Rockingham Racer wrote:Greg Moore wrote:njt/mnrrbuff wrote:Yes, but I am not sure about how many car rental facilities are in the immediate area of Hudson Station. Looking at a map of the Western Mass and the Hudson Valley near Albany, it looks like from Pittsfield to Hudson, that takes the same amount of driving travel time that it does to drive to Rensellaer. If you are coming up from NYC or the Lower Hudson Valley, then Hudson would be the best option, assuming that you can rent a car or get a ride. If you are coming from Buffalo or Rochester, then getting off in Rensellaer is your best bet since it it is more direct. The issue with getting off at Hudson if you are coming from western Upstate NY is that it is a longer ride on the train to get to your destination.
Exactly. The goal appears to be a single-seat ride to Pittsfield where you can have Lyft, Uber, local bus or friends pick you up. Sometimes it's more about convenience than total time.
I didn't say that it was. I said "If it was..."
And if you're coming in from the west, obviously you'd change trains at A/R or take the Lake Shore straight through. Hertz and Enterprise are in Hudson. Enterprise isn't open there on Sat/Sun, so that wouldn't work too well, given the proposed weekend-only schedule for the train. I don't know if Hertz would come and get you or not.
I understand the goal of being a one-seat ride. And the folks in Pittfield are quite attuned to having options to continue the journey to a final destination once the train gets there. It's too bad they don't have the money to build an east leg of the wye at Castleton. That would cut at least two hours off the trip.
Since the goal is to bring in folks from NYC, Mass really doesn't care about folks coming from the West.
And building the wye (which is discussed in the plans) hardly drops two hours.
The current plan (option 1A) has a train leaving NYP at 2:20PM and arriving at Pittsfield at 6:10PM. Just under 4 hours. 3:40-3:50 in the plan
Option 2 is listed at taking 3:30-3:40. A savings of 10 minutes.
In sounds counter-intuitive, but much more of the track is 40mph.
This would also require a new trainset (which given Amtrak's current situation is not available I'm betting) and capital costs are estimated at $17.2-$33.5M vs $0 for the planned option.
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