Amtrak Pennsylvanian service may end (Pittsburgh, Lancaster: buses, airport, trains)

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by pman

this isnt really true actually. how much do you think it cost to build i80? certainly as much as it would cost to build hsr to Philly and once youre in philly there already a fast rail connection to ny.generally speaking hsr makes money once its built so the need for ongoing subsidies goes away. look at keystone east. amtrak and penndot put in 145 million, chump change by highway standards, and losses have been cut threefold. the reason you dont see demand is because the Service isnt available. where faster rail is available, demand materializes. show me where it hasnt?
id also point out rail is shared. the keystone corrisor sees freight moves as does the freight line west of harrisburg, the chunnel also sees freight moves. the private vehicles use publicly funded roads, many of which require greater subsidies than rail.

I-80 is much more versatile as it can transport freight as well as passengers and has tremendous flexibility at all hours. An HSR is passengers only at regulated hours. And we need look no further than Pittsburgh International to determine Pittsburgh's desirability as a destination. Not exactly a hot spot. Not every HSR route will turn into an Acela.

[pman]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

I-80 is much more versatile as it can transport freight as well as passengers and has tremendous flexibility at all hours. An HSR is passengers only at regulated hours. And we need look no further than Pittsburgh International to determine Pittsburgh's desirability as a destination. Not exactly a hot spot. Not every HSR route will turn into an Acela.

incorrect. pittsburgh airport was built for a hub not pittsburgh as an od generator. rail carries passengers as well as freight and hours arent regulated in terms of houra of operation anymore than roads are. even better lanes are interchangable. the main problem with rail is that most americans dont know much about it. i80isnt versatile its just a taxpayer built road that primarily. serves freight at the expense of private freight railroads. the acela isnt even hsr and makes money. air traffic controllers are federally funded, roads are publicly funded, rail is subject to american narrow mindedness where rail is assumed to always be inefficient and road efficient despite no data.where is your example of an improved rail route where ridership didnt materialize?

[MathmanMathman]

Originally Posted by pman

incorrect. pittsburgh airport was built for a hub not pittsburgh as an od generator. rail carries passengers as well as freight and hours arent regulated. even better lanes are interchangable. the main problem with rail is that most americans dont know much about it. i80isnt versatile its just a taxpayer built road that primarily. serves freight at the expense of private freight railroads. the acela isnt even hsr and makes money. air traffic controllers are federally funded, roads are publicly funded, rail is subject to american narrow mindedness where rail is assumed to always be inefficient and road efficient despite no data.where is your example of an improved rail route where ridership didnt materialize?

Freight is not going HSR. And regardless, you go when the train schedules a run. Not on your whim as you can with roads. And Acela's top speed is 150 mph so that's good enough to be considered HSR.

And I was referring to Pittsburgh International's traffic. The airport relies on O&D so as it is small as commercial airports go, you can imagine how little rail demand Pittsburgh would have. And airlines can drop and add routes easily without new infrastructure which makes it way better than rail.

Commercial passenger rail had it good for decades but declined and ultimately failed. It's great for freight.

[pman]

Originally Posted by MathmanMathman

Freight is not going HSR. And regardless, you go when the train schedules a run. Not on your whim as you can with roads. And Acela's top speed is 150 mph so that's good enough to be considered HSR.

And I was referring to Pittsburgh International's traffic. The airport relies on O&D so as it is small as commercial airports go, you can imagine how little rail demand Pittsburgh would have. And airlines can drop and add routes easily without new infrastructure which makes it way better than rail.

Commercial passenger rail had it good for decades but declined and ultimately failed. It's great for freight.

right, but service on the freight line can be improved without going hsr. the service is slower today than it was in the 1930's. I figure trip time competitive with driving could be had in the $250-500 million range if tilting equipment is used.
nonetheless, HSR isn't "less useful" because freight and passengers need to be segregated. it's utility is simply different. hsr is a game changer for pittsburgh. look what happened to the city when the canal opened and not much later, the railroad?

I imagine hsr rail demand would be about the same as total O&D for the airport. I don't think you understand the dynamics of the two. airports are relatively cheap to construct vs rail but airplanes are much more expensive to operate. the amount of fuel required to get an enormously heavy jet in the air is enormous, far greater than an electric train significantly more people. O&D in pittsburgh is depressed by prices. southwest pulled out of the market because of fuel prices. they simply couldn't sell enough tickets are prices high enough to cover increased fuel costs.
I see you are using the good old Republican "commercial passenger rail failed so therefore it's not viable" angle. why wouldn't it fail, railroads were run into the ground during the war, then rather than be reimbursed for their costs the federal government embarked on a massive taxpayer funded highway building campaign. when railroads tried to respond, rates were set by the government, abandonments were prevented if they weren't politically popular, etc, etc. the reality is all forms of transportation are subsidized including air travel. the idea that if planes can't serve a market well then it shouldn't be served at all is both arrogant and inaccurate). again, please show me an improved rail line in the US where ridership hasn't materlialized? I know why you can't, because it hasn't happened.

[pman]

for the record, if the service were "as fast" as the acela it would be 4 hours to philly with the same number of stops the acela has between washington and boston. It carries 212k people now at one per day, estimates have pointed to ridership doubling simply by adding another slow train. one might guess that with 4-5 a day you'd be around a million passengers per year. it doesn't seem a stretch to think that if you have 4-5 faster trains, it's going to be several times higher than that. lancaster station sees 560k rides per year in a city of 60k people. in fact, there are more rides taken than people in the county as a whole and that service is simply relatively fast and frequent. i suspect that a drive competitive train would see something on the order of a couple million rides per year. an hsr connectino would likely be a regional draw and might be something like 6-9 million rides per year. currently, the train is competitive from johnstown west into pittsburgh but schedule padding owing to lack of infrastructure improvements adds 34 minutes; consequently, what is really a 40 minute ride from greensburg is advertised as over an hour. the bus takes what, 80 minutes?

[ElijahAstin]

As long as they keep service between Philly and Harrisburg, I'll be happy. My girlfriend's going to be starting a job there soon, and I want to be able to travel and see her on the weekends, cheaply and (semi-)comfortably, all while being able to get some work done and bill the time back to my firm.

[pman]

Originally Posted by HeavenWood

As long as they keep service between Philly and Harrisburg, I'll be happy. My girlfriend's going to be starting a job there soon, and I want to be able to travel and see her on the weekends, cheaply and (semi-)comfortably, all while being able to get some work done and bill the time back to my firm.

so long as they pass transportation funding you're good. they should be looking at running something like this

The Talgo Milwaukee Story and Train Tour - YouTube

[pman]

McDonnell's expected transport tweaks - Shuster: Improve Amtrak's Pennsylvania speeds - Banking Chairman Johnson to announce retirement - Will FAA relax gadget rules? - POLITICO Morning Transportation - POLITICO.com

...With Amtrak service through T&I Chairman Bill Shuster’s district on to Pittsburgh preserved by a deal between Pennsylvania and the railroad, the next step in the chairman’s view is to get those speeds up. The problem is less about the existing route needing subsidies, he recently told MT, but instead improving the viability of the route by making it quicker than driving. “We learned the lessons from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. How do you do it? You increase the speed, you get the time down to travel.” ...right now service from points west of Harrisburg isn’t frequent or fast enough to make the trip faster.

[pman]

The Bullet Train as a Boost for Second-Tier Cities - Eric Jaffe - The Atlantic Cities

[Sealtite]

This is troubling to hear about. I understand the business and economic standpoint, however the Pennsylvanian is a staple that will be sorely missed.