Except that with the Cap the endpoint market clearly exists, and even Amtrak has noted capacity jams on the Cap on a seasonal basis (connected to the traffic surges on the western trains, unsurprisingly). Endpoint traffic is basically about 35-40% on the existing schedule. IIRC, about another 10-15% gets added for CHI-PGH (with a decent amount also showing up for PGH-WAS).
To be fair, this is because outside of Maryland, West Virginia, and Indiana the times on the train stink rather badly: Pittsburgh is served at midnight and 5 AM (Toledo is about the same) while Cleveland has even worse times. Give Cleveland and Toledo better times on trains headed to Chicago and those numbers should increase significantly, while through cars should add to the CHI-PGH traffic for obvious reasons.
My best guess (and this is only a guess) is that if you added a second Cap and gave it through card (or dressed it up as a Broadway with a Washington section splitting at Pittsburgh) you'd get something like this:
CHI-WAS: 25% (the train wouldn't have connections in CHI to the LD trains, but it would still connect to the Chicago hub trains)
CHI-PGH: 20% (through cars would more than make up for the bad time, since this would include traffic going through to New York)
CHI-CLE: 10% (Cleveland benefits the most from the bump in traffic to the west)
CHI-TOL: 10% (Toledo benefits a bit less, but it has more traffic to begin with)
CUM-WAS: 6% (Cumberland gets a bump from the second frequency)
CLE-WAS: 6% (another bump from the schedule switch)
CLE-PGH: 4% (...and another, this one down to the LSL's awful times here)
As to the question of the Second Lake Shore, what I would do there is keep one of the trains with a Boston section (probably the current one). The second one might have a Boston section as well (you get about 80k pax/yr on the Boston-Albany section, though some of that is probably internal to the section), though the temptation to add a Detroit section as well is quite strong since it might do better. I'm opposed to a complete reroute of either train due to the lost time fouling the Ohio-Chicago market, but a section to Detroit and then on to Chicago does make sense. Having two splits on the train (one at Albany and one at Toledo) is setting up an operational headache.
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Jis: Would that Chicago-Indian-Ohio service run by way of Calcutta? Or would it be an extended Hiawatha?
To be fair, this is because outside of Maryland, West Virginia, and Indiana the times on the train stink rather badly: Pittsburgh is served at midnight and 5 AM (Toledo is about the same) while Cleveland has even worse times. Give Cleveland and Toledo better times on trains headed to Chicago and those numbers should increase significantly, while through cars should add to the CHI-PGH traffic for obvious reasons.
My best guess (and this is only a guess) is that if you added a second Cap and gave it through card (or dressed it up as a Broadway with a Washington section splitting at Pittsburgh) you'd get something like this:
CHI-WAS: 25% (the train wouldn't have connections in CHI to the LD trains, but it would still connect to the Chicago hub trains)
CHI-PGH: 20% (through cars would more than make up for the bad time, since this would include traffic going through to New York)
CHI-CLE: 10% (Cleveland benefits the most from the bump in traffic to the west)
CHI-TOL: 10% (Toledo benefits a bit less, but it has more traffic to begin with)
CUM-WAS: 6% (Cumberland gets a bump from the second frequency)
CLE-WAS: 6% (another bump from the schedule switch)
CLE-PGH: 4% (...and another, this one down to the LSL's awful times here)
As to the question of the Second Lake Shore, what I would do there is keep one of the trains with a Boston section (probably the current one). The second one might have a Boston section as well (you get about 80k pax/yr on the Boston-Albany section, though some of that is probably internal to the section), though the temptation to add a Detroit section as well is quite strong since it might do better. I'm opposed to a complete reroute of either train due to the lost time fouling the Ohio-Chicago market, but a section to Detroit and then on to Chicago does make sense. Having two splits on the train (one at Albany and one at Toledo) is setting up an operational headache.
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Jis: Would that Chicago-Indian-Ohio service run by way of Calcutta? Or would it be an extended Hiawatha?