Fiscally Constrained System Vision

[west point]

Roanoke - Bristol - Knoxville - Chattanooga several problems.

1. Roanoke - Bristol very low population base. N&W stopped at many places to get very few passengers.

2. Bristol - Would need to add Johnson City with East Tennessee State University. Kingsport not on proper route but many persons. Passenger service only a single Clinchfield RR train stopped shortly after WW-2. This whole Tri-cities area has 500,000+ population.

3. Bristol - Knoxville best RR time was ~ 3:45 that was still faster than US 11E or US 11w. Time might improve because there was always a lot of head end traffic on the SOU - N&W - SOU trains. RPO discontinuance quickly caused trains to be cancelled.

4. Knoxville - Chattanooga many possible stops slowing down service.

5. Chattanooga - Atlanta requires 25 mile backtrack to Ooltewah on NS or 15 mile back track on CSX. Both CSX & NS go Chattanooga - Dalton, Ga with about same passenger running times.

Note: Have lived in area and much information from old timers.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

All I know is what I read in the papers:

http://clevelandbanner.com/stories/amtrak-linethrough-areagets-new-look,13181

“What is approved at this point is an extension down to Roanoke (Va.),” said MPO coordinator Greg Thomas. “The gist of the MOU seems to be that governments in the four states along this corridor agree to support the project.”

So why is Virginia getting states and cities to sign on to the Memorandum of Understanding if they think it will never happen?

 

[Anderson]

All I know is what I read in the papers:

http://clevelandbanner.com/stories/amtrak-linethrough-areagets-new-look,13181

“What is approved at this point is an extension down to Roanoke (Va.),” said MPO coordinator Greg Thomas. “The gist of the MOU seems to be that governments in the four states along this corridor agree to support the project.”

So why is Virginia getting states and cities to sign on to the Memorandum of Understanding if they think it will never happen?

Per some discussions I've had over the years, it basically comes down to this:

(1) The Bristol extension needs to remain in the state's plans (and is desirable) for political reasons but not operational ones. Put another way, Bristol-Roanoke is a hole into which money is likely to be poured at present...VA wants it but it complicates the state's picture financially (tossing $5-10m/yr into a train in that part of the state pulls it out of the capex side of things).

(2) Extending further (to Knoxville, Chattanooga, etc.) does one of two things: Either it fills that hole with through traffic or it splits the cost up with the other state(s). Either of these makes VA's extension to Bristol more viable.

Therefore VA is going to be more than happy to offer whatever encouragement they can to this: The state is going to be in favor of it if it can happen and if there are too many practical obstacles...well, that's not VA's problem, is it? Also, it's an MPO in Tennessee that is getting them to sign on...and from my understanding of the politics in that part of the state, this is coming from the local governments on up (Roanoke is more likely to get additional trains if some of them are continuing to somewhere, for example, and Bristol just wants their train back) not from the DRPT on down.

 

[neroden]

Chatanooga has a particular tourism reason to want their train back even if it's slow.

...so the localities might be able to pull this off. I really don't know how fast they can make the Roanoke-Bristol and Bristol-Knoxville track though. It seems worth of an Actual Study.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Chattanooga has a particular tourism reason to want their train back even if it's slow.

Sounds like a winner:

 

[WoodyinNYC]

For a long time, Virginia has been promising a train to Bristol, eventually, while trying to get support in the legislature to fund its higher priority projects D.C.-Richmond, D.C.-Lynchburg, and D.C.-Norfolk, and, again in the eventually category, Richmond-Petersburg-Raleigh over the shortcut.

Having talked about it for so long, VA DOT can't stop talking about it without inflaming folks in that far southwest corner of the state. Or giving politicos a reason to not believe them. Uh oh.

When I read about Virginia getting three other states and various cities and counties to sign on to a Memorandum of Understanding for an ambitious plan D.C.-Bristol-Knoxville-Chattanooga-Atlanta (plus Louisville-Knoxville-Chattanooga-Atlanta), I know they're looking some years ahead. But they are looking, and have a good record of getting train stuff done.

Yeah, it would take another Stimulus, manna from Heaven sort of Billion dollar windfall to pay for such a route. Or, it could take years and years of incremental smallish steps, like Lynchburg-Roanoke.

The $100 million plus (is the remembered figure in the ballpark?) that it's costing to get from Lynchburg to Roanoke is only the first step, of course. Then there'd be more revenue on that portion if it were also carrying riders to/from Bristol, after the next step gets there. Both those segments would perform much, much better if carrying pax to/from Knoxville -- as well as Chattanooga and Atlanta or Kentucky.

I certainly expect the Bristol extension to become a real thing. That will only be after much more is invested D.C.-Richmond, D.C.-Norfolk, Richmond-Petersburg, and Richmond-Petersburg-Raleigh (and, of course, after Amtrak has enuff single-level equipment for the trains).

So, not soon, but not never either.

Anyway, the opening post for this thread gave us $10 Billion in chips to invest. I'm still ready to put $1 Billion here. And it still beats the pants off reviving the Pioneer, Desert Wind, or Sunset East. LOL.

 

[jphjaxfl]

I have ridden Amtrak frequently every year for the past near 45 years. When Amtrak started, they discontinued all but a bare bones long distance system. In the early 1970s some of the Senators and Congressmen who were involved in setting up Amtrak were able to bring back a few routes. In the late 1970, the long distance system shrank more. Since then not much has changed on the long distance scene. Ironically the last long distance route started was the extension of the Sunset Limited from New Orleans to Miami. What has changed is the corridor services from the Northeast Corridor to state supported Corridors where some have more trains than pre Amtrak. It is interesting to speculate about new Long Distance routes, but history and reality say different. A test Amtrak train was run from Miami to Jacksonville via the Florida East Coast several years ago, the first passenger train on that route since 1967. There was a lot of local excitement, but nothing has happened. Except for some rail fans, most people doubt any new service will actually happen. In 2 years, we will have the Brightline from Miami to Orlando. That should give people more confidence that a new successful passenger rail passenger is possible.

 

[DesertDude]

On Anderson's specific route proposals, the only one I want to comment on is the Desert Wind. I really think that would require a market study to figure out how much of a market there is. (Is Sin City to Mormonland a major travel pair?) I suspect it's a bad idea to include it.

If you lived in the Intermountain West, you would know that Las Vegas has a substantial mormon population. Mormons settled in the Las Vegas valley as early as 1855, and there's a large mormon community there today (a private college catered to mormon students is being planned for the Moapa Valley, which is also in Clark County). An average of 12 non-stop flights go from SLC International to McCarran on any given day.

A better reason for not running the Desert Wind between Las Vegas and SLC is that the UP line goes through a very, very desolate region (much more desolate than anywhere on the Pioneer route). To illustrate my point: The combined population of Milford and Caliente is less than 3,000 people. Yes, that's 3,000 and not 30,000. Even if you wanted to include towns that are within a 90 minute driving distance of stops in Milford and Caliente, you're probably only looking at a ridership base of 70,000 people to draw from (and that's being very generous). That segment might have more success if the train went SLC - Provo - Las Vegas (as opposed to the old Desert Wind that went Provo - SLC - Las Vegas). But the potential ridership from the Provo area would be cut the moment Allegiant Air offered direct flights from Provo to Vegas (which I have a hunch will happen sooner rather than later).

 

[Anderson]

SLC-Las Vegas was also in the Xpress West "system vision". I agree that the intermediate area is very empty; the issue back in "the day" IIRC was that there was a lot of LAX-Vegas traffic which tended to crowd out through SLC-LAX traffic. It's not unlike the Reno-Bay Area or Denver-Grand Junction/Glenwood Springs markets (or, really, any of the major "bookend" markets on LD trains which have the potential to overwhelm the route) in that regard.

 

[neroden]

So, 12 airplane flights per day.

But from everything I've read there's little or no road traffic going from Las Vegas to SLC -- Google Maps aerials show a pretty empty highway north of the split from I-70.

Google thinks it's 5 hrs. 34 min. without traffic or 6 hr. 5 min. with traffic (which is probably urban traffic).

I assume that the airplanes are so much faster on time that they're beating the roads. The plane is 1 hr 10 min -- even if you add an hour at each end for airport access (which is probably really excessive, since Salt Lake's airport is practically in the middle of downtown), that's 3 hours.

Which means that a non-high-speed train is a bad bet, because the train is going to go at roughly the speed of the roads. The last schedule was 6 hrs. 35 min. southbound, 8 hrs. 25 min. northbound. Minor improvements could bring this up to car speed, but not to plane speed.

Here on the Lake Shore Limited route, the road routes are busy and crowded year-round day and night. So the train doesn't have to beat the plane on time, it just has to beat the car.

Looks like that is not the case for SLC-Las Vegas. It looks like the train would have to be time-competitive with the plane. A high speed rail route could do so (especially since it wouldn't need to make any intermediate stops); a rail route on a freight-owned track *definitely* could not.

Worth Noting: if CAHSR is finished, and XPressWest Las Vegas-LA is finished, the trip time from San Francisco to Las Vegas will drop to less than 4 hours. That changes everything, because then travelling SLC-Las Vegas by conventional train and Las Vegas-San Francisco by HSR, becomes faster than travelling direct from SLC - Reno - San Francisco by car.