Hampton Roads/Norfolk/Newport News NE Regional Service

Station Aficionado wrote:

Matt Johnson wrote:We're rolling into Quantico now ... just noticing the lack of grade crossings, coupled with the fact that I believe the former RF&P is already cab signal equipped, made me wonder if this could be an easy place to speed up the ride.

... There are a number of crossings between Fredericksburg and Staples Mill. ...

What most impressed me looking out the window some
years ago at Ashland, a little north of Richmond, was
the tracks running down a major street lined with beautiful
historic homes, and right thru the Randolph-Macon campus.

I can't imagine allowing 110-mph trains thru Ashland, or
90 mph, or even 79 mph. What can they do? Tunnel under
the street? Build new tracks to bypass the town? Gonna be
a real tuff problem, and in no way cheap.

I don't think anyone would suggest high speed trains through Ashland, where most trains make a station stop anyway. It's like that for a couple of miles through town, but then mostly rural outside of the town. Anyway, today's train 95 was over an hour late into Williamsburg. Long station dwell times, 10 mph crawl through Richmond, waiting in sidings for passing trains - makes for a painful experience! What a difference between north of DC and south. We covered the 168 miles between DC and Williamsburg in 4:29. Average speed: 37 mph.

I live in Northern New Jersey and my brother(who has no car) attends the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. He begs, me, my dad, or friends for rides because of the layover in DC and the stop n' go almost always late operation south of DC. Its hard to find to a more ideal likely rider, a college student without a car who is 15-20 min away from an Amtrak Station on either end of the trip.

Just saying, my brother who has nothing again rail travel, would much rather seek other forms of transport south of DC. They need to do something to improve the reliability and speeds south of DC because they are missing out on a great deal of ridership.

I don't know if this is true, but many people from that area told me the RF&P was designed with 90mph operation in mind. It seems like it is more a matter of will and maintenance.

Aren't those two of CSX's strong points?

Hawaiitiki wrote:I live in Northern New Jersey and my brother(who has no car) attends the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. He begs, me, my dad, or friends for rides because of the layover in DC and the stop n' go almost always late operation south of DC. Its hard to find to a more ideal likely rider, a college student without a car who is 15-20 min away from an Amtrak Station on either end of the trip.

Just saying, my brother who has nothing again rail travel, would much rather seek other forms of transport south of DC. They need to do something to improve the reliability and speeds south of DC because they are missing out on a great deal of ridership.

I know YMMV, but the ridership on the Virginia trains is so strong that they nearly break even on an operating basis. The numbers are in the monthly reports. As for students, there was a trainload of them (VCU and W&M) riding from Williamsburg and Richmond to Alexandria and beyond this past Friday,, and back down on Sunday. Indeed, both sb trains were sold out on Sunday. You'd better reserve early if you want to take the train at the beginning or end of any school break. As for time-keeping, I've met the train at Alexandria a number of times in the past year, and there has only been once that the train was as much as 15 mins. late. The OTP numbers are also in the monthly reports. The route needs capacity improvements between RVR and RVM (which would reduce total trip time) and, most especially, another frequency, but this is already a successful, well-patronized service, including among college students.

Station Aficionado wrote:

Hawaiitiki wrote:I live in Northern New Jersey and my brother(who has no car) attends the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. He begs, me, my dad, or friends for rides because of the layover in DC and the stop n' go almost always late operation south of DC. Its hard to find to a more ideal likely rider, a college student without a car who is 15-20 min away from an Amtrak Station on either end of the trip.

Just saying, my brother who has nothing again rail travel, would much rather seek other forms of transport south of DC. They need to do something to improve the reliability and speeds south of DC because they are missing out on a great deal of ridership.

I know YMMV, but the ridership on the Virginia trains is so strong that they nearly break even on an operating basis. The numbers are in the monthly reports. As for students, there was a trainload of them (VCU and W&M) riding from Williamsburg and Richmond to Alexandria and beyond this past Friday,, and back down on Sunday. Indeed, both sb trains were sold out on Sunday. You'd better reserve early if you want to take the train at the beginning or end of any school break. As for time-keeping, I've met the train at Alexandria a number of times in the past year, and there has only been once that the train was as much as 15 mins. late. The OTP numbers are also in the monthly reports. The route needs capacity improvements between RVR and RVM (which would reduce total trip time) and, most especially, another frequency, but this is already a successful, well-patronized service, including among college students.

However, it would probably perform better if had a shorter and more dependable running time.

ThirdRail7 wrote:However, it would probably perform better if had a shorter and more dependable running time.

No disagreement there. The line is mostly single-track east of Richmond. Some more sidings would be nice, but I think NNS-RVM could generally be described as "ok." And as Matt noted, the trains generally move pretty swiftly between RVR and WAS. The problem is RVM to RVR. It is slow and congested from the north end of Acca to RVM. The Acca bypass is the key to improving that stretch.

Even with the current schedule, though, the train will often be time competitive with driving, given the horrific traffic on 95 south of DC (especially on weekends), and is a much less stressful way of making the trip. The fastest nb WBG to ALX (66) is carded for 3:09. Driving the same route under optimal conditions is around 2:30 (figuring one "comfort stop"). Conditions, however, are rarely optimal (I heard that it was 3:00--without stops--from downtown Richmond to the Beltway this past Saturday). Say you could chop 15-20 mins out of the current train schedule, the train (if on time) would be in the ballpark time-wise with driving even under optimal conditions.

Station Aficionado wrote:

ThirdRail7 wrote:However, it would probably perform better if had a shorter and more dependable running time.

No disagreement there. The line is mostly single-track east of Richmond. Some more sidings would be nice, but I think NNS-RVM could generally be described as "ok." And as Matt noted, the trains generally move pretty swiftly between RVR and WAS. The problem is RVM to RVR. It is slow and congested from the north end of Acca to RVM. The Acca bypass is the key to improving that stretch.

Even with the current schedule, though, the train will often be time competitive with driving, given the horrific traffic on 95 south of DC (especially on weekends), and is a much less stressful way of making the trip. The fastest nb WBG to ALX (66) is carded for 3:09. Driving the same route under optimal conditions is around 2:30 (figuring one "comfort stop"). Conditions, however, are rarely optimal (I heard that it was 3:00--without stops--from downtown Richmond to the Beltway this past Saturday). Say you could chop 15-20 mins out of the current train schedule, the train (if on time) would be in the ballpark time-wise with driving even under optimal conditions.

Only done this route once. From Washington to Williamsburg. (after a LONG gruelling update in our datacenter, so I slept most of the way). Met my family there. Definitely was great to be able to sleep on the train. But enjoyed the parts I was awake for.

Driving back to DC with the family a few days later. Sheer torture.

I'd take the train again if I could. (and nice station in Williamsburg too).

Station Aficionado wrote:
Even with the current schedule, though, the train will often be time competitive with driving, given the horrific traffic on 95 south of DC (especially on weekends), and is a much less stressful way of making the trip. The fastest nb WBG to ALX (66) is carded for 3:09. Driving the same route under optimal conditions is around 2:30 (figuring one "comfort stop").

I agree fully. I recently drove the Williamsburg to DC stretch in 2 hours 5 minutes, which made me do a double take when I hit DC and noticed the elapsed time from leaving Williamsburg! I'm not a slow driver, but not an aggressive one either - I usually don't break 80 mph for any length of time but I guess I was doing up to 80 quite a bit on I-95 that day though! But yeah, 95 can be a disaster. My preferred driving route is actually Rt 13 up the Delmarva peninsula to the Cape May - Lewes ferry. Much more relaxing!

Say you could chop 15-20 mins out of the current train schedule, the train (if on time) would be in the ballpark time-wise with driving even under optimal conditions.

The current schedule's not bad, when they run on time. But I think there's a lot of opportunity to do better than just "not bad" if Virginia ever decides to get serious about high speed rail.

The special half-year ridership report looks really good for Hampton Roads.
http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/178/1001/Am ... 13-031.pdf

The new Norfolk train carried 12,238 passengers--I think that's very good when you consider that Lynchburg is carried 17,000 ish (16,800 this year, 18,500 last year). And also good when you consider that probably at most 2,000 of those were "stolen" from Newport News.

If Norfolk grows like Lynchburg did, it can look forward to about 3 years of 10% to 20% growth per year and end up at something like 16,000 to 18,000 just like Lynchburg.

Arlington wrote:The special half-year ridership report looks really good for Hampton Roads.
http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/178/1001/Am ... 13-031.pdf

The new Norfolk train carried 12,238 passengers--I think that's very good when you consider that Lynchburg is carried 17,000 ish (16,800 this year, 18,500 last year). And also good when you consider that probably at most 2,000 of those were "stolen" from Newport News.

If Norfolk grows like Lynchburg did, it can look forward to about 3 years of 10% to 20% growth per year and end up at something like 16,000 to 18,000 just like Lynchburg.

Yes, the Norfolk numbers are the main story of that press release. Most of the rest are statistical anomalies. March this year had 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays including Easter. Easter fell in April last year. So routes that carry more passengers on weekends showed good results; routes that carry business passengers during the week showed poorer results. Good Friday is generally not a good day for business meetings and earlier in the month government offices in Washington D.C. were shut down for a snowstorm that missed the city. Last year the Carolinian and Palmetto were affected by track work.

But there's no denying that the new train to Norfolk is resulting in about 10,000 additional passengers per month. That is an impressive start.

A possible reason why these trains are doing so well: their OTP is great.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/all ... _blog.html

On-time rates used to be 50 percent on Amtrak, making the only reliable rail travel available on Virginia Railway Express, a commuter line that operates from the District to Fredericksburg and Manassas.

Now Amtrak says it is 90 percent on time in the Old Dominion and is adding trains. Riders are noticing.

A fairly new train from Lynchburg to Washington has been a major success. The route, partly financed by the state of Virginia, has seen service up 14.1 percent to 185,000, Amtrak reports.

Another popular route, Newport News to Washington, saw ridership up 11.9 percent to 624,000. Another daily train from Norfolk was resumed for the first time in 35 years last fall.

That's the second time in less than 8 weeks that a "VA trains run on time and are doing great" story has run. Positive press is breeding more positive press and I think this is going to be reflected in the ridership results as "late adopters" (who wait until things are settled and running well) decide 'now is the time' to make the switch. We could see a really big month for the Virginia trains in May (5%-10% growth).

gokeefe wrote:That's the second time in less than 8 weeks that a "VA trains run on time and are doing great" story has run. Positive press is breeding more positive press and I think this is going to be reflected in the ridership results as "late adopters" (who wait until things are settled and running well) decide 'now is the time' to make the switch. We could see a really big month for the Virginia trains in May (5%-10% growth).

The second order effect of all this is that the new Norfolk service train would cover 100% of its costs to Amtrak and potentially reduce or eliminate any subsidy from VA. That would be a really big deal as well.

Actually i think any publicity is good publicity for Amtrak , outside the NEC . The more people aware that the service exists the more will ride , even if that awareness came form a potentially bad piece of publicity .