Cardinal discussion

This is happenning in Florida right now. Closer to the route of the Cardinal (and this topic) the Potomac Eagle already runs a scenic excursion operation. Others have considered actual passenger service to and from the Greenbrier resort.

gokeefe wrote:This is happenning in Florida right now.

You talking about Brightline?

Yes. And good infrastructure (FEC) is a big part of the reason why.

gokeefe wrote:This is happenning in Florida right now. Closer to the route of the Cardinal (and this topic) the Potomac Eagle already runs a scenic excursion operation. Others have considered actual passenger service to and from the Greenbrier resort.

Buckingham Branch could nearly operate such a service on its own (leased from CSX) rails, from CVS or even RVM to Clifton Forge. It's just the matter of the last forty(?) miles to WSS.

Isn't the problem, though, that with coal's decline, nobody is investing in rails through West Virginia? Instead, the investment is along routes that intermodal wants (which favor good interstates and bigger population/commercial/manufacturing centers)

Is this chart still accurate? If so, it suggests that the Cardinal is uniquely vulnerable to dis-investment by CSX (by contrast to Capitol Limited which follows CSX's National Gateway / National Corridor), and that CSX's investments in Indiana focus on IND to Kentucky, not CIN.
https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng ... k_Grey.png

Looks right to me. Only thing missing is the Patriot Corridor (Pan Am Railways/NS) but that's probably not considered a "major" route.

Arlington wrote:

David Benton wrote:You need to factor how many passengers ride the whole route, or a significant portion of it , to see the New river gorge in Daylight. I know I planned too, but slept in and missed that portion.

Ok, how many is that? NARP shows only 10% of passengers riding 900mi or more (CHI-WAS = 921mi), and CHI and WAS are big enough that maybe 80% of that 10% are not there for the scenery. Might be 2% of pax and 10% of revenue? Whatever the number of NRG-gawkers is, it'd pale compared to a 30% to 60% lift from CIN re-timing.

Westbound, if the train is on time, NRG is crossed at 7:30p, which puts it in dark all winter anyway, but yes, running 4hrs later would put it in the dark all year.
Eastbound, if the train is on time, NRG is crossed at 9am. Pushing the train 4 hours earlier would be 5am, which would be light in summer. Tourists like you might still promise to wake up, and also sleep in anyway.

The number of people in and to/from CIN is something like 10x to 20x the number who might be riding for the NRG.

Why else would you ride the Cardinal Washington-Chicago, when you can get there quicker on the Capitol ?

So you would agree that timing the train for "end to end" is not a priority?

Hmm: One stated reason for keeping the WAS-NYP segment of the Cardinal was that it was PHL's only one seat ride to CHI. I will check the route numbers, to see if there's evidence how important the "single-level" markets are.

I am saying I think the number of passengers that ride end to end because they want to see the scenery is higher than a few % . I would say its over 50 % , as why else would you ride this line ???
I have actually argued in the past that the Cardinal should be split into 2 day trains , but I put the splitting point as Huntington, not Cincinnati.

The ridership numbers don't bear that out, see the earlier referenced fact sheets. The train's ridership bases are out of Cincinnati (to Chicago and points between) and Charlottesville (to Washington).

I meant 50 % of the ridership end to end.

Ridership end-to-end s only 10% of all ridership. So instead of my final 2% estimate (2k per year), your hunch nets out to 5% (5k/year) riding end to end to see NRG.

Either way, 30k to 60k of latent demand at CIN, should totally dominate the 2k to 5k of gorge-gapers.

For reference 10% of the LSLs 350k ride NYP-CHI (like 35k pax per year), and 30% of the Capitol Ltd's 330k ride WAS-CHi (69k pax per year).

Versus the Cardinals.numbers of
WAS-CHI 5k.per year
PHL-CHI 2.3k.per year
NYP-CHI w.ek per year

East of Huntington , I would leave the schedule as is .
West , I would have ,
huntington depart 7.44 a.m, Chicago arrive 8.05 pm
Chicago depart 7.45p.m , huntington arrive 9.09p.m

I would be careful equating big ridership to a big city like CIN.But my Huntington proposal would cater for them to Chicago at least.

A careful forecast usually starts with city size. Southwest used to use it as the leading filter: did an airport serve a metro of 1m+?