Cardinal discussion

I believe I posted this a while ago but this would be my ideal Cardinal schedule. I would say it's pretty close to Arlington's. I think if the Cardinal and Hoosier State are on separate schedules the HS should stay at the current schedule.

Oxford OH is the classic college-town-not-on-interstate that should have long since had a stop. Trains timed for their convenience (or CIN"s) should be well patronized. Miami University (Oxford OH) has enrollment of 18,000.

Philly Amtrak Fan wrote:I believe I posted this a while ago but this would be my ideal Cardinal schedule. I would say it's pretty close to Arlington's. I think if the Cardinal and Hoosier State are on separate schedules the HS should stay at the current schedule.

But all the great scenery is at night and all Chicago connections to major trains are missed, unless the idea is to get people to stay over and not do a same connection. But that's a tough one. I've been on the Cardinal pre and post Superliner era (right now we are in post with single level consist) and honestly, this train should not be one the NEC. It should originate and terminate in Washington DC. There's MAJOR turnover in DC. Going to NYC now is for convenience. If you want to continue on the NEC - make a connection, like what used to have to be done pre-Amtrak and post-Amtrak. There's an Acela Express and Northeast Regional around 6 am that would get in around 9 am that could easily connect with the Cardinal. The engine change timing is removed so the Cardinal could depart Washington DC at 6:30 am with various padding removed. A 6:30 departure from Washington DC would get the Cardinal into Cincy before midnight (i.e. around 11:30 ideally).

I might do a Jul-Aug Cardinal timed for scenery and mountain-leisure (and whatever Indiana's up to without daylight savings) and another for the rest of the year with an emphasis on strict "transportation" trips (where the endpoints matter more and the view matters less), with an emphasis on serving the college towns at good hours:
Lafayette IN (Purdue)
Indianapolis
Oxford OH (Miami U)
Cincinnati
Charlottesville VA (UVa)

The win has got to be serving people, not scenery.

jp1822 wrote:

Philly Amtrak Fan wrote:I believe I posted this a while ago but this would be my ideal Cardinal schedule. I would say it's pretty close to Arlington's. I think if the Cardinal and Hoosier State are on separate schedules the HS should stay at the current schedule.

But all the great scenery is at night and all Chicago connections to major trains are missed, unless the idea is to get people to stay over and not do a same connection. But that's a tough one. I've been on the Cardinal pre and post Superliner era (right now we are in post with single level consist) and honestly, this train should not be one the NEC. It should originate and terminate in Washington DC. There's MAJOR turnover in DC. Going to NYC now is for convenience. If you want to continue on the NEC - make a connection, like what used to have to be done pre-Amtrak and post-Amtrak. There's an Acela Express and Northeast Regional around 6 am that would get in around 9 am that could easily connect with the Cardinal. The engine change timing is removed so the Cardinal could depart Washington DC at 6:30 am with various padding removed. A 6:30 departure from Washington DC would get the Cardinal into Cincy before midnight (i.e. around 11:30 ideally).

From NEC to Chicago there's the LSL and CL. Indy under my plan would still have the Hoosier State to transfer to Chicago (maybe you could even leave later from Indy since the chances of delays are much less). And Cincy: would you rather get on a train at 1am in the morning to be able to transfer west or get on a train at 7am in the morning? Plus the earlier arrival into WAS/NYP allows you more leeway transfer south to Florida easier or gives you more time in DC or NY.

Arlington wrote:I might do a Jul-Aug Cardinal timed for scenery and mountain-leisure (and whatever Indiana's up to without daylight savings) and another for the rest of the year with an emphasis on strict "transportation" trips (where the endpoints matter more and the view matters less), with an emphasis on serving the college towns at good hours:
Lafayette IN (Purdue)
Indianapolis
Oxford OH (Miami U)
Cincinnati
Charlottesville VA (UVa)

I think that would be confusing. I can't think of any train that has a significantly different schedule for summer and for winter.

Arlington wrote:
The win has got to be serving people, not scenery.

Amen!

Taking some quotes from the Hoosier State discussion:

Station Aficionado wrote:

Arlington wrote:See a page or two back. CIN is 3x to 4x the size of all of West Virginia's Cardinal markets put together. Oxford would underscore OH's importance.

WV should get the 2am -4am shift, and CIN should get better timed. It either means shifting the Cardinal or running state sponsored service in a slot less geared to CHI LD connections. And frankly Indiana tourists Chicago day trippers are poorly served by the Hoosier's current "commuter train" schedule.

But here's the thing--WV (high cost and limited air service, older and poorer population) needs the train far more than Cincinnati ever will. That's a fact not lost on the powers that be, especially the WV congressional delegation. Assuming Amtrak survives, the Cardinal will remain timed to serve WV at reasonable hours. The solution for Cincy (as for Indy) is a separate Chicago-bound train with reasonable calling times. Perhaps with the on-going freight recession, there's now capacity in Mill Creek valley for another train.

Philly Amtrak Fan wrote:
A separate Chicago-bound train for Cincinnati/Indianapolis? Congress has flat out said they won't pay for it (750 miles). So what they are saying is Cincinnati only gets graveyard shift service to Chicago/New York while West Virginia gets good service to Chicago/New York and Pennsylvania between Pittsburgh and Philly get no service to Chicago.

This attitude is why Amtrak loses money. Cincinnati doesn't ride the Cardinal because it's inconvenient and West Virginia doesn't ride the Cardinal because few people live there. I'd be willing to bet the Cardinal is pretty empty between Cincinnati and Charlottesville every day it runs. So you have lower ridership/revenue which means more of a financial deficit which is passed on to us taxpayers.It shouldn't be about who needs the train more, it should be about who can fill the train more. If I have to pay for Amtrak, I want full trains not empty ones. The airlines and buses don't bypass the big cities to make sure Alderson has service. To me what Amtrak is doing is worse because it's our money. You want to serve the most people at the best times. The Cardinal not only doesn't do that but it takes money/equipment from other trains which could (and have been) more successful. I shouldn't have to pay taxes so that all five people who live in Thurmond can visit New York and Chicago whenever they want. Every time I suggest a state like Florida, Texas, or Ohio should have more trains it is met by "tell their state to pay" (whether from this board, other train boards, or Congress themselves if they refuse to change the schedule). Why not tell West Virginia to pay for trains? Why not tell North Dakota to pay for trains? If there is a role for the federal government for funding train travel, shouldn't it be to serve as many people as possible and not to make sure Montgomery, WV has trains?

Arlington wrote:If West Virginia needs a train that bad, they should be willing to board at odd hours.

gokeefe wrote:
The existence of the Cardinal has been a Congressional prerogative since Day 1. To interpret it as anything else is completely unfair to the highly competent railroad professionals who manage Amtrak on a day to day basis.

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/03/busin ... wanted=all" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hence my clever nickname for the Cardinal.

People think the Cardinal is all of a sudden going to be a more successful and popular train if it goes daily. They forget that the Cardinal was daily and was one of Amtrak's worst performing trains.

http://www.fra.dot.gov/eLib/details/L04177" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It is clear from the report the Cardinal was daily. Table 3-9 lists train miles for "Chicago-Washington" as 0.995 million while "Chicago-NYC/Wash" as 0.824 million. Either the Cardinal was daily or it ran a whole lot of miles to have more train miles than the Broadway Limited. Yet the Broadway had more than double the number of passenger miles (141.690M to 60.006M) and more than triple the revenue (9.776M to 3.039M). In fact, the Broadway ("Chicago-NYC/Wash") had more passenger miles and revenue than the Lake Shore ("Chicago-NYC/Boston") at the time (119.840M passenger miles and 7.420M revenue).

Table 3-11 lists the trains by "Density of Use (Passenger Miles Per Train Mile) FY 1977". "Chicago-Washington via Cincinnati"s PM/TM was 60. Only "Chicago-Laredo" was worse among LD trains (ironically it's still running as the Texas Eagle today). By contrast, "Chicago-New York City/Washington"s PM/TM was 172 and "Chicago-New York City/Boston" had a 142 PM/TM. This was when both trains were daily. In fact, several of the trains that were cut in 1979 had higher PM/TM than the Cardinal. They include "Chicago-Houston" (113), "Kansas City-New York/Washington" (89) and "Chicago-Florida" (74). Also worth noting "Los Angeles-New Orleans"'s PM/TM back then was 170 even though it was 3x/week (0.631M miles from Table 3-9).

Table 3-12 lists the trains by "Profit/(Loss) Per Passenger Mile FY 1977". Once again, "CHI-WAS via Cincinnati" is at the bottom of the LD trains, ranked 40th out of 41st overall, right ahead of "WAS-Cincinnati".

If you want to say train travel is higher today than 40 years ago and the Cardinal would be more successful today than it was 40 years ago, maybe those other trains would be more successful if they were still running today (most other than the Broadway probably wouldn't be as successful today because the communities aren't used to train travel and some stations would have to be rebuilt, driving up the cost). If Amtrak had chosen which trains to cut by performance, the Cardinal would've been cut a long time ago (and was cut before Byrd demanded it be brought back).

I do realize he's probably a bad person to quote based on what happened since then but one Senator said "''I hope that this Senate is not going to get into the business of seeing who has the most power and the most clout and saying we shall designate certain routes to run regardless of the fact they do not meet the criteria we have set down.''

Making the Cardinal daily may improve the train's performance (it would be hard to make it worse) but it isn't going to be a magic elixir that's going to put it at the level of the CL and LSL. As long as nobody lives along the route and nobody wants to visit anywhere along the route, the train is still going to be empty.

Arlington wrote:I might do a Jul-Aug Cardinal timed for scenery and mountain-leisure (and whatever Indiana's up to without daylight savings) ...

Indiana has had Daylight Saving Time statewide since 2006.

Station Aficionado wrote:Amtrak will need all the friends it can get going forward, and if that means prioritizing the needs of old folks in Charleston over students in Oxford, OH, so be it. And, beyond the politics, it just may be that there is a stronger social case for giving better service to these particular old folks rather than the Miami U. undergrads.

What about the social case for old folks in Cincinnati metro, who 3-to-1 outnumber the old folks of West Virginia (and also about 20% outnumber those in Indianapolis)?

They have access to excellent medical care where they are, along with plentiful, and relatively cheap, air service in both cities.

I'm certainly not opposed to better rail service for Cincinnati and Indianapolis. What I am I against is a Hunger Games competition for the current Amtrak services, that takes no account of fact that the current services do play a meaningful role for the communities where they are, or the particular challenges facing some of those communities.

Unfortunately the competition is a reality assuming Amtrak's current budget and the complete lack of interest to fund any expansions. Congress basically said anything under 750 miles is states' responsibilities and I highly doubt Amtrak is starting any new long distance routes anytime soon. The last LD train started I believe was the Auto Train and before that was the Capitol Limited (which essentially took the Broadway Limited's place so it was more of a reroute than a new train).

My argument is with Amtrak's limited budget how can we best use that equipment to maximize ridership and revenue with that budget? You can worry about the passengers that will lose their train(s) but what about those who lost their trains like Nashville, Louisville, or Columbus or never had trains or only have graveyard shift service by Cincinnati? Everyone can't have trains. So it's always going to be a competition for the federal budget, even if you increase the budget. If you can figure out how to make sure everyone in America can have Amtrak service within 25 miles of them without doubling our income or other taxes then go right ahead. Otherwise, the "Hunger Games" is a reality. With the same money you can either keep the status quo or think about how to improve service. I'd like to consider trying to improve over accepting the status quo.

Improve needs to be more than a desire to make it better for oneself. Especially with the competition between cities that would be affected by any change.

Perhaps the best view would come from a person further away from the issue ... not vested in current service or desiring a self-serving change. Unfortunately those people have their own pet projects and they may want any current operating budget or improvement money to go to their part of the country. When the whole country is competing for money finding a winner requires compromise.

Station Aficionado wrote:[Old people in CIN metro or IND] have access to excellent medical care where they are, along with plentiful, and relatively cheap, air service in both cities.

Which people or what percent of Cardinal's 2015 West Virginia ridership of 37,454were old sick West Virginians accessing healthcare?

[EDIT Actually, answer that for the 32,347 non-WSS Cardinal WV ridership, since WSS's 5,107 passengers would still have pretty good timing if the whole train were re-timed for better CIN service.]

How much of the Cardinal's operating costs of $24m would you assign, based on route-hours or route-miles to West Virginia service?

Speaking of Oxford. it looks like it will be a reality.

Arlington wrote: Which people or what percent of Cardinal's 2015 West Virginia ridership of 37,454were old sick West Virginians accessing healthcare?

[EDIT Actually, answer that for the 32,347 non-WSS Cardinal WV ridership, since WSS's 5,107 passengers would still have pretty good timing if the whole train were re-timed for better CIN service.]

How much of the Cardinal's operating costs of $24m would you assign, based on route-hours or route-miles to West Virginia service?

CHI-NYP on Cardinal route: 27 hr, 13 min
Huntington to White Sulphur Springs: 4 hr, 23 min

CHI-NYP: 1147 miles
Huntington to White Sulphur Springs: 668 - 472 = 196 miles

That would be about 16% time wise and 17% distance wise.

I counted 32 total stops along the Cardinal and 8 (1/4) of them are in West Virginia. The eight stops are more than any other state. Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York each have just one stop while New Jersey has just two.

If you want to consider costs, keep in mind that every WV stop along the route is only served by the Cardinal so the entire cost to run each of those stops/stations can be fully attributed to the route. By contrast, NYP, CHI, PHL, WAS, and others have many routes that serve them so the cost of those stations can be split among multiple routes.

20 stations have no other train service than the Cardinal/Hoosier State (5 are served by the Hoosier State).
Six stations are north of DC. (All with other Amtrak services, of course.)