If Amtrak was able where should the next train go from point to point or extend to? My self, I think they need to put the train back on from MSP to Duluth MN. There is so much tourist traffic going that way now a days it could prove cost effective, though it is always tuff to compete with an interstate highway along the same routing. Then I hope to see the Heartland flyer extended through to Tulsa and up to Springfield MO and then on to either St Louis or KC. Bring back the meteor!
How about a change in routing? Put the Builder back on the old NP in Montana! The High Line may be faster from Chicago to Seattle. But it completely misses too many population centers. I would think having potential for increased ridership might help the bottom line. Boxcab E50 [ 26. June 2003, 18:38: Message edited by: BoxcabE50 ]
I would like to see another "Auto-Train" operate from Chicago to Florida, living in Michigan if I have to drive to Va to board the train I might as well continue to drive on to Florida. AMTRAK NEEDS MORE TRAINS - period!If people have a choice on what day & time they can leave, there is a better chance they might take a train, if your only choice is to drive hours away to a station and board a train in the wee hours of the nite at some amshack shelter, that could turn off even a die hard rail traveler. One of the reasons air travel is so popular is that the flyer has multiple choices on departure times.
Fred- You've hit on a good point. Another thought- The more through routes that the railroads are allowed to truncate, the fewer options are available. Especially at some future date.... Where I live, a destination that comes up frequently, is Denver. In order to take a train there, you must cobble together such a round about route, that it's not worth the hassle. Well, in fact this is true for too many other destinations..... Boxcab E50 [ 27. June 2003, 02:24: Message edited by: BoxcabE50 ]
Rerouting 2 thoughts on the builder idea. First I would hope we don't or wouldn't have to pull service from any route. Second I think you have to look at the southern MRL route closely. It would compete with the parallel I-90 and with Montanan's love of high speeds on the highways train might find tuff going. Also having worked on both lines at one time I can say the high line is a much better route as far as speed and scenery. What about a train that comes out of Sea goes thru SPK make some kind of connection with Builder which would come out of PDX, Then continue on the MRL to Laurel and then down to Denver then to Amarillo and on to DFW, then onto either New Orleans or Houston.
As long as the government keeps giving money away to air and road travel and not to passenger train travel, the only way it can go is south. Now i'm not saying that all that money need to go to passenger rail travel but the gov needs to creat a balance betweent the three. But of course as long as the government owns and operate Amtrak it can't go anywhere. If any of you have noticed, the gov can't run a profitable company.
Understand your point about competing with I-90. Although they get seperated by many miles, for anyone traveling by rail from the upper midwest, to the Pacific NW, the entire Builder route west actually is competing with I-90. The old NP has far more passenger ($$$ in the ticket sales to help pay for any train) potential than the High Line. The bulk of the population in Montana lives in the southern and western halves of the State. We don't really have a love for speed here. It's a necessity. It's a just long ways between major population points. Such as between here and Spokane. 5 hours. By using a couple of back roads, and bumping it up some, that's cut to 4 hours. An hour is valuable. Many shoppers from here take a day, and go over there. So they save two hours in traveling. That's a lot of time. For myself, I've always liked the scenery on the old Homestake Pass route across the Continental Divide. And along the Clark Fork Valley. Dunno why. As you know, I live in the vicinity of the High Line. Prior to the current economic situation, there was a move ongoing, to get a passenger connection from Spokane east and down to Denver. Haven't heard much about lately. I'm sure that when things pick up, then it will surface again. It had a lot of support here in State. Boxcab E50 [ 28. June 2003, 02:34: Message edited by: BoxcabE50 ]
Here in the Pacific northwest I think they could improve things qhite a bit without adding more trains but by rescheduling the ones already in service. Currently you cannot make connections between the Cascade (talgo) trains and any of the long distance trains except the eastbound Builder without staying overnight in Seattle. Coming the other way, it's just as bad. The starlightarrives at Seattle way too late to connect with anything, and the westbound builder misses connections with the Talgo at Everett by 5 minutes. Likewise, you cannot take the Amtrak to catch a flight out of SEATAC airport without a $60 cab ride. You can't take the train to and from a game even though the stadium is next door to King Street Sation. So here is my list of things Amtrak should do to increase ridership in this area: 1: Create a flag stop station in Kent WA (Joint with the Sounder, which might already have one there) with direct meeting transportation to the airport and preferably with baggage checked through either at the point of boarding or when they board the bus. 2. revise the schedules so that passengers can make across the platform transfers to and from the long distance trains for the Talgo trains to their final destinations. In some cases this need not be done in Seattle. For Example, passengers going to Bellingham, Mount Vernon, or Vancouver BC could connect with the northbound Talgo at Everett. It should be possible for a passenger to take the Talgo southbound in the morning and connect to the southbound Coast Starlight. 3: Amtrak should run special trains for sporting events in Seattle and return. On my end of things these trains would only need to runas far as Bellingham and therefore would avoid the more difficult areas north of the border. I don't think there is a hope in hell of any of this happening, but we can dream.
In the Northeast, one thing that should have been done originally--follow the European example and put the Acela on a dedicated track so that we can have a true high speed train. More in the dreaming category: high speed train travel should be developed all across the country. I know the terrain makes this very difficult in some areas, but that hasn't stopped creative engineering in the past. If I can get from London to Paris in less time than it takes to fly, we should be able to do similar runs between major cities here.
I think that Amtrak should have a train running right to Las Vages, NV. I know we would of already ride it many times if that were the case. I also agree with the amount of trains, I think it should be more. And they should plan the trains better. There is a 4 hr delay (in the middle of the night) between the Texas Special and the Sunset Limited in San Antonio, Tx, All in all Amtrak needs help but I think if the right people do stuff (the govenment) Amtrak could be a contender but unfortuneitly they are not.
Amtrak actually built a Taglo set specificall for service between L.A. and Vegas (I know you're in Texas UP Wings, but the point is they were planning to increase Vegas service) but the trainset (or at least the F59PHI) is still up in cascades service. Oh, and Portland/Vancouver have excellent meet scehduals between the Cascades, Coast Starlight and at least the westbound builder.
Nice to know it works somewhere. I always said you Oregonians were smart. You can even get to the airport in Portland by train! What a concept! The blue Talgo set that was meant for the las Vegas run seems to spend most of it's time up here on the Seattle - Vancouver BC run. I've ridden it a couple of times in the last few months and always seem to get the blue one. I just wish they would make an effort to keep the blue F59PHI with the blue trainset!
Amtrak needs to start turning a profit and stop stealing my money before they think about expanding. I'm no expert on marketing, or on the operational side of railroads. But it seems pretty clear that Amtrak is never going to make money by operating as a mode of transportation. People taking Amtrak know that they would have gotten to their destination a couple hours faster on the bus, or many hours faster on a plane, and pay less for either of those modes. I think Amtrak should make the trip itself the attraction. Take ideas from cruise ships of ways to entertain people onboard the train for hours or even days. Don't bother stopping at every little town in the middle of nowhere (Ever heard of Chemult, Oregon? No one else has either.), but make long stops at cities with some tourist attraction of their own. The trip itself would be the vacation, and would be marketed as such. Mike
I'll have to disagree. It was 95 dollars per ticket to New York City, while the cheapest airline was well over 200. THEN we got a call about a week before our trip from amtrak that offered us FIRST CLASS for only an extra 50 Dollars for the three of us.(Included all dinners, a TV with 2 different movies, personal bathroom with shower and bunkbeds). If you plan for the extra time on a train, it is very nice. The people were nice, and the cars were clean and roomy. There isn't much that Amtrak can logically do to improve service. The Employees have families and need a decent pay. The equipment has to maintained for everyone's safety. I think it's the fact that people in general are too fast-paced these days. I'd take Amtrak everytime. A++ [ 02. July 2003, 03:34: Message edited by: A&A 6183 ]
I'm sure Chemult is not as familiar as Whitefish or San Loui Obispo but I can tell you it does a fair share of passenger buisness enough to warrant a connector bus service. Some times the town the stop is in is nothing but the area it serves is. Like Sun River, Bend and Redmond. Amtrak is not going to make a profit or pay for itself. No passenger service in the world does. We just have to decide do we want it or not. As far as the train to Los Vegas, States should take notice how hard it is to get a train back on once it is pulled off especially on the UP! The Desert Wind used to go there but was pulled now see how easy it is to get some train on. I hope the state of Oregon opens it's eyes to this too.
I would love more auto trains running. I may take the one to Florida next year or the year after. I would love to take an auto train to Chicago or somewhere in California.
Las Vegas isn't the only major western city that has lost service, Phoenix lost their's also. Now you can only catch it in an outlying community (Maricopa) and they use a bus to get you there Very inconvenient. At Christmas time 2000, we traveled on Amtrak from Flagstaff Az, to Albany NY with our 3 month old daughter durring one of the worst snow storms in years. We had many delays but the crew was VERY acomidating. I was a bit upset about being 12 hrs late until I found out people were stranded in the airports for 3 days. I think it's one of the best travel exsperiences I've ever had. If it were possible to shorten the travel time by adding more trains ( alternating stops along the way ) to compete with airline travel there would be a lot more people using it. Frankly I'm suprized ridership hasn't really increased after 9-11.
We need more trains running by Amtrak and none of this 3 times a week crap all the trains should at least be daily but our Government just doesn't care
I believe that Amtrak needs a more coherent system of hubs. Part of its problem is in trying to run a individual train over extremely long disatances. The Sunset Limited is the best example that I can give. Cities like St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, New Orleans and Cincinnatti would be good Amtrak hubs. Of trains currently runing, these would be the changes that I would make: 1 - Change the Sunset Limited so that it reverts to its originial Los Angeles to New Orleans run. An additional train can be run from New Orleans to Florida. 2 - Change the Texas Eagle so that it terminates in St. Louis, as it originally did when it was a Missouri Pacific train. From St. Louis, connections can be made to the north and east These are the new runs that I would like to see: Kansas City to Minneapolis Kansas City to Memphis Kansas City to Denver Memphis - Birmingham - Miami Chicago to Miami Boston to Montreal Washington to Montreal (Restored Montrealer) Dallas to El Paso Houston to Dallas to Denver Denver - Portland - Seattle Washington to Buffalo New York to St. Louis New York to Detroit Washington to Boston (Inland Route Train) Boston to Detroit New York - Cleveland - Cincinnatti Cincinnatti - Atlanta - Miami Well, thats how I envision it. Your opinion(s)??? [ 18. August 2003, 22:36: Message edited by: CNJ_1526 ]
Hi Brian welcome to the Trainboard glad you joined us here and if you need help just ask any of us moderators I moderate the Administration and the Cattle Car where we lay back and have fun so join us there and post anythin you wish Lady S.
