Anderson possible changes: Dismantling LD, Corridor, Etc.

June Trains magazine carries a story on short haul intermodal . One of the options put forward is in combination with Amtrak passenger trains. this may be a way to fund improvement/expansion. This would have to be done in cooperation with the freight railroads this time.

electricron wrote:In most of the rest of the world the railroad corridors are owned by the government, not by a private firm whose primary profits come from moving freight. Amtrak States it runs over 21,300 miles of track but owns just 700 miles itself.

457 miles is the WAS-BOS NEC, rest is mostly Keystone Corridor (104 miles) and parts of the Michigan Corridor (inherited from Penn Central).

There are some state-owned corridors in that mileage as well, but small amounts (MassDOT, ConnDOT, MNCR, Florida DOT and the SCRRA owned trackage used on the Surfliner).

Most countries are smaller. Most countries/areas with frequent passenger trains carrying a major share of travelers are much smaller and much more densely populated. Also most countries don't have anything like our five* western transcontinental railroad routes, 2000 miles apiece, at least one double track pretty much the whole way, crossing hundreds of miles of barely populated mountain, desert, and range, and hundreds of miles more of thinly populated farm country** and crammed with huge-distance freight from coal to intermodal. Japan and Europe haven't maintained equivalents to the Empire Builder and the Super Chief and whatnot. Not even the 20th Century Limited and the City of New Orleans. They have maintained something like the NEC and added networks of much faster trains on key routes. And they have done it mostly because that is a good way to link cities that are so close together.

So I am frustrated that even the dense parts of our country have iffy public transportation and are more dependent on cars than they could be, but I am mostly only nostalgic that most people going from LA to Chicago fly. Or at least, I don't think that foreign countries have kept major market share for train on the long runs across empty places. The distance from Burlington, Iowa, to Reno, Nevada, is about the same as from one end of Japan to the other. The longest dimension of France is 703 miles -- less than from Hastings, Nebraska, to Green River, UT.

* (Or six? What do we do with the potential transcontinental route that includes the DRGW but is now either lightly used, abandoned, or essentially part of a single UP route from Ogden to California? No matter.)
** Nothing against thinly populated farm country; it just doesn't generate the kind of traffic to support a lot of passenger trains.

David Benton wrote:June Trains magazine carries a story on short haul intermodal . One of the options put forward is in combination with Amtrak passenger trains. this may be a way to fund improvement/expansion. This would have to be done in cooperation with the freight railroads this time.

Most American trains are too slow. They have not kept pace with the increase of speed found in Europe and Japan. Speed would attract passengers.

george matthews wrote:Speed would attract passengers.

Speed and frequency, but I'm not at all convinced that destroying what we have will lead to the Republicans' dream of a free market miracle. I'm more of a bird in hand person. On the contrary, I believe that preserving the Amtrak core network over the years has enabled the growth of corridors like those in California, the Pacific Northwest, Chicago region, the northeast, and now increasingly the mid-Atlantic and south.

China is in a similar situation as us except that actually executed. They have a very dense region along the sea, and the remainder of their nation is very sparsely populated. They are finally bringing HSR to the few cities that are in the western part of the country. Also, SNCF built their entire network up from the ground, this way they didn't have to purchase any track, this also allows for building higher quality track that has higher speed limits.

And that required serious investment. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to kill the few attempts at serious investment in high speed rail in the United States. I don't buy for a second that sacrificing the long distance network will result in any additional corridor services. Smoke and mirrors. I imagine that working on the Amtrak long distance routes right now must feel something like being on the Ford Mondeo/Fusion design team. If your leadership doesn't believe in the product and the mission, you have the wrong leadership.

What comparisons are there to the United States in terms of long-distance railroading?

Russia only really has Vladivostok on its east coast, plus a string of cities and interchange with Mongolian, Chinese, and North Korean consumers. So, it has One Big Passenger Train that takes days, with locals on some portions.

Canada is similar - more or less just Vancouver beyond the Rockies, Calgary and Edmonton before, and a couple strings of 500k-2m cities. It also has One Big Train plus locals, but ought to have two and a few Regionals.

Same with Australia and its One Big Train coast-to-coast, with another Smaller Train south to north.

China is heavily investing in moving citizens out into the western hinterlands, far more so than Russia. It’s using highways, airlines, and railroads to do so, in a 21st century version of the United States.

Europe as a whole isn’t comparable, because there are population nodes throughout.

Africa isn't comparable either, since African Union countries haven’t yet agreed on large-scale trans-national infrastructure projects either north-south or east-west.

Mexico said no to passenger rail, and is struggling to rebuild it on the Euro-Chinese model.

I don’t know enough about Brazil or Argentina to comment, but those are the only other nations I could roughly compare to the United States in bulk and population.

So - the American passenger railroad model is rare, but so is the American national model.

Mr Anderson has started to talk about DESTAFFING some stations that are still staffed, with reported daily passenger loadings under 40 passengers,
Cincinnati Oh,Charleston W.Va,Texarkanna Tx/Ar,Meridan Ms,Hammond La,Marshall Tx,Ottumwa Ia,Ft Madison Il, Topkea Ks,Garden City Ks,
Harve Mt,Shelby Mt, La Junta Co,Tuscaloosa Al,and Lamy NM.

For all the talk of DMUs and EMUs, it dawned on me we are essence just talking about the NEC and branches off it. The Midwest has their equipment unless Amtrak sends a DMU to for CHI-MIL and CHI-DET. The west coast has their equipment too, so we are just talking east coast, and whatever new corridor developed.

With the rumored DMUs and the states getting their own equipment, the replacement for Genesis becomes less urgent. It will be Chargers to keep capital and mx costs down. For long distance equipment, it gets interesting. Makes more sense to refurb the Superliners, it will be less money (since Anderson really does not want to invest much into LDs anyway). The problem is what to replace the Amfleet IIs with, if and yes, a BIG if Anderson is serious about EMUs and DMUs. I guess Siemens coaches.

We all stated Amtrak needed changing, well , we got it.

<40 passengers is not enough to support 1 FTE station agent. Staff should be operating the trains or fixing stuff. Or cooking food.

I think its probably musing aloud, from Anderson , on DMU's, and probably blown way out of context.
I doubt the CEO has much input into the design and type of rolling stock, this would come from the Mechanical dept. Sure he has the overall last word , but I doubt the original concepts and plans are coming from him.

Just as NC is building a Raleigh-Charlotte corridor, the same could be done with ATL-Charlotte -NEC and ATL-Birimgham (since they have a new station now). Stop the Crescent at ATL from the NEC, since its mostly empty south of ATL.

Sunset Ltd.- Lets face it, if any LDs will be annulled it will be this one and the Cardinal. At least PHX-LAX can be a busy corridor,and California has experience in creating new rail markets. Ca. will expect AZ .to pitch in of course. Other than that I do not any other corridors on this line except SAT-HOU. Both station facilities will have to be extensively upgraded to attract new customers.

The Cardinal- After seeing the success from the states around Indiana will have once the new equipment is running on upgraded tracks, maybe Indiana will take this route more seriously and make a proper corridor of it. Its the only part of this route that can be turned into a corridor (CHI-IND). A day train can be run daily from Charleston to NEC it would be an upgrade since it would be daily.

Southwest Chief-Never understood why some would say this train was in danger. Are the boardings that weak? KC-CHI could be a day train if it came to it, or annul the Texas Eagle and bring back to the Texas Chief to combine with the SWC to increase pax. The train would split and combine in Newton. The down side east Texas and Arkansas would loose service.

No easy choices and no one wants to loose service. Just speculating what LD changes could come from Anderson's Amtrak.

Texas is increasing not decreasing rail. New lines and stations are being built out by Tex Rail for instance. Amtrak connectivity in Texas is important and no way will connectivity in Eastern Texas be cut.

Amtrak does need connectivity, but should eliminate non profitable routes and connectivity should be supplemented with State sponsored or private based firms where it can be sustained

Backshophoss wrote:Mr Anderson has started to talk about DESTAFFING some stations that are still staffed, with reported daily passenger loadings under 40 passengers,
Cincinnati Oh,Charleston W.Va,Texarkanna Tx/Ar,Meridan Ms,Hammond La,Marshall Tx,Ottumwa Ia,Ft Madison Il, Topkea Ks,Garden City Ks,
Harve Mt,Shelby Mt, La Junta Co,Tuscaloosa Al,and Lamy NM.

Yep:

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-wor ... et-window/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — A historic Amtrak station outside of Santa Fe will no longer have a ticket window to sell tickets.

The Santa Fe New Mexican reports Amtrak announced last week the sales window at the century-old Mission Revival-style station in Lamy, New Mexico will close.

Amtrak says it’s a casualty of changing ticket-purchasing habits as more passengers buy tickets online.

The station itself, which functions as the Santa Fe stop on the Southwest Chief route between Chicago and Los Angeles, will remain on the line.

http://www.cjonline.com/news/20180430/a ... cket-sales" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Amtrak employee James Woods learned late last week that he will lose his job at the Topeka station after the company announced it will close two manned ticket windows in Kansas.

The Topeka and Garden City stations will remain open but won’t have ticket agents on site to sell tickets, said Marc Magliari, Amtrak’s regional spokesman. The Topeka ticket window will close May 20, while the Garden City window will close May 15.

“Fewer than one in 10 Amtrak tickets nowadays is sold at a ticket counter,” Magliari said, adding that Topeka has been one of 500 places nationwide where tickets could be purchased. In terms of volume, Topeka isn’t in the top half of stations for ridership.

“It’s not a reflection on the customer service rep there,” Magliari said. “It’s just the customers have voted with their pocketbooks on how they buy tickets. It certainly has trended not only are fewer than 1 in 10 tickets sold at a ticket counter, I think more than three-quarters of them are sold with no human intervention at all.”

Staff will remain in the Newton and Kansas City Amtrak stations.