NARP has complete listing of each train and each station figures for each train. Do not know where these came from but some interesting readings. Look at the lakeshore BOS & NYP section pass: Builder – SEA & PDX; Sunset & Eagle. Lots of analysis can be done ?
Interesting! A virtual gold mine for liars that use figures.
Looking at the Lake Shore Ltd, you notice that the 1000-1099 mile trip lengths are only 3.5% of trips. BOS-CHI are the only two stations over 1000 miles apart on the route, so some people will want to lop-off the Boston leg. However, BOS-CHI is ranked number 6 in ridership pairs, and number 2 in revenue!
NYP-CHI is number 1 in both ridership and revenue, despite it being in with the 11.7 percentile of the 900-999 mile trip lengths.
Another thing that surprised me is that Croton-Harmon and Framingham have the 2 smallest station loadings, despite being the suburban stops for NY and Boston.
Can’t speak for the rest, but Croton-Harmon being lightly utilized isn’t surprising. Very few Chi passengers come from the rather lightly settled, ‘up the Hudson,’ area. They come from the five boroughs, LonGuyland and Joisey. The part of Joisey near Croton-Harmon is mostly the Palisades Interstate Park - not many deer and squirrels (the furry kind) ride trains.
Chuck (ex Noo Yawka - but I left)
Besides, Poughkeepsie is also a suburban NY boarding point and may draw the trade the might use Croton-Harmon if parking were as easy there as at Poughkeepsie. Parking may also be an issue at Framingham.
Not too many from Joisey drive to the east side of the Hudson to catch a train…MNRR/NJT offer excellent hourly service out of Spring Valley on the Pascak Valley Line, and excellent peak hour services on the former Erie line west of Suffern and good mid day services catching people from Newburg at the west end of Moodna Viaduct at Salsbury Mills-Cornwall or at Harriman. Croton Harmon on the NYC’s Water Level route is a grandfatherd stop for all trains as the location NYC changed to and from electric power going in and out of Grand Central Terminal. Amtrak and commuter lines both seem to salute the past with what I call “charter stops” and “charter trains” in that the trains made the stops since the first rail was laid and first train arrived and departed. For instance, only recently did NJT eliminate trains 600 weekdays and 900 weekends as 4AM departures from Dover to Hoboken but the LIRR still runs an train to Montauk arriving at 3:57AM daily and NJT/MNRR has a similar arrival at Port Jervis. The point is that there are probably a lot of commuter and some Amtrak trains that run and stations that are stopped at (not necessarily served) because thats the way it has always been.
Perhaps having Croton-Harmon as a stop is another example of Amtrak’s “because they always did” philosophy. Wasn’t that the stop where steam/diesel power was exchanged for elecric and vice versa in the old NYC days and was only lightly patronized even then? Now it appears most of the patrons are riding within NY state and less then 200 miles. So perhaps it should be a stop only for Empire Service trains and not the Lake Shore Limited (3747, about 10 patrons per day).
Are there other Lake Shore stops with that low a passenger count?
Another thought I have about Croton-Harmon concerns union contracts and seniority districts…a lot of these agreements are grandfatherd into today. Changing locomotives also meant a change of engine crews with electric engines making numerous round trips to and from GCT, the steam/diesel engines and crews working west (north) to Albany and back… Made for agreements and operating rules which still stand in minds if not formulas and programs of today.
The power now works through NY-GCT - Albsny-Rennselaer. Does the engineer?
Good question. That’s why I brought the subject up.l
dave klepper: The answer is no. However, Poughkeepsie has only 5,816 for the LSL. Elyria, OH only 4,585, Bryan 6,693 and Sandusky only 6,136. Perhaps stops that generate so little traffic should be candidates for being dropped or made flag stops.
Then the engineer only round trips Croton-Harmon to and from Grand Central or to and from ALbany?
Albany… At least.
Probably works a turn from Rensselaer…
Very true. Thank for this link to some useful factual data.
I used to live in northern Westchester County so Croton-Harmon was convenient to us. Yes it is a legacy stop, as the former electric-to-steam/diesel engine change point. Since all electrics end there it is also a convenient transfer point. But perhaps Tarrytown would be a better suburban stop, with its closer to I-287 expressway/Tappen Zee Bridge access, and closer to population centers. Don’t know about parking. As I recall, Amtrak moved their traditional west CHI suburban stop from Aurora to Naperville.
Would station upgrades be needed?. esp disability facilities ?
Amtrak moved its far suburban stop from Aurora to Naperville in part because of the rebuilding of Metra’s terminal facilities in Aurora. With the rebuilding, the station platforms were moved off the main line onto separate terminal tracks. Consequently, an Aurora stop was no longer feasible for Amtrak.
If Tarrytown is currently served by MNRR, wouldn’t it already be adequate? The point about dropping Croton/Harmon was that it serves almost no patrons for the LSL.