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Amtrak, America's long distance rail system, has now (2023) been promised more Federal funding that they have for many years, thanks to Joe Biden who himself rode Amtrak daily during his long decades in Congress. Now they have to decide between 2 conflicting priorities:
1) Should they add more frequent service on existing routes, such as the Northeast coast corridor, the East Coast to Great Lakes route, and the West Coast corridor? (This option may actually benefit more people).
OR
2) Should they stretch the service thin, by adding new routes in currently unserved areas? This option may benefit fewer people, BUT by covering 47 of the 48 contiguous states, it will be politically expedient because it will please members of Congress from previously unserved states.
Just my two cents, and not considering the high cost of construction, I think it's a shame that huge metropolises like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Nashville have NO Amtrak service at all. There is also no route between Houston and Dallas, nor is there any from Florida to Chicago / the Great Lakes (although I remember when there used to be one, and the tracks are still there).
Since every election in the United States is district based politically having a constituency that is devoted to you makes way more sense than a bunch of people across the country that sort of mildly have an affection for trains.
Quality service from say Las Vegas to LA would basically ensure Amtrak is important because the NV senate seats and Electoral votes would depend on Amtrak. Politically extending the Hiawatha like 1 stop to Waukesha is probably more politically effective than adding like 12 new tri weekly or daily trips nobody is going to use out dude like weeklong vacations.
Focusing on a few corridors is the way to go. At least as long as the Senate abc Electoral college exist making small margins in a few states matter a lot
I think the right middle ground is to identify shorter lines that can be either created or improved to be very good in reliability, capacity, and speed and have good ridership because of that, and then try to link up long-distance services through those shorter lines forming large portions of that segment. New long-distance services should for the most part have a large portions of its segments going through major corridors where ridership can be large. Really, the only very sparse parts for the contiguous US are the northern parts of intermountain west and great plains states.
I do think it's silly that even for the proposal, Nashville doesn't connect to either Louisville or Carbondale for shorter and longer runs.
I think a line from Pueblo to Cheyenne (in Wyoming, not currently served) would be good for roping in those 2 Senators (since Wyoming Senators are deeply parochial and transactional). Amtrak is proposing that.
Otherwise, I'd prioritize any metro over 2 million without service (like Columbus), then pivot wholly to the Northeast Corridor where the money and demand is. Considering Amtrak is proposing new service to Columbus, Las Vegas and Nashville, I think they get that.
When the Virginia Long Bridge is complete, the Commonwealth is planning on massively boosting trains coming into Richmond. I think Amtrak should be thinking through whether there's an opportunity to link the Piedmont Atlantic to the Northeast Corridor better. I live in Northern Virginia and 99% of my Amtrak use goes north since anything heading South is a ****show (although $13 one-way trips to Richmond is not bad).
Why not take advantage of existing tracks to extend the Albuquerque-Santa Fe commuter line all the way to Denver? Seems like kind of a no-brainer. The Denver area has such a huge population, there's bound to be at least some demand. And some S Fe residents would probably appreciate having an alternative to driving for 6 hrs. ABQ residents too, maybe. Flights between Santa Fe and Denver book up months in advance now, so there does seem to be demand.
The roadrunner logo is kinda catchy, for the "Railrunner", as it's called.
I do think it's silly that even for the proposal, Nashville doesn't connect to either Louisville or Carbondale for shorter and longer runs.
Restoring the passenger route from Florida to Atlanta - Chatt - Nashville - Louisville - Indianapolis - Chicago, is part of the official proposed expansion.
I'd love to see Amtrak get up to snuff. We are so far the train service in other countries. Amtrak needs new track and cars- the cars in the northeast corridor are old! New routes are needed as well.
1) Should they add more frequent service on existing routes, such as the Northeast coast corridor, the East Coast to Great Lakes route, and the West Coast corridor? (This option may actually benefit more people).
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Just my two cents, and not considering the high cost of construction, I think it's a shame that huge metropolises like Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Nashville have NO Amtrak service at all. There is also no route between Houston and Dallas, nor is there any from Florida to Chicago / the Great Lakes (although I remember when there used to be one, and the tracks are still there).
My $0.02 would be to blend the two; only add new service that is likely to be heavily used such as L.A. to Las Vegas, and L.A. to Phoenix, but beef up the heavily used Northeast Corridor and West Coast Corridor.
I think a line from Pueblo to Cheyenne (in Wyoming, not currently served) would be good for roping in those 2 Senators (since Wyoming Senators are deeply parochial and transactional). Amtrak is proposing that.
Otherwise, I'd prioritize any metro over 2 million without service (like Columbus), then pivot wholly to the Northeast Corridor where the money and demand is. Considering Amtrak is proposing new service to Columbus, Las Vegas and Nashville, I think they get that.
When the Virginia Long Bridge is complete, the Commonwealth is planning on massively boosting trains coming into Richmond. I think Amtrak should be thinking through whether there's an opportunity to link the Piedmont Atlantic to the Northeast Corridor better. I live in Northern Virginia and 99% of my Amtrak use goes north since anything heading South is a ****show (although $13 one-way trips to Richmond is not bad).
There are a lot of metros over 2 million without service, and a lot of the ones currently with service have very limited service. The problem I have with the Nashville and Las Vegas lines is that they're limited spurs when I think they should be connecting lines that trains run through. Vegas is a bit tougher for this in terms of its location, but certainly Nashville should be. I also think what should get equal billing instead of a fully pivot to NEC are lines that were already, pre-pandemic, close to or at net zero federal funding and expand and improve these. As with what I'd like in new lines, I also think having improved existing lines that are already doing okay being extended out a bit so as to not terminate in major hubs. I'd like to see some overshoot of a few trains terminating in Chicago right now to instead through run to the other side. For example, I think a lot of trains heading in from rail south like from Carbondale or Detroit should end up going north a bit to terminate in Milwaukee or potentially a little further in Madison or Green Bay. Similarly, even more NEC trains should go on through to various spurs in Virginia than they do now and NYC terminating trains should also continue to one of the branches in CT, Western Mass or Long Island.
Yea, getting buy-in from a few places where it makes sense is good. Cheyenne is an easy-ish one because the commuter rail tracks and stations already line a good deal of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth
Why not take advantage of existing tracks to extend the Albuquerque-Santa Fe commuter line all the way to Denver? Seems like kind of a no-brainer. The Denver area has such a huge population, there's bound to be at least some demand. And some S Fe residents would probably appreciate having an alternative to driving for 6 hrs. ABQ residents too, maybe. Flights between Santa Fe and Denver book up months in advance now, so there does seem to be demand.
The roadrunner logo is kinda catchy, for the "Railrunner", as it's called.
Yea, I think that one's a very good idea and possibly down towards El Paso as well, but these shouldn't be as part of the commuter line. That should tie into the above mentioned Cheyenne
Quote:
Originally Posted by slowlane
Restoring the passenger route from Florida to Atlanta - Chatt - Nashville - Louisville - Indianapolis - Chicago, is part of the official proposed expansion.
I think opting for Nashville - Carbondale might actually be better because Indiana is not serious about improving passenger rail service, but Illinois is so you're likely to get better state of track and on-time performance if you're not routing too much through Indiana.
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One thing missing though is to paying a lot more attention to maintenance, uptime, and on time performance. Some of that requires giving Amtrak some teeth to enforce the agreements made with some of the freight rail companies, but also maintenance and redundancies for Amtrak-owned track as there is some pretty good signs of rapidly changing climate patterns that can cause issues.
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