Amtrak Downeaster Discussion Thread

If NNEPRA were to make a play for some of the money, what's still in their honey-do list? Did they get the siding in Yarmouth done that PAR was saying they needed? Do they have a shovel-ready design for the Mountain Junction wye, or would they need to spend the money to get that together rather than on construction? AFAIK the "baseline PAR mainline improvements" are still undesigned; when NNEPRA asked for a TIGER grant for them they were pursuing Track II which I believe meant funds for design and engineering.

Of course, as was just pointed out, these funds also require a state match and AFAIK the recent Transportation bond issue was essentially entirely committed to specific projects before it went to the voters; no "slush fund" in case things like this came up.

The bond did question did mention passenger rail. Is there a list available of the projects that the money will be spent on?

Here's a project that will consists of improvements to exit 5 at Thompson's Point.

http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/ind ... planholder" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

BM6569 wrote:The bond did question did mention passenger rail. Is there a list available of the projects that the money will be spent on?

Here's a project that will consists of improvements to exit 5 at Thompson's Point.

http://www.maine.gov/tools/whatsnew/ind ... planholder" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

According to the Portland Press Herald, other than improvements to the International Marine Terminal in Portland the project list is "to be determined".

The rest would fund to-be-determined multimodal projects, including the acquisition of property and capital improvements at the International Marine Terminal in Portland – specifically, to extend rail service directly to the terminal to serve Eimskip, an Icelandic company that moved its shipping hub to Portland earlier this year.

This is actually an interesting situation as it potentially puts NNEPRA in a position to come up with a small 20% match should some portion of the Iowa funds become available.

Thanks; I had seen something somewhere that implied the bond was fully committed; I'm glad that's not the case (at least not this early).

Coming in tomorrow morning's Press Herald: Downeaster expansion spurring ridership.

Amtrak’s Downeaster carried nearly 50 percent more passengers between Portland and Brunswick than rail officials expected in the first year of the service.

From the start of the service on Nov. 1, 2012, through Oct. 31, 2013, about 52,000 people rode the train between Brunswick and Portland, according to unofficial numbers, said Patricia Quinn, director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority.

That’s well above officials’ projection of 36,000 but consistent with the Downeaster’s steady growth in ridership since it started running between Portland and Boston 12 years ago.

The article even talks to one fellow who uses the Downeaster to commute from Brunswick to Portland and back!

Edit: I forgot to mention this last night.

BM6569 wrote:Here's a project that will consists of improvements to exit 5 at Thompson's Point.

Nice find! Those are actually the specs for the traffic improvements related to the ForeFront project (exclusive of the grade crossing upgrades which I assume will be PAR's to do).

"Amtrak’s Downeaster carried nearly 50 percent more passengers between Portland and Brunswick than rail officials expected in the first year of the service."

More lollipops and rainbows. Not true. And regardless, if Portland-east business is booming beyond all expectations, then Portland-west business is bleeding for some reason. The service has run short of budget on ridership (-1%) and revenue (-2.5%) May through September. And NNEPRA missed their September ridership and revenue targets by over 4% and 7%, respectively. What is interesting is that Sept 13 (with BRU service) is dead flat with Sept 12 (pre-BRU service) and YOY revenue actually declined.

Cowford wrote:More lollipops and rainbows. Not true. And regardless, if Portland-east business is booming beyond all expectations, then Portland-west business is bleeding for some reason. The service has run short of budget on ridership (-1%) and revenue (-2.5%) May through September. And NNEPRA missed their September ridership and revenue targets by over 4% and 7%, respectively. What is interesting is that Sept 13 (with BRU service) is dead flat with Sept 12 (pre-BRU service) and YOY revenue actually declined.

Were there construction disruptions over the summer time? For some reason I think not but its seems wise to ask. I know these might not amount to much. I'm pretty sure they did have disruptions in September but October and September kind of bleed together for me right now.

I would maintain that until we have a full year without disruptions and schedule changes then we don't have a really good baseline for YOY performance statistics. At least for the moment I think its reasonable enough to say "its more" or "its less" but making the leap to qualitative judgement ("its bad" or "its better") seems like a leap to me.

Should ridership south of Portland be higher? Absolutely. Are there mitigating factors? Possibly.

Yes, GO'K, you're quite right about some service disruptions in Sept. I looked back and saw a post about one on a weekend, so that certainly plays as a factor.

TrainRiders/NE was just implemented its FaceBook page. Check us out at: https;//www.facebook.com/trainridersnortheast

TRNE wrote:TrainRiders/NE was just implemented its FaceBook page. Check us out at: https;//www.facebook.com/trainridersnortheast

You mistyped that URL.

https://www.facebook.com/trainridersnortheast" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This should work.

I'm enjoying reading the stuff that has been posted on that page. Good news about the Exeter station. Here's an interesting tidbit that was posted:

"Did you know that during the last game of the World Series, the Downeaster had two trainsets running 6 coaches each (instead of 5) and the third had 5. The extra capacity was needed an appreciated. Well done to Amtrak's Downeaster manager."

BM6569 wrote:I'm enjoying reading the stuff that has been posted on that page. Good news about the Exeter station. Here's an interesting tidbit that was posted:

"Did you know that during the last game of the World Series, the Downeaster had two trainsets running 6 coaches each (instead of 5) and the third had 5. The extra capacity was needed an appreciated. Well done to Amtrak's Downeaster manager."

Wow. Where did the extra cars come from? I thought the third train set was using all the spares they had.

BM6569 wrote:I'm enjoying reading the stuff that has been posted on that page. Good news about the Exeter station. Here's an interesting tidbit that was posted:

"Did you know that during the last game of the World Series, the Downeaster had two trainsets running 6 coaches each (instead of 5) and the third had 5. The extra capacity was needed an appreciated. Well done to Amtrak's Downeaster manager."

I thought this was the best one by far....

TrainRiders/Northeast

October 29.

A bit of history - 51 years ago this evening, the State of Maine Express, train #82, departed Portland's Union Station at 9:30PM, due New York at 7:30AM.

As Maine's famous train prepared to depart on its last southbound trip, chains were threaded through the double handled doors of Union Station - (which were never equipped with locks because the station was open 24/7) and Padlocks had to be used to connect the chains together.

eastwind wrote:

BM6569 wrote:I'm enjoying reading the stuff that has been posted on that page. Good news about the Exeter station. Here's an interesting tidbit that was posted:

"Did you know that during the last game of the World Series, the Downeaster had two trainsets running 6 coaches each (instead of 5) and the third had 5. The extra capacity was needed an appreciated. Well done to Amtrak's Downeaster manager."

Wow. Where did the extra cars come from? I thought the third train set was using all the spares they had.

If it is the move I'm thinking of, Washington via Boston.

Amtrak’s Downeaster carried nearly 50 percent more passengers between Portland and Brunswick than rail officials expected in the first year of the service."

More lollipops and rainbows. Not true. And regardless, if Portland-east business is booming beyond all expectations, then Portland-west business is bleeding for some reason. The service has run short of budget on ridership (-1%) and revenue (-2.5%) May through September. And NNEPRA missed their September ridership and revenue targets by over 4% and 7%, respectively. What is interesting is that Sept 13 (with BRU service) is dead flat with Sept 12 (pre-BRU service) and YOY revenue actually declined.

Yeah, this number stuff can be confusing and misleading. One of the issues is that the people who do ridership estimation
tend to make sure they underestimate the actual numbers. That way, when the system is built, the administrators can
go "See, we did better than expectations!". However, it can get tricky. In locations where projects are having trouble
getting approval, they sometimes OVERSTATE them at the beginning in order to get $$$$ (see MBTA Greenbush). Consequently, it's always hard to be sure how honest the ridership projections are. In the end, the total numbers and actual cost per
passenger mile are the ones that really matter. In the former, I think the Brunswick expansion has done O.K.; not sure
about the latter.

More to that point, it's interesting to look at how ridership forecasts have quietly been brought down, while claims are made that ridership is exceeding expectations. Here's what I'm talking about: Amtrak's FY runs through Sept, so NNEPRA must have provided FY 2013 to Amtrak in mid-2012. Their orig forecast for July/Aug/Sept 2013 was 56,066/60,318/50,669. NNEPRA's FY 2014 forecast shows 55,697/58,473/46,409. In other words, this year NNEPRA brought down ridership expectations by 4%, or 6,500 riders in Q1, FY 2014. Actuals came in between the two, but the forecasting change begs the question: If ridership is exceeding expectations, why did NNEPRA REDUCE its forecast?

As info, NNEPRA has indeed budgeted what looks to be a 10-15% hit in ridership moving forward due to the new Amtrak accounting of monthly pass riders. (Counting actual riders rather than estimates.)

EDITED TO CORRECT A DATE