Amtrak Downeaster Discussion Thread

[MEC407]

From CentralMaine.com:

WATERVILLE — City Councilor Sydney Mayhew says he will do everything in his power to see that passenger rail service returns to Waterville.
. . .
He drafted a resolution declaring the city’s intent to explore the benefits of passenger rail service and will seek the endorsement of fellow councilors at Tuesday night’s council meeting. Augusta councilors approved a similar resolution in December.
. . .
Meanwhile, Mayhew said Maine Rail Group Inc., a volunteer organization that seeks to promote awareness of the contribution railroads make to the state’s economy, will make a presentation Tuesday. He also invited Sustain Mid Maine and an official from the city of Augusta to Tuesday’s meeting. A state DOT official and representative of Northern New England Passenger Rail are scheduled to speak to the council April 21, he added.

Read the rest of the article at: https://www.centralmaine.com/2015/04/05 ... l-service/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Arlington]

If Maine is going to serve these little towns (Auburn/Lewiston, Augusta, Waterville, and even Bangor) that all have great access to I-95 or I-295, they're going to need an operator with a lot lower costs and more flexible (or just plain smaller) consists than Amtrak (a la Iowa Pacific), and in many cases, the state would best provide service with regular buses to Portland, or should figure out how to run DMUs, not Amtrak.

Amtrak is a great way to penetrate big, congested, expensive, high-wage cities at rush hour. Fill a big train with high-fare passengers and drop them at a station in the Central Business District. Chicago, Dearborn, NEC, Norfolk/Newport News, yes yes yes. Boston yes. Portland maybe. Beyond that, a proven "no". Amtrak is too pricey, and really, can't beat a bus running to small communities via stretches of uncongested interstates.

The farther out you get on the dangling ends of the network (like downstate Illinois and much of Indiana) the competitive edge vs car/bus/highway disappears and so does the ridership, and with it, the economic and political rationale.

Portland - Boston is a great train market, but that makes Portland a great intermodal hub, not the branching point for long thin low frequency, low-urgency tendrils into the uncongested hinterlands. You end up having to spend WAAAAy more money on rails (shared by very little other traffic), vs running a bus on a highway that shares its costs with lots of other traffic. Busy systems are easier to pay for. For Maine beyond Portland, that's highway.

[george matthews]

Soon, the need to avoid adding carbon dioxide to the air is going to make railways more attractive.

[Arlington]

Soon, the need to avoid adding carbon dioxide to the air is going to make railways more attractive.

Not in sparsely-populated Maine, it won't. The fuel efficiency of trains only "happens" when they run reasonably full. The DE north of Portland has an average of just 10 or 20 passengers {at BRU, and EDIT: 30, between POR and FRE} on a 298 seat train. These people--and indeed the next 20 years of passenger growth beyond POR--would produce less CO2 (both per trip and moreso per passenger) on a 55 seat intercity bus than on a 298 seat train.

In thin markets (such as any DE extension would serve) bus is far more fuel-efficient than a DE consist.

The bus requires no new infrastructure, less rolling stock, less fuel per trip and far less fuel per passenger, and is also way more labor efficient (1 driver vs, ~5? on a DE)

If Maine wants to show a commitment to mobility to these towns, a bus station is the smarter investment.

[MEC407]

From CentralMaine.com:

The council voted 6-0 to approve the resolution, which says the city expresses serious intent to explore the advantages, economic possibilities and stimulus that passenger rail would bring to the region.
. . .
Councilor Dana Bushee, D-Ward 6, said she was pretty sure no one in the room needed to be swayed about the issue. Signing the resolution, she said, is an important “baby step.” Councilor Rosemary Winslow, D-Ward 3, recalled taking trains when she was a child and her family would go to Lewiston or Portland to shop.

Mayor Nick Isgro had the last word on the proposal, saying, “Well, let’s pass it.”

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.centralmaine.com/2015/04/07/ ... esolution/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Cowford]

$100+ million project to serve a market currently demanding two bus departures daily except one on Wednesdays.

Ain't gonna happen.

[Arlington]

$100+ million project to serve a market currently demanding two bus departures daily except one on Wednesdays.
Ain't gonna happen.

Well, let's just say that you could build a bus station for $5m and perpetually endow the ops of a busline for $20m

[Rockingham Racer]

Concord Coach already stops at Colby College in Waterville at the Athletic Center, apparently. No real need for a $5 million bus station, I suppose. Trouble is: no service when there's no school. So how do the locals leave town when the kids are out?

[Arlington]

Concord Coach already stops at Colby College in Waterville at the Athletic Center, apparently. No real need for a $5 million bus station, I suppose. Trouble is: no service when there's no school. So how do the locals leave town when the kids are out?

A perfect example of a moment when a small subsidy from the State of Maine for the limited, specific purpose of ensuring the bus runs consistently, year round would be an obvious bargain. Tea partiers could even call it private enterprise and competitive bidding (its the kind of little lie they like when their gas taxes fail to pay for the roads they use). It could be structured as a charter-with-rev-share or as a guaranteed minimum revenue on those "off days", or you put a contract out to bid and the winner is the bus company that promises to provide service for the lowest annual subsidy.

The point is that buses are cheap, and if they pay for themselves on during the school year (and weekends the rest of the year) than you can provide year-round service just by subsidizing the school-break-weekdays: way cheaper than sponsoring a train and way way cheaper than spending on the order of $100m to upgrade the rail lines.

So with just a wave of the subsidy pen (and no capital costs) Maine can be in the business in a matter of weeks of ensuring year round transit from Portland PTC all along the I-95/295 "spine"
Orono/UMaine
Bangor
Waterville/Colby College
Augusta
Brunswick/Bowdoin
Freeport (which you probably could have gotten help for from the Chamber of Commerce & LL Bean)
Lewiston/Bates College
as well as
Rockland

The buses are there. They just need a gentle government subsidy (much gentler than all kinds of ROW work plus an operating subsidy for the DE) to ensure they run year round, and perhaps more times per day.

Dividing 300 seats worth of DE with, say, a staff of 6, produces a much more useful service if you split it into 6 buses, seating 55 people, with a staff of 1. Either you go to the same places 6 times per day (and make great connections to the DE at the PTC), or you fan out 3 little places (Rockland, Lewiston & Standish-Bridgton )2 times per day at ideal times (which cannot be done with a train at all).

Either more frequency (good for convenience) or more geo coverage (very expensive to do on train, but cheap to do by interstate/turnpike)

[FCM2829]

f Maine is going to serve these little towns (Auburn/Lewiston, Augusta, Waterville, and even Bangor) that all have great access to I-95 or I-295, they're going to need an operator with a lot lower costs and more flexible (or just plain smaller) consists than Amtrak (a la Iowa Pacific), and in many cases, the state would best provide service with regular buses to Portland, or should figure out how to run DMUs, not Amtrak.

Your logic is sound. The economics of the bus vs the train are not in question, the bus is the clear winner. However, have you ever taken the bus to Waterville? It dumps you off at a gas station about a mile from the center of Waterville. Ten paces off that bus, and you feel, in a word, marooned. Ditto for Augusta, which has an actual bus station at least a mile from town. Thankfully, there is a pretty sweet tractor supply outlet nearby.

I think what Waterville and many other towns/cities are searching for is an outcome which predates the decentralized system which serves the auto. Most towns and cities have a center, the origin of the town itself,usually where the railroad is, and then a separate utilitarian strip designed entirely for auto travel. Waterville actually has a pretty nice downtown, all things considered, and a centralizing city plan would be a way to grow this more 19th century walkable model. We handed the whole transportation system away lock, stock and barrel to the highways for the sake of convenience and freedom, but man, is it ugly. And when you are outside of a car, it makes no sense. I consider myself among the guilty, I only take the train or bus when it suits my lifestyle. But this way of life is being totally disdained and called into question by the next generation, who have great difficulty understanding why anyone would want to own an expensive personal cocoon and slowly turn the place that we live into So Orange, NJ.

A good place to start would be a bus station where the old train station used to be. When enough passengers fill the busses, maybe a train would be a good idea.

[Arlington]

^ That is how Maine needs to spend its next $20m in capital: 10 x $2m in town-center bus stations, ideally with a Dunkin Donuts as tenant and a train track out back. And it's next allotment of annual operating subsidy to extend slightly the buses it has to that terminal and ensure more operating days and frequencies. All fed into the DE at POR PTC hub and the PWM Airport and some onward to BOS.

[MEC407]

Speaking of buses: bus service will soon be returning to Wells (WEM) after a 10-year absence. Longtime followers of the Downeaster may recall that bus service began in Wells two or three years after the Downeaster began running, and only lasted for a year or two because not enough train riders were willing to switch to the bus.

Well, Greyhound has apparently decided to give it another try. They'll be serving Wells with two round trips per day. Southbound buses will stop at Porsmouth on their way to South Station, and northbound buses will stop in Portland and Brunswick.

Service begins April 15.

[jonnhrr]

I agree with most of the sentiments here concerning extensions to Waterville, although I would point out that at ~60,000 Lewiston/Auburn is hardly a "little town", not even counting the surrounding suburbs (Turner, Sabbattus, Lisbon, etc.).

Another perennial issue with extensions of the DE is that to go to Waterville and beyond from Brunswick requires reactivating the "Lower Road" currently out of service through Augusta. Besides this extra expense, this route bypasses L/A and the aforesaid 60K population. There doesn't seem to be a viable way to extend from Brunswick that hits L/A.

Jon

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

I agree with most of the sentiments here concerning extensions to Waterville, although I would point out that at ~60,000 Lewiston/Auburn is hardly a "little town", not even counting the surrounding suburbs (Turner, Sabbattus, Lisbon, etc.).

Another perennial issue with extensions of the DE is that to go to Waterville and beyond from Brunswick requires reactivating the "Lower Road" currently out of service through Augusta. Besides this extra expense, this route bypasses L/A and the aforesaid 60K population. There doesn't seem to be a viable way to extend from Brunswick that hits L/A.

Jon

There isn't. That ship sailed, and if they want forking service out of Portland to both Auburn and Brunswick that's where it's not only no-go if they don't have their own operator...but also the point where Amtrak tunes out on giving NNEPRA any more attention span and starts listening to less-scatterbrained state-sponsored offers for its equipment and ops instead. So in that sense if Amtrak is to remain in the picture at all north-of-Portland, it's Augusta (or, yes, Waterville via Augusta since that gets in the neighborhood) via Brunswick or bust. None of this branching Virginia Regionals at Yarmouth pile of foam. That's the put-up-or-shut-up at one's own peril line in the sand re: 3rd party ops vs. Amtrak ops.

[Cowford]

if they want forking service out of Portland

I wasn't quite sure how to read that!

And as mentioned before, any extension will certainly relegate Brunswick to a way station and call the layover facility into question.