Amtrak Express LD Trains?

[jis]

We will do so as soon as Pennsylvania starts paying for the infrastructure and operation of all the NEC service it gets now for free.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

We will do so as soon as Pennsylvania starts paying for the infrastructure and operation of all the NEC service it gets now for free.

Well assuming PA would share costs with neighboring states, I think they would make the trade of paying for their portion of the NEC if they didn't have to pay for the trains that didn't go through their states and only had to pay maybe 5-10% of trains like the Palmetto and Cardinal that barely go through it.

Then again, wait a minute, NEC trains run a profit. They're paid for by passengers and then some.

 

[Ryan]

Well unfortunately Sen. Byrd did stick his nose where it didn't belong and did change Amtrak forever (IMHO for the worse).

Finally someone admits the primary goal of the Cardinal. So make Virginia and West Virginia fund the Cardinal then. Not the rest of us.

Like hell he did, he did exactly what he was supposed to - advocate for the people that elected him.

I've said all along that the purpose of the Cardinal was to serve those people, and you seem to be under some ridiculously misguided notion that they don't pay taxes or something. They pay the same taxes that you and I do and are entitled to Federal support for their train.

Don't like it? Tough. Elect politicians that will go to work for you like Sen Byrd did for his constituents.

 

[jis]

NEC does not run a profit when you include the cost of the upkeep of the tracks and infrastructure that they run on, even after you fold back all of the above the rail surpluses into NEC. Far from it. It runs a profit only above the rails. Meanwhile I am sitting here in Florida and paying to maintain the NEC roadbed and getting nothing for it. So first pay for it yourself before whining about Virginia and West Virginia. And moreover I am also paying for operating the LD network which I have no easy access to and therefore don't really have much use for. So shut it down or get someone else who is getting anything out of it to pay for it.

Of course I don't agree with your whole stupid divisive position of this sort on this matter, but you already knew that, didn't you?

 

[Ryan]

Then again, wait a minute, NEC trains run a profit. They're paid for by passengers and then some.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, like hell they are.

The magic track fairy doesn't pay for the infrastructure, and the revenue from passengers doesn't even come close to paying that.

A for effort, F for grounding in reality.

 

[Seaboard92]

What did I say earlier. If we give the responsibility to Virginia and West Virginia we would lose the train. Not states aren't going to be willing to get it going. And just like Ryan said Byrd did his job better then most. He fought for his constituents. Unlike PA.

I pay federal taxes too. The coast Starlight is fairly useless to me as I live on the east coast. But it's useful. I pay for a lot of things I don't need. But those trains are needed. Elect better people to congress and things change

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

Well unfortunately Sen. Byrd did stick his nose where it didn't belong and did change Amtrak forever (IMHO for the worse).

Finally someone admits the primary goal of the Cardinal. So make Virginia and West Virginia fund the Cardinal then. Not the rest of us.

Like hell he did, he did exactly what he was supposed to - advocate for the people that elected him.

I've said all along that the purpose of the Cardinal was to serve those people, and you seem to be under some ridiculously misguided notion that they don't pay taxes or something. They pay the same taxes that you and I do and are entitled to Federal support for their train.

Don't like it? Tough. Elect politicians that will go to work for you like Sen Byrd did for his constituents.

They are paying the same taxes as I do. That's the problem. Why should I? It's their train, not mine. If a train serves the national good, the nation should pay. If the train serves a limited population, make them pay for it.

Again, when you choose politicians you have to look at the big picture. You may like Amtrak Joe's position on Amtrak but hate his views on other issues. So you vote for someone else. Doesn't mean you don't care about Amtrak.

Considering you live near DC Ryan I am guessing you know Congress and the Senate more than me. 100 senators, 2 on each state. There are many subcommittees including one on transportation. Some senators take leadership positions. Byrd took the initiative. I wish Byrd could represent PA. But he can't. Each state can only choose the senators and representatives that are running in their state. There are some Robert Byrds who take leadership positions in the Senate and others who don't. Byrd was President Pro Tempore of the Senate and the most senior member of the Senate for years. No one Pennsylvania or Ohio elects will have that much power or it would talk several 6 year terms to get it. I'm not saying Specter or Santorum did or didn't fight for their trains. But if Byrd is the leader, guess who wins.

To me you are saying it's fair West Virginia gets special benefits because their senator has power in the senate. I don't agree. No one disputes Byrd could do it. I'm just saying it's wrong. I don't think you can say Pennsylvania or Ohio doesn't deserve Amtrak service because their senators are weaker on the political scale than Byrd.

Does Congress control Amtrak? Of course. Should they? I say no.

My claim is the Broadway Limited is faster between CHI and PHL/NYP than the Cardinal and serves a much larger unique population base. I challenge anyone to dispute that. Byrd forced the Cardinal on us. I get it. But the Broadway Limited "was better".

 

[Ryan]

What're these "special benefits" that you're raving about?

You get a ridiculous amount of benefit from the taxpayers across the nation financing the NEC. Complaining about the "special" treatment that people in WV get from your tax money is somewhere between disingenuous and ignorant.

 

[Seaboard92]

I think the Cardinal is a national train it serves NY, NJ, Philly, DE, MD, DC, VA, WV, KY, OH, IN, and IL that's ten states plus DC. I would say that's a national train. Now it's target market just so happens to be WV, and VA more so then the other states. And Virginia is paying for track upgrades for the route. So don't say they aren't funding it at all because they are. One place I can agree is more of a compromise everywhere deserves better rail service. The Cardinal for being a tri weekly train has great ridership. But lets say they cancel it but YOU have to go to WV, and VA and tell all the people who use this train as their method of transportation. How are you going to justify it to them to take away their train for a train that hasn't existed since the 90s. And seeing it's been gone so long it will take a long time to build up ridership. Not everyone is as lucky as you to live in a great city with lots of fun and interesting things to do. That doesn't mean they aren't people, and it doesn't mean they don't have the same needs that you do. And to them it's an important train. And it's a market that no other train serves. The Broadway Limited has the Lake Shore Limited to take the NY-CHI market. The Pennsylvanian to take the NYP-PHL-PGH Market. The Capitol Limited for the PGH-CHI market. And the PGH-CHI market on it's route remember what I said earlier most of it is thirty minutes to an hour from a station on the LSL/CL routes. Except for Lima, OH. But I have a feeling you would skip them as they are like WV citizens not important enough. It was never a choice between the Cardinal and the Broadway Limited. It was really the Capitol Limited and the Broadway Limited. And the Capitol Limited plays an entirely different market. It's market is WAS-PGH-CLE-CHI. I would rather have one train for every market then two for the same market. I'm sorry that way we have better coverage. But who am I to know just a lowly private passenger train operator.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

You forgot one state (mine) and you miscounted the ones you listed. So, it really serves 11 states and DC.

I think the Cardinal is a national train it serves NY, NJ, Philly, MD, DC, VA, WV, KY, OH, IN, and IL that's nine states.

 

[jebr]

Legislators are supposed to be representatives of the constituency they are elected from. If the senator from WV is spending his limited time working to keep the Cardinal, that tells me it is important to him and his constituents that the train continues to run. If senators from other states are not making that effort to save their trains, that tells me they're not important to those constituents.

 

[Seaboard92]

You forgot one state (mine) and you miscounted the ones you listed. So, it really serves 11 states and DC.

I think the Cardinal is a national train it serves NY, NJ, Philly, MD, DC, VA, WV, KY, OH, IN, and IL that's nine states.

Sorry about that Amtrak Blue. I'll go in and correct that

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

Legislators are supposed to be representatives of the constituency they are elected from. If the senator from WV is spending his limited time working to keep the Cardinal, that tells me it is important to him and his constituents that the train continues to run. If senators from other states are not making that effort to save their trains, that tells me they're not important to those constituents.

Maybe they are but Byrd's the boss and he rules.

 

[Ryan]

If they were, clearly they weren't doing a good enough job.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

If they were, clearly they weren't doing a good enough job.

You try challenging the Senate Majority/Minority leader/ President Pro Tempore. Rick Santorum was just elected to the Senate in 1994. I'm not saying Santorum cares about Amtrak. But if he did and tried to challenge Byrd you're telling me a newly elected senator can win a battle against the President Pro Tempore if they are debating as to which train they keep? I disagree with your premise that Byrd fought harder, he just had more power at the time.

 

[Ryan]

You forget (or conveniently left out) your other Senator at the time.

Ohio also had a pair of relatively senior senators, and Indiana had **** Luger.

If they had cared, there was plenty of horsepower on the side of your beloved train that could have done something.

 

[jis]

The fact of the matter is that PA has not been blessed with a Booker, a Lautenberg, a Schumer or a Moynihan, a Hutchinson, a Byrd or a Staggers (remember Harley's Comet? Has a bit of relevance to the Cardinal discussion). That is their misfortune. And heck! Booker isn't even that senior yet. The fix is to be very careful about who you select to represent yourself in significant funding and decision making bodies.

Ah yes. Specter could have made a difference if he chose to. But he did not since he probably had other bigger fish to fry. I am not sure Santorum cares so whether he is junior or senior would not matter a lot. If you know otherwise, I'd like to know. And as I mentioned before, for NY and NJ whether another train ran through Pennsylvania direct to Chicago or not was way below their concerns about the NEC. It still is, even more so with the tunnel mess. Even within the rail advocacy community it is hard to find prime time for the LD trains in NJ politics. Kudos to Booker that he gives us the time of day and takes input from us and acts upon them. Menendez is too busy worrying about archaic blockades of Cuba and such to worry about real day to day issues other than trying to stay out of prison and such. In NY both Schumer and Gillibrand are ready to go to the mat for passenger trains of all sorts.

And then there is my current home state. Nelson will act if we can get his attention focused on something. Rubio is useless since he is hardly ever present in the Senate. He is too busy doing other stuff. In the House Mica is intriguing. He has this thing up his rear end about Amtrak food service. OTOH when it comes to supporting development of passenger rail within Florida he is incredibly supportive. Some say it is because of associated real estate deals. Perhaps we should find more Congresscritters who are associated with real estate deals associated with passenger rail if that is how it needs to be played

 

[Carolina Special]

Naming the trains after the respective congress critters might be a way to get their support.

Byrd had many WV roads and buildings named after him and his wife for all the spending dollars he brought in. There is a whole Wiki page out there that lists those facilities.

I suppose we're lucky the Cardinal didn't renamed the "Byrd".

 

[Anderson]

There's nothing saying that Specter (or any of the others along the Broadway's route) would have to take on Byrd directly. In theory they could have "logrolled" something like "Daily Cardinal requirement (up from 3x weekly) in exchange for requiring a daily Broadway". Of course, that might have just triggered either dropping the Cap and/or converting it into a stub day train WAS-PGH (which would, to be fair, then be a train largely lacking in any real patronage in Washington and likely just get the ax later).

Edit: I've taken at least some of the fight over the Pennsylvanian to be related to Amtrak's costing (that's a repeated quibble in general, I find...nobody is happy with that and there are quite a few "black box" issues all over that have, I believe, actually been crimping Amtrak's cash flow because Amtrak hasn't been supporting their bills with cost breakdowns.

 

[neroden]

There's nothing saying that Specter (or any of the others along the Broadway's route) would have to take on Byrd directly. In theory they could have "logrolled" something like "Daily Cardinal requirement (up from 3x weekly) in exchange for requiring a daily Broadway". Of course, that might have just triggered either dropping the Cap and/or converting it into a stub day train WAS-PGH (which would, to be fair, then be a train largely lacking in any real patronage in Washington and likely just get the ax later).

Capitol Limited ridership PGH-WAS is consistently anemic. We know that nearly half the riders are transferring to the Pennsylvanian. Looking at the numbers with overhead removed, I don't see a path to above-the-rail profit -- whereas the Auto Train, all of the Silver Service, the Cardinal, the LSL, and a revived Broadway Limited can all be made break-even before overhead.
Why? On the CL, the intermediate stations contribute basically nothing. (Perhaps this is because MARC runs as far as Martinsburg, meaning that Cumberland and Connellsville are the only unique stations.) The track is super-slow. I doubt that PGH-PHL-WAS (7 1/2 + 1 1/2 = 9 hours) can be made as fast as the Capitol Limited (6 hours), but if Pennsylvania High Speed Rail were ever built from PGH to PHL, the CL would probably be cancelled the week after it opened.

The LSL was originally advertised as a Boston-Chicago train, and has eventually become primarily a NY-Chicago train with a Boston branch. The CL should become a Philadelphia-Chicago train with a DC branch, because that matches the ridership flows.

Edit: I've taken at least some of the fight over the Pennsylvanian to be related to Amtrak's costing (that's a repeated quibble in general, I find...nobody is happy with that and there are quite a few "black box" issues all over that have, I believe, actually been crimping Amtrak's cash flow because Amtrak hasn't been supporting their bills with cost breakdowns.

I think we've all concluded that Amtrak's overhead allocation is gibberish.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

There's nothing saying that Specter (or any of the others along the Broadway's route) would have to take on Byrd directly. In theory they could have "logrolled" something like "Daily Cardinal requirement (up from 3x weekly) in exchange for requiring a daily Broadway". Of course, that might have just triggered either dropping the Cap and/or converting it into a stub day train WAS-PGH (which would, to be fair, then be a train largely lacking in any real patronage in Washington and likely just get the ax later).

Capitol Limited ridership PGH-WAS is consistently anemic. We know that nearly half the riders are transferring to the Pennsylvanian. Looking at the numbers with overhead removed, I don't see a path to above-the-rail profit -- whereas the Auto Train, all of the Silver Service, the Cardinal, the LSL, and a revived Broadway Limited can all be made break-even before overhead.
Why? On the CL, the intermediate stations contribute basically nothing. (Perhaps this is because MARC runs as far as Martinsburg, meaning that Cumberland and Connellsville are the only unique stations.) The track is super-slow. I doubt that PGH-PHL-WAS (7 1/2 + 1 1/2 = 9 hours) can be made as fast as the Capitol Limited (6 hours), but if Pennsylvania High Speed Rail were ever built from PGH to PHL, the CL would probably be cancelled the week after it opened.

The LSL was originally advertised as a Boston-Chicago train, and has eventually become primarily a NY-Chicago train with a Boston branch. The CL should become a Philadelphia-Chicago train with a DC branch, because that matches the ridership flows.

You think if the CL can go an hour or two faster by going through Pennsylvania they would? If that were true, the Cardinal would have been canceled. The BR/TL got to PHL/NYP WAY faster than the Cardinal does now.

 

[neroden]

Yeah, but the Cardinal has always been all about the intermediate stations (Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana).

The Capitol Limited simply doesn't have much ridership from Connellsville and Cumberland, and probably never will.

 

[Anderson]

There's nothing saying that Specter (or any of the others along the Broadway's route) would have to take on Byrd directly. In theory they could have "logrolled" something like "Daily Cardinal requirement (up from 3x weekly) in exchange for requiring a daily Broadway". Of course, that might have just triggered either dropping the Cap and/or converting it into a stub day train WAS-PGH (which would, to be fair, then be a train largely lacking in any real patronage in Washington and likely just get the ax later).

Capitol Limited ridership PGH-WAS is consistently anemic. We know that nearly half the riders are transferring to the Pennsylvanian. Looking at the numbers with overhead removed, I don't see a path to above-the-rail profit -- whereas the Auto Train, all of the Silver Service, the Cardinal, the LSL, and a revived Broadway Limited can all be made break-even before overhead.
Why? On the CL, the intermediate stations contribute basically nothing. (Perhaps this is because MARC runs as far as Martinsburg, meaning that Cumberland and Connellsville are the only unique stations.) The track is super-slow. I doubt that PGH-PHL-WAS (7 1/2 + 1 1/2 = 9 hours) can be made as fast as the Capitol Limited (6 hours), but if Pennsylvania High Speed Rail were ever built from PGH to PHL, the CL would probably be cancelled the week after it opened.

The LSL was originally advertised as a Boston-Chicago train, and has eventually become primarily a NY-Chicago train with a Boston branch. The CL should become a Philadelphia-Chicago train with a DC branch, because that matches the ridership flows.

Edit: I've taken at least some of the fight over the Pennsylvanian to be related to Amtrak's costing (that's a repeated quibble in general, I find...nobody is happy with that and there are quite a few "black box" issues all over that have, I believe, actually been crimping Amtrak's cash flow because Amtrak hasn't been supporting their bills with cost breakdowns.

I think we've all concluded that Amtrak's overhead allocation is gibberish.

On the Cap, the issue is that there is far more ridership CHI-WAS (40-ish percent) than CHI-PGH (14 percent). The train's connecting role between the Midwest and Florida (in particular) overwhelms all other roles. The train's operating "hole" comes from this as well: It's one thing to smack someone for $450-600 for a WAS-ORL sleeper. It's entirely another to try and hit them for $1200 for a CHI-WAS-ORL sleeper. Basically, the Cap cross-subsidizes trains on both ends due to its connecting role. As a similar issue, when the Builder/Zephyr/Meteor/Crescent/Star sells out (yes, I know not all of those are always legal connections) then the Cap runs the risk of losing through traffic...so adding capacity to the Meteor (for example) would likely add demand to the Cap.

Much of this is down to the fact that you really can't effectively connect to the present Florida schedules with a connection north of Washington if you're also picking up connections coming in from the west. Really, you can connect well on one end (e.g. WAS/NYP or CHI) but forcing both gets clunky...as we see now.

 

[Ryan]

Capitol Limited ridership PGH-WAS is consistently anemic. We know that nearly half the riders are transferring to the Pennsylvanian.

We do?

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

Yeah, but the Cardinal has always been all about the intermediate stations (Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana).

The Capitol Limited simply doesn't have much ridership from Connellsville and Cumberland, and probably never will.

I thought it was about one of them in particular and a certain senator.