It's not all about speed

Pardon what's a posting more of a musing nature.

Let me start that I want faster trains, in most places. I think 160MPH along the NEC is a good start, but until the average speed is around 100mph, it doesn't mean much.
I'd love to get ALB-NYP in 1:30. But I can live with under 2:00 for now.

That said, I will posit there are times when some speeds are "good enough" or more accurately, there are many cases where increased speed (or more accurately decreased times) won't make much of a difference.

I'll start by saying contrary to popular belief, I think there is a definite increased market for overnight trains.
And I think there are some corridors where very fast trains may be operationally a less than ideal situation.

For overnight trains, I think 10-12 hours between major endpoints makes it viable. This means the current NYP-CHI doesn't really meet this criteria.

However, the reason for this particular number is based on a particular pattern of usage. Namely, "leave office, get on train (or eat dinner first then get on the train) and depart in a sleeper. Arrive the next day in the next major city in time for business meetings. I think even up to 14 hours (6:00 PM-8:00 AM for example) is workable.

The Crescent meets this criteria for WAS-ATL, but in my experience it isn't marketed this way (and I'm not sure there's much market between these two cities at this time.)
For CHI-WAS or CHI-NYP, I think this is a viable market and we're close to it.

Now, obviously faster trains could still be run, but like trains 66,67 that intentionally run slower to allow for track work, etc. they would be allowed that work some hate, "slack time".

But arguments for "super trains" between NYP-CHI of say 6-8 hour running times won't "fly". They won't attract the business traveler because there's no advantage to them over an pure overnight train and a definite disadvantage to them over flying.

On the flip side, I think there are day trains that can target the economy market that can easily take 8,9 or more hours (say up to 14) to get end to end. People will be willing to put up with long running trains if they're cheap enough and willing to write off a large part of their day. Here a "day train" to Chicago that leaves NYP fairly early and gets into CHI rather late MIGHT work because its focus is on the economy travel and you can run it at slower speeds than your "super trains" of 6-9 hours that some people advocate).

Ultimately, I suspect that one will find there's a "bathtub" curve in preferred time on a train.
At one end you have the :30-3:00 (really closer to 2:30). These trains definitely benefit from faster service. This is your "typical" NEC service and some of the off-NEC service as well as corridor service in the CHI area and on the west coast.

Then at the other end, you'll find a pick up on travel (both overnight and day) once you're beyond say 6 or 7 hours (for daylight travel) and then 10 hours (for overnight travel).

Now perhaps I'm just repeating the obvious. But I think sometimes people overlook it when they're so eager for "faster trains".

But, I think that it should go into what people plan and advocate. Improving NYP-WAS will have direct benefits. Improving NYP-BUF will have limited benefits unless one can see huge improvements in speed. And "speed" gets costly.

Just some thoughts open for comment.

Musing about more trains carrying more sleepers and more businessmen …

All we need is another order (or two or three) for 130 or more single level cars, money to cover the modest losses on the coach class passengers, agreement from the host freight roads, and slots to take more long distance trains under the Hudson and over the Potomac. With that, we can do this!

Each route would be stronger if several of these overnight sleeper trains were launched and marketed together, selling the concept to a generation that never heard of such a thing.

I've seen speculation that new sleepers could be added to the Regional that runs from Boston to Newport News, recreating an overnight sleeper train.

There's plenty more potential.

Add an overnight run on the Adirondack route to Montreal, a slam dunk at around 12 hrs. (The Adirondack carried about 132,000 pax in fiscal 2012, and a second run would call forth more pent-up demand.)

An overnight run on the Maple Leaf route to Toronto, also around 12 hrs.

Yeah, Buffalo seems thin, but Cleveland at 11 1/2 hrs seems perfect. Nobody goes to Cleveland any more? How would we know, when all the stops there are after midnight?

NYC to Columbus, too, if or when a change of heart or mind in Ohio government ever allows upgrading the line from Cleveland.

The Lake Shore Limited now reaches Toledo in 14 hrs, "too long". Adding 2 hrs to reach Ann Arbor/Dearborn/Detroit would be far "too long". But there's plenty of places to upgrade that line to run up to 110 mph and slice a few hours out of the trip time for a second train.

BTW, Nobody goes to Detroit. Sure. In part because you can't get there from here. But 145,000 pax went to Ann Arbor, 116,000 to Kalamazoo, 74,000 to Dearborn, 59,000 to Detroit, 56,000 to Battle Creek, and about 60,000 to Pontiac/Royal Oak/Troy-Birmingham (according to 2008 figures on the NARP site). So there's some kind of market on the Wolverine route.

On the Pennsylvanian to Pittsburgh, it's only 9 hrs or so from NYC and 8 hrs from Philly. Maybe an overnight train could be put on a passing siding to kill time; I think the freight host knows how to do that.

The Crescent arrives in Atlanta at 8 a.m., and that's good. But that's after leaving NYC at 2 p.m., and that's bad. Leaving from D.C. at 6:30 p.m. is very good.

A second run on the Crescent route could leave NYC around 7 p.m. and arrive in Charlotte at 7 a.m. And that would be excellent.

An overnight run on the Carolinian could leave NYC early evening and be in Raleigh in about 10 hrs.

Out of Chicago, the Capital Limited already does a strong business in pax riding end to end, iirc it's the highest share of any of the long distance trains. But D.C. to Chicago in 18 hrs? Push that D.C. departure back from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., cut the trip time, and watch the ridership pop.

Surely we could get 3 hrs out of the Capitol Ltd's schedule by getting much of the route from Chicago to Pittsburgh up to 110 mph. (Remember that taking time out of the route Cleveland-Toledo makes a sleeper service from NYC to Michigan viable.)

There's already one great schedule on the City of New Orleans. Depart Chicago 8 p.m., arrive Memphis by 6:30 a.m., return from Memphis at 10:40, arrive Chicago 9 a.m.

Isn't that arrival a bit late for a busy day in Chicago? Ah ha. So here's the problem. Nobody rides the trains any more, but Chicago Union Station, like Penn Station, is so infested with arriving commuter trains that it cannot handle more long distance trains.

I can get these phantom overnight sleepers out of the city in the evening, but I can't get them back in the busy morning hours.

So we really need two more tunnels under the Hudson, or three. We could fill them, without too much trouble, I'm sure. And then do work around the D.C. and ChicagoLand stations.

Until then I'll be dreaming of sleeper trains Omaha-Chicago, or will it be Denver-Chicago when the new 110 mph line crosses Iowa? And Kansas City-St Louis-Memphis (about 10 hrs or so?). Or St Louis-KC-Omaha?

Meanwhile, improving tracks to handle much higher average speeds than "Amtrak average" will allow trains to pass cars of the highways. Those 110 mph trains are what is needed to get serious market share. To go beyond that, to true HSR around 200 mph, costs such huge money that will only work in a select number of corridors in the US, perhaps only two in my lifetime.

Well, I'm reaching my bedtime. Sweet dreams.

Until you have pre-clearance, overnight trains to Canada won't work. You would have to wake passengers up at the border the way the current system works.

M&Eman wrote:Until you have pre-clearance, overnight trains to Canada won't work. You would have to wake passengers up at the border the way the current system works.

What you're suggesting is true for a late afternoon/early evening departure when the trains reach the border in the middle of the night. But wouldn't be true if the trains are scheduled to arrive at the border around 6, both am and pm.

Sleeper trains work best in the long distance market. VIA experimented with shorter distance sleeper trains between Toronto and Montreal that proved a failure a decade or so ago with brand new equipment. I don't think Amtrak would get better results.

electricron wrote:

M&Eman wrote:Until you have pre-clearance, overnight trains to Canada won't work. You would have to wake passengers up at the border the way the current system works.

What you're suggesting is true for a late afternoon/early evening departure when the trains reach the border in the middle of the night. But wouldn't be true if the trains are scheduled to arrive at the border around 6, both am and pm.

Sleeper trains work best in the long distance market. VIA experimented with shorter distance sleeper trains between Toronto and Montreal that proved a failure a decade or so ago with brand new equipment. I don't think Amtrak would get better results.

I would consider myself a potential customer of shorter distance sleeper service in my current situation. I've traveled on Amtrak between Williamsburg and "home" in New Jersey several times, but it's always been the day trains. I have thought about using the overnight 66/67 trains though, and were a Viewliner still available, I'd spring for it. But it'd be more viable if I were going all the way to Boston. One problem with taking it to NJ is it gets to Newark too late for me to catch a NJ Transit Coast Line train from there.

electricron wrote:

M&Eman wrote:Until you have pre-clearance, overnight trains to Canada won't work. You would have to wake passengers up at the border the way the current system works.

What you're suggesting is true for a late afternoon/early evening departure when the trains reach the border in the middle of the night. But wouldn't be true if the trains are scheduled to arrive at the border around 6, both am and pm.

Sleeper trains work best in the long distance market. VIA experimented with shorter distance sleeper trains between Toronto and Montreal that proved a failure a decade or so ago with brand new equipment. I don't think Amtrak would get better results.

6 AM is still really early to be poked and prodded by Customs. That means actually waking up at 5-530 to shower and get dressed. Not everyone's an early bird.

Matt Johnson wrote:

electricron wrote:

M&Eman wrote:Until you have pre-clearance, overnight trains to Canada won't work. You would have to wake passengers up at the border the way the current system works.

What you're suggesting is true for a late afternoon/early evening departure when the trains reach the border in the middle of the night. But wouldn't be true if the trains are scheduled to arrive at the border around 6, both am and pm.

Sleeper trains work best in the long distance market. VIA experimented with shorter distance sleeper trains between Toronto and Montreal that proved a failure a decade or so ago with brand new equipment. I don't think Amtrak would get better results.

I would consider myself a potential customer of shorter distance sleeper service in my current situation. I've traveled on Amtrak between Williamsburg and "home" in New Jersey several times, but it's always been the day trains. I have thought about using the overnight 66/67 trains though, and were a Viewliner still available, I'd spring for it. But it'd be more viable if I were going all the way to Boston. One problem with taking it to NJ is it gets to Newark too late for me to catch a NJ Transit Coast Line train from there.

Yeah, I'd say the 66/67 train is one of the few where "short-distance" overnight sleepers appear to work. I believe that train is scheduled to get a sleeper once enough roll off the CAF line.

M&Eman wrote:Until you have pre-clearance, overnight trains to Canada won't work. You would have to wake passengers up at the border the way the current system works.

Uh, you'd be getting to the border around 8 am going towards toronto, coming from it'd be 10 pm. Not an issue.

I've been saying since i took the maple leaf to canada this past january that an overnight second train in either direction makes too much sense.

I think any potential increases in service need to be daytime corridor type trains in proven markets or potential markets and not overnight trains which attract much fewer intermediate passengers and cost much more to operate. I don't think any increase in service in Ohio is warranted UNTIL you see a change in the thinking at the state level in Columbus and I don't know if or when this will ever happen. There are any number of great options in this country for corridor type services of distances of maybe 500 miles or so but even for this a lot of other things will have to happen before you can even consider something of this nature.
For quite some time we have allowed tracks to be torn up when there could have been an option for a passenger line or a freight alternative so today the lines that remain often have a problem with capacity and the freight railroad simply just says no to any more passenger trains without outside help. I think there might be need for more capacity on the existing overnight trains (at least some of them) but more overnight trains, I doubt it very much.
Noel Weaver

The New York Times found someone else who thinks sleeper service could appeal to businesspeople.

On the Road
Trains Fill the Gaps in Airline Schedules
By JOE SHARKEY
Published: December 10, 2012

"Mr. Matt Fels suggested more than a dozen such overnight routes with evening departures and early-morning arrivals.

"These were among them: Richmond, Va., to Savannah, Ga., on the Silver Meteor route between New York and Miami; Charlottesville, Va., to Atlanta on the Crescent, which goes from New York to New Orleans; Eugene, Ore., to Sacramento on the Coast Starlight between Seattle and Los Angeles; and Chicago to Buffalo on the Lake Shore Limited, which goes from Chicago to New York and Boston.

"Mr Fels added, 'I take the Texas Eagle, which goes from San Antonio to Chicago. But I only ride an intermediate segment, Dallas to St. Louis.'"

Woody wrote:The New York Times found someone else who thinks sleeper service could appeal to businesspeople.

On the Road
Trains Fill the Gaps in Airline Schedules
By JOE SHARKEY
Published: December 10, 2012

"Mr. Matt Fels suggested more than a dozen such overnight routes with evening departures and early-morning arrivals.

"These were among them: Richmond, Va., to Savannah, Ga., on the Silver Meteor route between New York and Miami; Charlottesville, Va., to Atlanta on the Crescent, which goes from New York to New Orleans; Eugene, Ore., to Sacramento on the Coast Starlight between Seattle and Los Angeles; and Chicago to Buffalo on the Lake Shore Limited, which goes from Chicago to New York and Boston.

"Mr Fels added, 'I take the Texas Eagle, which goes from San Antonio to Chicago. But I only ride an intermediate segment, Dallas to St. Louis.'"

Link?

hi55us wrote: Link?

Just google the name of the article: Trains Fill the Gaps in Airline Schedules

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/11/busin ... .html?_r=0