The western LD trains serve these states en route aside from the end point states (IL, WA, OR, CA, LA):
CZ: IA, NE, CO, UT, NV
EB: WI, MN, ND, MT, ID
SWC: MO, KS, CO, NM, AZ
SL: TX, NM, AZ
TXEagle: MO, AR, TX, NM, AZ
The estimated US Census population for the US 2015 = 321.4 million.
The population of these 16 states (IA, NE, CO, UT, NV, WI, MN, ND, MT, ID, MO, KS, NM, AZ, TX, AR) = approximately 78.6 million or 24.4% of the total. They are served by 5 LD routes, with a low ridership and at a considerable loss. Most would/will be served far better by corridor services.
Not to forget that the Southwest Chief also serves Iowa.
You can prove darn near anything with numbers or the absense thereof. I know you like corridor trains and don’t so much like LD trains. Personally, I’d like to see both.
What I don’t want to end up with is chopping what was once a run-through into corridors that may or may not connect, forcing either over-night stays to continue on or even using alternate transportation to bridge gaps.
When I went from Little Rock to Los Angeles earlier this year, I could do so with a one-seat ride! Couldn’t do that on a plane and it was a key selling point for me.
So what are the corridors you see? How long is a corridor? And what about any gaps making a trip from Chicago to the West Coast impossible?
Starting from Chicago, there’s an effort to get passenger service to Quad Cities (but the current gov in IL makes even that a challenge). To extend the corridor to Iowa City is welcomed by the business community in Eastern Iowa and opposed by the current governor and his band in Des Moines. The corridor really should go to Omaha (or even Lincoln, NE, given all the traffic Omaha - Lincoln). This is just one corridor, but it crosses statelines and everyone seems to only care about their own state. So how do you make corridors happen?
New York - Chicago is in my mind a good corridor that should have multiple trains a day. With higher speed or even true high speed trains, travel time would meet or beat driving. Or is that too long for a corridor in your book?
The length for a competitive corridor varies with speed and total time, end to end. An advantage of corridors over 2000 mile LD trains is the ability to have better service in three ways, at least. One, more frequent service daily. Two, more scheduled convenient times of service. Three, more reliable, on-time service because of shorter distances in which delays are compounded.
Implemenation would likely require taking more of the financial burden off the states, especially on multistate routes, such as CHI-Lincoln or Omaha-DEN.
CHI-NYC could work with much higher speeds. Some trains could run endpoint to endpoint, some on existing or new corridors on the overall route(s). And it could only work with largely dedicated RoWs, either new or rebuilding some of the redundant old freight routes.
We talk as though the solution on given routes is either/or: the long-distance trains OR connecting corridors.
However, I doubt very much if the money saved by eliminating the LD trains would support the corridors and frequencies envisioned by Schlimm. The only answer is enough money for Amtrak-- the “fair share” called for by many – to support both the corridors and the existing one-seat ride.
Until we succeed in getting this, I’m afraid we’re only corridor dreaming.
Bring back the Broadway Limited/Three Rivers but instead run it through Michigan. It would serve as a direct train from Philly, Harrisburg, and Lancaster to Chicago and a direct train from Michigan to Philly and New York without dealing with the Thruway Bus and waiting in Toledo during the graveyard shift. I’ll take the through cars off the Capitol Limited but when Amtrak posted the PRIIA they weren’t going to change the times of the CL or Pennsylvanian so that long near 4 hour wait in Pittsburgh wasn’t going away (the only difference is you can wait in the train as opposed to being banished to the station).
Of the five, only the SL could be considered to have a low ridership. And each of the first four trains serve a purpose in connecting a key western area to Chicago which allows them the ability to connect to trains from Chicago to the East (SWC: LA, CZ: Bay Area, TE: Texas, EB: Pacific Northwest). The only change I might make would be to replace the EB by bringing back the Pioneer as long as they have a train between Chicago and Minneapolis. You can then run the California Zephyr and Pioneer joint and then split at either Denver or Salt Lake City. That would allow passengers from Denver and SLC to visit Seattle/Portland and allow Amtrak to serve Boise again. The only decent sized market on the EB between Minneapolis and Seattle/Portland is Spokane. But the EB had higher ridership than both of the California trains so why mess with it?
You can argue the Sunset might be worth getting rid of but you would lose a direct connection from Texas to California (the two largest states in the US) and have no service at all in Houston. Plus instead of being about 40 miles away from Phoenix, you’d be a lot farther away.
If there’s any train worth getting rid of because of lack of population and low ridership, it’s the Cardinal. Almost no one travels from endpoint to endpoint because other trains are faster and the two biggest markets outside of Chicago and the NEC are Indy and Cincy, which are served at lousy times (Cincinnati in the middle of the night). The market with the second largest ridership on the Cardinal is a tiny college town. Plus, there’s an obvious replacement just waiting that you can use the equipment on. I’d like to see a Chicago-Cinci
Few. if any folks on here have any influence or power over passenger rail services. It’s all dreaming.
But you underestimate the enormous operating costs of those five Western LD routes annually. Through July 2016 YTD (10 months, I believe), they look to have cost $364.4 million dollars for operations. By way of comparison, the operating costs for ALL the Acela service is $255.2 million and ticket revenues are such that they yield a surplus of $258 million.
That ridership is a small fraction of NEC ridership and even smaller compared to the state-supported corridors. And since others have pointed out that the bulk of the ridership on the five Western trains is not end to end, replcement with shorter corridors, where appropriate, would serve most of those populations there far better. The purpose of Amtrak is to provide needed transportation for the greatest numbers, not highly subsidized land cruises for the few (1.6 million).
Somehow it’s hardly fair to compare one train/day each way with a corridor that has 3-10 trains each way/day for ridership. Experience from around the world shows that when there are more times to choose from, travel by that mode goes up.
Yes, most travel on the LD trains is not end-to-end. But where do you make the breaks between corridors?
Take the Texas Eagle: Many of the folks getting on in Little Rock go all the way to Chicago. So in a corridor model, should those folks all have to change trains in St Louis? (Chicago - St Louis = corridor, Dallas - St Louis = corridor, San Antonio - Dallas = corridor). That intermediate travel doesn’t break down neatly but covers most of the possible station pairs on the longer line.
When I was on the Southwest Chief last, coming from LA, a number of people who’d traveled from LA got off at Lamy. In a corridor model, would there be a connection from LA for them? A corridor from LA might go to Albuquerque. Then what?
Short corridors, inside one state are “easy”: you just have to have leadership in that state willing to spring for it. Get a couple states into the mix and all bets are off.
I’d really like to see more than one train a day on the LD routes, and would be fine with them covering part of the distance in corridor fashion. Still want to have the ability to offer one-seat rides for longer than 500 or 700 mile distanc
It can also be argued that the Sunset Limited would have higher ridership if it didn’t just run 3x week.
This year, going from Little Rock to LA, the 3x week fit my schedule going out and would have fit perfectly coming back, except for construction that had the train leaving LA in the afternoon instead of late evening. So I chose to come back on the Southwest Chief and stop and see friends in Chicago on the way home, rather than sit in LA for a couple more days.
Someone else might decide to fly instead of taking the train when the train only runs a few times a week.
I would hate losing a direct train from Chicago to LA or Chicago to San Fran or Chicago to Texas (the NW would be the one I care about the least as I have no interest in traveling to Seattle). If you force a transfer or two, you also make it harder for passengers from east of Chicago to travel out to California/Texas. The east/west model with Chicago in the middle works well for a good portion of the country but Philadelphia is cut off from Chicago as is Florida, Georgia (Atlanta) and the Carolinas. I’d also like better connectivity in the South. The SL is just 3x/week and try going from Texas/New Orleans to Florida now. I can’t think of way to do it without going all the way north to Chicago and then back south again (using the Capitol Limited and the Silver Meteor). I’d like to see a same day connection possible between the Crescent and Sunset Limited as opposed to having to spend the night.
Actually there’s a simple solution, but it would never fly in Congress(it would really help out in two areas). The fuel tax needs to be completely overhauled and separated into 3 different values, one fore automotive fuels, a second for commercial diesel fuels(those used by buses/trucks, etc.), and a third for wholesale diesel fuel(that used by RR’s’)(it currently is divided into only two, automotive and diesel). Then you take the base fuel tax of today, which was last raised in 1993, is not indexed to inflation and has not been raised since(since inflation from 1993 to now is 64.6%, the current fuel taxes would be raised from 18.4 cpg(cents per gallon) to 30.3 for automotive fuel, and from 24.4(cpg) to 40.2(cpg) for diesel and other speciality fuels with future increased tied to the inflation index. The fuel tax on wholesale fuel could be set at 4 cpg(just look at how much fuel the railroads use), also tied to the inflation index, with the money going into a special RR only fund(like the Highway Trust Fund). The change in fuel tax rate should also include language that restricts Congress from diverting these funds to any other purpose except transportation infrastructure. Notice that even with inflation the fuel taxes are still not close to a $1/pg for federal, though adding in the amounts state charge would increase a number of states to over $1/pg of fuel tax combined.
This Railroad Trust Fund could then be used for any public and/or public/private improvement to the overall transportation network, especially Amtrak.
@Philly Amtrak Fan: P.S. - For New Orleans to Florida you don’t need to go to Chicago, just take the Crescent to Washington then the Silver Star or Meteor to Florida(depending on destination). Of course an extended and daily Sunset would be a more logical joice.
“But you underestimate the enormous operating costs of those five Western LD routes annually. Through July 2016 YTD (10 months, I believe), they look to have cost $364.4 million dollars for operations. By way of comparison, the operating costs for ALL the Acela service is $255.2 million and it runs a SURPLUS over ticket revenue of $258 million.” (I think that you meant to say that ticket revenues exceed operating costs, you actually say the reverse when you say operating costs run a surplus over ticket revenues.)
First, if you believe those numbers, you are in a great deal of trouble. Having done work for Amtrak, I can tell you that they are not the real story. For Acela, note that you use operating costs, which are the smallest cost of what it takes to operate the trains. This is like ignoring the cost of the car and oil changes, and just looking at the cost of fuel. Suddenly the cost of having a car is much cheaper. For Acela to operate, the track, electrical system, signal system, and many other infrastructural costs are much greater than they would be without the trains. Additionally, going from FRA Track Class 6 (110mph) to Class 8 (160 max) adds a great deal of regulatory changes including fencing, additional track inspections, dynamic testing daily, etc., etc., etc. Also note that the western equipment seems to last much longer than corridor trains, most of it having been rebuilt multiple times. However, advocates for higher speed “corridors” never seem to add those costs to the package. If Acela actually ran that much of a surplus, and the other corridor trains came close to break even, then Amtrak would need almost no subsidy each year as there would be enough internally generated cash to pay the cost of the long distance trains. However, Amtrak needs about $1 billion a year to survive. Obvously, there are a great deal more costs than you want to talk about.
Look at the billions of dollars being talked about for Northeast Corridor projects. Almost every one of those
The long distance passenger trains are here to stay as per my post on the FF blog. They have been part of the national fabric for more than 40 years. Comparing them to corridor trains does not appear to be a worthy exercise.
Eight-five per cent of Amtrak’s long distance passengers go coach class. Most of them are only on the train for one night if at all. Most of the sleeping car passengers travel further than coach passengers, but the numbers indicate that most of them are only on the train one night.
An important question is whether the long distance trains can be more efficient and effective? The following steps could make them so and probably reduce their losses.
Eliminate the sleeping cars. Replace them with business class cars equipped with seats similar to those found on cross country flights.
Eliminate the dining cars. Upgrade lounge car meal offerings. Outsource food and beverage services to a food service vendor whose core competency is food service.
Eliminate the staff at intermediate stations that are serv
I compared operating costs with operating costs. They are the only costs available to the public. You seem unfamiliar with even basic accountancy, as you want us to compare apples with trucks. The facts are clear and obvious: Western LD trains have much higher (labor) costs than corridors, largely because of sleeping cars and diners. And they serve very few people, endpoint to endpoint especially.
Combine with the City of New Orleans and split off at Memphis, TN for Little Rock, AR, Texarkana, Dallas and the rest.
I see zero value in having the TE run over a HSR corridor between St. Louis and Chicago and mucking up schedules with it’s slower run or even stopping at the intermediate cities St. Louis to Chicago since they are on a Corridor already.