Tadman wrote: ↑Thu Jun 20, 2024 9:59 pm
I'm not sure I buy that argument but assume for a moment it holds water, and the LD trains really did allow for viable non-NEC corridors. Why area we still running LD trains? When it takes 9 hours (scheduled) for a New Orleans to Houston run, every other day, wishing and hoping that Union Pacific gives you priority, that's just not a serious transportation option. When the only options to Cleveland put you there in the wee hours of the morning, that's not a serious transportation option.
If the LD trains did pave the way, great. Then lets move on to more serious and viable transportation options such as corridorizing those routes. The Sunset could be NOLA-Houston, Houston-San Antonio, Tucson-Phoenix, and Phoenix-LA. 3x/day each way. Dump the 3/week fleabag dog of the current train and move on. Pay market rate trackage rights and get the priority we so crave (did you know that Amtrak's trackage rights payments are minimal compared to their payroll?).
It's a win for the riders, for public policy, for the politicians, and the environment, and the host railroad. What is holdign us back???
But instead we're studying a 20 meandering sloths of long distance trains.
You know the reasons: Politics, and in many places the impossibility of serious corridor trains.
Take the proposed reinstatement of the North Coast Hiawatha for instance, the route with the most grassroots support of any in the proposals (which I think could work despite low populations on much of the west end, because of the Empire Builder's ridership history and its close proximity to Yellowstone, but that's beside the point). You can't "corridorize" that route as you tried doing because of another user's stated issues with population. The western transcon routes, proposed or existing apart from the Sunset Limited, don't have this as a real option for the entire route for them because of the very rural space in between. You wouldn't have the ability to split the SW Chief or EB. Probably not the CZ.
They need to exist until you've got the wide selection of regional routes like many of us want, you included, because these routes can only actually happen based on what the states want. Yes, there is a real world where we have the entire eastern US (and some states west of Illinois) and pretty much all of the major population centers in that portion of the country connected by corridor trains with several daily frequencies at several terminals, but that's not our current reality as I'm sure you're more than aware.
What's better? Cleveland being served by two LDR trains in the middle of the night? Or none at all? Even if the existing circumstances are most certainly not particularly useful in terms of transit in many places, is it better to just not serve these places at all? I say no.
Yes, LDR's provide low returns and are the primary reason amtrak has always failed to make money. Yes they are slow, yes they are often delayed and have so many other issues. But for the time being, they still need to exist, even if it's just to not disenfranchise states whose only current service is the LDR's.