Which averages out to 23/day. That's about half the capacity of a intercity bus or 1/4 the capacity of a short-distance Horizon car.
The new Acela: It's not Aveliable.
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goodnightjohnwayne wrote:welcome to america, where it's fine for the federal government to pay for train service to small towns but not large cities like cincy.
8,600 annual passenger boardings for a community with a population of 2,900.
Patrick Boylan wrote:That would be 23 per day if the train served Hinton, WV, 7 days a week. When I divide 8,600 / (3 * 52) I get 55 passengers per dayWell, assuming there are no service disruptions, there are 6 trains per week in Hinton (3 in each direction), or 312 for a year. I don't remember if the eb and wb Cardinal operates on the same days in Hinton, so I'll just go with a per train number of passengers (8600/312): 27.6. That's pretty good for such a small town, and with 3x/weekly service. But the ridership for the Cardinal for all of WV (that is all the WV stations except Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry [served by the CL]) was only 40,775 in FY11. That works out (40,775/312) to about 131 passengers per train. The numbers would certainly be much higher with daily service, and I agree with Tadman that the best way to get that would be a day train to NYP.
Amtrak and state officials plan meetings in the coming month on the estimated $4 million to $5 million a year it might cost the state to continue the service. ...http://www.pal-item.com/article/2012101 ... CFRONTPAGE
State Rep. Randy Truitt, R-West Lafayette, said community leaders needed to be ready to get involved after Amtrak and Indiana Department of Transportation officials meet.
jstolberg wrote:Interesting that the local cities want to keep the train, even if it does get much not ridership. The challenge is that the Hoosier State loses the most money per passenger mile and seat mile of all the Amtrak trains. Any plans for the communities to provide the funding will take considerable flak for that.Amtrak and state officials plan meetings in the coming month on the estimated $4 million to $5 million a year it might cost the state to continue the service. ...http://www.pal-item.com/article/2012101 ... CFRONTPAGE
State Rep. Randy Truitt, R-West Lafayette, said community leaders needed to be ready to get involved after Amtrak and Indiana Department of Transportation officials meet.
In other words, if the state doesn't agree to put up the money, perhaps Indianapolis, Crawfordsville, Lafayette, Rensselaer and Dyer could. This could become the first COMMUNITY-sponsored intercity passenger rail service.
afiggatt wrote: There is this part in the newspaper article that I find odd: "Amtrak says states are responsible for fully funding routes shorter than 750 miles under a funding methodology established by Congress in 2008. But state officials in Indiana disagree." Umm, this was set in the 2008 PRIIA act and is not exactly news to the other states. Maybe IN DOT thinks IN doesn't have to provide a subsidy because the Hoosier State shares a timetable and route with a LD train?I was struck by that, too. Hard to imagine that Indiana thinks that it gets the HS for free--lots of other corridors share track and timetables with LDs, and they're not getting a pass. I wonder if the reporter is simply referring to the fact that Indiana refused to sign on to the funding formula negotiated between Amtrak and the states. In any event, I don't see Indiana coughing up anything for the HS.
afiggatt wrote:Of course what the Cardinal/Hoosier service needs is better trip times between CHI and IND. It did get some help recently. There was a report several weeks ago in Railway Age about the completion of CREATE project B15 which modernized signals and switches at a yard and improved track speeds from 15 to 30 mph for the Cardinal and Hoosier State. Quote from the article: "With the improvements, Amtrak trains and freight trains operating on the IHB main line are expected to pass through in as little as six minutes. Trains used to experience 15 to 30 minutes of delay for every hand-operated switch they navigated as well as when waiting for other trains to navigate the project limits with manual switches." So there has been improvement on a small part of the long Cardinal route. A spot check of Amtrak status maps archives shows that the Hoosier State has been getting in early to CHI a number of times recently which might be due in part to the CREATE project completion.Good news certainly, but just a drop in the bucket compared to the remaining problems: no signals west of Indy to Crawfordsville, deteriorating track and antiquated signals north of Crawfordsville, the remaining bottlenecks in the Chicago terminal area, etc. I fear the patient will expire long before the treatment takes effect.