New Routes?

[Crescent Mark]

Question -

If Obama/Biden win, do you think Amtrak will significantly get an increase in funding, to the point where they can start creating new routes? With that said, what parts of the country are in need for new routes? I'm biased because I live in the south, but I'd like to get some routes going down here, and I know Las Vegas needs to be included in a route too. If they do get a big increase, do you think they will go as far as to do things like continue the Sunset Limited again? Or do you think they'd spend it mainly for equipment upgrades? I'm interested in what everyone thinks.

What were the last few routes added to Amtrak?

Also, what were the last few routes that were discontinued by Amtrak?

If Obama gives a lot of support to Amtrak and commuter rail, do you think state-level governments will see that as something they should improve on also? An example is how developed the North Carolina, Washington (State) and California Transportation Departments are in terms of rail.

 

[Shotgun7]

My age makes me not too qualified to answer this, but a few route immediately come to mind. As for routes I think they definately need restored, they need to get the Sunset Limited running at least five times a week, with a connecting train down to Florida. As of now, the only way for people in my state to get west on the train is to go via Washington and Chicago. That being said, Chicago too needs to be connected to at least Jacksonville, despite the horrible track quality and if that's not possible, then Atlanta to Miami would definately be a profitable route with a huge market. So many government employees down here who need to get to Atlanta every month or so would prefer to take a train than fly. The Desert Wind is also a necessity to bring back.

I couldn't tell you what the last few routes were that were added, but ones recently discontinued do come to mind. Both the Pioneer and Desert Wind were abondoned in 1997 and the Sunset Ltd went to tri weekly service sometime in the 90s. The Three Rivers route from Chicago to New York via Pittsburgh was cancelled in 2002, eliminating the fastest route between the two hubs. Also around this time, the Silver Palm was discontinued, forcing many central and northern Florida cities to be reduced to bus service. IIRC, the Kentucky Cardinal was the last route to be canceled, ending rail service to/from Louisville.

 

[the_traveler]

I think the Midwest Flyer (running from MSP down thru KC down to Texas would be a good addition. Also to improve the connections between the SL, CONO and Crescent to eliminate the necessary overnight stay. And of course the SL (east) - or at least some rail connection to FL from NOL.

I also agree that the Pioneer and Desert Wind need to be restored.

AFAIK - the SL (even in pre-Amtrak days) was always 3 days a week.

 

[sky12065]

Question - If Obama/Biden win, do you think Amtrak will significantly get an increase in funding, to the point where they can start creating new routes? With that said, what parts of the country are in need for new routes? I'm biased because I live in the south, but I'd like to get some routes going down here, and I know Las Vegas needs to be included in a route too. If they do get a big increase, do you think they will go as far as to do things like continue the Sunset Limited again? Or do you think they'd spend it mainly for equipment upgrades? I'm interested in what everyone thinks.

What were the last few routes added to Amtrak?

Also, what were the last few routes that were discontinued by Amtrak?

If Obama gives a lot of support to Amtrak and commuter rail, do you think state-level governments will see that as something they should improve on also? An example is how developed the North Carolina, Washington (State) and California Transportation Departments are in terms of rail.

Politics aside, whatever funding is provided, let's hope that it's sufficient to get the ball rolling on what should be first priority, equipment repair & upgrading and new acquisition to adequately handle the growing demand for the routes we currently have; and in addition to that, improved promotion for current routes lacking in ridership. Once these priorities have been reasonably accomplished then new or re-established routes and full promotion can be saught!

 

[jphjaxfl]

[ the Sunset Ltd went to tri weekly service sometime in the 90s.]

Th Sunset Ltd has been tri-weekly since Amtrak started in 1971 and the Southern Pacific operated it tri-weekly about 2 years before that. When The Sunset Limited last ran daily, in 1968, it was coaches only with vending machine food service. Espee offered to bring back sleeping car, dining car and lounge service if the Interstate Commerce Commission would allow the train to be cut back to tr-weekly.

 

[lrdc9_metroplitan_sub]

Three Rivers need back. But the biggest thing they need is a purly a N-S route from WA to Denver south to the border through all the tourist cities in Colorado.

Also, new equipment should go #1 (not to replace but to add on) as well as more refurbs.

Also route from WAS/PHL to STL/KC w/ a timed connect to the Southwest Limited. Route south from Indianapolis would also be great!!!

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

My age makes me not too qualified to answer this, but a few route immediately come to mind. As for routes I think they definately need restored, they need to get the Sunset Limited running at least five times a week, with a connecting train down to Florida. As of now, the only way for people in my state to get west on the train is to go via Washington and Chicago. That being said, Chicago too needs to be connected to at least Jacksonville, despite the horrible track quality and if that's not possible, then Atlanta to Miami would definately be a profitable route with a huge market. So many government employees down here who need to get to Atlanta every month or so would prefer to take a train than fly. The Desert Wind is also a necessity to bring back.

Jacksonville is a much smaller city than either Orlando or Miami. The focus ought to be on the current population centers, not the historical railroad hubs.

In that corner of the country, I believe we ought to be building new, 300 km/h or better track from Miami to Orlando to Atlanta to Charlotte to Washington, DC. When I speak of 300 km/h, I'm thinking that once the train gets to the edge of the major city, the train would be able to accelerate to whatever speed is choosen, and not need to decelerate until it reaches the edge of the next city it's going to stop at. That would get us about to the level of technology the French were using 30 years ago.

I couldn't tell you what the last few routes were that were added, but ones recently discontinued do come to mind. Both the Pioneer and Desert Wind were abondoned in 1997 and the Sunset Ltd went to tri weekly service sometime in the 90s. The Three Rivers route from Chicago to New York via Pittsburgh was cancelled in 2002, eliminating the fastest route between the two hubs. Also around this time, the Silver Palm was discontinued, forcing many central and northern Florida cities to be reduced to bus service. IIRC, the Kentucky Cardinal was the last route to be canceled, ending rail service to/from Louisville.

If the Three Rivers was substantially slower than 5 hours going from Chicago to NYP, then we again ought to be building new high speed track to become competitive with what the French were doing 30 years ago.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Politics aside, whatever funding is provided, let's hope that it's sufficient to get the ball rolling on what should be first priority, equipment repair & upgrading and new acquisition to adequately handle the growing demand for the routes we currently have; and in addition to that, improved promotion for current routes lacking in ridership. Once these priorities have been reasonably accomplished then new or re-established routes and full promotion can be saught!

Without investment in new track, about the best we can hope for is 40 car trainsets on every route. And lengthening the trains like that is likely to make every stop take much, much longer than it does now.

 

[JohnF]

What's needed here in Texas is a Texas to Colorado connection via the old Texas Zephyr route. Houston-Dallas-San Antonio-Houston corridor service. Daily Sunset Limited service. Extension of the Heartland Flyer north to KC and eventually to Minneapolis/St Paul and south to San Antonio. Send the Texas Eagle out west from Ft Worth on the UP(former T&P) Baird division to El Paso and connect with the SSL there. Houston to the valley(Corpus Christi/Brownsville/McAllen) corridor service. That is all for starters. They can fill in the blanks with thru-way bus connections.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

With that said, what parts of the country are in need for new routes?

I believe that all of the 35 biggest primary census areas (see the list here)ought to have 3 hour or less downtown to downtown service to adjacent primary census areas which are close enough to make such times possible if we could get our country caught up to late 1970s French high speed rail technology. (That would be roughly 500 miles.) Perhaps we should even contemplate going faster than the traditional French technology so we can include high speed Denver to Kansas City track.

If they do get a big increase, do you think they will go as far as to do things like continue the Sunset Limited again?

I really hope that instead of a three day in each direction train, we see a high speed train with sleepers that does Miami to Orlando to Atlanta to St Louis to Kansas City to Denver to Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to Los Angles in about a day, which ought to be easily possible with 30 year old French technology. Phoenix should have a high speed connection to Las Vegas, and Dallas / Ft Worth a high speed connection to Kansas City and San Antonio and Houston, and everything else to the south of that high speed cross country route should be connected via daily daytime conventional speed trains. The longest route in terms of wall clock time in a modern system ought to be the Empire Builder, which mostly covers territory that's not very densely populated at all and thus isn't worth much investment in track upgrades west of Minneapolis.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

What's needed here in Texas is a Texas to Colorado connection via the old Texas Zephyr route. Houston-Dallas-San Antonio-Houston corridor service. Daily Sunset Limited service. Extension of the Heartland Flyer north to KC and eventually to Minneapolis/St Paul and south to San Antonio. Send the Texas Eagle out west from Ft Worth on the UP(former T&P) Baird division to El Paso and connect with the SSL there. Houston to the valley(Corpus Christi/Brownsville/McAllen) corridor service. That is all for starters. They can fill in the blanks with thru-way bus connections.

What if, instead of the Sunset Limited, you had hourly departures of high speed trains from each of San Antonio, Ft Worth, Dallas, and Houston to Kansas City, and at Kansas City you could transfer to hourly high speed trains that went to places such as Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco; Minneapolis / St. Paul; St Louis, Chicago, Cincinati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, New York City, Boston, Montreal, Atlanta, Orlando, and Miami? If we imitate French definitions of high speed, any of those destinations are probably easily possible from any of those large Texas cities in well under 24 hours.

 

[saxman]

This has always been my vision for the near future:

Crescent Star: split from Meridian to Dallas and Fort Worth

Another split of the Crescent from Charlottesville to Roanoke, Tri-Cities, Knoxville, Chattanoogo, Huntsville, Memphis, Little Rock, DFW or OKC.

Heartland Flyer Extension to either Witchita, Newton and KC and hopefully MSP. Also south to San Antonio.

Pioneer and Desert Wind of course.

North Coast Hiawatha brought back to cover Fargo, Bismarck, Billings to Spokane and Seattle.

Chicago to Florida via Atlanta with a split also via Birmingham or something like that.

South Dakota has always lacked any type of service, so something splitting from MSP down through Brookings or Sioux Falls, Pierre, and Rapid City to Denver.

Again, these are just long distance trains. Doesn't even begin to cover all the high speed corridors and conventional speed corridors that would also be in place to help out the network.

 

[Steve Manfred]

I vote for a north-south train roughly on the I-35 corridor.

 

[sky12065]

Politics aside, whatever funding is provided, let's hope that it's sufficient to get the ball rolling on what should be first priority, equipment repair & upgrading and new acquisition to adequately handle the growing demand for the routes we currently have; and in addition to that, improved promotion for current routes lacking in ridership. Once these priorities have been reasonably accomplished then new or re-established routes and full promotion can be saught!

Without investment in new track, about the best we can hope for is 40 car trainsets on every route. And lengthening the trains like that is likely to make every stop take much, much longer than it does now.

By "investment in new track" I'm not sure if you mean new rails or new routes?

If you mean new rails, my thoughts included them as priorities. I just neglected to list them. If you mean't new routes, I used the term "reasonably" so as not to imply that the priorities had to be totally addressed first, but just enough to take care of most of the more serious tangible problems (i.e. equipment & rails) as freqently discussed on this web site. Amtrak can then, get into intangible things like route analysis, selections & acquisitions.

It's all good but Amtrak needs to live within their means and have priorities just as we all do!

ADDED ON EDIT: I can forsee some problems with 40 car trainsets but I think to describe using the term of "much much longer" is somewhat excessive. I can see problems in some places if the trainset takes too long to get through intersections.

It happened near where I am at the moment several years ago. The city (Mechanicville, NY) negotiated with the frieght company (or sued?) to shorten their trainset because the train was locking up one side of the city from the other. Eventually a bridge was built to alleviate that particular problem, but I believe that the unit limit still is in place today because of other problems long trains would create.

I am courious though as to why you think that any new route would resolve longer trains with longer station turnaround times! The only solution I could see to alleviate that kind of problem (longer trains to handle increased demand) is to add an additional trainset on the same track. i.e. The SWC having two daily departures insead of one. I don't (bearing any routes I'm not familiar with) see how another route would have any effect, at least under my example.

 

[WICT106]

New routes? Hmmm. We need to invest and upgrade the track on the existing routes, so as to allow for greater capacity and higher speed. Then, what about adding second or third frequencies of service along existing routes ? You need to make the train competitive with car driving times, or even faster or more convenient than a private vehicle, because that is what the non railfan public will compare the train.

 

[frj1983]

Question - If Obama/Biden win, do you think Amtrak will significantly get an increase in funding, to the point where they can start creating new routes? With that said, what parts of the country are in need for new routes? I'm biased because I live in the south, but I'd like to get some routes going down here, and I know Las Vegas needs to be included in a route too. If they do get a big increase, do you think they will go as far as to do things like continue the Sunset Limited again? Or do you think they'd spend it mainly for equipment upgrades? I'm interested in what everyone thinks.

What were the last few routes added to Amtrak?

Also, what were the last few routes that were discontinued by Amtrak?

If Obama gives a lot of support to Amtrak and commuter rail, do you think state-level governments will see that as something they should improve on also? An example is how developed the North Carolina, Washington (State) and California Transportation Departments are in terms of rail.

Politics aside, whatever funding is provided, let's hope that it's sufficient to get the ball rolling on what should be first priority, equipment repair & upgrading and new acquisition to adequately handle the growing demand for the routes we currently have; and in addition to that, improved promotion for current routes lacking in ridership. Once these priorities have been reasonably accomplished then new or re-established routes and full promotion can be saught!

Amen Sky12065,

equipment repair/upgrading and acquisition should get top, toP, tOP, TOP priority.

Of course this has been my mantra for sometime!

 

[Crescent ATN & TCL]

I say corridor service on all existing routes at least every six hours with the premium LD's every twelve, ACSES on all routes and top speeds raised to 110mph, and buy whatever is needed to bring this to fruition then expand to new routes from there. Then later on electrification of all passenger routes in the US, freight RR's aren't too far off from doing it them selves.

 

[JohnF]

What's needed here in Texas is a Texas to Colorado connection via the old Texas Zephyr route. Houston-Dallas-San Antonio-Houston corridor service. Daily Sunset Limited service. Extension of the Heartland Flyer north to KC and eventually to Minneapolis/St Paul and south to San Antonio. Send the Texas Eagle out west from Ft Worth on the UP(former T&P) Baird division to El Paso and connect with the SSL there. Houston to the valley(Corpus Christi/Brownsville/McAllen) corridor service. That is all for starters. They can fill in the blanks with thru-way bus connections.

What if, instead of the Sunset Limited, you had hourly departures of high speed trains from each of San Antonio, Ft Worth, Dallas, and Houston to Kansas City, and at Kansas City you could transfer to hourly high speed trains that went to places such as Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco; Minneapolis / St. Paul; St Louis, Chicago, Cincinati, Columbus, Pittsburgh, New York City, Boston, Montreal, Atlanta, Orlando, and Miami? If we imitate French definitions of high speed, any of those destinations are probably easily possible from any of those large Texas cities in well under 24 hours.

Interesting proposal........except why would anyone in Texas want to go through KC to get everywhere. It's just not a destination of choice. The most popular destination is Colorado followed by Orlando. The local corridor service would have to compete with SWA, a formidable competitor. Higher speeds would be the only way to compete in the local market. The long distance market is another animal, one the Europeans don't have to address. France, which you use as a comparison, is a tiny country compared to the whole United States. Then you can throw in Canada and Mexico. The only practical way to look at passenger rail in the US is to define local HS corridors between large population centers connected by long distance type services. There is no way we will build European type high speed service anywhere outside some specific densly populated corridors and even that will not occur in our lifetime.

 

[Tony]

Question - If Obama/Biden win, do you think Amtrak will significantly get an increase in funding, to the point where they can start creating new routes?

Sorry, nope. I do not think there will be a significant increase in funding. If anything happens, it would be due to Amtrak pulling itself up by its own bootstraps.

 

[MattW]

The problem is the freight railroads. Even if the entire national budget was dumped into Amtrak, I doubt it could do more than have some real great passenger cars with some expanded services along the Amtrak-owned routes. Freight railroads do NOT HAVE to cater to the federal government, even if the government "forces" them to, they can still drag out the process and tie it up in all sorts of legal red tape.

 

[JohnF]

The problem is the freight railroads. Even if the entire national budget was dumped into Amtrak, I doubt it could do more than have some real great passenger cars with some expanded services along the Amtrak-owned routes. Freight railroads do NOT HAVE to cater to the federal government, even if the government "forces" them to, they can still drag out the process and tie it up in all sorts of legal red tape.

Freight railroads are a private enterprise that are in business to MAKE MONEY. That is what businesses do. If Amtrak wants to pay for a premium service, then they will get it. Passenger trains getting priority over everything else as in the 'good old days' is a premium service. That is why the official railroad timetables classified them as first class trains. Railroad timetables now days do not specifically list any class of service. All trains are treated basically the same. Sure there are some hotshot freights that get priority when it is available, but it is not scheduled. Priority freights are usually advertised as a third day delivery or something similar to that with no specific timetable, just a window of arrival. On a busy freight railroad a passenger train takes up a time slot that could be occupied by a freight train that generated much more revenue. In addition, to give a passenger train priority over all other trains ties up the line and delays trains all along the route. Amtrak simply does not want to pay for such service. They want a free ride.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

ADDED ON EDIT: I can forsee some problems with 40 car trainsets but I think to describe using the term of "much much longer" is somewhat excessive. I can see problems in some places if the trainset takes too long to get through intersections.
It happened near where I am at the moment several years ago. The city (Mechanicville, NY) negotiated with the frieght company (or sued?) to shorten their trainset because the train was locking up one side of the city from the other. Eventually a bridge was built to alleviate that particular problem, but I believe that the unit limit still is in place today because of other problems long trains would create.

I am courious though as to why you think that any new route would resolve longer trains with longer station turnaround times! The only solution I could see to alleviate that kind of problem (longer trains to handle increased demand) is to add an additional trainset on the same track. i.e. The SWC having two daily departures insead of one. I don't (bearing any routes I'm not familiar with) see how another route would have any effect, at least under my example.

A 40 car trainset, if you assume 87.5' long cars (which happens to be the length of an Acela car), is 3500' long. I don't think there are any platforms out there that are 3500' long. You can either ask passengers to walk a quarter mile inside the train to the middle of the train at the time of their stop if they happen to be sitting near the very front or very back of the train, or you can have the train make several stops at the platform, one for each group of cars. Of course, that assumes platforms at through tracks; stub end terminals are more problematic, in that you can't make multiple stops to give everyone a chance to get out, and you may block the mainline for the whole time the train is in the station.

If you want to add a second SWC departure each day, you either need more track, or you need to clear a couple freight trains out of the way. (I suspect if you remove only one freight train from the daily schedule and run the second daily SWC at the same speed as the single freight train it's replacing, it's going to spend lots of time on a siding.) You can have close to 300 intermodal shipping containers on one freight train, so that's probably an extra 1000 trucks on the highway to make space for the second westbound SWC, and another extra 1000 truck on the highway to make space for the second eastbound SWC.

The only realistic way to add more frequencies on the long distance routes is to build more track, I think. And if we're going to that trouble, why not make the effort to catch up with where the French were 30 years ago while we're doing that, at least on all the major routes that connect one big city to another?

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

The problem is the freight railroads. Even if the entire national budget was dumped into Amtrak, I doubt it could do more than have some real great passenger cars with some expanded services along the Amtrak-owned routes. Freight railroads do NOT HAVE to cater to the federal government, even if the government "forces" them to, they can still drag out the process and tie it up in all sorts of legal red tape.

Remember, the tracks from WAS to BOS are owned by a mixture of Amtrak, New York State, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. If Amtrak were given $100 to $300 billion per year (less than the present military budget) and spent it wisely, there is no good reason why Amtrak couldn't have its own double track from one major city to the next, with an alignment that would support 250 MPH or 300 MPH operation. Amtrak could then switch to using the freight tracks only as a way of making daily runs to smaller downs that don't happen to be along the route of its own high speed tracks.

Amtrak's biggest problem is that we insist upon pretending that freight tracks and commuter rail tracks are a viable alternative to building proper high speed intercity tracks like the French were building 30 years ago, because we're too busy seeing the cost to notice the benefits of matching available labor to opportunities to create valuable infrastructure.

 

[AlanB]

The problem is the freight railroads. Even if the entire national budget was dumped into Amtrak, I doubt it could do more than have some real great passenger cars with some expanded services along the Amtrak-owned routes. Freight railroads do NOT HAVE to cater to the federal government, even if the government "forces" them to, they can still drag out the process and tie it up in all sorts of legal red tape.

Freight railroads are a private enterprise that are in business to MAKE MONEY. That is what businesses do. If Amtrak wants to pay for a premium service, then they will get it. Passenger trains getting priority over everything else as in the 'good old days' is a premium service. That is why the official railroad timetables classified them as first class trains. Railroad timetables now days do not specifically list any class of service. All trains are treated basically the same. Sure there are some hotshot freights that get priority when it is available, but it is not scheduled. Priority freights are usually advertised as a third day delivery or something similar to that with no specific timetable, just a window of arrival. On a busy freight railroad a passenger train takes up a time slot that could be occupied by a freight train that generated much more revenue. In addition, to give a passenger train priority over all other trains ties up the line and delays trains all along the route. Amtrak simply does not want to pay for such service. They want a free ride.

Well to be fair, Amtrak may want a free ride now, but it was Congress and the White House that set the terms and conditions that Amtrak currently operates under when they relieved the freight RR's of the responsabilities of running passenger service. So let's not blame Amtrak for what they were given.

 

[AlanB]

The problem is the freight railroads. Even if the entire national budget was dumped into Amtrak, I doubt it could do more than have some real great passenger cars with some expanded services along the Amtrak-owned routes. Freight railroads do NOT HAVE to cater to the federal government, even if the government "forces" them to, they can still drag out the process and tie it up in all sorts of legal red tape.

You're partially correct, but let's not forget that the Federal government has some cards that it too can play. The freight RR's still have to answer to the FRA. And the FRA can start passing rules that would severely hamper freight ops, or at least cost them big bucks to comply with. We could see increased fines for violations, a requirement that all trains operate with PTC, and so on.

And I'm sure that Congress would be more than happy to dump passenger service back onto the freight RR's and get that albatross off their backs. Remember that Amtrak was created to relieve the freight RR's of the burden of running pax service. So the freight RR's have to be careful too. Even if they eventually won in court, odds are most would be out of business by the time that happened. Granted that wouldn't exactly help the economy either, but Congress can always bring back Conrail too!

What's really needed is cooperation on both sides, along with some solid Federal contributions to both sides. That allows for new track on the freight side, to handle the increased services, and it allows for new equipment on the Amtrak side to increase service on existing routes, as well as to start up new services. idea!