MTA Alternative to Amtrak's Empire Corridor Service

Since driving is part of the equation, drive to the Ramsey-Route 17 station in New Jersey. My wife and I drive from Albany NY. The off-peak parking is $2.00 and NJT is about $28.00 r/t (for 2) to Penn Station. Besides that, drive the car to almost an empty tank and you can fill up on cheap NJ gas. Sometimes prices are 40 cents a gallon cheaper in NJ which will pay for part of the trip.

The worst headway during the week is every half hour. $200 for two people to NYC is insane.

Bob K

Slightly off-topic, but when my wife and I go to NYC for a weekend, we drive from Providence to New Haven and use Metro North. Although the
NH Division cars are decrepit, it's worthwhile because we get into GCT. Also, the trip back is better because Amtrak's service from Penn Station to New England is almost invariably late.

I knew quite a few people, when heading up to points in New England (Block Island, the Cape, etc), who would take MNRR as far as New Haven and then take Amtrak to lower the cost.

Since I moved to the Syracuse area eleven years ago, I've traveled to NYC via car and Metro-North more than ten times. I usually park the car at Croton-Harmon - if I time it right, it's a five-hour trip including a coffee and bathroom break enroute.

The big attraction for me is the ability to set my own schedule using M-N's hourly (or better) service on the Hudson Line. I can leave home at 4:00 a.m. and be in the city by 9:30. On the way home, I can stay in the city as late as 7:00 p.m. and still be home a little after midnight. If I relied on Amtrak, I couldn't begin my southbound trip until 7:05 a.m. (9:00 a.m. on weekends) and the latest northbound departure each day is the Lake Shore at 3:45 p.m.

Cost-wise, I've crunched the numbers in the past and it wasn't close even for one passenger, never mind two or three. My calculations included not only gas and tolls but also an incremental additional expense to account for the additional wear on the oil system, tires and brakes.

JD

The direction Amtrak has taken in the last decade certainly is dissapointing. In years gone by, the situation was much different. Amtrak still has a lot of great front-line employees. It's just too bad that Amtrak's beltway management seems to have lost touch with what it means to provide a meaningful service.

I don't buy the lack of funding thing at all. It does not cost that much money to address the problems that are being discussed on this thread.

Why, for example, must the last train to upstate New York be at 3:45 p.m.?

Why also, for example, are the trains less than hourly during the rush hour coming home, but hourly at other off peak times during the day?

Why such complicated schedules on the Empire Corridor? In a corridor situation, everything should be done to make the schedule as simple to follow as possible.

How much does it cost to clean the windows on a train?

It would seem like the reservation policy would actually cost money to implement. (Of course, Amtrak makes no real effort to implement the policy in any meaningful way.)

In this day-and-age, people just won't put up with Amtrak's beltway style of management. I am just amazed at what I see at the airports these days. The levels of efficiency are just so much higher than anything that Amtrak is doing. Same goes for the Metro-North. You look around, and things just make sense. In fact, often they impress.

At Amtrak, very little even makes sense anymore. Virtually nothing impresses.

L'mont wrote:Penn is NOT more conveniant to anything. Wall St. is easily reached via the 4 or 5 on the Lexington Ave line and there are far more offices within walking distance of GCT than Penn. GCT is in the heart of midtown. If you do have to get to the west side, the difference between Penn and GCT is only a 5 minute shuttle ride appart.

That, I disagree with. Penn is conveinent if you're heading in to NJ on NJ Transit or to some other point with Amtrak. There's no way to get from Penn to GCT (by rail) without taking two trains, which is usually why I walk. When I travel to DC on the Metroliner, I don't bother with the subway unless it is raining.

NY is long overdue to either work with Amtrak to deliver services cheaper and on a timetable that makes sense, or form its own rail authority to provide the service -- but that's another topic.

Since this discusion was geared towards travelling to NYC on MNRR vs. Amtrak I was limiting the advantages to only that. If you are travelling to NY for business or pleasure it's much more conveniant to arrive at 42nd and Park than 33rd and 7th.

Penn certainly has more options interms of travel outside the city, but we're not taking that into account here.

L'mont wrote:Since this discusion was geared towards travelling to NYC on MNRR vs. Amtrak I was limiting the advantages to only that. If you are travelling to NY for business or pleasure it's much more conveniant to arrive at 42nd and Park than 33rd and 7th.

Penn certainly has more options interms of travel outside the city, but we're not taking that into account here.

I thought we were looking at MNR vs. Amtrak for pleasure/occasional trips into NYC. What you do when you get here is what determines which station/terminal better suits your itinerary. I don’t think you could make a blanket statement that GCT is simply “more convenient” – the journey itself makes that determination for you. Midtown and Downtown are both served well by both facilities.

let's keep in mind that these disparate systems are the remnants of so many fallen flags. Go back to the New Haven, and I remember stories (not sure of the era) that they wanted to stop service from some point like Larchmont. Can you say NYW&B? Each state, protecting their political interests by protecting their constituencies, clamored for public takeovers. And so we have or had Conrail, the MTA and it's subs, NJT, PA, Amtrak, et al. With the exception of Amtrak (Inter-City), their primary destination was NYC. Now, with sprawl, they need to adapt. People living in Hicksville are working in Stamford, people in Stamford are working in Jersey. It's crazy.

Naturally, we all want a convenient way to get from point A to point B for ourselves. The system could be a lot better, no doubt. With so many agencies only worried about serving their core passengers, they will not coordinate unless there is something in it for them. Amtrak can't get slots on the Water Level Route in rush hour because MNRR won't give them up. Good luck to CDOT trying to get slots on Hell Gate or Hartford, or expanding service on SLE. And there's a price to pay for Amtrak at Shell interlocking.

Anyway, the Northeast needs a regional transit agency - maybe not along the lines of what the Bush admin wants to do with Amtrak, but something that would stretch from No. VA to Portland, ME. But I wouldn't hold your breath.

Sarge wrote:Naturally, we all want a convenient way to get from point A to point B for ourselves. The system could be a lot better, no doubt. With so many agencies only worried about serving their core passengers, they will not coordinate unless there is something in it for them. Amtrak can't get slots on the Water Level Route in rush hour because MNRR won't give them up. Good luck to CDOT trying to get slots on Hell Gate or Hartford, or expanding service on SLE. And there's a price to pay for Amtrak at Shell interlocking.

Where did you get these ideas? CDOT (or MNR, really) could probably get slots on Hell Gate, but there's the little problem of nowhere to go once you get to the other side. As for Amtrak wanting more slots to show up late for, this is the first I've ever heard or read of them wanting more.

I see no need to replace a perfectly good state bureaucracy with a potentially disasterous multi-state bureaucracy.

If the goal is to save Amtrak without raising prices through the roof, then we need to re-organize Amtrak and find a national funding source to cover their losses. I'd debate any hare-brained scheme, including letting Amtrak own the rails and infastructure and letting private companies run the trains.

L'mont wrote:Since this discusion was geared towards travelling to NYC on MNRR vs. Amtrak I was limiting the advantages to only that. If you are travelling to NY for business or pleasure it's much more conveniant to arrive at 42nd and Park than 33rd and 7th.

Penn certainly has more options interms of travel outside the city, but we're not taking that into account here.

Exactly. As I mentioned above, when Amtrak apologists claim that Penn is "better" for downtown they're basically lying. As we both mentioned, the 4-5-6 is fast and reliable; the Shuttle and 7 will bring you to the West Side.

GCT is better for midtown, and even to come downtown it's faster in the morning for me to exit at 48th&Park and take a cab than schlep through Penn Station (ugh) and use the A-C-E. That way I arrive in comfort at my office in Tribeca rather than be pissed off and hassled by using the sewer (sorry, subway) from Penn.

Lets not forget that Metro North also serves Penn (via NJT and Secaucus Junction for West of Hudson Service)

Just a few comparisons of Pricing and schedules for MNRR/Amtrak for a weekend trip

Amtrak (Poughkeepsie-NYP)
8:01am dep 9:25am arr trip time 84 minutes
$62 r/t

Metro North Hudson Line (Beacon-GCT)
7:50am dep 9:21 arr trip time 91 min
$23 r/t

Metro North PJ Line (Salisbury Mills-Penn)
8:10am dep 9:38 arr trip time 88 min
$17.75 r/t

PJ is the cheapest, but the trip time is an abberation, most PJ trips take 120 min on the weekends this particualr trip is a MNRR Express.

Here in Illinois, the state underwrites AMTRAK on routes to St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit and other locations. In fact additional trains have been added this Fall because of their popularity through rising passenger counts.

My understanding is that NYS does not contribute to AMTRAK funding. Maybe it is time for them to do it and address some of the problems addressed in this forum.

Regards, Jerry

You can add California, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Oregon to the list of states with directly subsidized corridor services. It seems the solution is in the New York State legislature rather than in Amtrak management, which is doing the logical thing.

New York State provides Amtrak with significant subsidies. Unfortunately, however, the funding has always been implemented in partnership with Amtrak, and as a result, the outcomes have too often been disaterous.

For example, after the State spent millions on a new train station in Rensselaer, Amtrak discontiued its morning services out of Schenectady. Previously, the state had spent millions upgrading the track between Albany and Schenectady to allow 110 mph operation and thereby extending the Empire Corridor to the Mohawk Valley. Now, with no early morning service out of Schenectady, the entire Capital District and Mohawk Valley must drive to Rennselaer, where they must also pay for parking. Moreover, in recent years, Amtrak has raised its fares on the Empire Corridor to increasingly outragous levels. Wow, the taxpayers really got their money's worth with that project.

Meanwhile, in a joint venture with Amtrak, the State of New York spent tens of millions of dollars rebuilding the turboliners, only to have Amtrak reject them upon delivery. For that project, all the citizens of New York got was a big fat lawsuit.

I have no problem with New York continuing its long tradition of subsidizing intercity passenger rail rail service, but I think New York State needs to take over the operation of the Empire Corridor from Amtrak and turn it over to the Metro-North. Presently, State Senator Bruno's task force is considering the purchase of a special fleet of equipment designated for service on the Empire Corridor. I hope the task force has the presence of mind to insist on a new operator for the service, because Amtrak's beltway management has proven itself utterly unfit for the job.