Hampton Roads/Norfolk/Newport News NE Regional Service

M&Eman wrote:The fact that the military booked air shuttles of such short distance is silly in the first place. There should be some sort of protocol about transportation under a certain distance never being air, always being rail or bus. A lot of people outside the Northeast (including perhaps people who set up the travel system) do not get how close everything is here. Living in Northern New Jersey, I would never fly for anything shorter than EWR-Chicago or EWR-Charlotte. Northeastern air shuttles strike my as inefficient, environmentally unfriendly, and by all accounts are not exactly huge profit centers for the airlines, since they are expensive to operate. More airlines besides United should have codeshares with Amtrak. Anyone flying into Dulles (soon), DCA, BWI, PHL, EWR, JFK, PVD, or BOS has easy enough connections with Amtrak through a rapid transit link. EWR and BWI additionally have intercity trains stopping directly at the airport. It is a no-brainer for airlines to book LAX-PVD via EWR or something similar with Amtrak as the connection.

To be fair, the Dulles' Metro connection is a LONG one (I believe over 30 minutes).

But overall, I agree.

I also suspect that in the long run, the airlines would rather give up the short-haul slots in the NYC area for long-distance flights.

Jeff Smith wrote:Military Travel would ALWAYS book me from JFK to BWI, no matter the cost. It was like pulling teeth to get a corridor train from STD to BWI, which was ALWAYS cheaper.

Cuts to travel budgets will help rationalize that.

Jeff Smith wrote:Recently, there was a proposal for a troop train to go from Fort Lee to Fort AP Hill. It would have been operated by Amtrak as a charter. Apparently, the cost was too much.

That was a different issue entirely I seem to recall that they were going to use some kind of odd contract structure through a logistics company that was going to make things exceptionally expensive.

As of Jan 1, the cuts to the military are so deep, they not only won't be able to fly...unless you are of Field Grade or Fleet Grade...but trains, busses, out of the question and back to the old days....walk.

Regardless the point remains the new Northeast Regional service from NFK is probably going to attract quite a few travelers some of whom might be on government travel or working as a contractor for the government (who have their own travel budgets to watch).

Does anyone know the name of the new interlocking on the A-Line for the Norfolk connection? It seems fairly short and I suspect it is something like BX after an old tower at the location, but I'd like confirmation. I need to properly name some photos.

In the run-up to NFK's start, I think we missed that the FRA published on Dec 7th 2012 a Record of Decision for NFK's Tier 1 EIS. The key elements seem to be:

SOUTHSIDE / NS Route / Norfolk Terminus
- Future 6 Daily r/t (up from 1)
- Future MAS of 90mph. 110 was judged to cost too much and to interfere to much with freight
- Future stations at Petersburg (relocated as sited by SEHSR study) and Bowers Hill

NORTHSIDE / CSX / Newport News Terminus
- Future 3 Daily r/t (up from 2)
- MAS of 79mph

It looks like ridership to NFK is exceeding the expectations of its local backers. From WVEC-13 this evening:

Preliminary ridership numbers show between 11,200 and 11,500 trips were made in December, double what the city projected, according to Assistant City Manager Ron Williams.

Officials also report that close to 6,500 passengers got on or off at the Norfolk stop in that same time.

Could someone with a better journalistic or internal source clarify the exact benchmarks those numbers represent?

The interlocking on the A-Line is indeed BX and the interlocking on the NS is CP Crater. The connection is 1,000 ft long, good for 45 MPH; however, the switch at Crater is 40.

Andy

Jersey_Mike wrote:Does anyone know the name of the new interlocking on the A-Line for the Norfolk connection? It seems fairly short and I suspect it is something like BX after an old tower at the location, but I'd like confirmation. I need to properly name some photos.

CComMack wrote:It looks like ridership to NFK is exceeding the expectations of its local backers. From WVEC-13 this evening:

Preliminary ridership numbers show between 11,200 and 11,500 trips were made in December, double what the city projected, according to Assistant City Manager Ron Williams.

Officials also report that close to 6,500 passengers got on or off at the Norfolk stop in that same time.

Could someone with a better journalistic or internal source clarify the exact benchmarks those numbers represent?

I do not have an alternate source, however I may be able to "interpret". Put simply the figures represent the route ridership for the train between NFK and WAS, much the same as it is reported between LYH and WAS.

Put simply these numbers are really really strong. The train carried 11,200-11,500. To give us a sense of scale LYH-WAS, now in a more "mature" phase of growth carried 12,801 in September 2012. IF the cost structures are similar it would appear that this train is already turning a profit. Given that 1/2 of the potential ridership originates from NFK we can see a pretty clear contribution by the terminal station to overall route strength. Unless NPN has "fallen off a cliff" I think we've got a winner.

CComMack wrote:

Officials also report that close to 6,500 passengers got on or off at the Norfolk stop in that same time.

Could someone with a better journalistic or internal source clarify the exact benchmarks those numbers represent?

Seems pretty straightforward to me. 6500 passengers got on or off at Norfolk in a 20 day period (Dec 12 to 31 inclusive). The 11,500 includes passengers who got on/off at RVR, Petersburg, other VA stops. The 20 day period included heavy holiday period travel, at least one slow day for Christmas, still works out to 325 per day. Pretty good for a brand new service with a train departing at 4:50 AM on weekdays.

The January and February daily averages should be lower, as these are the lowest ridership months of the year. On the other hand, there may be steady traffic from military personnel and contractors making day trips to WAS from NFK to keep the numbers up. But it appears that NFK is well on the way to becoming a 100 thousand plus passengers a year station with just 1 train. We will have to wait and see what the drop-off in NPN numbers are, but this service is starting out with solid numbers.

afiggatt wrote:

CComMack wrote:

Officials also report that close to 6,500 passengers got on or off at the Norfolk stop in that same time.

Could someone with a better journalistic or internal source clarify the exact benchmarks those numbers represent?

Seems pretty straightforward to me. 6500 passengers got on or off at Norfolk in a 20 day period (Dec 12 to 31 inclusive).

Wow. I forgot about the partial month in December!

one difference in costs would be Lynchburg was an existing station , sharing costs with the crescent . Norfolk is a new station , with all costs on one train at this stage .

gokeefe wrote: Put simply these numbers are really really strong. The train carried 11,200-11,500. To give us a sense of scale LYH-WAS, now in a more "mature" phase of growth carried 12,801 in September 2012. IF the cost structures are similar it would appear that this train is already turning a profit. Given that 1/2 of the potential ridership originates from NFK we can see a pretty clear contribution by the terminal station to overall route strength. Unless NPN has "fallen off a cliff" I think we've got a winner.

I think it is premature to draw such a conclusion. That train had a decent amount of ridership out of RVR to begin with. As someone that has been monitoring the NFK-RVR numbers for months, I think real push was Amtrak making an "introductory" NFK-WAS fare. That's when NFK-WAS ridership surged. Additionally, those numbers may include the inaugural runs, which carried a lot of additional people.

I'm interested in seeing what happens with the "normal" fare.

afiggatt wrote:

CComMack wrote:

Officials also report that close to 6,500 passengers got on or off at the Norfolk stop in that same time.

Could someone with a better journalistic or internal source clarify the exact benchmarks those numbers represent?

The 11,500 includes passengers who got on/off at RVR, Petersburg, other VA stops.

Thanks; since the NFK trains are (IIRC) extensions of RVR trains, I wanted to double-check that this number included RVR-ALX boardings, which was my initial guess based on the magnitude of the number. An alternate reading of the sentence could have implied a very large ridership gain at Petersburg, which I thought was unlikely, but just plausible enough to be worth checking.

We really need to be careful about describing these trains as "profitable." If they are, even on just an operating basis, "profitable," why do commonwealth officials continually caution about the need to identify operating funds come 10/1/13 (when the new formula for state-supported services kicks in)? The Virginia trains have been very successful, but I suspect they (like all other transportation modes) will still require subsidy (which, as a Virginia resident, I would strongly support).