There was a news story about the possibility of this train going away due to budget cuts.
http://m.fox8live.com/wvuefox8/db_354681/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=jOW3DVcQ
That's a pretty good story for local TV news, and very good for Fox. LOL.
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New Orleans and Amtrak are at a pivot point in their relationship.
As soon as enuff dollars and equipment can be lined up, New Orleans is in line to gain, in effect, a fourth train (after the
Crescent, CONO, Sunset Ltd) with restored service along the Gulf Coast to Florida.
The same study that came up with the plan to connect to Orlando by extending the
CONO also proposed an overlapping short corridor train New Orleans-Gulfport (casino coast) Biloxi-Mobile. They would work together, with the EB Florida train leaving NOLA around 5 p.m., and WB arriving NOLA at 9 the next morning. The EB corridor train would leave NOLA in the morning, returning WB from Mobile in the evening. So, two trains each way, with commuter service and possible same-day, go-and-return trips to the cities at the corridor's ends.
Meanwhile, the same outfit, Southern Rail Commission recently secured grants to build or restore stations in Baton Rouge and two stops en route to NOLA. That would make sense if that corridor had any passenger trains, but at this time it doesn't! It only makes sense if someone seriously believes that passenger trains are coming and the stations will be needed.
Linking the Baton Rouge metro with 835,00 residents to a corridor with New Orleans (metro population 1,269,000), Gulfport-Biloxi (pop 392,000) and Mobile (metro pop 415,000) gives a solid market to draw from. btw Louisiana doesn't really have a beach; the coastline is marshy. The closest good beaches are on the Mississippi and Alabama shores.
In a few years, when the
Texas Eagle combines with the
Sunset Ltd at San Antonio to go daily to L.A., a
Sunset Shuttle will run NOLA-Houston-San Antonio, another heavily populated route.
At the present juncture, riding from, say, Jacksonville to San Antonio, or L.A., requires an "overnight connection" in NOLA. Not everyone is up for spending 23 hours in any place, not even the Big Easy. But the WB Florida train will arrive at 9:30 a.m., while the
Sunset Shuttle departs at 9 a.m. LOL.
A solution to the "overnight connection" is simple (not cheap) and another example that
the cure for what ails Amtrak is more Amtrak.
First, the NOLA-Schriever (for Houma)-New Iberia-Lafayette-Lake Charles-Beaumont-Houston-San Antonio segment needs a big speed up in any case. The
Sunset currently takes 15 hours and averages less than 40 mph. Getting that speed up to 50 mph would allow the WB
Sunset Shuttle to depart
after[/i] the Florida train arrives, allowing an easy connection. Or the tracks Mobile-NOLA could be upgraded to allow the Florida train to arrive earlier. Or both.
It will depend on whether any, and which of, the states (Texas, LA, MS, AL) are willing to invest in better infrastructure. Another frequency or three on this corridor would help to justify the capital investment. (Plenty of Horizon cars can be used here.) Four round trips would require an operating subsidy, but also make good connections to the CONO and the Crescent, and give good times at San Antonio. Meanwhile, I haven't yet worked out the EB "overnight connection" problem, LOL, but I think the solution involves the four daily round trips.
On a related note, the Southern Rail Commission plans to push for a extension of the Crescent to break off at Meridian, MS, then Jackson-Monroe-Ruston-Shreveport-Dallas-Ft Worth. (Shreveport's casinos serve the Dallas-Ft Worth Metroplex, so that segment will have heavy ridership for sure.) Adding this second line and end-points to the Crescent would greatly help the imbalance of ridership on the southern section (ATL-NOLA) vs the northern section (ATL-NEC).
That Dallas line would not connect to Baton Rouge and NOLA at first. But say 10 years down the line, a new train could go NOLA-Baton Rouge-Alexandria-Natchitoches (we need this wonderful name in the national system)-Shreveport-Longview-Dallas-Ft Worth-(and beyond?).
Any Baton Rouge corridor train, the daily Sunset Shuttle to Houston and San Antonio, and the Shreveport-Nachitoches-Alexandria-Baton Rouge-NOLA train would feed connections to/from the Crescent, again helping with the imbalance of northern/southern segment ridership on that LD train.
Taken together, these new and improved routes would make NOLA a second Amtrak hub, while greatly improving service not only to Louisiana but to under-served Texas as well.
Alternatively, the haters could kill all the LD trains and shift the fixed overhead onto the NEC and state-supported corridor trains, in the end leaving New Orleans bereft of passenger trains.
