Corona virus impacts on Amtrak

Mentioned this elsewhere, but is Amtrak still operating to Seattle King Street or within Washington State at all? It seems like the ban on gatherings of 250 or more people could put Amtrak in a bind for the Builder and Starlight in particular.

mtuandrew wrote: ↑Thu Mar 12, 2020 6:24 pm What is Amtrak’s plan about New Rochelle? The entire city is a containment area but they can’t exactly stop using the NEC.

Andrew: The entire City of New Rochelle is **NOT** under containment or quarantine.
The "Containment Zone" is a one mile radius area around a certain "House of Worship"
in which the outbreak of the virus is centered in that is located in the North End of the
City. The Metro-North/Amtrak New Rochelle Station and Downtown is not in this zone.
New Rochelle is 10.35 square miles (land) and is particularly long from north to south.
The southeast corner of the Town of Eastchester and east section of Tuckahoe is
also in the Containment Area.

https://heavy.com/2020/03/new-rochelle- ... ronavirus/
Tuesday March 12 to Wednesday March 25 is the effective CZ dates.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Rochelle,_New_York
New Rochelle's 2010 population was 77,052 - the seventh largest City in NY State.

Everyone: The impact on ridership on all rail transit is widespread noting how
operators are cutting back service - with Amtrak and CtRail for starters adopting
Saturday schedules for weekdays. The MTA noted that NYC Subway ridership is
down around one million riders per day compared to regular weekday numbers.

I agree that this topic should be about Amtrak primarily but there should be one
to take note of service cutbacks and significant changes that can affect passenger
rail of all types during this time period.

Be safe all and hope for the best in the coming days and weeks...MACTRAXX

mtuandrew wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 4:24 pm Mentioned this elsewhere, but is Amtrak still operating to Seattle King Street or within Washington State at all? It seems like the ban on gatherings of 250 or more people could put Amtrak in a bind for the Builder and Starlight in particular.

No cancellations yet, but I would imagine that since Washington and Oregon are effectively shut down and **ALL** major events cancelled for at least a month, the load factors on the Cascades have to be utterly abysmal to the point of being worthless to run the trains.

I would imagine the long distance trains, and especially the Builder, would be less impacted, but I could envision if the situation got worse that the Builder would not operate west of Spokane. Meanwhile Alaska will likely cut a huge amount of its capacity which is heavy on short-distance flights in the Pacific Northwest, and now there's talk of Greyhound being put up for sale - with no one interested in buying it. Throw in "travel shaming" into an area already known for taking extreme environmentalist positions...

If Washington State does go on lockdown while a Builder is en route, I could see it running “sealed” between Sandpoint and Portland.

As I think someone mentioned, this presents Amtrak with the possible unexpected chance to close one North river tube for rehabilitation or maintenance. Presumably they have a contingency plan for needing to close one tube , and commence urgent repairs on it. If the Saturday schedule cannot be maintained with one tube, could they come up with an alternative schedule to suit ? I guess alot depends on NJT's level of service too.
As far as funding goes , surely Chao would have to put her money where her mouth is , in regards to helping pay for repairs.

David Benton wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 4:48 am As I think someone mentioned, this presents Amtrak with the possible unexpected chance to close one North river tube for rehabilitation or maintenance. Presumably they have a contingency plan for needing to close one tube , and commence urgent repairs on it. If the Saturday schedule cannot be maintained with one tube, could they come up with an alternative schedule to suit ? I guess alot depends on NJT's level of service too.
As far as funding goes , surely Chao would have to put her money where her mouth is , in regards to helping pay for repairs.

I was thinking that as well. If they're going to have to close one tunnel at a time anyway might as well start literally right now while passenger loads are down. Even if only some of the work gets done it'll make any shutdown under normal circumstances (when things return to normal and passenger loads are once again at a breaking point) shorter and therefore less painful.


Some are saying that this is only the beginning of the coronavirus and that more and more people will be affected by it and more and more events, etc. will be curtailed as the weeks and months so perhaps the "window of opportunity" will be around for awhile. But it would be extremely prudent for Amtrak, NJT, and the Federal Government to get the ball rolling now while they can.

David Benton wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 4:48 am As I think someone mentioned, this presents Amtrak with the possible unexpected chance to close one North river tube for rehabilitation or maintenance. Presumably they have a contingency plan for needing to close one tube , and commence urgent repairs on it. If the Saturday schedule cannot be maintained with one tube, could they come up with an alternative schedule to suit ? I guess alot depends on NJT's level of service too.
As far as funding goes , surely Chao would have to put her money where her mouth is , in regards to helping pay for repairs.

They can tweak the Saturday schedule a bit... but NJT has to basically abandon service to Penn Station to do it. As mentioned (and I verified with some calculations in the Amtrak Gateway Tunnels thread) the amount of trains you can shove into one tube doing two-way traffic is 6/hour. The Saturday schedule can do that with some adjustments on just Amtrak alone.

NJ Transit, while suffering a 20% decrease in passengers, is still full service. Want to bet those 20% were all standees? In other words, can't be done. New York City has to shut down first... and that's not going to happen any time soon.

STrRedWolf wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 8:32 am

David Benton wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 4:48 am As I think someone mentioned, this presents Amtrak with the possible unexpected chance to close one North river tube for rehabilitation or maintenance. Presumably they have a contingency plan for needing to close one tube , and commence urgent repairs on it. If the Saturday schedule cannot be maintained with one tube, could they come up with an alternative schedule to suit ? I guess alot depends on NJT's level of service too.
As far as funding goes , surely Chao would have to put her money where her mouth is , in regards to helping pay for repairs.

They can tweak the Saturday schedule a bit... but NJT has to basically abandon service to Penn Station to do it. As mentioned (and I verified with some calculations in the Amtrak Gateway Tunnels thread) the amount of trains you can shove into one tube doing two-way traffic is 6/hour. The Saturday schedule can do that with some adjustments on just Amtrak alone.

NJ Transit, while suffering a 20% decrease in passengers, is still full service. Want to bet those 20% were all standees? In other words, can't be done. New York City has to shut down first... and that's not going to happen any time soon.

Indeed, for example the weekday NJ Transit weekday schedule, shown on the the Northeast Corridor passenger timetable, has 24 trains departing NJ Penn between 4 and 7 pm. The NJ Transit NEC weekend schedule, which allows for single tunnel operation by bunching its and Amtrak's trains in each direction, has only 10 NJT trains during that same time period. Based on that alone, it would require over a 50% decrease in weekday service to close one tunnel Monday - Friday.

Chicago Union Station looking pretty empty (though granted, it’s a Sunday morning.) Good. Apparently the westbound Empire Builder was lightly-patronized too, only about 15 people per coach.

My parents did say there were a lot of groups of Amish traveling still. That sounds like very bad news for their communities in re: potential spread of infection.

Updates from Amtrak

https://m.amtrak.com/h5/r/www.amtrak.co ... edule.html

Northeast Corridor to operate at 60% capacity

Keystone Service running on Saturday schedule and will run express from Philadelphia to Lancaster with nonstops between. Harrisburg to Philly only.

Hartford Springfield to operate on Saturday schedule

Maple Leaf suspended between Toronto and Niagara Falls.

Only if FORCED TO by a national travel ban.

rcthompson04 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 5:43 pm Updates from Amtrak

https://m.amtrak.com/h5/r/www.amtrak.co ... edule.html

Northeast Corridor to operate at 60% capacity

Keystone Service running on Saturday schedule and will run express from Philadelphia to Lancaster with nonstops between. Harrisburg to Philly only.

Hartford Springfield to operate on Saturday schedule

Maple Leaf suspended between Toronto and Niagara Falls.

Further notes:
-NEC capacity will be at about 40%, not 60%
-the Winter Park Express is canceled due to Colorado closing all ski resorts
-Amtrak will curtail some cafe car service on the Corridor between NYP and WAS (which likely means all cafe service will be off soon, as states mandate that restaurants close.)

Train60 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 7:22 pm No one should be surprised to see Amtrak initiate an orderly shutdown of their Long Distance network this week.

Backshophoss wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 7:56 pm Only if FORCED TO by a national travel ban.

No, I agree that it’s coming too. Enough states are readying transportation restrictions that Amtrak won’t be willing to challenge.

We have no idea what is going to happen to Amtrak. However look at it this way. It will all depend on how successful efforts are to stretch out the rate on persons getting the virus. If the effort takes months what will be the use of running LD trains ? A quick uptick in infections might mean a slow down ? It s too hard to tell. And if a vaccine is devised then all present bets are off.

Backshophoss wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 7:56 pm Only if FORCED TO by a national travel ban.

Not necessarily. Illinois Gov. Pritzker could order Chicago Union Station closed as he did with restaurants and casinos.

Then what?