Uses Dalllas Ft.Worth -Miami possible route as an example. Interesting read that will effect Amtrak.
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...enefits-of-selected-routes-news-and-analysis/
Excerpt-
"The report’s extensive data sets the stage for prioritizing the routes under consideration, which may or may not be a part of the final report. Adding together an average of each route’s costs for stations, track and signaling, and equipment, Fort Worth-Atlanta via Shreveport, La., and Meridian, Miss., is the cheapest route to implement. This is primarily because it is the shortest (855 miles) and can serve many existing stations currently served by the
Texas Eagle, City of New Orleans, and
Crescent.
The service modeled, though, is not an extension of the
Crescent, which has already been studied enough by Amtrak, the Southern Rail Commission, and the I-20 Corridor Council for those entities and cities along the route to have applied for several federal grants. Instead, the proposed overnight train evaluated here arrives in Atlanta in the morning and departs for Fort Worth in the evening. Running another round trip that would include a
Crescent appendage, if money could be found to do that, would give travelers two daily options at stations from Fort Worth to Marshall, Tex., and from Meridian to Atlanta, on nearly 500 miles, or 58% of the route.
At this stage, the report makes no judgment about which routes have the most potential to be implemented. Yet the highest priority has to be elevating the
Sunset Limited and
Cardinal from tri-weekly to daily status, because the stations and crews are already there and the trains suffer financially from three days of revenue spread across seven days of route costs.
Not studied is an Amtrak plan from 2010 to make the
Texas Eagle a daily Chicago-Los Angeles train with a separate New Orleans-San Antonio connection that, as proposed at the time, could have been accomplished with existing Superliner equipment instead of requiring four additional trainsets.
Another dilemma: the fate of prime population centers Amtrak no longer serves like Las Vegas, Nev., Nashville, Tenn., and Columbus, Ohio, are tethered to routes with possible built-in challenges. Columbus is on Detroit-New Orleans and Dallas-New York City routes that would need significant track and signal upgrades nowhere near the Ohio state capital. Nashville, on a key Chicago-Miami route, could be victimized by the thorny issues of finding a suitable station site in Chattanooga, Tenn., and an agreeable Atlanta-Jacksonville, Fla., host railroad. "