The Amtrak Pioneer- Ripe for a Return

[dlagrua]

The Pioneer was a discontinued Amtrak train (1997) that went from Chicago to Seattle via Boise, Portland, Salt Lake City, and ran on part of the California Zephyr route. It was a three day train but it did serve CHI, PDX and SEA

If we examine the situation on the Empire Builder route and the horrendous delays that are common, it may be years before enough track is laid to resolve on-schedule service problems. No matter what BNSF does, oil traffic growth may continue to out-pace additional rail capacity. It would seem that the time is right to return the Amtrak Pioneer to service. With the frustration of having to deal with a train that is often 12 hours late many travelers would probably opt for this alternative route. Therefore, the fare box recovery for the Pioneer may now be viable. Point is that something must be done. It is time for another route from CHI to SEA.?

What say you?.

 

[keelhauled]

UP's route through Idaho is I believe largely single track. They'd never allow Amtrak on it without a massive bill for track upgrades, think daily Sunset Limited scenario from a few years ago, it was 750 million or something like that. To say nothing of no equipment. With no new Superliners on order it'd be probably a decade(?) before you get new equipment. So you'd have to cancel the EB and move its equipment. Somehow I don't see that as a politically palatable option. I suppose you could kill the Sunset Limited and run a 3x weekly pioneer, but who wants another 3x weekly train?

 

[afigg]

Has much changed since the 2009 Amtrak study on restoring the Pioneer? (137 page PDF). Back then, UP wanted about $300 million in track upgrades. The Superliner equipment shortage has not eased nor is there $100 or $200 million to buy new Superliners.

The 2009 stated this for projected cost recovery:

The projected fare box recoveries for the various Pioneer options are significantly lower than the average fare box recovery for Amtrak long distance trains in FY2008 (51.8%). Fare box recovery for the two Seattle options (Options 1 and 2) is lower than on all but one of Amtrak’s 15 existing long distance routes, and the Portland options have a lower fare box recovery than any Amtrak long distance route.

With no prospects of a significant increase in operating subsidy from Congress in the foreseeable future, why add a LD train that will burn a hole through the operating subsidy? There are possible LD routes which would come far closer to cover their fully loaded operating cost on top of covering their direct costs: Three Rivers/Broadway Limited from NYP to PGH to CHI, another sleeper train from NYP to Florida, maybe even a NYP to Dallas single level train via the NS Crescent corridor, and so on.

The only way that a Pioneer service comes back in the next 10-15 years is if a influential US Senator or powerful House committee chairman puts his or her political muscle behind it, and this is the hard part, Congress becomes less dysfunctional.

 

[MikeM]

Don't hold your breath. Among the many obstacles that would stop this happening, in no particular order...

- UP does not like Amtrak (see Sunset Limited daily proposal for example 1).

- Amtrak is terrified of doing anything that they are not doing already expansion wise (also see Sunset Limited for example of this).

- Whenever questioned, Boardman's focus is on "improving" existing routes, never on expansion. This was a clear message at the Trains / Amtrak meeting a few years ago, where he was repeatedly asked about service expansions.

- The route lacks any firm Amtrak Boosters - really other than Washington / Oregon, no other state really has cohesive political support for Amtrak. Although Idaho has one station, and Utah service is in the middle of the night, and both only have one train serving, the lack of support isn't a mystery.

- Existing equipment is old, in no imminent timeline of replacement / addition.

- Even is something did happen, Congress would micromanage the costs, or push the states to pay for it.

I'd love to see the Pioneer come back, it was a great train and neat scenery. But my hopes for Amtrak growing are pretty limited in the current environment.

 

[Paulus]

In terms of bang for the buck, both in potential revenue and in public benefits, a new long distance route is on the very bottom of the list of things that Amtrak could do with the money.

 

[Shawn Ryu]

Concentrating on short haul routes aimed at business passengers is the way to go

 

[The Whistler]

I agree with much that has been said here but the EB route is near a crisis condition. Another RELIABLE route to PDX and SEA is badly needed. I believe that the Pioneer was dropped because Oklahoma would no longer support the state segment. That was about the same time that the Desert Wind went away.

Everyone realizes that no new federal funding is (or will be) available in the foreseeable future but if the states were aware of the potential fare box recovery of the line that may change the equation.

Some good info is provided here on the coalition to restore service.: http://pioneertrain.org/

 

[neroden]

The biggest problem with the Pioneer is that there is absolutely nobody along most of the route. West of Denver, there's Portland, Boise, Salt Lake, and Laramie, and that's IT.

Very long routes with nothing in the the middle tend to do poorly. What you want on a railroad is a string of cities. If Amtrak ever was going to start a new long distance route, it needs to be something like Chicago-Indianapolis-Louisville-Nashville-Atlanta or Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati-Louisville-Nashville-Birmingham-Montgomery-Mobile-New Orleans, or even Jacksonville-Macon-Atlanta-Chattanooga-Nashville-Evansville-St Louis. Or, more realistically, Chicago-Battle Creek-Lansing-Dearborn-Toledo-Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh-Philadelphia-NYC.

I'm open to the idea of restoring Sunset East, which does have a string of cities, though it would need a lot of funding to bring the tracks east of Mobile up to speed. But the Pioneer has SO little potential because *nobody lives there*.

Long-distance trains as a general concept have potential. Ones which cross the empty wastes of the least populated states in the country have much less potential.

The Empire Builder does better than you'd expect because the small towns along its route have poor road service, especially in the winter. This is not the case for routes further south.

Frankly, before you worry about fixing the Empire Builder's problems, worry about fixing the critical problems with Chicago-East Coast service, which has much more potential and was pretty close to breaking even last year.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I think you meant the Texas Chief/Lone Star if you're referring to Oklahoma and a discontinued route! Oklahoma and Texas support the Heartland Flyer and it wasn't for Kansas which is broke, and has terrible Political Leadership, it would probably already connect with the SWC in KCY!

The Pioneer didn't run through Oklahoma!

 

[Paulus]

I agree with much that has been said here but the EB route is near a crisis condition. Another RELIABLE route to PDX and SEA is badly needed.

Problem solved!

Seriously, all that Pioneer brings to the table is another Sunset Limited without the Sunset's excuse of being triweekly. It's not worth the half billion in capital investments or the $30-40 million subsidy that it would take to run, especially since it would take several years of lead time before it appeared.

 

[railbuck]

Another RELIABLE route to PDX and SEA is badly needed.

The Zephyr-Starlight and Chief-Starlight connections are actually pretty reliable.

 

[The Whistler]

It should be noted that today millions of people live on the old route of the Pioneer and its serves some larger cities like Boise and Salt Lake City. If you look at the website of the Coalition to Restore the Pioneer, they site over 33 potential cities and towns West of Denver that would be served. Maybe a miracle will happen one day and the states will fund it as a corridor route.

 

[R30A]

I don't see why the North Coast Limited would not be a better alternative for restoration.

 

[zepherdude]

Its just another pipe dream. Ain't gonna happen in this lifetime. Just like Sunset Limited East. Those trains have dissappeared in Railroad history.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Not a United 777-200!

 

[jis]

Yeah but the discussion I was commenting about was primarily about domestic flights very few of which are 777.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Yeah but the discussion I was commenting about was primarily about domestic flights very few of which are 777.

:giggle:

 

[Dakota 400]

Restoration of the Pioneer? No disagreement from me. I lost a chance to travel on this train due to a reservation screw up.

But, if Amtrak could ever restore routes: may I suggest the former PRR Spirit of St. Louis route which they did operate in there early years. Or the old New York Central Ohio State Limited? It could connect from Cincinnati at Cleveland with the Lake Shore Limited if it could not be a complete train set.

 

[EB_OBS]

I think a better route, and possibly sustain more ridership would be SEA/PDX to Boise, ID to Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to Los Angelas.

If Las Vegas would advertise and promote, even subsidize the train like they do the airlines, I think it could be a very popular alternative for travel to and from Las Vegas.

the West coast could use another North/South route and returning to Boise and Vegas would be seen as a positive move.

 

[Anderson]

Honestly, an LAX-Vegas corridor with 2-3x daily trains would probably be a major hit with all the congestion I've heard of on I-15. Of course, getting anything through the passes...*sighs*

 

[GG-1]

Honestly, an LAX-Vegas corridor with 2-3x daily trains would probably be a major hit with all the congestion I've heard of on I-15. Of course, getting anything through the passes...*sighs*

Congestion No how do you define that. Once it tool me 9 hours and recently the trip time was about 12 hours. / :wacko: / :angry2:

Aloha

 

[Paulus]

Honestly, an LAX-Vegas corridor with 2-3x daily trains would probably be a major hit with all the congestion I've heard of on I-15. Of course, getting anything through the passes...*sighs*

Congestion is really a peak time issue; eastbound Fridays & westbound Sundays. Those two days are about 36% of all travel to/from Vegas and they're very directional, which is why I-15 sucks at those days. The problem with rail service is that it's also heavily group travel and pricing is going to make it lean heavily towards car travel. So seats are going to be empty most of the week (bad) and not look terribly nice price wise. The last real study, with 3-5 frequencies per day, saw ridership of only 362,200 with Talgos (5:30 time) or 322,900 with Surfliners (5:45 time). That's pretty anemic in my opinion and California could do a lot better with the five sets required for that service level.

 

[Shawn Ryu]

I agree with much that has been said here but the EB route is near a crisis condition. Another RELIABLE route to PDX and SEA is badly needed.

Problem solved!

Seriously, all that Pioneer brings to the table is another Sunset Limited without the Sunset's excuse of being triweekly. It's not worth the half billion in capital investments or the $30-40 million subsidy that it would take to run, especially since it would take several years of lead time before it appeared.

Whistler said RELIABLE, not United Airlines.

 

[jis]

And of course Amtrak is extremely reliable while operating on host freight railroads as we all know! LOL! Actually United of late has been way more reliable than Amtrak on many routes whether we like it or not.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum

 

[railiner]

Another RELIABLE route to PDX and SEA is badly needed.

The Zephyr-Starlight and Chief-Starlight connections are actually pretty reliable.

That would be my choice as an alternative...the Zephyr and Starlight.