Green Mountain RR commuter line article from Boston Globe

http://www.boston.com/news/local/vermon ... _canceled/

From the Boston Globe:

BURLINGTON, Vt. -- A plan for a privately run commuter rail line has been scrapped because there weren't enough advance tickets sold.

The run between Charlotte and Burlington initially had been scheduled to start operating Monday.

Bellows Falls-based Green Mountain Railroad Corp. in mid-April pitched the idea of running a commuter train along the same path as the defunct Champlain Flyer, which ran for more than two years until shutting down in March 2003 because of high expenses and low ridership.

Green Mountain Railroad planned to privately finance the new venture, called the Burlington Express, and needed to sell 300 season passes at $400 each to make the project work, said Gayle Bellows, passenger-department coordinator.

The company sold 40 passes.

Bellows said the low number shocked her, especially now that road construction is in full swing on U.S. 7, the main commuter artery between Burlington and points south. Train organizers had hoped the road-widening project and traffic congestion would push frustrated commuters to seek refuge on the railroad tracks, but that didn't happen.

"Burlington is maybe just not a location to support a train service," Bellows said. "Above all people are reluctant to give up their cars and the freedom that brings. They were resistant to committing to a whole season."

Rail service would have run through November.

Jenny Behr was among the 40 who signed up for passes. The Burlington woman plans to move in June to a Charlotte home near the Ferry Road train station. Her Burlington job is just a block from Union Station at the foot of Main Street. She was looking forward to a worry-free commute.

"I thought it was going to be the greatest thing ever," she said. "It would have been ridiculously convenient."

Many commuters don't work so close to the train tracks, though, and would have had to rely on other means of public transportation, such as buses, to reach their destinations, Behr said. Perhaps that's why so few tickets were sold, she said.

"For people to consider mass transportation, it would have to be absolutely convenient, but those systems won't be in place until more people are interested," she said. "It's a Catch-22."

Behr and the 39 others who signed up for the train will not be charged.

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Information from: The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com

Actually, that doesn't surprise me very much. A ridership survey done a couple of years ago indicated
that no more than 50-60 people would be likely to
ride a commuter train from Middlebury to Burlington, so the numbers shown here sound about right. It's
a good idea, but there just enough people to ride
it to make it work.

Wow, even with the ever expanding price of gas, most folks just can't seem to ween themselves off their automobiles... even for a commute. Perhaps commuter speeders would work? Kudos to Green Mountain for their forward thinking and if petrol gets to be $5.00 a gallon maybe there will be more enlightened people willing to climb aboard?

It seems like the real problem is that people still have a ways to go once they get off the train.

That is correct. There aren't that many employment
centers within walking distance of the station in Burlington and the General Dynamics stop in South
Burlington. If they had got the commuter train up to the IBM plant in Essex Junction a couple of years ago like they'd planned, I think it would have worked. Unfortunately, that was going to require major track work, so it didn't happen. Too bad.

When the Champlain Flyer was in operation, the management worked very hard to set up bus connections at Union Station, making the train worthwhile. I think that without some sign of support from the local government, running the train alone would be a tough sell. Besides, are people in Burlington really of the commuter mindset? You have to be "conditioned" like we are down here in New York to take trains to work. Maybe if the train started running and people saw what kind of service it was, more people would have signed up. Who knows, it's all what-if's at this point...