Does Amtrak Add Cars to the Silver Star/Meteor for Hurricane Evacuation?

[andytiedye]

The highways will obviously be jammed with people trying to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Dorian.
Does Amtrak add capacity to the Silvers to help people get out?

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

No capacity, no trains running, no effort available. CSX not helping too.

Bunker down.

Evacuation of a area by train is not a valid solution. Reverse traffic flow on Highway is the only real option. Bus for those who can’t or don’t have a car option.

Evacuation of a heavy populated area is a nightmare. Think New Orleans after Katerina. How to get them out? When to start? Where to put them. How to get them back? How to rebuild.

 

[chakk]

The highways will obviously be jammed with people trying to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Dorian.
Does Amtrak add capacity to the Silvers to help people get out?

What trains? Amtrak has already cancelled all train services in Florida thru Tuesday. And if the hurricane does significant damage along the ROW, the suspension of service might well continue into next week.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Reverse traffic flow on Highway is the only real option.

Houston put that assumption to the test and it failed miserably.

Think New Orleans after Katerina. How to get them out? When to start? Where to put them. How to get them back? How to rebuild.

Those are not insurmountable questions, but they do require a lot of planning, budgeting, and coordination. Which is just the sort of thing Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown was proudly incapable of managing. The way we handled Hurricane Maria proves very little has changed since Katrina. How much we help depends almost entirely on who is being hurt. That's bad news for places like Louisiana and Puerto Rico, but great news for a prominent resort featuring swing state like Florida.

 

[Barb Stout]

Houston put that assumption to the test and it failed miserably.


Those are not insurmountable questions, but they do require a lot of planning, budgeting, and coordination. Which is just the sort of thing Michael "Heckuva Job" Brown was proudly incapable of managing. The way we handled Hurricane Maria proves very little has changed since Katrina. How much we help depends almost entirely on who is being hurt. That's bad news for places like Louisiana and Puerto Rico, but great news for a prominent resort featuring swing state like Florida.

What happened when Houston tried the reverse traffic flow highways? In what ways did it fail?

 

[user 14106]

It’s unfortunate Amtrak cannot revise cancellations based the storm track. They likely could have operated at least today and possibly tomorrow too.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

What happened when Houston tried the reverse traffic flow highways? In what ways did it fail?

Bad traffic jam. On the side street people were “blocking the box”,that of course jam up the intersection. The highway were 12 lanes near the city, and became 4 lanes further out. People running out of fuel, breakdowns in travel lanes. Of course you still have to find someplace to travel to and stay.

Houston is set up for reverse of travel lanes it just doesn’t get you very far. They are building more lanes further out, but the city just follows the wider roads with more housing and commercial spaces.

The lack of real zoning is a big problem. The recent oil refinery fire, was across the street from a apartment complex. Political people approve new housing in flood plane.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

It’s unfortunate Amtrak cannot revise cancellations based the storm track. They likely could have operated at least today and possibly tomorrow too.

Storm slowed down. Sure CSX want to prepare for the storm too. You pull off the arms at the grade crossing. Doesn’t make them unusable, but now you have to get off to flag the traffic before the train enters the intersection.

 

[Seaboard92]

New Orleans has used evacuation trains in the past. It’s amazing PR for the railroads. But it’s not something they want to do.

 

[jloewen]

No capacity, no trains running, no effort available. CSX not helping too.

Bunker down.

Evacuation of a area by train is not a valid solution. Reverse traffic flow on Highway is the only real option. Bus for those who can’t or don’t have a car option.

Evacuation of a heavy populated area is a nightmare. Think New Orleans after Katerina. How to get them out? When to start? Where to put them. How to get them back? How to rebuild.

Actually, when Katrina approached, Amtrak needed to get ALL its stock out of harms way and offered to take at least 500 people N out of NOLA. FEMA was so disorganized, and so was the state, that the trains left empty.

 

[Cho Cho Charlie]

Amtrak might not what the responsibility either. All Amtrak needs is for the tracks to be blocked, for any reason you can dream up, and passengers would need to weather the storm on board the stranded train.

 

[Seaboard92]

Well I’ve long thought in my state (SC) that routinely cancels school in the upstate furthest from the coast to use school buses for evacuation should consider evacuation trains.

To give a very detailed response on why I think it makes sense.

From Charleston to Columbia is 123 miles by Norfolk Southern at 49 MPH. With a one way trip averaging two hours and forty minutes. So one trainset can basically make the trip in seven hours round trip.

If the state were to use our local rail museum’s equipment which consists of 3 ex VRE gallery cars, and 3 CN EMUs they could transport 450 people out of harms way per trip. Relieving nine school busses from the roads. Which makes room for a few more cars to drive out as well.

Now let’s say we use what Amtrak has available in the SE so the Palmetto, Silver Star, and Silver Meteor.

The palmetto seats 296 (if I remember right) without using the tables in the cafe. If one could use both consists seeing Amtrak allots those cars every day as is it wouldn’t effect any other train. We have 592 seats.

The Meteor could seat 455 if you filled the sleepers, coaches, and both food service cars. With four train sets you can serve 1,820.

The Star Seats 326 when using sleepers, coaches, and cafe for seating. Also a four set train giving 1,304 seats.

The Auto Train Seats 818 (rough guess based on AU consist listing and superliner diagrams) per train when seating in sleepers, coaches, and food service/lounge cars. With both sets 1,636 seats.

So if the state used all of the Amtrak Southeast equipment, and the Rail Museum equipment they would have 5,352 seats available or 107 school buses. If each of the 12 sets made two round trips in a day we could move 10,704 in a day. Which could free up a lot of space on our evacuation routes, and school buses. And any railroad who is apart of it would have great PR.

When you cancel service you don’t end up looking good. But when you cancel to help move people out of harms way it looks good. And you would get several first time train riders who might consider riding in the future as well.

And the host railroads would also get good publicity which they crave as well. It would be a win win for all parties involved.

I should tell our governor this next time I see him. It actually makes sense.