At this point I suggest that anyone in Amarillo or Wichita, or who plans to travel to either city, should write to Amtrak to show the extent of the market demand. But I'm not sure who to write to (I suppose one could write direct to Boardman).
Taking your advice, I emailed Mr. Boardman. The good news is that he replied pretty quickly. The bad news:
Dear AmarilloByMornin' ,
It is my intent to keep the commitments to those along the existing Chief Route. I understand your interest. The public is way ahead of Congress on the need for connectivity.
Yes we are a private business and we need to make smart decisions and yet we must do our very best to make good on our commitment to our existing customer base at the same time. The United States decided on this long distance network over 40 years ago when it allowed the Freight Railroads to come into being. They were relieved of their money losing passenger traffic by a new company Amtrak. The United States needs to keep their commitment.
I hope at some point your dream of service will be fulfilled but if I can help it, it will not come on the back of those who will lose their service from Dodge City to Raton and beyond.
I wish you well in your quest.
Joe Boardman.
Not exactly what I was hoping for...
Yeah. It's a pretty decent letter, though, compared to the usual form letters! I actually appreciate seeing it.
So thank you for writing; who knows, it may make an impact on his thoughts in the long run. Enough letters from Amarillo and he may realize what a market is sitting there waiting for him. (Maybe it's worth writing to the "general manager long distance-services", Mark Murphy, as well?)
I think, politically speaking, Boardman has to say that he'll fight to keep service to Dodge City; I just hope he knows when it's time to cut bait. And that time is, as previously announced, the end of 2014.
He does say "if I can help it". But I doubt he can help it. Back in 2012, he told the cities and states on the existing route they needed to come up with a plan to get the money by the end of 2014. That's a good long lead time. Amtrak and BNSF volunteered 2/5 of the money, and the locals still couldn't do it, with all three state legislatures rejecting any allocation of money. Meanwhile, the state government of NM threw away the entire Raton Pass track to save a measly $5 million dollars in 2013. (Contrast Devil's Lake and ND.)
In 2015, Amtrak should be talking to the locals in Wichita and Amarillo and Clovis and Albuquerque.
My worst case scenario is losing service on the existing route without getting service on the Amarillo route! If Amtrak takes this down to the wire by refusing to talk to the cities on the Transcon route, I'm worried that come 2016 we won't HAVE stations in Amarillo or Wichita.
I'm inclined to say that Amarillo and Wichita should aggressively contact Amtrak and BNSF regarding station design requirements -- even though Amtrak and BNSF don't want to talk to them -- and hire architects to make designs, because they *have* to get this started in early 2015 in order to have stations come 2016-2017.
I see that an Amarillo station is drawing support from as far as Dumas.
That says to me that people from Hutchinson will mostly be happy to drive to Wichita, and I notice that Boardman refers to those from "Dodge City to Raton and beyond", indicating that he also doesn't think of Hutchinson as losing service. If you count Hutchinson as served by a reroute, the advantages of the reroute become even *more* apparent; Hutchinson is by far the largest city on the existing route.
Assuming that people will drive from Hutchinson to Wichita; that Albuquerque will be served by the wye; that Santa Fe will be served by a a RailRunner connection; the other bypassed cities on the route really don't amount to much. The sum total metro area population of all of them is 126K. To be fair the towns on the current route do "punch above their weight". The ridership of the stops which would be fully bypassed is 46912.
But consider that Amarillo would get significantly better service hours than Flagstaff -- and Flagstaff, with a metro population of 136K, has a ridership of 40390 (though perhaps some of that is driving from Phoenix). Amarillo has a metro population of 250K. Also, Canyon, TX, just outside Amarillo, has West Texas A&M; colleges always punch above their weight and it might even be worth having a second station there.
Losing downtown Hutchinson service would be more than compensated for by gaining downtown Wichita service. Newton isn't even in the Wichita metro area; it's as far away from Wichita as Maricopa is from Phoenix. We all remember how much ridership Phoenix lost when the station moved to Maricopa. Wichita alone, with a metro area population of 623K and a city population of 385K, should generate 28K - 31K passengers even if it has ridership rates as bad as Topeka (which has very bad ridership rates and awful calling hours). Even if we make the unreasonably pessimistic assumption that all the ridership currently at Hutchinson and Newton is from Wichita or would refuse to drive to Wichita, this would still be an increase of over 8K passengers.
People will drive from Dumas to Amarillo. People will drive from Lubbock, which has a metro area population of 290K, to Amarillo. Clovis will gain yet more passengers (including those from Roswell and Carlsbad). If a station is placed in Woodward, people will drive from Dodge City to Woodward (it's the same distance as Lubbock to Amarillo.)
The improved ridership on the Transcon will dwarf the "Philmont" effect. (Philmont isn't even on the Raton Pass route; the Scouts have to take a bus anyway, so they can and will take the bus from Albuquerque.) Furthermore, except for Dodge City, the cities which would be bypassed are all *shrinking*. (Boy Scout membership is shrinking too.) Amtrak needs to follow the population, rather than spend hundreds of millions every year just to stay on the route with a shrinking population!
I am quite sure ridership will go up with a switch to the Transcon route, IF suitable stations are built. The Transcon route is just *better* -- ridership will *have* to go up. Given some investment, ridership could go up a *lot*.
There's just so much potential on the Transcon route -- and so little on the La Junta/Raton route. Sorry to the person living in Raton (population 6607), but since I live in a metro area with a population over 100K and we don't have connecting bus service to the nearest train station, I am far more sympathetic to the population of Amarillo than to you.
As for the people on the existing route? Get them some Thruway buses. I don't like bustitution, but it's better than nothing. Amtrak considered a bus to be good enough for the people on the Ocala route in Florida (which has much more population).
Amtrak could simply run a Thruway bus on the existing train route; it would probably even run faster than the train, since western Kansas's highways are completely uncongested. But Amtrak could probably do better than that. There's already a Greyhound route across Raton Pass, which extends from Albuquerque to Denver; better connecting schedules could be contracted. There's also already a Greyhound route from Lamar to Amarillo, and it's even timed right for connections to Chicago on a rerouted SW Chief. Dodge City, the only growing city on the route, deserves some good bus connections; probably the correct thing to do is to run one route Denver-Pueblo-Dodge City-Wichita with eastbound SW Chief connection, and another route Dodge City - Woodward - OKC with a westbound SW Chief connection.
Speaking of buses, a Thruway route from Amarillo to Lubbock to Midland/Odessa should also be a successful feeder to the Transcon route. Design it for eastbound connections. Allow people to stay overnight in Amarillo for the westbound connections (i.e. don't be stupid about the ticketing the way they are on California Thruway buses), for a little extra ridership.
My fear: Amtrak may, as "jis" says, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory if they fail to do the planning for the reroute. :help: The three nightmare scenarios: no LA-Chicago train at all; a train with no stops between Newton and Albuquerque (or even farther, if Amtrak idiotically fails to rebuild the wye in ABQ); a train running slower than molasses over a 30mph Raton Pass. If Amtrak does not get the money committed for the existing route by the end of 2014 (and it won't, it's not actually possible given the legislative schedules), then Amtrak *needs* to start working on the Transcon reroute ASAP on January 1st, 2015.
