That's because to go the last mile costs millions of dollars to construct. A new bridge was ready to go in, but that whole area is old swamp, and driving pilings for the new structure Conrail/CSX were afraid it would damge the old structure. If you ever drive under it, the abutments aren't in that great of shape to begin with.
Now there's some great rumors that they want to have a three-day curfew and replace the existing bridge with a brand new structure, with Amtrak money behind it, both wider and longer to allow for adding lanes to Park Street underneath - but so far they've been nothing but rumors.
The track around into the Regional Market used to go to a fruit and vegetable distributor where the Wendys on Park Street is now, who up until the track was cut when the transportation center was built, got single cars about once a week. There's still an old insulated boxcar in there at the rail equipment dealer lot - it's on what was another siding off that line. I have shots of a Conrail B23-7 in there with a boxcar that derailed one axle somewhere in my slides.
The ball park platform has never been used. Bragman I guess had plans for another platform in the Regional Market itself at one point. Or someone did, I've heard it discussed before. But the track was never reconnected after the Transportation Center was built.
There was even a grand plan to put in a bridge over CSX at CP-293 so trains could go from downtown, to the NYS Fairgrounds, without need of CSX permission or insurance to cross the frieght mainline. I'm guessing this would have made use of the old West Shore from where it used to cross a million years ago just shy of MP 293, along and down and feeing into where it's used as a siding for the cement plant (something that was torn out in the 30s when the elevated line into the city was built). Going to the Fair actually makes sense, but not at a cost of millions to build/rebuild a mile of new right of way with a bridge. The last idiot who ran the fair was anti-railroad anyways, wanted CSX to remove the line in front of the Fair and run it around the back somehow. Don't know what the current one thinks about that, but I don't think that will ever happen either. A bridge over Nine Mile Creek would need to be relocated at best, or it would have to feed through the parking lot, defeating the purpose of moving it.
Now that it's gone, no one seems to have missed it or be complaining about it, so what does that tell you?
Not to mention the fact that the nice big downtown parking lot by the Armory Square station, is becoming a sewage treatment plant, so there goes parking downtown to ride anyplace else. I suppose it would be great to park elsewhere and ride in, but where? All there is is the mall, and with all the new work parking spots there are getting fewer and farther in between.
It never made sense to me not to run it during the coldest part of the year, when I might want a warm ride up to the mall to shop or whatever from downtown. Especially around Christmas, when it's a zoo in there for a good 4 straight weeks and it would be good to not have to deal with parking there.
But you have to remember that Ontrack was just a means to an end, it was what Walter needed to get control over the north end of the Syracuse side from Conrail so he could take back the stack trains that CP was handling west of Binghamton. Eventually that led to moving the entire interchange from Utica, to trackage rights right into Dewitt. It was never intended to make money or grow very much.
Syracuse roads are great as long as they run at capacity. Shut a lane down for any reason anywhere and you have miles of backups at rush hour. A drive out 690 and crossing the bridge at 292.8, where the Salt Land turns into former Industrial Track #7, is proof enough of that - two lanes with an on-ramp feeding in westbound and it's always slow during the rush in both directions. I've tried to drive downtown at 2:00 in the afternoon from the west and hit long backups for lane shutdowns. They keep bringing up this grand plan to get rid of I-81 through the city and I always ask, where the h#[[ are the cars going to go? The only thing that saves your commute from being a daily nightmare is the taxes suck, the local economy is level at best, crime in the city is nuts, manufacturing is gone, and there's not much reason to move here. So there's no real growth, so there's no additional commuter traffic, so it's not a problem until they close something to work on it or there's an accident.
So there's no need for the Ontrack service really anyhow. Heck in all the time it was here, I rode twice - once out of downtown on the trip that ran to Tully ahead of the Milwaukee 261 leaving town, and once back into downtown on an NRHS triangle trip that bussed to Utica and boarded there. We all talked about riding the shuttle for the heck of it, but never did.
Now about the money the counties and state have spent upgrading the track for passenger trains to places like SU, Armory and the Regional Transportation Center, that have never materialized... I guess they're going to have to talk to the executor of the estate on that one.
