USDA Frontier and Remote (FAR) (less densely populated) areas, and Amtrak

[railiner]

The apparent loss of intercity bus service around the US is going to require some kind of change. What IMO not sure?

The loss is because there is insufficient demand to sustain or attract new service with few exceptions. Unfortunately, I can’t imagine anything changing in the near future…

 

[Willbridge]

The relationship between rural and urban areas in those relatively dense parts of the U.S. has been developing over a long time. When corporate executive Wendell Wilkie was nominated as the Republican candidate for president, one of the first things he did was to go back to his folks' front porch in Elwood, Indiana for photos and checked on how things were going on farmland that he owned.

That relationship was furthered by an extensive network of interurban lines overlaid on the already extensive network of steam railways. Small town and rural residents could more easily go into town and wholesale houses in central cities like Indianapolis could distribute merchandise on multiple daily trips.

 

[west point]

The imminent demise of intercity bus lines can only have so much help from Amtrak. That is very little. It is getting close to time that public transportation in other that the NEC is going will take a big hit. Now is it a policy that certain POLS want to keep all persons nationwide close to home? Isn't that is what dictatorships try to do?

 

[railiner]

Now is it a policy that certain POLS want to keep all persons nationwide close to home? Isn't that is what dictatorships try to do?

I don't know about that, if you look at China as an example...seems they are encouraging domestic and international travel by huge infrastructure investment. Of course, they restrict their dissidents, but not others...

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

Link: State support of intercity bus routes.

 

[Willbridge]

Link: State support of intercity bus routes.

It's a good article and mostly true.

Two important things to note:

1.) There was a lot of head-banging and experimenting before the Oregon and Colorado networks were established. Those were the two that I know about. Foot-dragging within agencies is always a problem.

2.) A reliable rail network is needed if buses are to connect with it. That means schedule adherence, of course, but also means not having a massive Amtrak cutback proposed by every new Federal administration.

 

[railiner]

Link: State support of intercity bus routes.

Not mentioned in that report is NJT, which covers almost its entire state, and neighboring ones, either directly, or by contract…

 

[jiml]

I'm curious if these people who live within reasonable range of large cities but consider themselves rural in places like Ohio:
*actually avoid the city/cities because they consider them a different world and assume there's nothing there for them,
or
*go to the nearby city/cities for medical care, sports, concerts, social events, etc. but just tell themselves and others its another world from where they live?

Both these examples are valid a lot of places, not limited to Ohio or even the US. Despite growing up in a city I now count myself in the second group and know many in Group 1. Avoiding cities unless absolutely necessary is a thing.

 

[jphjaxfl]

Other big rail connection cities were Cincinnati, St Louis. & Atlanta. other minor cities were WAS, JAX, NOL, DFW, DEN, LAX, OKJ, SEA / PDX.

Memphis was a major gateway city until the early 1960s. It was possible to connect from various western and southern cities to the northeast, eastern and southeastern cities. The passenger trains were scheduled to make good connections. For example you could travel travel from Los Angeles via Espee and RI to Washington and New York via Southern and PRR. Also from Texas cities to Atlanta and Florida via T&P/MP or CottenBelt connecting to Frisco/Southern. I remember pulling into Memphis Union Station on MP's Southerner with Southern's Tennessean waiting on the adjoining track to depart 15 minutes later and on another track L&N's Hummingbird for Louisville and Cincinnati, also departing 15 minutes later.

 

[Matthew H Fish]

Perhaps they consider themselves rural because they live on a farm or near farms. That's how I view rural vs urban.

Years ago, Slate produced a great interactive map where you could view the US, county by county, and see what percentage of that state's population were farmers. I forgot what the methodology was, because sometimes people live on farms but aren't farmers, and sometimes people work on farms but live elsewhere (including in cities). The map seems to have been lost, but from what I remember, in states like Ohio, the highest percentage of farmers in any county was around 10%.
Even that can be a bit deceptive, because the USDA considers a farm anything that could produce $1000 dollars worth of crops a year. A suburban house on a large lot with a dozen apple trees is a farm---even if there is no actual harvest.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...d-most-small-farms-arent-really-farms-at-all/
This has been an issue in American politics since the beginning. Thomas Jefferson thought the country didn't need to develop infrastructure, because in his mind, the US was a nation of independent, self-sufficient farmers. The thing was, even in the 1700s, this was already more a dream than a reality. But the myth persists, and there are plenty of places where people think of themselves as living in farm country---while living in commuter suburbs where they travel to work in offices.
And from a train point of view, if you look at areas like Cleveland-Cincinnati or Houston-Dallas, that currently don't have train service---those are both large cities within a short geographical distance, with not many terrain barriers. Those areas have population densities not that much less than the NEC, which has dozens of trains per day. And, of course, California's central valley, which is an area with many agricultural workers and farms, has regular corridor train service. And soon will have high speed rail!

So I guess my point overall is that rural, and agricultural, are words that have a denotation and a connotation. The average American might think of Ohio or Texas as rural, agricultural states where many people live on or near farms---but objectively, that isn't true.

 

[Dan Olsen]

One other thing to mention about this...in part because I think the moderators changed the name of my thread to add the word "rural".
<clip>
So sometimes this seems like a technicality, but it can be very important. Especially for planning in things like education, health care, and especially transit.
Take, Butte, Montana, for example. Butte, Montana is a city with a large downtown full of three and four story brick buildings, a university, a hospital, an airport, a shopping mall, and in general, as many facilities as most people would normally need. But its population is around 35,000 people, so it is considered urban but also FAR, because the closest metropolitan area with more than 50,000 people in Missoula, about two hours away. So the residents of Butte normally have many options for day to day life, but if they want something not found in Butte---it is quite a daunting task to get it. If a graduating high school student wants to go the University of Washington, that is at least eight hours, non-stop.
Compare that to an area that is rural but not FAR...someone living off of a freeway exit on one of the many freeways going between Indianapolis or Chicago, or St. Louis and Nashville, or Detroit and Great Falls, etc. On a day to day level, those people might have to go a bit further to get certain things, and might live in towns with less services...or not live in towns at all. But then, if residents of areas like that do want to go further, they might have to drive an hour or so and they are in a city of millions of people with a choice of world-class universities.
This is also obviously relevant to transit planning. Along with aesthetics, it is one reason I am a fan of the reinstatement of the North Coast Hiawatha. The population across I-90 in Montana and North Dakota isn't very big, but it is surprisingly urban. In a city like Butte, for example, most of that population lives within a walking distance of a possible train station! So it might be possible to generate more ridership in an urban, FAR place like Butte than in a rural, not FAR place like Ohio.

Matthew - First of all, thanks for starting this thread.
Your reference to Butte . . . I take that personally! (In a good way)
Yes, the issue of FAR is a problem. As a lifelong Butte resident, I'm working as a part of the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority to restore the North Coast Hiawatha (NCH) route, which traversed southern North Dakota and Montana on its way from Chicago to Seattle. The FRA/Amtrak Long Distance Service Study (LDSS) program has been working on this issue. In their first meetings and studies, they were trying to use data from the Federal Highway Administration’s 2020 travel study, which categorized travel based upon being in what they called "Metropolitan Statistical Area Zones" (aka MSA) which are defined as "area having at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more population". For the states of Montana and North Dakota, they had 3 and 2 MSAs respectively. The rest of the route in those states was classified as "non-MSA area". Statistically not a good targeted data set. In later meetings, they started using "Micropolitan Statistical Areas" which are slightly better at "areas [counties] of 10,000 or more population". Still a pretty wide net for a truly rural area. Montana is the 4th largest state and North Dakota is the 19th largest in area. Both are near the top of the most sparsely populated with North Dakota at 4th and Montana as 3rd least densely populated.
When the decision in 1979 to discontinue Amtrak service along the NCH route was made, a large factor was the "new" Interstate Highway System and that the NCH route essentially paralleled the I-90/I-94 routes across North Dakota and Montana. But also by abandoning this route, it also cut off rail service to the 4 of the 5 MSA areas in North Dakota and Montana . . . which were both destinations and origins for passenger rail traffic for the larger metropolitan areas the NCH served.
In reference to the Whitefish and Empire Builder route. . . The Empire Builder is one of the most "profitable" (fares provide a great percentage of the Amtrak cost) of the long distance routes operating in the country. (from the data provided by FRA/Amtrak in the LDSS reports/presentations).
With the adoption of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, a lot of the focus was on providing services like safe and affordable transportation (rail) to the underserved rural and tribal communities.
We aim to be able to restore this route to fulfill that need.

 

[Dan Olsen]

I'm curious if these people who live within reasonable range of large cities but consider themselves rural in places like Ohio:
*actually avoid the city/cities because they consider them a different world and assume there's nothing there for them,
or
*go to the nearby city/cities for medical care, sports, concerts, social events, etc. but just tell themselves and others its another world from where they live?

If it's the former, that sorta explains the lack of demand for rail travel. (The objective need is probably still there, but not the subjective active demand.) If the latter, they can be persuaded that the train is the better option for their city trips if the train is convenient and their destination is convenient (by walking or good transit) from the station; "why deal with city driving and parking?"

John -
In my community, we haven't had passenger rail service since October 6, 1979 when Amtrak pulled out. I live in a community of 35,000 which had daily passenger rail service starting September 3, 1890 (actually had southbound service starting Dec 21, 1881 . . . but that's another route/story).
It's hard to drive demand for passenger rail, when the nearest passenger rail service is either Shelby or Whitefish about ~240 miles, today in winter driving conditions in the northern Rocky Mountains.
"Back in the day" the Milwaukee Route of the Hiawatha rails were less that a mile from the house I'm composing this from. The former Northern Pacific North Coast Limited station is less than 9 miles.
I'm working on getting the passenger rail restored to my community through the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority. A critical issue that Big Sky Passenger Rail will also be addressing before that first passenger rail train arrives here is the "last mile" services for the passengers that will be arriving or departing. I've spoken with a lot of local folks and they are excited about the possibility of again having passenger rail.
Yes, I live in a small community, but for day-to-day living it is a great place to live (as some others discovered during CoViD19 and moved in). I prefer to live here and then when I need the "big city amenities" (and want to battle the "big city" traffic, etc.) I can visit long enough to get my needs fulfilled and when I've had my fill of "big city life", I can escape to my day-to-day reality.

 

[west point]

On the builder and NCH routes can imagine that in winter sometimes only snow mobiles can be reliable. Only they can be last mile(s)

 

[Amtrak25]

Amtrak detested any federally funded route not in the original 5/1/71 plan, and in 1979 and 1997, managed to get rid of most of them, including what Senators Mansfield (NCH) and Church (PIO) added to the system. Swap Broadway Ltd with Capitol Ltd and Lake Shore Ltd and Oklahoma against Arkanas, and that is where we are now. With flyover, endpoint mentality, they don't much care.

When the NCH got axe, Greyhound was still a professionally run outfit, ran 4 frequencies a day bween Chicago and Seattle (plus Salt Lake to West Yellowstone and Bozeman). Now it is all a segmented mess. Brown, Intermountain, and Rimrock have also all gone out of business.

Northwest Airlines was also big. I don't know what is left of it with Delta today.

 

[Stobe fan]

Years ago, Slate produced a great interactive map where you could view the US, county by county, and see what percentage of that state's population were farmers. I forgot what the methodology was, because sometimes people live on farms but aren't farmers, and sometimes people work on farms but live elsewhere (including in cities). The map seems to have been lost, but from what I remember, in states like Ohio, the highest percentage of farmers in any county was around 10%.
Even that can be a bit deceptive, because the USDA considers a farm anything that could produce $1000 dollars worth of crops a year. A suburban house on a large lot with a dozen apple trees is a farm---even if there is no actual harvest.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/feature...d-most-small-farms-arent-really-farms-at-all/
This has been an issue in American politics since the beginning. Thomas Jefferson thought the country didn't need to develop infrastructure, because in his mind, the US was a nation of independent, self-sufficient farmers. The thing was, even in the 1700s, this was already more a dream than a reality. But the myth persists, and there are plenty of places where people think of themselves as living in farm country---while living in commuter suburbs where they travel to work in offices.
And from a train point of view, if you look at areas like Cleveland-Cincinnati or Houston-Dallas, that currently don't have train service---those are both large cities within a short geographical distance, with not many terrain barriers. Those areas have population densities not that much less than the NEC, which has dozens of trains per day. And, of course, California's central valley, which is an area with many agricultural workers and farms, has regular corridor train service. And soon will have high speed rail!

So I guess my point overall is that rural, and agricultural, are words that have a denotation and a connotation. The average American might think of Ohio or Texas as rural, agricultural states where many people live on or near farms---but objectively, that isn't true.

I know a few people who have sixteen or more acres whose properties are listed as tree farms, They get a nice tax break but live less than 20 minutes from a major city.