Sunset Limited and Pioneer route studies

Lately I've been reading each issue of UPRA's (United Passenger Rail Association) newsletter. The author certainly does a good job criticizing Amtrak for being pessimistic about both routes. Does he have a point that if Amtrak hired an outside firm to do the studies, they would do a better job of explaining how something can be done, rather than hearing Amtrak's "it can't be done" or "it costs too much"?

Note: I'm awfully sick of the whole "is it worth it?" debate about long distance trains. I'm not interested in your ranting that long distance trains don't deserve to exist. It seems that no matter how much complaining you will do, they are here to stay. My simple question is: Is Amtrak doing all it can do with regards to these studies?

Here's UPRA's most current newsletter about the Pioneer route: http://www.unitedrail.org/2009/09/22/th ... 009-09-22/

And the Sunset Limited route: http://www.unitedrail.org/2009/07/20/th ... 009-07-20/

Most of the time, I think Richardson is out of his mind, but in the case of all of these route studies, he is right on target. He's often very loose with facts, but I read the Sunset study in full and it was absolutly the most incompetent report I can recall reading in any field in years. We actually paid for that report!

I agree with Richardson in this-- the Board should have fired anyone with any responsibility for the Sunset report. I assume that the Pioneer report and the Ohio one are more of the same. I dont think Amtrak has enough equipment to do all three services, but come on- either the Pioneer or Sunset should be possible with the equipment available.

I don't think the reports are either pessimistic or optimistic, they're just a response to a Congressional mandate. URPA consistently seems to think that there are millions of people just waiting to jump on a fleet on refurbished equipment and ride for two days on a train when a 737 can make the same trip in 5 hours. I don't know if Amtrak's ridership projections are completely accurate but I definitely think that URPA's are from "outer space".

Add a second section of the Empire Builder? It might add a few riders between Seattle/Spokane and Chicago/MSP, but it wouldn't come close to covering its costs and it would cannibalize the existing EB's ridership. URPA's comparison of the Empire Builder with the Silver Service is way off. The population of the Carolinas and Montana aren't even close to equal. Also, Southwest Airlines is here to stay. I might take an 18 hour ride from Seattle to Boise on the Pioneer once or twice in my lifetime, mostly to see the scenery; but if I had to travel regularly between Seattle and Boise I would be earning frequent flyer miles on 80 minute Horizon Air flights.

Crew qualification costs aren't set by Amtrak, they are federal requirements. Maybe the requirements are overkill, but that isn't Amtrak's fault.

I appreciate URPA's passion and stenographic skills, but there isn't much there that is useful for building an effective transportation mode for the 21st century.

I read through the executive summary of the Pioneer study. I can see what Amtrak did:

No, I don't want this hot potato. YOU take it.

Soon enough, the potato will be back in Congress' hands, with a price tag. Here are my questions: Which Congressional delegration is pushing the agenda? Do they have the ability to influence the other 217 and 50?

Vincent wrote:URPA consistently seems to think that there are millions of people just waiting to jump on a fleet on refurbished equipment and ride for two days on a train when a 737 can make the same trip in 5 hours.

IMO, when the fact that the average traveler wants to get from point A to point B as quickly and conveniently as possible is considered, one thing is clear: Regardless of how the expansion is done (i.e., new service or restoration of past service), Mr. Vincent's statement pretty much sums up the reason for not increasing Amtrak's LD service.

Vincent wrote:I appreciate URPA's passion and stenographic skills, but there isn't much there that is useful for building an effective transportation mode for the 21st century.

Well said!

Of course URPA attacks the Pioneer and Sunset studies. If you read through their website, you learn some amazing things. Those of us who believe that passenger rail service (like all modes of transportation) requires government funding are way off base. Passenger trains of the long-distance variety actually make lots of money! Indeed, you wonder why the railroads were so anxious to get out of the business.

I do not doubt there are flaws in the studies. I'm sure they were only too happy to accept UP's estimate of necessary infrastructure upgrades, no questions asked. But even if the true costs of restarting the Pioneer and the Sunset-East were only half of that estimated in the studies, the message is still clear. These trains would cost a heck of a lot of money, and the return would be, to be charitable, relatively small. But that, of course, assumes that Amtrak's purpose is something other than being a vendor of land cruises for the well-heeled.

Full disclosure: I have been a sleeping-car passenger on Amtrak several times (Crescent, Capitol Ltd, and the now-renamed and coach only Night Owl). I think there is a role for such trains, even beyond their political role of securing enough votes to fund the NEC. But that role is limited.

A few years back, Trains did a series of centerfold maps on the various routings. The routes showed traffic densities on the line. Locally, I was interested in the Kansas City map. The densities now are a far cry from even the days just before Amtrak, let alone from the heyday of passenger rail. In addition, regarding the Pioneer, UP has been aggressive in re-using its property for other purposes... be it coach yards, stations, shops, or commissaries. They're GONE. Further,the traffic on the Overland Route has increased.

Its easy to tear Amtrak down. But look at a few things they've done right this year.

1. Hired more people at Bear and Beech Grove. Even though only a couple extra cars were refurbished in time for the summer travel season, I think most would agree that the rolling stock is old and needed more attention than it was getting. Bear and Beech Grove have huge backlogs, but having more repair people will whittle away at that over the next couple years.

2. Huge gains in on-time performance. Negotiations with the host railroads have restored priority treatment for passenger trains. Now that the passenger trains are getting better attention, the bottlenecks in the system are being exposed. The physical infrastructure limitations will take some time to fix, but the Amtrak and the FRA have shown considerable willingness to help the host railroads increase their capacity for everyone's benefit. I think the improved on-time performance will accelerate passenger growth over the long term.

3. Improved maintenance facilities at Chicago and Los Angeles. The true benefits of these won't be seen for 3 or 4 years, but passengers will appreciate cars where the bathrooms aren't broken, plugged or frozen.

4. Trainsets. Repair of the Talgos for Cascades service is complete. California now has an order in for refurbishment of all their cars. New service in Virginia begins next month from Lynchburg. Another train is being added in December from Richmond. North Carolina is adding an additional Piedmont frequency early next year. Wisconsin has ordered 2 Talgo trainsets for Chicago to Milwaukee. Oregon promises to order another 2 Talgos. Ohio wants to start manufacturing DMUs in their state. New Viewliner equipment is being designed even though Amtrak doesn't yet have the money to order them. Amtrak has a long way to go, but this is a good start.

5. Stations. Groundbreaking on a new station at Sanford, FL was long overdue. Many other stations are getting leaky roofs repaired, air conditioning fixed, and crumbling parking lots paved.

I know it's been a few days since the last post in this thread, but I've been noticing an increasing amount of coverage for the Pioneer route. I want to preface this question by saying that I don't know a lot about this route so I'm not going to claim some strong opinion about it, so I really just wanted to ask for reasons of clarification:

1. Why do the route. As I stated I don't know the details about it, but intuitively I don't see it as that strong a route in terms of the cities it covers. I'm not against it if someone can explain it.

2. Since we have the Empire Builder and California Zephyr, would the main purpose of this route be to provide an inland connection from SLC to Portland? And if that is the case, wouldn't a corridor train work better?

3. What role do existing routes play in this, i.e. is the Pioneer the only possibility for fixing some routing issues?

I know some of these questions sound like they're skeptical, but place all blame on the English language for not giving me the ability to ask the question perfectly. I really just want to know more about what the route is because I keep hearing both sides bicker over it in the news and I feel I don't know enough to understand what said bickering is about.

Anyways, thanks

Batman2 wrote:I know it's been a few days since the last post in this thread, but I've been noticing an increasing amount of coverage for the Pioneer route. I want to preface this question by saying that I don't know a lot about this route so I'm not going to claim some strong opinion about it, so I really just wanted to ask for reasons of clarification:

1. Why do the route. As I stated I don't know the details about it, but intuitively I don't see it as that strong a route in terms of the cities it covers. I'm not against it if someone can explain it.

2. Since we have the Empire Builder and California Zephyr, would the main purpose of this route be to provide an inland connection from SLC to Portland? And if that is the case, wouldn't a corridor train work better?

3. What role do existing routes play in this, i.e. is the Pioneer the only possibility for fixing some routing issues?

I know some of these questions sound like they're skeptical, but place all blame on the English language for not giving me the ability to ask the question perfectly. I really just want to know more about what the route is because I keep hearing both sides bicker over it in the news and I feel I don't know enough to understand what said bickering is about.

Anyways, thanks

I'm also not very familiar with the route either, but I'll give it a go.

1. Besides possible increased political support, it's a way for people from Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado and Utah to reach the Pacific Northwest without having to go through Chicago or Sacramento. Whether this is a popular way of travel, I don't know. It'd probably also serve as a backup for the Empire Builder.

2. A corridor train isn't a bad idea. I'd guess it'll end up being a hybrid - a coach and a sleeper split off the Zephyr at SLC, onto a coach + Cross Country Cafe (or similar) corridor train. The western LDs have a tradition of splitting and rearranging cars relatively quickly, and the time stopped is a relatively insignificant portion of the total travel time.

3. Well, it'd be a convenient way to get more service to western Oregon and Washington, as well as running spare cars to Seattle and Portland from the east, but I can't see any routing issues it'd solve besides allowing travel between points west of Chicago and the Northwest.

Finally, a routing question - instead of routing it to Portland and running a train along either side of the Columbia, could this run up through Pasco, connect there with the Empire Builder's Portland section, and go along the NP to Seattle directly? There's been talk of a new North Coast Limited/Hiawatha, but this might be a quicker solution to the problem of serving those cities in western Washington.

there is a link to the pioneer study in narps hotline .
it seems its quite difficult to link it up with the zephyr . they could run a seperate train to Denver , via overland route

David Benton wrote:there is a link to the pioneer study in narps hotline .
it seems its quite difficult to link it up with the zephyr . they could run a seperate train to Denver , via overland route

And this route could probably be up and running a LOT faster with Amfleets coaches and an Amfleet Diner-Lite, but no sleepers. Equipment is a huge problem for getting these trains started. The studies have pointed out that for the Pioneer to run it would need an order of Superliners, and also for the City of New Orleans.

However, I tend to believe if they restructure the Sunset Limited route from LA to New Orleans (running on different days of the week) this would free up some equipment to use on an extended City of New Orleans running from Chicago to New Orleans to Miami. Then another train set could be freed up if the Southwest Chief and Capitol Limited; or Texas Eagle and City of New Orleans operated as "run through" trains at Chicago - now that on-time performance has improved for long distance trains.

For each route, it all depends on who the Fairy God-Congresscritter is, and what the Speaker or the Majority Leader owe him/her.

If he's a must-have vote on healthcare, it might just happen.

Notice that I'm not holding my breath.

The Pioneer will succeed or fail depending on how much traffic can be generated at stations along the route, not because of the endpoint to endpoint traffic. Whether the train runs Denver-Seattle or Portland-Salt Lake City, the endpoint to endpoint market will be dominated by the 737s of Southwest, Alaska, Delta and United. It's really difficult to set a schedule that serves all the major markets--Seattle, Portland, Boise, Salt Lake City and Denver--at optimum times. So it will be a matter of choosing which cities get good schedules and which cities get bad times. But like the Empire Builder, there most likely would be a good number of riders that will use the train for shorter trips. There could be a pretty good market for Portland to the Columbia Gorge/ Pendleton or Boise to Twin Falls/Pocatello and for short trips out of Salt Lake City. The problem is that because of geography and the slow travel rate of the proposed Pioneer, not all of the shorter city pairs can be served at marketable hours. But if the train runs as a corridor train without sleepers and food service it won't be attractive to the long distance passengers who pay a heftier ticket price.

And forget about running the train via Pasco and Stampede Pass. Even though the old NP line appears to be a shorter route to Seattle, the route is very slow and there wouldn't be much time saved compared to running via UP to Portland, especially if Portland to Seattle is upgraded to some sort of higher speed operation. Sacrificing Portland for the Tri-Cities, Yakima and Ellensburg isn't an even trade in terms of passenger counts. The tremendous number of passengers lost wouldn't be worth the few minutes of time saved. Also the cost of refurbishing Stampede Pass for passenger train service would probably be in the neighborhood of $400-$500 million.

The Pioneer isn't high on my list of 21st Century passenger rail priorities, but it would be a beautiful trip that I surely would want to make once or twice in my lifetime, so if somebody wants to step up and pay for the service, I'll be glad to ride it. But there are more important priorities.