Cardinal discussion

Rockingham Racer wrote:Forgive me for asking, but isn't the Subway still open at Zoo? And if it is, why can't people in the Phildelphia area go to the North Philadelphia station to get a through long-distance train as in days of yore? All of the PRR's through trains skipped 30th St. AFAICR.

The subway is still open, but there is very little service and no Amtrak presence at PHN.

gokeefe wrote:I find these last few posts very interesting in that it has really brought to light the true fundamental issue at hand. The Cardinal simply should not run as a through train to Chicago. The route isn't competitive nor is the timing. Passengers originating in West Virginia and traveling towards Chicago would have a layover in Cincinnati but Union Terminal these days is really quite nice and there would be more than sufficient facilities present for a handful of "Moutaineers" (ok ... they probably are not all WVU alums ...) to pass the time while waiting for departure of the train to Chicago.

You can say that about most long distance trains. Heck, you can say that about a lot of trains in general. This train is basically trying to serve three functions. It basically serves as two corridor trains with a bridge in between the middle. The third function is to serve as the congressional glue for the other states and their service. The lack of upgrades on the route will continue to hobble the main portion of CHI-IND. If they cut the Cardinal, do you really see INDOT continuing the service to IND. While Virginia "may" continue to fund another train to CVS, that may impact the funds needed for other routes.

Philly Amtrak Fan wrote: Let's say for sake of argument we can get a daily "Broadway Limited" of some sort before we can make the Cardinal daily. Tell me why we shouldn't replace a 3x/week Cardinal with a daily Broadway, using one more train set and easily doubling ridership (especially if Amtrak can use their own 110 mph track in Michigan to save on paying NS for a significant portion of the route and providing direct access from Michigan to PHL/NYP)? Now a daily Broadway probably requires some track negotiations and for the mess in Chicago to clear up. But which will Amtrak be able to do first, a daily Broadway or a daily Cardinal?

If not for the Buckingham branch, you could probably get away with another Cardinal tomorrow. That's is because they could eek out the equipment, there is a crew profile for the route, existing route profiles, existing stations, existing contracts for servicing and fueling and an existing Amtrak presence. None of that exists on most of your mythical Broadway route. Indeed, you couldn't even get another train to PGH on NS territory for now (and this route previously had two trains a day) and you somehow think it will be easier to get another train over their territory to CHI......daily?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Philly Amtrak Fan wrote: I really think if we're discussing "when is the Cardinal be daily?" 5-10 years from now, Amtrak will still be in the red and the Cardinal will be one of the biggest money losers. Why waste 2 LD sets on a train that can only be used 3x/week if there is an obvious better option using 3 sets?

As for Congress, Byrd's dead. Hopefully the next time Amtrak's budget is cut, the Cardinal will be the one canceled and not some better train. If any better train gets canceled to save the Cardinal it will be as horrible as the decision to cut the Broadway to save the Cardinal.

A decision you can blame on your representatives at the time. If your representatives acted like Senator Byrd (who protected his service), Senator Hutchinson (who protected her route) or Senator Snow (who built a route from the ground up), something like the Broadway might still exist.

Additionally, towns along the route continue to push for daily service. Even West Virginia has expressed support. Hopefully, they will put their money where their mouths are.

The biggest threat to the Cardinal is the same threat that most people over look from a system perspective.

Arlington wrote: "CSX may hobble it"

Arlington wrote:Isn't the problem, though, that with coal's decline, nobody is investing in rails through West Virginia? Instead, the investment is along routes that intermodal wants (which favor good interstates and bigger population/commercial/manufacturing centers)

It is not just West Virginia. There are other trains and routes that have the same problem...you guys just seem to focus on the Cardinal. Ultimately, hard decisions will need to be made. However, if they continue to operate the Cardinal, they should make it worth the effort and run it (or something) as much as possible.

The Cardinal was full when I rode it early December 2012. In fact, It was the only train I had a seat mate with in my entire trip, a interesting older lady travelling to New Mexico.

Welcome back ThirdRail7 .

This emphasis on "Cardinal was full" doesn't really tell us anything, particularly given that the train takes in only $8m vs $24m in costs. It could mean:
1) Prices were too low
2) The train can only sustain/fill a short consist (poor efficiency locomotive, track, slot costs)
3) People tend to report their train was full (people's similar needs create peak loads; on empty trains there's so few people there's less of chance of getting a trip report here)

CHTT1 wrote:Want do you mean let Iowa Pacific take care of a Cincy train? You mean let Indiana DOT and Ohio DOT run a Chi-Cincy service. Iowa Pacific doesn't run the Hoosier State on its own account. It runs it under contract with InDOT. Iowa Pacific is not going to run its own trains without state assistance.
Terminate the Cardinal in Galesburg!!!! You want to establish a whole new maintenance base, food vendor and crew base in some little town in the middle of nowhere? Bypassing the second largest city in the U.S. for a place that isn't even the top 10 population centers of Illinois!!! All for the dozen or so folks who might want to transfer to the CZ or SWC on a given day.
As far as terminating the train in Washington, hasn't it been shown that ridership increased a lot when the Cardinal became a through train to New York?

Chicago - Indianapolis -Cincinnati should be a multi-train corridor just like the Chicago-St. Louis and Chicago-Detroit corridors, but good luck in getting Indiana and/or Ohio to cooperate in establishing such a corridor.

What I said was to let IPH handle the Indy to Chicago corridor route. If State assistance will only allow for a four day a week train - then it's a four day a week train. I think the Cardinal should stop at Indy, but then continue WEST and terminate outside of Chicago as one Amtrak study had suggested. It may have been Kansas City that was the recommended terminus. But the idea was to let the Cardinal intersect with the various long distance trains coming out of Chicago, as opposed to going into Chicago itself and to try to pickup some of Chicago's metro traffic. Not all trains need to go directly to Chicago.

It has NOT been shown that ridership has increased a LOT by having a train that meander from Chicago to Kentucky, West Virginia etc. and terminates in New York City. Have you seen the amount of turnover that occurs at Washington DC on say a eastbound Cardinal! Cardinal continues to NYC for service convenience only.

How much equipment moves to BEE on the Cardinal nowadays?

Arlington wrote:This emphasis on "Cardinal was full" doesn't really tell us anything, particularly given that the train takes in only $8m vs $24m in costs. It could mean:
1) Prices were too low
2) The train can only sustain/fill a short consist (poor efficiency locomotive, track, slot costs)
3) People tend to report their train was full (people's similar needs create peak loads; on empty trains there's so few people there's less of chance of getting a trip report here)

Should be easy enough to tell my doing some booking inquires over the next 6 months to a year. I will say people who know a train, such as the Cardinal, has limited supply will tend to book in advance, as opposed to say booking a ticket on the NEC where you would expect there to be a seat at the last minute, if only at a off peak hour.

But I think we are missing the real point,rural politics. When trains in NZ were on the chopping block, I was very surprised as to which trains were saved, due to local pressure on politicans . It wasn't people in the big (by NZ standards) endpoints that jumped up and down, it was the people in the small towns in between that did . And those small towns had the numbers to make a single train important enough to save.
My point is , The majority of people in Chicago, Cincinnati, Washington, New York , couldn't give a toss if the Cardinal was scrapped. But a good portion of the people in Huntington, Charleston et al , would, and perhaps Amtrak knows this, and what the resulting fallout from the area's politicans would be.

A lot of the discussion around the timing of the Cardinal has to do with the trade-off between being able to make connections in Chicago to/from the western trains, and the ability to serve Cincinnati at a reasonable hour. Question for those in a position to know: how much of the Cardinal's ridership is connecting in Chicago to once-daily trains?

mtuandrew wrote:How much equipment moves to BEE on the Cardinal nowadays?

Everything.

I do not believe they run deadhead trains. Even the Hoosier State is tagged on to the Cardinal for the two deadhead moves each week.

When the IP set runs,they don't tow anything for Amtrak to/from Indy,
When the Cardinal runs,they tow everything headed to BEE and back to Chicago.
The IP Deadhead moves are also handled by the Cardinal.

David Benton wrote: My point is , The majority of people in Chicago, Cincinnati, Washington, New York , couldn't give a toss if the Cardinal was scrapped.

Maybe then Amtrak needs to find a way to make those areas give a toss (never heard that expression before).

Amtrak was asked by people in Cincinnati if the train can be scheduled to better serve Cincinnati. Their response translated: No! They were also asked about other trains that can better serve Cincinnati and the Amtrak people made it sound like "ride our train and we might be able to give you more", implying Amtrak has to prove they deserve trains that serve them.

http://www.urbancincy.com/2016/10/episo ... -cardinal/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

There are (or were) selfish politicians who only care about themselves and to heck with the rest of the country. There are also others that would like Amtrak to be self sufficient. Well running Byrd Crap isn't going help. Congress needs to just butt out when it comes to train routes and let the people of Amtrak who know what trains are good for business and have good ridership and revenue and maybe Amtrak will be self sufficient (I believe the latest is 94%). Amtrak would listen to us when deciding which trains run and which don't, Congress should as well (especially since they're spending OUR money).

No, West Virginia is not a reason to waste $16 million on a 1100 mile, 27 hour train. Need I remind you...

Population within 25 miles of the following stations:

Cincinnati: 1,748,725

Ashland: 323,357
Huntington: 299,913
Charleston: 279,421
Staunton: 239,551
Connorsville: 214,866
Montgomery: 206,420
S. Portsmouth: 199,942
Prince: 160,758
Thurmond: 149,762
Hinton: 149,621
Maysville: 100,580
Alderson: 67,325
Clifton Forge: 64,972
White Sulphur Springs: 59,028

Have shorter trains serve the markets where people live and tell those people in West Virginia who push for trains to pay for them themselves. Amtrak has much higher priorities. I'd go to Congress and tell them would you rather pay for an 1100 mile train that costs $16 million or separate Chicago-Cincinnati and Charlottesville-New York trains that cost less without sacrificing that much ridership/revenue. People like me don't like paying for stuff that we don't use. If someone in Philly whose metro is actually served by Byrd Crap doesn't care (and only 5,969 boarded the train from PHL in 2015 so very few people in our area care), imagine how people in Texas and Florida feel about it (or even worse people in Las Vegas and Nashville that have no trains at all). Trains "work" in large population metros. That's why New York, Chicago, and Philly have local rapid transit trains and places like Prince, WV don't (there's not enough riders to make it worth the cost). If you run a train to serve no large population metros, no one will ride it. The trains might be full in some areas but I'll never believe it's full between Cincinnati and Charlottesville. And even if it is, it's because of a smaller consist than the other trains. There's more coaches/sleepers on the LSL, SM, SS, and Crescent because demand is higher there.

Why do I pick on the Cardinal? Every other LD train serves a specific purpose. You take away the California Zephyr and there's no train between Chicago and the Bay Area and no train serving Denver and Salt Lake City. Even the Sunset Limited (even though it's performance is as bad as the Cardinal) serves the Texas to California route and taking that away would make it much harder for people from San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas/Ft. Worth (by way of the Texas Eagle) to get to California and vice versa (and Houston would have no trains at all). That's why the SL East is important. Try getting from NOL/Texas to Florida now. As a LD train, the Cardinal is a slower longer LSL/CL and the largest market lost would be Cincinnati, a market Amtrak (or Congress) doesn't care about anyway. So yes it is the most expendable train by far. Either serve the largest unique market at reasonable hours or take the train and put it in Byrd's grave where it belongs.

CComMack wrote:A lot of the discussion around the timing of the Cardinal has to do with the trade-off between being able to make connections in Chicago to/from the western trains, and the ability to serve Cincinnati at a reasonable hour. Question for those in a position to know: how much of the Cardinal's ridership is connecting in Chicago to once-daily trains?

Well ridership in and out of Chicago for...

LSL: 164,470
CL: 143,411
Cardinal:45,495

The most popular city pair on the LSL is CHI-NYP and the most popular on the CL is CHI-WAS (second is CHI-PGH). The three most popular city pairs on the Cardinal are CHI-IND, CHI-Lafayette, and CHI-CIN, nowhere near the full distance. So the LSL and CL are more likely to attract the LD passenger who is more likely to make the cross country trip than the Cardinal (and even if the people of Indiana want to transfer west just have the Hoosier State stay in the Cardinal slot). People in Cincinnati would probably rather a train at a good hour than the ability to transfer west. And NYP and WAS have other trains if they want to transfer.

Philly Amtrak Fan wrote:Population within 25 miles of the following stations:
Cincinnati: 1,748,725

Ashland: 323,357
Huntington: 299,913
Charleston: 279,421
Staunton: 239,551
Connorsville: 214,866
Montgomery: 206,420
S. Portsmouth: 199,942
Prince: 160,758
Thurmond: 149,762
Hinton: 149,621
Maysville: 100,580
Alderson: 67,325
Clifton Forge: 64,972
White Sulphur Springs: 59,028

There's a lot of double-counting in those WV numbers (stations are closer than 25 mi apart, and I suspect the population is crowded along the line)
From WSS to Montgomery is 120 mi and 6 stops.
I'm going back to my calculation:

ALL of WV has a population of 1.8m. From this subtract populations well north of the Cardinal, for whom Amtrak is a Capitol Limited-or-nothing proposition:
- 0.28m in eastern panhandle
- 0.18m in Morgantown-Fairmont
- 0.05m in Weirton
- 0.77m in Wheeling
Taking out these 1.3m across the northern tier of WV, that leaves, at best,just 0.5m West Virginians "within range" of the Cardinal.

ALL of WV has a population of 1.8m. From this subtract populations well north of the Cardinal, for whom Amtrak is a Capitol Limited-or-nothing proposition:
- 0.28m in eastern panhandle
- 0.18m in Morgantown-Fairmont
- 0.05m in Weirton
- 0.77m in Wheeling
Taking out these 1.3m across the northern tier of WV, that leaves, at best,just 0.5m West Virginians "within range" of the Cardinal.

Counting the CL, it's 868,877 within 25 miles, representing 23% of the state (although I'm guessing Martinsburg and Harper's Ferry aren't much). That is double counting since the entire state as Arlington said has 1.8 million. The Cincinnati metropolitan area alone has 2,157,719 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_M ... ical_Areas" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;).

https://www.narprail.org/site/assets/fi ... s_2015.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I'm glad someone here actually cares about population. Others say let's just let the Senate (or who's in charge of the Senate) decide who gets trains and who doesn't and who gets stuck with the graveyard shift.

Philly Amtrak Fan wrote:I'm glad someone here actually cares about population. Others say let's just let the Senate (or who's in charge of the Senate) decide who gets trains and who doesn't and who gets stuck with the graveyard shift.

We happy few

Whose metric is the "25mile radius" ...is that a NARP thing?, If stations are 40+ miles apart that's a great way to gauge demand (maybe for LDs out west?), but in West Virginia (to emphasize where we agree) *Triple* counting is possible with stations 24 miles apart.

Imagine a city of 100k that was 2miles in diameter with stations downtown and 24 miles on each side. That 100k would be counted as 300k in any 25mi radius numbers (even of the outlying towns had zero).

Where stations are 24 miles apart--as is the case in WV, you'd have to use a 12mi radius to avoid double/triple counting.

I don't begrudge the WVs their many stops, but don't let the fact that they are luxuriously served physically lead us to make.it seem they are a market to rival CIN in size (all of WV service area together are just 1/3 to 1/4 the size of CIN alone.

Philly Amtrak Fan wrote:

CComMack wrote:A lot of the discussion around the timing of the Cardinal has to do with the trade-off between being able to make connections in Chicago to/from the western trains, and the ability to serve Cincinnati at a reasonable hour. Question for those in a position to know: how much of the Cardinal's ridership is connecting in Chicago to once-daily trains?

Well ridership in and out of Chicago for...

LSL: 164,470
CL: 143,411
Cardinal:45,495

The most popular city pair on the LSL is CHI-NYP and the most popular on the CL is CHI-WAS (second is CHI-PGH). The three most popular city pairs on the Cardinal are CHI-IND, CHI-Lafayette, and CHI-CIN, nowhere near the full distance. So the LSL and CL are more likely to attract the LD passenger who is more likely to make the cross country trip than the Cardinal (and even if the people of Indiana want to transfer west just have the Hoosier State stay in the Cardinal slot). People in Cincinnati would probably rather a train at a good hour than the ability to transfer west. And NYP and WAS have other trains if they want to transfer.

Given what the present schedule is, one of the few incentives to take Amtrak to/from Cincinnati is a connection in Chicago. So, I'm less interested in speculation, and more interested in hard data about how many people would need a hotel stay in Chicago (not cheap) if we broke the Cardinal's connections. If we want to speculate, the raw boardings in Chicago are not strong evidence that the Cardinal has less transferring passengers than the Lake Shore or Capitol Limited. This way lies madness, and is not worth pursuing without data.