Vermonter To Lose Connecting Bus to Montreal

[AlanB]

According to NARP's December 20th Hotline, David Gunn has writen a letter to Congress explaining why Amtrak needs 1.2 Billion this year. You can read the full story by clicking here.

The same newsletter also has a story that states the Thruway bus connection between Montreal and St. Albans, VT will cease to exist come January 6th. This story is half way down the page.

 

[tp49]

Honestly I am not too surprised about the Vermonter losing its connecting bus. When I looked at my options to go to MTL over the summer I thought about the Vermonter but the bus connection from MTL left at 6 in the morning making it difficult to make if you rely on transit and stay somewhere other than the Queen Elizabeth Hotel at Gare Central. Upon the schedule change in October, the bus left MTL at either 4:30 or 5 AM making it now very unattractive to anyone wishing to try and make it because it departed before the transit system began running. I'm sure that bus' ridership numbers dropped dramatically as a result allowing them to pull it. Another casualty of bad scheduling.

 

[Amfleet]

Also in that report I'm glad to see the sleeper buckets being dropped (well at least temporarly).

 

[Viewliner]

Also in that report I'm glad to see the sleeper buckets being dropped (well at least temporarly).

What exactly are sleeper buckets? :unsure:

 

[AlanB]

NARP's Hotline news, is now reporting that the Montreal Bus has received a short and temporary reprieve. You can read the news brief here. It's the third story down.

 

[tp49]

Sounds to me like a life support maneauver, the times are just too unattractive to make continuing this service viable.

 

[Viewliner]

I guess since a rescheduling of the train is unlikely, I guess the only viable thing is for an outside agency to pick up the service and operate it at a more reasonable hour, with anyone going to montreal having to stopover.