[globetrekker96]

I wonder if people in Fairfield County use the Stamford station to take Amtrak to commute to NYC. You definitely get a more luxurious seating experience.

Having Amtrak on the New Haven line is convenient for people traveling to other states. Recently, while waiting to pick someone up in Stamford, I had an idea. Because Amtrak was delayed for the arrival due to traffic of Metro North trains, I wondered if Amtrak started making local stops instead. I am sure a lot of people who use Amtrak live in other places besides Stamford.

What if Amtrak stopped in Greenwich? Who would determine the price of tickets, since MTA usually stops there by itself. Amtrak has business, coach, and room seats. The price of basic ticket on Amtrak is roughly the same as Metro North.

[Lillie767]

MetroNorth fare from New Haven to Stamford: $8.25
Amtrak fare from New Haven to Stamford: $34+

[Stylo]

They don't have the ability to stop at other stations. There’s only so much traffic the tracks and stations can handle.

It would also only slow down the Amtrak trains, which is a selling point of theirs, speed for long term travel.

It would make little financial sense, for Amtrak or for riders.

To answer your question, very very few commuters use it due to costs.

[JayCT]

Originally Posted by Lillie767

MetroNorth fare from New Haven to Stamford: $8.25
Amtrak fare from New Haven to Stamford: $34+

I know that several years ago you couldn’t buy a ticket on Amtrak from New Haven, Bridgeport or Stamford to New York City. You would have to buy a ticket to Newark instead and just get off the train at Penn Station. I had coworkers that would do this because they were going to Penn Plaza and the ticket was cheaper than taking Metro North to Grand Central and a taxi over to Penn Plaza. There was an agreement between Amtrak and Metro North that prevented the selling tickets that competed with them. That must have changed since I see you can buy them. Jay

[Lillie767]

Originally Posted by JayCT

I know that several years ago you couldn’t buy a ticket on Amtrak from New Haven, Bridgeport or Stamford to New York City. You would have to buy a ticket to Newark instead and just get off the train at Penn Station. I had coworkers that would do this because they were going to Penn Plaza and the ticket was cheaper than taking Metro North to Grand Central and a taxi over to Penn Plaza. There was an agreement between Amtrak and Metro North that prevented the selling tickets that competed with them. That must have changed since I see you can buy them. Jay

The inability of buying intra-CT or CT-NY tickets was fully enforced during the MetroNorth strike in 1983. People in FC would board Amtrak in Stamford, buy a ticket to Penn Station-NJ and get off in Penn Station-NY. The trains were jammed; no one cared about the fare - only how to get into Manhattan. I would drive DH back and forth from Stamford station.

As an aside, people would also take Connecticut Limousine airport shuttle to LGA. Easy to get to Manhattan from there. The buses that took people from CT to Bronx subway stations were horribly crowded. And then you still had a very long subway trip to Manhattan.

[OyCrumbler]

If it's more luxurious seating experience that you want, then it'd make more sense for Metro-North and CDOT to improve the seating experience than it would be for Amtrak to make local stops since Amtrak is meant for longer distance travels. If the Amtrak trains made more local stops, then that means everyone traversing through will have a longer trip and increasing those trip times makes those trains less attractive for longer intercity travel and also means more hours spent on employees per mile. Also, given the capacity constraints on the Connecticut shoreline, this could mean screwing with the Metro-North and possibly SLE schedules. One thing to note though is that local CT stops aren't quite as bad in terms of impact on overall trip time as they would be in many other parts of the Northeast Corridor because the CT shoreline tracks wind quite a bit and are among the slower parts of the Northeast Corridor, but that certainly doesn't mean adding more time to that would please all that many people.



Ultimately, I think what would make sense is for Amtrak to build dedicated high speed rail tracks coming out of NYC and going inland in CT with a local / express service to Boston. This would open up capacity for more local or regional service regardless of the agency on the CT shoreline while not impacting those looking for longer distance trips traversing CT. I liked the plan of new tracks from NYC going north in Westchester County and then linking to Danbury, Waterbury, Hartford, Storrs/UConn, Providence and then Boston and hopefully with connections to train services in those places where existent. Then there'd be express service that does Boston-Providence-Hartford-NYC on that segment with the other mentioned stations as part of a local service where express trains can pass the local services at the major stops. That was a very appealing plan to me, but who knows when that'll ever be funded. Supposedly this federal administration, which is really who holds the coinpurse, is serious about infrastructure. The last one was big league serious about it, but uh, it didn't really seem to do much.

[globetrekker96]

These answers are insightful to hear, thanks.

[2nd trick op]

In the days of privatized rail passenger service, many of the railroads provided a combination of local and "express" or "though" service -- same principle as used on city subways, but on a smaller scale and/or spread over a wider area; it worked something like this:

An hour or so before the arrival of a popular long-distance train, a "feeder" schedule would leave from a point not served by the express, and pick up both local and long-haul passengers. When it reached a point served by the express (usually just a few minutes ahead of it) it would stop and transfer the long-distance riders. and usually pickup passengers for smaller stations up ahead.

The local, now following the express on a slower schedule, would the drop off these passengers; at the end of its schedule, it would likely be turned around to perform the same duty in reverse the next day, while another "trainset" would cover the previous day's responsibility.

The Santa Fe system, with a fleet of equipment sufficient to cover several long-distance schedules, was the best-known practicioner of this art, and it maintained a fleet of modern (for the time) self-propelled coaches known as Rail Diesel Cars for this purpose. But with most patronage already lost to the airlines, this would be a budget-buster in contemporary markets.

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by 2nd trick op

In the days of privatized rail passenger service, many of the railroads provided a combination of local and "express" or "though" service -- same principle as used on city subways, but on a smaller scale and/or spread over a wider area; it worked something like this:

An hour or so before the arrival of a popular long-distance train, a "feeder" schedule would leave from a point not served by the express, and pick up both local and long-haul passengers. When it reached a point served by the express (usually just a few minutes ahead of it) it would stop and transfer the long-distance riders. and usually pickup passengers for smaller stations up ahead.

The local, now following the express on a slower schedule, would the drop off these passengers; at the end of its schedule, it would likely be turned around to perform the same duty in reverse the next day, while another "trainset" would cover the previous day's responsibility.

The Santa Fe system, with a fleet of equipment sufficient to cover several long-distance schedules, was the best-known practicioner of this art, and it maintained a fleet of modern (for the time) self-propelled coaches known as Rail Diesel Cars for this purpose. But with most patronage already lost to the airlines, this would be a budget-buster in contemporary markets.

I think this happens today as well on these tracks. This also still happens today all over the world whether public or private. There are a few ways local and express service work, and CT has them in various parts.

If the local and express trains share track then this requires that track layout to have a passing siding that allows for express trains to pass local trains with one set of trains switching to these temporary passing siding tracks from the main tracks--these can take a few forms including being built into specific major stops where both express and local trains stop so that an express train catching up to a local train can be at the station at the same time to make a transfer (hopefully just across the platform) and then the express train go first, bypassing that local train which was originally further "ahead" of it. CT does have this.

If sharing tracks and no passing sidings, then if the schedule is sparse enough, local and express services can run without bumping into each other. This sometimes happens with the "first" early train of the day and happens in parts of the CT shoreline rail.

If not sharing tracks, but rather there are sets of tracks for local and for express and these are just alongside each other, but local and express trains use different sets of tracks (as seen in a lot of NYC subway local / express service), then they just both keep running. This also exists in parts of CT's rail service.

I think given the not-so-fast speed of even express trains on the tracks and the frankly not that long of a distance to Manhattan or Stamford which most people are headed towards on these trains, people probably just opt for sticking to the one seat ride on the local train at a local stop rather than switch from local to express.

[Huasho]

Just like I would not take a Greyhound Bus, that stops every where making a Trip between Orlando and Miami an eternity, the same would apply to Amtrak if it became a stop and go everywhere on the way to a destination.