NARP's "Vision For Trains In America"

[Mystic River Dragon]

The CardinaI has a reputation for being the most scenic route in the East, which seems to be the main reason to take it. If Amtrak can't sustain it with also trying to get the SL daily, do you think it's possible that it could be taken over by a private operator and run more like a tourist train? Rooms fixed up, menu improved and with a real dining car, nice PV-type lounge car. (I am not good at thinking out of the box, so this may be a ridiculous idea--please do not throw Amtrak café food at me ). But there might be people who would take it for the scenery as a land cruise, but of course that could only be done if Amtrak gave it up.

 

[brianpmcdonnell17]

The CardinaI has a reputation for being the most scenic route in the East, which seems to be the main reason to take it. If Amtrak can't sustain it with also trying to get the SL daily, do you think it's possible that it could be taken over by a private operator and run more like a tourist train? Rooms fixed up, menu improved and with a real dining car, nice PV-type lounge car. (I am not good at thinking out of the box, so this may be a ridiculous idea--please do not throw Amtrak café food at me ). But there might be people who would take it for the scenery as a land cruise, but of course that could only be done if Amtrak gave it up.

I doubt that most of the passengers are riding due to the scenery. That is likely the reason for many railfans, but not the general population. If it truly was a tourist train, they would find a way to put an observation car/sightseer lounge on it, even if that meant terminating the the route in Washington. A large share of the passengers are on the daily portions of the route, west of Indianapolis and east of Charlottesville. There is also a significant number of people travelling to Cincinnati or smaller cities in West Virginia. In addition, there are also passengers who connect to the Crescent in Charlottesville or the Silver Meteor via a bus to Richmond. When viewed as a New York-Chicago or Washington-Chicago train it may appear that only tourists would ride it, however the reality is very few passengers are travelling on this route for those city pairs. Although these markets are relatively small, especially given the poor hours at Indianapolis and Cincinnati, it doesn't take many people to fill up a tri-weekly train with the short Cardinal consist.

 

[dlagrua]

I cannot imagine the Cardinal being taken over by a private railroad. It is said that like many Amtrak LD routes the Cardinal is not profitable, yet every time that we have taken a summer trip on it (the last three years) it has been completely sold out or near capacity. This whole vision that the NARP has of future passenger rail is really a fantasy. You can double the Amtrak budget and you still wouldn't see it. The capital expenditure for equipment and track improvements would be staggering and that is assuming that the freight railroads would even be willing to share their tracks. Yes it would be great to see it but right now even a single new service is a stretch. Amtrak can't even get funding to restore the Gulf Coast service.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

I didn't realize how many people take the Cardinal between intermediate points. Definitely, then, it needs to be fought for and kept, and maybe even fought for to go daily.

 

[railiner]

I feel that if a train is run at all, it should be run at least daily....hate to have to consult a calendar to figure which days a train will run. That should be the first priority before any additional frequency on other routes is considered...even if increasing said frequency will yield better financially...just my humble opinion.

 

[neroden]

While I do believe both trains should be daily, I agree that the SL should be a higher priority. I would rather see 3-5 daily trains west of Cincinnati and tri-weekly service between Cincinnati and Charlottesville than once daily service over the entire route (although in a perfect world there would be both).

Well, in my ideal world we'd have the 3C (Cleveland-Columbus-Cincy) line. And a Houston-Dallas line. And the Sunset Limited would stop in Phoenix.

The SL is actually an inherently weak route, because the cities are too far apart. A good rail line thrives on intermediate population. El Paso is an awfully long way away from both Houston and San Antonio. (Salt Lake - Reno is the next largest "depopulated" gap I can think of in the Amtrak network). The portion of the route from San Antonio to Houston is better but lacks intermediate stations, and Houston really ought to be connected northward. Houston - New Orleans is all right (good even) and would make a decent corridor if Louisana or Texas ever cared enough and completed their other priorities first.

On top of that, the SL has terrible politics, with no state government support and very little local government support (most of which is from Beaumont to New Orleans). The Cardinal gets much stronger local support for whatever reason, perhaps because it's more useful.

 

[Anderson]

I think utility has something to do with it. As far as that gap, Reno-Salt Lake does a pretty good job of hosing the Zephyr's performance (and indeed, that gap hosed WP's service prior to A-Day). Not that having the train isn't useful (it serves an EAS-esque role in some areas) but it's hard to get good financial performance out of the situation between Tucson and San Antonio.

TBH I think it would, financially, probably make more sense to run a daily train Tucson-Phoenix-Los Angeles and another one San Antonio-New Orleans (I once heard a suggestion to extend the Crescent to either Houston or San Antonio) alongside the existing 3x weekly through train than to try and force this one to be daily. That has all sorts of operational disadvantages, but unlike (for example) the gap between Cleveland and Buffalo or Huntington/Cincinnatti and Indianapolis, both of which are only a few hours long, the one on the Sunset is 920 miles and about 18 hours long.

 

[neroden]

Agree with Anderson. Until there is enough support in Phoenix, there is no stop in Phoenix, which makes part of that plan very hard. On the east end, Dallas to Houston to New Orleans seems like the correct daily train to me. Stop at College Station...

 

[west point]

Cardinal ? How many O & Ds south of WASH for locations to the west ? That would include Cincinnati. Only CIN <> WASH has good air service. Every other town has very limited service available including locations north of WASH.

We certainly cannot say the other routes to CHI are that limited.

 

[Anderson]

Agree with Anderson. Until there is enough support in Phoenix, there is no stop in Phoenix, which makes part of that plan very hard. On the east end, Dallas to Houston to New Orleans seems like the correct daily train to me. Stop at College Station...

Phoenix is a bit of an odd duck: If I'm not mistaken, service on that part of the line was cut when SP wanted to abandon the line...but the line was never abandoned. This was probably in some part due to the merger...the timing is certainly right to it being merger-related (Phoenix/Tempe/Coolidge are still the stops in the April 1996 timetable; Wikipedia lists service as having stopped on May 28, 1996 while the merger wasn't for a few months...so it sounds like this was an SP plan that got thrown out when the merger became a fiasco).

My best guess is that returning the train to that routing would be worth perhaps 25-30k riders: Ridership at Maricopa right now is a little over half what it was in Phoenix in the 1990s (12k vs 21k) and I'm going to hazard a guess that, given the trend in ridership on the Sunset Limited over the last 10-15 years even in spite of losing the Sunset East (LAX-NOL now has as much ridership as LAX-ORL had pre-Katrina, and IIRC even that was up from where it was in the 1990s) I would guess very much that ridership at Phoenix would be up significantly as well (especially since the population of the Phoenix metro area has also grown since then). Also, Tempe had a station (and presumably at least some ridership), and said station is apparently within walking distance of the light rail line (which also didn't exist 20 years ago). I'm guessing that, vis-a-vis Maricopa's 12k/yr, Phoenix should probably generate about 25k/yr (up modestly since the 1990s) while Tempe should generate perhaps 10-15k (I'm being generous to Tempe, but it arguably has somewhat better calling times as well as a significant catchment area on that side of the city as well as being more transit-accessible). That added ridership (presuming it could be accommodated) would probably be worth around $2.5-3.5m/yr, presuming that the passengers from those stations behave like the pax originating at Maricopa do. By the way, just under half of the traffic from Maricopa goes to LAX (and that, in turn, is about 5% of the Sunset Limited's ridership).

@West Point:

I'm going to go off of NARP's ridership data (which differs a little from the Amtrak ridership report data), but 5 of your top 9 ridership pairs and 4 of your top 9 revenue pairs fall under that category. Setting aside the Hoosier State-supplemented stops in Indiana, Charlottesville and Cincinnati both send quite a few folks through to Chicago (ridership to Chicago is right behind ridership to Atlanta for CVS, which is saying something considering that ATL has the Crescent running daily versus the Cardinal going 3x weekly). With that aside, the stops in WV switch back and forth between WAS and CHI as their #1 destination (HUN and WSS have WAS, HIN and CHW have CHI). The turnover in CVS has actually been pretty stunning every time I've seen it.

 

[west point]

@West Point:

I'm going to go off of NARP's ridership data (which differs a little from the Amtrak ridership report data), but 5 of your top 9 ridership pairs and 4 of your top 9 revenue pairs fall under that category. Setting aside the Hoosier State-supplemented stops in Indiana, Charlottesville and Cincinnati both send quite a few folks through to Chicago (ridership to Chicago is right behind ridership to Atlanta for CVS, which is saying something considering that ATL has the Crescent running daily versus the Cardinal going 3x weekly). With that aside, the stops in WV switch back and forth between WAS and CHI as their #1 destination (HUN and WSS have WAS, HIN and CHW have CHI). The turnover in CVS has actually been pretty stunning every time I've seen it.

Anderson ========

That was my suspicion on riders CVS west <> CHI. But it is somewhat surprising the ATL comparison. Have done ATL <> CVS <> Cardinal going west. Had quite a few connecting passengers waiting with us at CVS. The long wait at CVS enable views of the university and downtown on the trolley.

 

[Anderson]

One thing to remember is that CVS is a significant transfer point for both trains: There's a bus from RVR/RVM to CVS to connect to/from both the Crescent and Cardinal, and the Cardinal's bus allows a legal connection to the Silver Service (and to Hampton Roads on Friday and Sunday) while the Crescent's allows the connection both ways on a daily basis IIRC. Basically, if there's something screwed up with the Cap, I could use the Cardinal as a backup from my usual stations.

Edit: I actually did this once, and I got to have a dining car breakfast and lunch en route. I missed dinner...but mainly because I was having too much fun enjoying the ride along Afton Mountain.

 

[ainamkartma]

Agree with Anderson. Until there is enough support in Phoenix, there is no stop in Phoenix, which makes part of that plan very hard. On the east end, Dallas to Houston to New Orleans seems like the correct daily train to me. Stop at College Station...

Phoenix is a bit of an odd duck:

Another thing to consider regarding Phoenix is that its status as a major airline hub is likely to change over the next decade. When USAir merged with American Airlines, one of the conditions of Justice Department approval of the merger was that the combined company would not make major reductions of flights at any hub for three years after the merger. One of the big reasons for the imposition of this restriction was that it was pretty obvious to everyone in the aviation world that the new AA can't sustain major hubs at both LAX and PHX: they are too close together. So it is pretty obvious that as soon as the three year window expires, which I believe it this coming December, AA will start more or less drastically ramping down operations at PHX, since obviously they can't reduce their international and transcontinental operations at LAX. Since the merger, they have been slowly increasing their domestic operations at LAX and making significant capacity improvements at LAX.

So, the long and short of it is that there is a real possibility, at least, that PHX will become much less convenient to reach by air over the next decade, which will change the cost-benefit analysis of improving Amtrak service there.

Ainamkartma

 

[railiner]

Agree with Anderson. Until there is enough support in Phoenix, there is no stop in Phoenix, which makes part of that plan very hard. On the east end, Dallas to Houston to New Orleans seems like the correct daily train to me. Stop at College Station...

Phoenix is a bit of an odd duck:

Another thing to consider regarding Phoenix is that its status as a major airline hub is likely to change over the next decade. When USAir merged with American Airlines, one of the conditions of Justice Department approval of the merger was that the combined company would not make major reductions of flights at any hub for three years after the merger. One of the big reasons for the imposition of this restriction was that it was pretty obvious to everyone in the aviation world that the new AA can't sustain major hubs at both LAX and PHX: they are too close together. So it is pretty obvious that as soon as the three year window expires, which I believe it this coming December, AA will start more or less drastically ramping down operations at PHX, since obviously they can't reduce their international and transcontinental operations at LAX. Since the merger, they have been slowly increasing their domestic operations at LAX and making significant capacity improvements at LAX.

So, the long and short of it is that there is a real possibility, at least, that PHX will become much less convenient to reach by air over the next decade, which will change the cost-benefit analysis of improving Amtrak service there.

Ainamkartma

Interesting...if LA and Phoenix hubs are too close together, what do you think will happen with JFK and Philly?....

 

[jis]

Or Newark and Washington Dulles for that matter.

 

[ainamkartma]

The scuttlebutt on Flyertalk is that PHL will also suffer badly, but PHX will be hit hardest. But in the slightly longer term, remember that AA's terminal at JFK was designed to have ~twice as many gates as were actually constructed; they halted construction when it was half finished. So there is huge capacity available there, possible after an extended construction period.

I have not paid any attention to discussions of UA's plans regarding hubs in the northeast, but one could certainly imagine that NYC and Washington both have enough premium O&D traffic to justify nearby hubs or at least major operation centers. This is also true of LAX, but emphatically not true of PHX or PHL.

However, I guess no one outside of the AA management really knows what their plans are, of course. Certainly not me.

Ainamkartma

 

[Lonestar648]

There is also a saturation point that the airlines try to ignore at the HUB cities like Chicago, Atlanta, New York, etc. On a good day, there are more flights in/out of Chicago O'Hare than the ATC system can handle per hour. UA and AA flight each other for space on a regular basis. Phoenix could easily loose its status as a major HUB by either just eliminating certain flights that do not fill up and moving others to HUBs like LAX, DFW, or ORD. Air fares in/out of Phoenix area including Tuscon, are likely to rise with the reduced capacity. But with only a three day a week SL, I doubt Amtrak will see much change.