Tadman wrote: ↑Mon Jan 22, 2024 9:47 am
Wigwag, do you think there is something else wrong with the operation? I make a lot of posts about service levels, timing/scheduling, market rate trackage rights... I don't doubt your assessment but find it hard to believe that in such an environmentally conscious area with a big university, they have such poor ridership. Should the schedules be moved? Fares adjusted for students, state workers, professors? Equipment adjusted to carry bikes and skateboards, maybe camping gear? A dedicated bus from PUS to PDX for out-of-towners?
The fares are already dirt cheap and literally giving away the service isn't attracting ridership. The State's own employees, heavily environmentalist/Democrats, are still preferring by leaps and bounds to use E-plated SUVs for "business" (a.k.a. taxpayer funded) travel over the environmental friendliness and convenience of Amtrak Cascades. Transit advocates and planners overwhelmingly choose I-5 over the scenery and comfortable seats of Amtrak Cascades. College students by huge margins love Subaru and Toyota, not Siemens and Talgo.
What's wrong with Amtrak Cascades?
Two pitiful schedules, horrifically timed.
A lack of meaningful connections. Piss-poor intercity bus service. Piss-poor local bus service. (You basically need a car at either end of your Amtrak journey, so why not just have the car?) Traffic is a non-issue 99.9% of the time in the Willamette Valley (unless you decide to take Oregon 99E and get stuck behind a tractor.) The inconvenience of having to make a reservation and buy tickets ahead of time, rather than board and pay like a bus. Believe it or not, the majority of Amtrak's riders DO NOT connect to or from TriMet's MAX light rail, Portland Streetcar or WES Commuter Rail. And when you need to get to Happy Valley, Tigard, McMinnville, Canby, Lebanon or Junction City - Amtrak absolutely, positively CAN NOT help you. Amtrak works, if you're in the tiny, tiny, tiny population of people within walking distance to an Amtrak station. For the other 4 million Oregon residents? They overwhelmingly drive. Because they don't live their entire existence within 2,000 feet of 800 N.W. 6th Avenue, Portland; 1757 Washington Street, Oregon City; 500 13th Street SE, Salem; 110 SW 10th Avenue, Albany or 433 Willamette Street, Eugene. And if you're a student of Western Oregon University, Linfield University, Pacific University, George Fox University, Reed College, University of Portland, Western University of Health Sciences? Yeah, Amtrak don't serve you, either.