Amtrak Route Map

[av84]

There used to be a San Jose, CA - Monterey, CA bus that bypassed Salinas. It was eliminated in 2020. If I look close I think there are two green lines connecting to Carmel-Monterey. I believe the upper one represents this route, and should be marked as deleted.

 

[Willbridge]

That was a holdover from the C&O using a chartered Greyhound to connect those points to the George Washington train in Newport News. The regular bus used for that, even had: "C&O Transfer Service" decals on is door. C&O used the Greyhound terminal in Norfolk for its station, and Greyhound agents sold train tickets. At departure time, they had a recorded announcement for the train made by the same professional announcer that Greyhound used nationally.

Besides that one, Amtrak always had buses to meet the trains terminating in Oakland to transfer to the Terminal in San Francisco, another holdover from the SP and AT&SF (and earlier the WP).

In fact, the Oakland<>SF buses once saved a Japanese tour leader from having to commit ritual _______ . In 1974 he announced to a four-bus tour that they would depart from their hotel an hour earlier than advertised and THEN called me to arrange for the buses to run earlier. I had been warned by Tokyo that this was his first tour into the U.S. He had always led tours to Southeast Asia before, where presumably hungry drivers were waiting around the garage for a chance for work. I had to explain to him that it didn't work that way in the U.S. His buses were on a S.F. Symphony matinee charter for suburban music fans. Music Director Seiji Ozawa would not appreciate it if his audience had to leave early.

I could tell that he was realizing that he had made a mistake, so I told him to stand by and I'd try to get help. Our excellent charter provider, Falcon Lines, was making some calls around town. And presto, East Shore Lines had buses with drivers twiddling their thumbs at Oakland-16th Street waiting for the delayed San Francisco Zephyr. They convoyed over the Bay Bridge and took our Japanese tourists to their activity and then returned to Oakland. Falcon buses took the music lovers home and then deadheaded to pick up our group.

The tour leader was relieved. And I'm sure that he remembered to check on the buses first, before announcing a schedule change.

Some middle management is needed to fix problems. A lot of the Thruway links that have disappeared from this map experienced problems that were not addressed.

 

[John Santos]

I took the Thruway bus from Las Vegas to Kingman in early September, 2019 (to catch the SWC east bound.) It was a van, about 12 seats and was completely full.

The trip was actually from the Las Vegas airport to Kingman, with a fairly long (1/2 hour?) stop in Laughlin Nevada. I got the impression the van arrived at the airport from somewhere in downtown Las Vegas, but maybe the airport stop was its origination.

 

[west point]

Some middle management is needed to fix problems. A lot of the Thruway links that have disappeared from this map experienced problems that were not addressed.

Do all LD routes have a route manager? If so, is the route manager responsible for thruway buses? Or does that have to come from headquarters?

 

[Willbridge]

The trip was actually from the Las Vegas airport to Kingman, with a fairly long (1/2 hour?) stop in Laughlin Nevada. I got the impression the van arrived at the airport from somewhere in downtown Las Vegas, but maybe the airport stop was its origination.

from the Transit Wiki:

Pick up points​

• Lake Havasu City - 271 S. Lake Havasu Ave
• Kingman - 424 W. Beale St
• Kingman Station
• Needles - 221 J St - Jack in the Box

Laughlin:

• • Harrah's Laughlin
  • Laughlin River Lodge
  • Golden Nugget Casino
  • Tropicana Casino Laughlin
  • Edgewater Casino
  • Aquarius Casino
  • Riverside Casino
• Searchlight - 100 US Hwy - Terrible’s Roadhouse
• Harry Reid International Airport

2017 at Las Vegas airport.


2017 at Laughlin.


2017 at Kingman.


This has such a different set of times and connections that it probably would continue to operate even if the Desert Wind was restored.

 

[jis]

The Florida West Coast Thruway (i.e. through ticketing) service used to run beyond Fort Meyers to Naples in the '70s.

There was Thruway service between New Orleans and Jacksonville in the '70s

Though no through ticketing, but Greyhound's Miami - Key West service timetable was included in the Amtrak Timetable in the late '70s.

Take a look at the July 1979 Timetable to find other bits and pieces of Thruway (through ticketed bus) service that is missing from your map.

 

[niemi24s]

There used to be a San Jose, CA - Monterey, CA bus that bypassed Salinas. It was eliminated in 2020. If I look close I think there are two green lines connecting to Carmel-Monterey. I believe the upper one represents this route, and should be marked as deleted.

Thanks. Would that include the green line between Salinas and San Jose?

 

[av84]

Thanks. Would that include the green line between Salinas and San Jose?

No, San Jose-Salinas is still served as part of the Oakland-San Jose-Santa Barbara route.

 

[niemi24s]

OK, thanks. Deleted the upper green link to Carmel-Monterey on my file copy of the map in Post #19 and may post it later when no more corrections are noted.

Might ask my tech-savvy son how to create a PDF of that map so it could be zoomed in for a closer look.

 

[niemi24s]

The Florida West Coast Thruway (i.e. through ticketing) service used to run beyond Fort Meyers to Naples in the '70s.

There was Thruway service between New Orleans and Jacksonville in the '70s

Though no through ticketing, but Greyhound's Miami - Key West service timetable was included in the Amtrak Timetable in the late '70s.

Take a look at the July 1979 Timetable to find other bits and pieces of Thruway (through ticketed bus) service that is missing from your map.

Thanx. Added and brown-dotted the NOL-JAX and FTM - Naples bus links.

Tried to get something from those archived timetables on the RPA website, but my decrepit old eyes just can't resolve anything but the largest print. That's why the earliest timetable used was the October 2008 issue on Juckins.net.

[edit] This type of home-brew map may never be complete. F'rinstance, Amtrak may at one time had a bookable bus link to some town in South Dakota that only lasted a few weeks because nobody booked it or the operator of the bus link went out of business. And the tough part of maintaining this kind of map would be adding any new links. Any way of discovering a new link other than simply stumbling upon it?

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

As a reminder, this one has all the bus links I could find since October 2008 (the earliest on Juckins.net).

Q1: Were there any other bus links bookable at any time via Amtrak that are not shown?
Q2: Are there any other deleted bus links that are not shown as deleted?
Q3: Anybody feel sorry for those poor neglected folks in South Dakota?

Thanx. Added and brown-dotted the NOL-JAX and FTM - Naples bus links.

Tried to get something from those archived timetables on the RPA website, but my decrepit old eyes just can't resolve anything but the largest print. That's why the earliest timetable used was the October 2008 issue on Juckins.net.

I guess you mean The Museum of Railroad Timetables not the RPA? The museum ends with January 2016. I don't know how far you are going back with buses, since at some point it's interleaved with changing train service. For what it's worth, Suffolk VA was a Thruway stop in the 1970s, then it was dropped. The NFK-PTB train returned in 2012, but the Suffolk station was, and is, skipped.

By contrast, Amtrak's May 1975 map and schedule had Southern Railway's Crescent, so it had the Asheville NC branch and its 14 stations. Those never became a bus in the schedule. The 1975 schedule really shows a different world, with a full page promotion "Amtrak and Greyhound - a Good Connection," and the Florida car rental deals. Then plastered on the Asheville branch schedule is "(finger icon) Notice! Application has been made to the appropriate regulatory body to discontinue Trains Nos. 3-4. Consult agent before travelling."

The October 1, 1979 schedule has a Thruway to Key West FL.

 

[niemi24s]

I guess you mean The Museum of Railroad Timetables not the RPA?

I stand corrected - this is the older archived system timetables I was referring to: http://www.timetables.org/ Spent some time fiddling with the System Map contained in the very first system timetable (1 May 1971) and this is as good as could get it:



Note that it does not show any bus links, but I don't really know if there were any back then. Notice how clear the staples are! All image doctoring was done using Faststone.

 

[jis]

I stand corrected - this is the older archived system timetables I was referring to: http://www.timetables.org/ Spent some time fiddling with the System Map contained in the very first system timetable (1 May 1971) and this is as good as could get it:

View attachment 35739

Note that it does not show any bus links, but I don't really know if there were any back then. Notice how clear the staples are! All image doctoring was done using Faststone.

That is why I suggested look at the maps from the timetables in the late 70s when things had stabilized and they do show the bus routes.

 

[Willbridge]

I guess you mean The Museum of Railroad Timetables not the RPA? The museum ends with January 2016. I don't know how far you are going back with buses, since at some point it's interleaved with changing train service. For what it's worth, Suffolk VA was a Thruway stop in the 1970s, then it was dropped. The NFK-PTB train returned in 2012, but the Suffolk station was, and is, skipped.

By contrast, Amtrak's May 1975 map and schedule had Southern Railway's Crescent, so it had the Asheville NC branch and its 14 stations. Those never became a bus in the schedule. The 1975 schedule really shows a different world, with a full page promotion "Amtrak and Greyhound - a Good Connection," and the Florida car rental deals. Then plastered on the Asheville branch schedule is "(finger icon) Notice! Application has been made to the appropriate regulatory body to discontinue Trains Nos. 3-4. Consult agent before travelling."

The October 1, 1979 schedule has a Thruway to Key West FL.

In late1975, Greyhound suddenly pulled out of the Amtrak connecting service that had developed. Earlier (1973 or 74), they had moved in and muscled out independent carriers.

 

[niemi24s]

Looked at the first 18 system timetables looking for system maps with bus routes with no luck. Then the 19th finally had them as kinda shown below:

This is defuzzified as much I could get it. And this is getting to be a real chore. Anybody wanting to glean the missing bus links from this and the other 37 newer system timetables and post then to a copy of the map in post #24 is free to do so. Have fun.

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

A fresh scan of the printed Amtrak publication would solve the fuzziness problem. Or ask the Museum if you can use theirs. It's 1790 pixels in height. Thanks for all this work!

 

[niemi24s]

Thanks for the idea and kind words, but think I'll find something else to tinker with.

 

[niemi24s]

Here's the final one:

 

[BuffaloBoy]

Finally broke down and counted up all the bus-only places listed in the front of my 11 Jan 2016 paper copy of the system timetable and came up with a total of 347 places served only by the Thruway bus network. This is 36 more than all those found by looking at both the online and paper route maps, so that's about 90% of the ones shown seven years ago.

Looks like the only way to find out which of those 347 stops is still bookable is to make about twice that number of dummy bookings because some can be booked from one direction and not the other. I did about 140 of them and then quit. Here's a recap of what was found about bus-only destinations:

• CA had the most with maybe 71 and has lost maybe 1
• OR is next with maybe 37 and has lost maybe 6
• WA is next with about 24 and has lost around 9
• MI had 14 or so and has lost 6 or so
• WI had 14 too and has lost 1 I think
• FL & ME each had 12 and have lost none.
• NH had 9 and doesn't seem to have lost any
• TX had 8 or so and has lost all but 1
• ID had 8 too but has lost 3
• MT also had 8 and has lost them all

These 11 states back in 2016 had perhaps 217 of the 347 bus-only stops and seem to have lost about 35 (or 16%) of them. The sad part is not their loss but that average folks can't really find out all the places now served by Amtraks trains and buses unless some extra effort is made.

Note the iffyness in that listing, above.

All the brown spots from Vegas thru Idaho are served by regional line Salt Lake Express including pickups at the SLC and Boise airports

 

[Willbridge]

All the brown spots from Vegas thru Idaho are served by regional line Salt Lake Express including pickups at the SLC and Boise airports

Salt Lake Express even stops on the street at the (former) Intermodal station - but - it does not participate in Amtrak Thruway for reservations and ticketing, which is what this thread is about.

For example, if you look for CHI>BOI in Amtrak's site it will put you on the Empire Builder to SPK, and then Northwestern to BOI. If you look for DEN>BOI it will tell you that there is no service.

(Edited)

 

[Sullen Maximus]

All the brown spots from Vegas thru Idaho are served by regional line Salt Lake Express including pickups at the SLC and Boise airports

Yeah I don't count entirely private owned shuttle companies "serving a line"

Like any private shuttle company, they're super expensive. Costs as much one way to vegas from SLC as a round trip to and from Denver.seems more like a service for rich Boomers who don't want to drive.

 

[niemi24s]

You can get most anywhere by walking, hitchhiking or driving. The idea behind the map was to show the places you can now get to or from (or could have gotten to or from in the past) by booking with Amtrak.

 

[moselman66]

You can get most anywhere by walking, hitchhiking or driving. The idea behind the map was to show the places you can now get to or from (or could have gotten to or from in the past) by booking with Amtrak.

Very much appreciate all the time you spent on this AND that you were kind enough to share it.

 

[niemi24s]

Kiitos! (Thank you)