gokeefe wrote: ↑Sun Feb 23, 2020 1:08 pmWhat I read was a Democrat as sponsor of legislation in a legislature that's about 3/4s Republican. Which has me attributing the relatively positive response to the fact that no one even sees a need to disparage the proposal.
My take on the situation so far is tea-leaf reading of the politics. They look pretty good. I would imagine Amtrak did quite a bit of work behind the scenes before going to a legislative hearing. Hence, the relatively positive reception.
Is there some sign that I missed that makes you more sanguine?
I tend to agree with the analysis of Atlanta. Two trains to a single destination, plus the Crescent, in a very large city isn't a big enough footprint to even make Atlanta aware of Amtrak.
You had mentioned the Virginia model. But the Virginia model is completely different. It wasn't built in a vaccuum. Instead, they built on through-routing to the NEC to a) give people multiple time-competitive destinations, and b) draw riders bound for VA from places that are already very aware of Amtrak.
If Amtrak is interested in building Tennessee into the system, Memphis should be the focus, not Nashville. In Memphis, you can pursue a variant of the Virginia model -- connecting to two existing successful hubs, Chicago and St. Louis, that both have a significant number of trains and an Amtrak-aware public. Extension of the Saluki/Illini would be relatively cheap (I don't mean to dismiss costs, but compared to a new, slow-running train to one city that has no existing plausible station, on tracks that don't currently host passenger rail, on a route that will certainly require new equipment rather than utilization of existing cars.) There are also plausible ways to extend Rail Runners from St. Louis as well, though it likely requires a train set or two and other significant costs, but likely not at the scale required to create Atlanta/Nashville from scratch. I would guess the costs of a corridor train to New Orleans on the City of routing would also be lower than the cost of virgin service.
And the payoff is much larger. You've substantially improved the St. Louis hub by adding another regional destination, pushing Amtrak much higher on the list of transportation options there. You've given Chicagoans more than one timing to/from Memphis, strengthening Amtrak in its big Midwestern hub. And you've created the beginnings of a hub in Memphis.
To me the point of hubs isn't so much connections to other trains, though that helps a little. The point of a hub is that, while in most places Amtrak isn't even on the list of options people think of, when Amtrak offers sufficient trains to a sufficient number of destinations, it becomes a natural part of travel planning.
I think that's why Amtrak does loom larger in many rural communities and smaller cities. I grew up in Springfield, IL, where people gravitate to one of two places - Chicago and St. Louis. Air travel was very limited. If there was commercial air service in town, as an upper middle class kid, I never heard of anyone taking it. But Amtrak served both major destinations. There's also the fact that in a smaller city, you're much more likely to see the train. Even those who drove (the vast majority) were aware of Amtrak.
In larger cities, that kind of awareness depends on serving enough regional destinations frequently enough. I don't think the Nashville proposal is sufficient to make a splash there or in Atlanta.
And, I don't believe you need Nashville for in-state political support. Politicians routinely accept regional tradeoffs - road-building in one place vs. a different type of transportation spending elsewhere. Memphis is a place with a chance of success. Amtrak should be targeting Memphis hard.
