b&m 1566 wrote:I believe MA and VT are currently looking to fund a study for BOS/MTL passenger service that would bypass NH altogether. I'll try and find the article I read about it (recently too).
Edit: http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/ ... ssible.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Yes. Northern New England Intercity Rail Initiative. Lots more docs available on MassDOT's portal site for that project:
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/northern ... /Home.aspx" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. That's the combined Inland Route restoration study with appendage of a new Boston-Montreal frequency on the L-shaped route out of Springfield hub. Much more comprehensive than just BOS-MTL in isolation.
The whole reason that BOS-MTL exists at all as a feasibility is because of the way it gloms onto regular Inland Route demand. The Vermonter/Montrealer has lasted uninterrupted since 1972 despite the sparse demand north-of-SPG and seesawing Amtrak fortunes over the years because (for all except the years of the New London-Willimantic-Palmer re-route) it has served as a de facto Springfield Northeast Regional frequency. The conventional Corridor demand floats the more meager farebox recovery north-of-SPG. The NNEIRI study takes the same approach. Inland Route is the bread-and-butter demand served and the driver for the infrastructure upgrades. Current NHV-SPG
Shuttles would all be extended to Boston and increased in frequency, while TBD mix/matching with WSH- & NYP- originating Regionals fills out the options. In much the same way as the Vermonter floats its boat by doubling as a conventional Regional, BOS-MTL is going to see primary demand from conventional Inland patronage. The twist is how transfers at SPG hub will be used to exponentially increase the travel options.
-- Instead of continuing to New Haven as a regular Inland, the BOS-MTL train will turn north. But its arrival in SPG will be timed with a SPG-terminating Regional that it changing ends, allowing Inland patrons to hop across the platform and keep going south on a cross-honored ticket.
-- Exiting passengers on that same SPG-terminating Regional get a reciprocal cross-tix transfer to the BOS-MTL train, making that Regional a de facto second daily Vermonter frequency for the WSH and/or NYP crowd. Presumably time-of-day of the BOS-MTL schedules would run opposite the existing Vermonter to give the existing route a schedule option spaced out to the opposite end of the day.
-- The existing Vermonter would be timed with a conventional Boston-departing Inland, such that Boston patrons gain the same second VT/MTL daily frequency via cross-platform transfer as regular Vermonter patrons would gain ^^above^^. Each market gets a run-thru north-of-SPG once a day, and a cross-platform transfer the opposite end of the day. 4 total slots for 2 different routings, but at ops cost of only +1 round-trips running north-of-SPG.
-- If BOS-MTL
didn't exist, the same train would depart Boston the same time for Springfield. And continue south as a regular Inland Shuttle to NHV instead of turning north, while that SPG-terminating Regional would be free on the clock to schedule itself whenever instead of being slotted to hit the transfer. Same number of trains either way, because the study ID's X number of Inland trains as its service target and Inlands are the primary demand. The only ops change with BOS-MTL existing vs. not existing is the extra running miles of going to St. Albans and Gare Central from Springfield instead of New Haven or NYP. The transfer scheduling is all paper.
Thus, the relatively pedestrian end-to-end demand from Boston to Montreal and diffuse demand to VT only has to concern itself with farebox recovery between Springfield and Gare Central. All else is underwritten by the Inlands and Regionals and the boosting of de facto frequencies by timed cross-platform transfers at Springfield hub. The loss leader mileage of the Vermonter can thus live within the margins of steady but very small-scale incremental growth in VT and largely speculative BOS-MTL end-to-end growth without taking a bath or being too big a risk financially to initiate at all. If the Inland Route gets built fully out, it becomes one of the lowest-risk new service patterns to try out on the whole Amtrak system map. The only capital costs VTrans would have to rationalize are signaling improvements in NECR dark territory for the additional round-trip frequency. Ops costs are well contained within established demand for a second frequency at opposite end of the day from the current Vermonter. Thumbs-up/thumbs-down on doing it becomes a very straight answer with no hand-wringing, and is questioned only by whether Massachusetts tries to do the Inlands on an ultra-squeezed budget with much lower service targets. Unlikely to go down that way because the NNEIRI study already has a Recommended Alternative for the service sweet spot that justifies the project's existence; they'll either build all of the Rec Alt. or not build anything, and won't try to split hairs. If the Inlands are a go, BOS-MTL is a near-certainty to be in the same package.
FWIW...the previous study for a North Station-White River Jct.-Gare Central direct via the ex-B&M Northern Route barely had any time difference from the L-shaped South Station-Springfield-WRJ-Gare Central route at conventional speeds. You had to reach into that study's unlimited-billions HSR stratosphere to see any improvement, and that wasn't realistic because triple-digit speeds in NH but slamming into the same old 60 MPH Central Vermont west of WRJ and through the Green Mts. made no sense. There's nothing you could've practically done to the Northern for unlimited money that you couldn't do just as well to the B&A and Conn River for the same unlimited-money sum to match-or-better effect on the schedule. But any such investment in the B&A + Conn River would return itself with way higher ridership because of the markets served, additional routes served, and extra ridership pipelines from the transfers...a head-to-head investment contest that de-abandonment of the Northern would never ever win. The NH route basically exists only a "me to" Congressional pork hypothetical to give every New England state equal slices of the intercity funding pot. It's not a viable one for ridership or schedule, and in the real world NH doesn't even want the "me too" pork all that much.