Flint, MI losing ticket agents

[Superliner Diner]

Flint - Ticket agents will be pulled from Flint's Amtrak station in January, forcing passengers to buy tickets on the train, over the phone or through a Web site.

The whole story is here. Flint is served by only one train daily, the International between Chicago and Toronto.

 

[tp49]

As much as I hate to say it if they are going to scale back the International route this much by closing most of the manned ticket offices and cutting the cafe car why don't they just eliminate the route. All of the cuts here will do nothing to boost ridership and will most likely result in the reduced ridership the powers that be seem to be looking for in order to cut the route. Why delay the inevidible it just makes Amtrak look worse.

 

[EmpireBuilderFan]

Unfortunately, this seems to be the trend for most of the stations that are served by only one train. A lot of the towns along long distance routes that had baggage service and manned ticket offices have lost those services. Pretty much the only way to get checked baggage is to go through a major city (like Minneapolis) or a city with more than long distance services (like Vancouver, WA).