Cardinal discussion

[njtmnrrbuff]

It would be very nice if the Cardinal can operate 7 days a week. I'm sure that many of the towns that it serves has little or no intercity bus service and people could use the train to travel to doctor's appointments in other towns along the route as well as maybe for business conferences in either DC, Charlottesville, Charleston, etc. I believe that on the Buckingham Branch, speeds were raised between Orange and Charlottesville so hopefully that has helped bring down the travel time somewhat.

In the end, unless if you really need to be in Charlottesville way before dinnertime, you are better off taking the Northeast Regional or the Crescent.

Morgantown is an hour and twenty minutes from Pittsburgh. I'm not sure if somebody would want to involve the Cardinal for their trip to Morgantown as it is too far north of the Cardinal route.

[STrRedWolf]

The Capitol Limited connects Harpers to DC but so does MARC.

MARC only connects Martinsburg, Duffields, and Harpers Ferry in rush-hour/rush-direction to DC. To be clear, that's three trains in the morning to DC, three back from DC in the afternoon/evening, and NOTHING ELSE.

I hardly consider that a proper connection.

[njtmnrrbuff]

While it's good that there is something in terms of passenger rail connecting Harpers Ferry, Duffields, and Martinsburg, the service isn't convenient at all, unless if you work in any of the cities in Montgomery County or the District. In fact, the service is very infrequent to begin with. Even taking 30 to DC and 29 back in one day isn't possible, especially if 30 is running very late.This summer, the Capitol Limited did very poorly with punctuality. If you are traveling to DC on MARC from any of the West Virginia Stations, you also have to get up very early. I don't know if there are actually many daily DC commuters from West Virginia who use MARC from the West Virginia stops. From Brunswick eastward, that's a different ball game.

Back to the Cardinal-there might be somebody who lives in and around DC who might need to attend a business meeting in Charlottesville or Charleston. They will probably have to end up spending the night though but at least, it would help if there was a daily Cardinal option. While you can make a daytrip from DC to Charlottesville on the Cardinal, you might not have as long as you think you might.

With the strong possibility of having an additional NE Regional train to the Blue Ridge Mountains, time will tell whether a person might have more options to CVS for daytrips. The capacity in the station building needs to be expanded too, in order to have more trains stopping there.

[zuckie13]

So if Amtrak does some of these proposed reschedules (like leaving later on the Westbound trip), how much ridership is lost when folks who want to see the New River Gorge don't ride since the train will be there after dark?

While this train provides important connections for the cities it serves, it will suffer if you make it less appealing to the tourists.

[Tadman]

So if Amtrak does some of these proposed reschedules (like leaving later on the Westbound trip), how much ridership is lost when folks who want to see the New River Gorge don't ride since the train will be there after dark?

While this train provides important connections for the cities it serves, it will suffer if you make it less appealing to the tourists.

I think part of a rethink is to determine where the current and potential customer base is. If this train is about tourism, it's worth noting the Canadian and Rocky Mountaineer only run a few times per week. If its going to be about business or students, much more frequent service is required.

[mtuandrew]

If you want to serve both a tourist and a local market during daylight, the answer is to halve the train at Charleston (for the scenery and balanced time-to-destination) or Cincinnati (to give that large market connections to both NYP and CHI.) That could mean a virtual cut, like I suggested with my Slow Train River Cruise idea, an actual cut into two day trains.

To best answer the question of where/if to chop, both of you are correct that you need to know where most travelers from Cinci are going, and where most Charleston travelers go.

[njtmnrrbuff]

The Cardinal has great scenery but that is not the point in terms of whether to keep the train running in its timeslot or not. The point here is being able to transport people safely and quickly as possible although I'm not sure if speeds can be raised on a lot of the Cardinal route. I rode it in 2010 and from what I remember, it was a rather slow ride in WV and on a lot of the stretch of track between Dyer and Chicago. If the state and NS can do it all over, I'm sure that they would have built a connecting track from the NS Main onto the Buckingham Branch at CVS. That way from Culpepper to Charlottesville, it would be a faster ride than what it presently is on the Buckingham Branch between Orange and Charlottesville.

It seems that many people who use this train aren't traveling the entire route because it is obviously slower than taking the Capitol Limited. You probably have passengers traveling from any of the major population centers in the Northeast to stops in West Virginia, especially Charleston, and maybe stations in Kentucky. The people who are heading to Chicago on this train are probably boarding in CVS onward. I wouldn't be surprised if there aren't many people who use this train to any of the Ohio stations since it stops in the middle of the night and only operates a few days a week. There are probably many people who board the Cardinal in Indianapolis who are heading to a station north of there, especially Chicago. You still have to get up very early when boarding this train in Indianapolis when heading to Chicago as well as the Hoosier State. It's a slow ride from Indy to Chicago and the bus is faster and more convenient too.

[mtuandrew]

I’m gonna push back and say the scenery does matter as a ridership draw, and further that no amount of retiming will change the fact that Amtrak doesn’t have Sightseer lounges on the Cardinal anymore. Without Viewliner lounges or Siemens Viaggio coaches with larger windows, this route can’t effectively attract riders who would ride specifically because of the New River Gorge scenery.

[Arlington]

I would expect a complete reinvention of ridership if CIN was actually served when people were awake.

Metro Cincinnati is literally TEN TIMES the size (2.2M) of metro Charlottesville (0.22M). As much as I'm a huge fan of CVS's ability to punch above it's weight, even allowing for its wealth, students, and NEC affinities, PGH, CIN and CLT are the "regional capitals" of the Appalachians and all should have better day service than they do.

[njtmnrrbuff]

Cincinatti might need its own state sponsored service train running to Chicago by way of Indianapolis. Ohio, in general, has always been the forgotten stepchild of Amtrak-not just along the Cardinal route but the other long distance routes.

[mtuandrew]

Cincinnati could have all that and more, and I think it should, but the state government has been unwilling to subsidize an extended Hoosier State or the 3-C service proposed years ago to link Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. That isn’t Amtrak’s job to run for free, according to the PRIIA legislation. Ohio also can’t claim to be forgotten with three LD routes, because it doesn’t want to pay for daylight service.

[ryanov]

If the west coast cities wanted to go to New York or DC, they can take the LSL or CL. I highly doubt many of them want to go to Hinton, West Virginia.

On my one trip on the Cardinal last year, I got an unscheduled multiple hour stop in Hinton, WV due to track work.

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

Cincinnati could have all that and more, and I think it should, but the state government has been unwilling to subsidize an extended Hoosier State or the 3-C service proposed years ago to link Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. That isn’t Amtrak’s job to run for free, according to the PRIIA legislation. Ohio also can’t claim to be forgotten with three LD routes, because it doesn’t want to pay for daylight service.

But a lot of states get "free" LD service at better hours of the day than Ohio does and some of the states have way less population than Ohio does. In addition to you know what state, how about a good portion of Montana on the Empire Builder? Why is it Amtrak's job to run service between Wolf Point and Libby (wherever the heck those places are) for free but not Cleveland and Cincinnati (or for that matter, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, which now only has state supported service)?

[mtuandrew]

Montana’s in daylight because it happens to be, not because they have any special right to it. North Dakota and Idaho could pool funding in exchange for daylight from Fargo to Williston and in & around Sandpoint if they wanted to change Amtrak’s scheduling though?

And PHL has four and a half overnight LDs a day daily, as well as three longer-distance day trains and a raft of Northeast Regionals and Acelas. It has more Amtrak service than any station but NYP and you know it it just doesn’t have the one you want.

[njtmnrrbuff]

There are a few stations in Ohio that have the trains calling at them just before or as the morning rush hour is about to begin. Cleveland Station-48 stops there at 5:45. At Toledo Station, 49 departs there at 6:15 a.m. and 29 departs from there at 5:22 a.m. Train # 30 departs Toledo at 11:39 p.m. If you live in and around Toledo and need to go to business meetings in Chicago, it can be done, but you have to get up very early still. If you want to head to NYC on Amtrak from Cleveland, that can be done but you have to get up very early. In fact, I'm going to probably be spending some days around Cleveland and coming back, I'm going to take 48.