What do people make of the idea in the Downeaster thread that Amtrak recently advanced the idea of a Richmond-Maine train? If real, it sounds to me like a "new LD" in a sense, and may suggest that Anderson sees value in the network aspect of LD service in specific contexts, the most important of which, I would postulate, is the existence of the corridor as subliminal advertising. The problem for Amtrak is that in most places, even those with a daily train, Amtrak doesn't even come to mind for most people.
I'm agnostic on most existing LD service. I agree that it doesn't offer much value today except political value. I like Tadman's thinking outside the box about how to restructure that political support, but fear that people fight much harder not to lose what they have than to get something new. That constrains the political benefit of proposing new corridor trains in return for axing an LD.
More important, it's not clear to me that disconnected corridors build that rapidly into winners. Look at the Rail Runner in NM. Sleek, fast, reliable, and not that successful. A new San Antonio-Houston corridor strikes me as something like an attempt at social engineering.
My focus would be to figure out how to build out from the basis of existing corridors in places where train travel is already a solution people consider. Virginia is proving this strategy. The Richmond to Maine plan, if real, seems to suggest that Anderson or those around him understand that success and think it might apply in previously unthinkable places.
I think the challenge is where to find other existing network effects strong enough to build on. I've been trying to brainstorm such things - suggesting a Memphis extension of a Saluki, a weekend Wisconsin Dells extension of a Hiawatha. Not that my ideas are great. But the question I'm trying to ask is how do you build something like the NEC and its successful extensions in a new place. Chicago-St. Louis, -Milwaukee and -Carbondale is the strongest web between Richmond and the Sierra Nevadas, with the bonus of a large commuter rail system in the metropolis itself keeping train travel on the mental map. If you can't build on that, where can Amtrak possibly build?
In particular, how does Amtrak come to serve enough of the potential destinations from a given city that it gets "bookmarked" either figuratively, in people's minds, or literally in everyone's web browser? My sense is that in the NEC and its environs, Amtrak gets at least routine consideration from most travelers. Even those who regularly go by car think "there's Amtrak, but it wouldn't work for me because ..." Most people are aware that it could get them to many places they like to go. That's why Maine could work. You've got tens of millions of people on the NEC who would think to check the schedule, and you only need a few hundred thousand/year to make it work.
Outside the corridor, Amtrak only even gets attention from a small group of people who have a regular need to go to a particular destination. The Chicago hub overwhelmingly serves two kinds of patrons -- people from outlying places who go to Chicago often enough to realize it's a useful way to do so, and people in Chicago who routinely head somewhere else - students taking the Saluki, state workers & lobbyists ferrying to the capital.
Despite regular service in several directions, I would argue that the vast majority of Chicagoans, even those tens of thousands who take heavy rail 5 days a week, never even consider taking Amtrak anywhere. If you tell someone you took the train to Kansas City for a vacation, they take it as an endearing curiosity.
Real network effects are achieved at the point Amtrak becomes a "bookmark". Even in Chicago this is a challenge. Is there any conceivable way the metropolises of Texas would think that way anytime in the next 20 years? But how do you make a stand-alone service work, if most of the people who might head in that direction never even think to consider it?
