Long/Medium Distance Maine Amtrak Service

To nudge us back to topic, I admit I am losing track of what, precisely, the purpose of a direct train from Maine to points beyond Boston is.

Is it to connect to the smaller cities of inland New England? How big of a market is that? I don't see how however many passengers would merit a direct train, no matter which routing you take. More service on the Inland Route is certainly needed, but that's not specifically Maine's problem.

Is it to avoid a rotten transfer experience in Boston? Then can we make the transfer more pleasant for less money? I think a direct bus between North and South Stations, meeting every Downeaster in both directions, would be a nice touch. The wide streets of the Surface Artery provides most of the route and is bus-friendly; the streets around North Station could stand to be better about bus interfaces. That would be duplicative of the Orange Line, to be sure, but it would be friendlier to intercity passengers with luggage.

Is it to link Maine to New York City (and points beyond)? Then in the presence of a handful of existing possible itineraries involving changing in Boston and daylight travel, as well as the new bus option which is faster even assuming horrific traffic in NYC, the thing that makes sense is to go overnight. Yes, you sacrifice a large percentage of your potential traffic at intermediate points, but that's not the markets where a direct train was going to live or die anyway. (There are also those who will appreciate an arrival into NYP from the north after 67 and before 2151; that will draw some attention from throughout New England.) If the arrival time into NYP is early enough, it can even create connection opportunities to the Carolinian and the Maple Leaf, and even the Cardinal if they ever retime the NEC portion, in addition to the obvious onward connections to PHL and WAS.

The direct one seat ride to New York is attractive. But even more so the access to points in West Boston, e.g. Worcester and also Providence. If NNEPRA is running the train any excess revenues from service beyond Providence would accrue to them and could be used to support operations further to the north where ridership will be lighter. The ability of passengers originating in New Hampshire to get to points West of Boston could prove to be an exceptionally attractive aspect of this service which, yet again, would help support operations further to the north.

gokeefe wrote:The direct one seat ride to New York is attractive. But even more so the access to points in West Boston, e.g. Worcester and also Providence. If NNEPRA is running the train any excess revenues from service beyond Providence would accrue to them and could be used to support operations further to the north where ridership will be lighter. The ability of passengers originating in New Hampshire to get to points West of Boston could prove to be an exceptionally attractive aspect of this service which, yet again, would help support operations further to the north.

You're assuming there would be excess revenues, that's not a guaranteed result. Additionally you're forgetting that increasing the train runs, either further north or south, will require more train sets, which Amtrak charges sufficiently for that west coast states, midwestern states, and North Carolina wish to avoid by providing their own rolling stock. Increasing costs will make it even less likely increasing the runs will provide excess revenues.

The purpose of a direct one-seat is that it can serve a weekender's market out of NYC. The Adirondack, Ethan Allen, and Vermonter do good and increasing business from that, and New Yorkers of the right-and-proper tax bracket are looking ever further-afield for ways to get somewhere a little more rustic and/or different because of the old "nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded!" complaints with the weekender destinations close to home. From a starting point of attracting the weekenders, establishing such a route can eventually start attracting a *trace* share of real business travelers between NYC and Portland, planting a seed that can grow over time. Vermont has worked that seed-planting pretty well with the Vermonter and EAE, and Portland is a much bigger metro area than anything top-to-bottom in VT...ergo, there's something to be said for establishing a one-a-day in advance and letting it mature for a solid couple decades like the Vermonter did. For advance starts such an NYC-Portland route has the advantage of so many connect-the-dots Amtrak route overlap between NYC and Portland being actively improved that a rate of investment in better speeds on existing routes connects the dots nicely and gives them a starting point that can live and grow inside tight niche margins. Like the Vermonter and EAE got themselves worked into niches that now...are starting to look like bona fide strategic growers.

Where NNEPRA's overactive imagination and objective reality diverge is in the skip-Boston part. There is no funding mechanism for the Worcester-Lowell-Andover detour, it is on Amtrak-unqualified track that Amtrak will have zero interest in running, and Massachusetts' own self-interest will not allow them to fund anything that skips Boston in any way. As has also been objectively proven thread-bump after thread-bump after thread-bump no matter how many times someone suggests and/or doubles-down on the otherwise, it's also an inferior Worcester-Portland travel time to go on that bypass route upgraded to its tippy-top running shape vs. plowing straight into Allston on the Inland Route, switching onto the Grand Junction Branch, and reversing on the North Station platforms. It's either several pages back in this thread or on another related thread, but the schedule 'convenience' myth that NNEPRA keeps repeating has been utterly and totally debunked.


In theory if the signal-to-noise around this proposal got cleaned up a bit, you'd be able to take a starting point of a future of regular Inland Route NE Regionals service running over a sped-up New Haven Line, sped-up Springfield Line, and sped-up (to best of ability, but mainly inside of MBTA territory) B&A. Then bootstrap it onto the previous MBTA study about running select Worcester Line trains over the Grand Junction Branch (which Amtrak has been qualified to operate since the DE's debut in 2001), with associated track upgrades, so both the T and Amtrak gain revenue slots to North Station over the B&A. Then keep on keeping on streamlining the DE physical plant and schedule reliability out to Portland. And have a 'build' that nets a new NYC-POR routing that requires very little capital expenditure, and just some ops cherry-picking. i.e. A semi-express, NYC-originating train lugging a Viewbag and maybe an extra coach or two scaled to demand appropriates a conventional Inland Regional slot, serves some of that existing audience overlap, then turns into a more or less conventional Downeaster slot at BON and serves some of that existing audience overlap. All while the churn-thru en route carves out the space to serve the unique weekender audience. Costs above-and-beyond what you'd normally have with an extra any-old-Inland slot running to South Station and a separate any-old-Downeaster slot running out of North Station boil down to basically the cost of the Viewbag and however many extra coaches that entails. In other words: negligible, and enough to pry open the margins from Day 1 where just that slice of Greater NYC weekender audience can make it at break-even or pocket-change profit, and plant that seed that'll start paying off with more business traveler traffic in a couple decades. The near total ops-only bootstrap on existing well-worn AMTK physical plant is the means for making it happen.


Where NNEPRA diverges from that keep-it-simple scenario is in overestimating the size of Maine--particularly (and habitually) the size of north-of-Portland demographics--, the proportional size of this weekender audience willing to travel that far out of NYC, and the proportional overcrowding of the traditional Boston ridership in the middle. Such that it has itself resolutely convinced that Boston must...be...skipped or else their overestimated NYC audience is going to be scared off. As well as resolutely convincing itself that the bypass is faster, when it's not. The train doesn't work within the demographic margins any which way if it is not a rigid, ops-only bootstrap onto existing territory where the "above-and-beyond" is literally just paying for the baggage car, +1-2 extra coaches, and the internal + crew mechanics of running it as one unified schedule instead of 2 halves. Once many route miles of new capital expenditures come on, it exceeds what the true NYC-Portland ridership can feasibly pay for from within its niche. As well as simply incurring incurring too many jurisdictional quandries like "Who pays for track upgrades in Massachusetts that Massachusetts won't pay for because it bypasses too much Massachusetts ridership?" Note how this diverges from the attitude Vermont has with the Vermonter, where they are fully banking on the fact that 'their' schedule gets treated like nothing but a vanilla Springfield Regional by 90% of the patrons until bleed-thru territory up I-91 in Connecticut starts picking up tangible tix-holders with Vermont-on-brain...culminating in a complete over-churn by Springfield. That's how they get a Vermont train at all, so...the more D.C.-New Haven-Springfield cattle, the better, if that's what gives them their opening in margins little VTrans can work in. NNEPRA, being less experienced at this and attempting its first foray at a real long(er)-distance train, is instead threatened by this same operating reality Vermont embraces as a 'feature' and has convinced itself that Worcester is some red line in the sand where the route loses the plot as a Mainer-specific train if it veers one milepost closer to Boston. The comparison with their most similar by far New England neighbor with AMTK routes suggests strongly otherwise.

So, they either get over it and see where the operating efficiencies and bootstraps support a NYC-Maine train that can thrive in niche margins, or their own intensity of belief that their demographics are bigger than they objectively are and that Boston objectively must be bypassed because of Maine's bigness...ensures it never happens. It's their choice. We could see this in 7 years, or not in our lifetimes. All depends on how they play it, and how much leverage they play or misplay, and how much leverage they leave untouched on the table out of pure stubbornness. Right now: they're being very stubborn.

In all fairness it is TrainRiders Northeast that pushes a Worcester - Providence routing harder than anyone else.

The funding mechanism for MA track miles would be a TIGER grant, and likely a sizeable on at that, somewhere between $50 and $100 million, at least. I suspect that there would be a private capital match and also a MassDOT match.

The rolling stock issue is moot given that Amtrak is almost certainly to have excess single level rolling stock as the new Nippon-Sharyo Bi-levels are built and come online. Yes, that program has "issues" but it is not dead by any stretch of the imagination. Furthermore, Amtrak's formulas for calculating rolling stock costs has been fixed under PRIIA. It will not fluctuate in the manner mentioned.

All of that being said F-line repeats the very valid criticisms and as usual does a very good job of making a case for the Inland Route.

If I were going to really throw something out there I would propose twice a day departures from Waterville, one for each route option (Back Road - Lewiston, Lower Road - Augusta). If we really wanted to mix it up one could take the Inland Route and the other could travel via Providence. Note very carefully here that the two route options in Maine are so close together as to effectively almost be a single corridor, with the likely benefits of such from a frequency standpoint. Regardless, I don't think that's what would happen but I do think the twice daily departures, one leaving in the extreme early am (no earlier than 4am) and the other leaving at a more reasonable morning hour (no earlier than 7am) would provide some very interesting arrival and departure times further down the route.

I do think farebox recovery would be exceptionally high and that NNEPRA would consequently be able to benefit from the operating surplus in MA/NH as a result. This is why Waterville is potentially realistic on an operational basis. If that's really too far afield then at least service could almost certainly be operated from Portland. F-line correctly points out that the weekender crowd from New York is a major potential source of fares, but so too is the crowd out of CT, MA, and to a lesser extent NH. There are huge population centers on either route that are constantly driving to and from "All Maine Points" which could almost certainly afford a train fare whether for business or leisure travel.

Breathe easy, F-Line, I was assuming any train would go to North Station via the Grand Junction.

That said, it's worth taking a look at the NYC weekender market, and comparing to the Ethan Allen Express. The EAE is currently carded at around 5:30 NYP-Rutland, depending on the direction and day of the week. It's worth noting that the departure is 3:15p from NYP every day of the week except Friday, when it's 5:45p, after the work day. Clearly catering to its market!

The issue is that NYP-BOS via the Inland Route was 6:05 in 1997, the timetable I could Google the fastest. And while current work on the Hartford Line will help reliability, as will future MassDOT-funded work on the B&A, I just don't see that number dropping all that much; maybe round those odd minutes down. And a Maine train is going to BON, not BOS, and I think that I'm being very generous to the Grand Junction in saying that there will be no delays running on it. Add a ~20 minute stop at BON to reverse the direction of the train and brake test, and probably switch crews, and then it's 2:25 to POR. Ten minute stop there (what the current Downeaster accomplishes, possibly ambitious), and then 0:45 to BRU. All in all, we're talking ~8:45 NYP-POR and ~9:40 NYP-BRU, and if your weekender destination was Rockland or Mount Desert Island, then add that connection and time in as well. That's a brutal schedule for a Friday evening departure if your goal is to check in to hotel accommodation in Maine Friday night. Again for comparison, the Vermonter, carded at 9:55 NYP-St. Alban's, leaves NYP at 11:30a to allow sufficient time. The only way around that is to not have a Friday night hotel stay as a goal, run Viewliners, leave later, and greet the sun somewhere north of Boston.

Politically, this works because you mollify MassDOT into funding its part of the train, by timing during the week late enough to capture some of the Boston horrifically-early-bird business crowd from Western Mass and MetroWest. Connecticut gets the same for early trips into NYP. Shift the timing on Friday nights/Saturday mornings to be friendlier to Maine, because you don't have Boston business traffic on that day.

Sample schedule follows: Obviously this is an aggressive schedule, and there are places where this schedule could actually use some pad (!) for reliability and better timings, but I think it works as proof-of-concept.

gokeefe wrote:In all fairness it is TrainRiders Northeast that pushes a Worcester - Providence routing harder than anyone else.

The funding mechanism for MA track miles would be a TIGER grant, and likely a sizeable on at that, somewhere between $50 and $100 million, at least. I suspect that there would be a private capital match and also a MassDOT match.

The rolling stock issue is moot given that Amtrak is almost certainly to have excess single level rolling stock as the new Nippon-Sharyo Bi-levels are built and come online. Yes, that program has "issues" but it is not dead by any stretch of the imagination. Furthermore, Amtrak's formulas for calculating rolling stock costs has been fixed under PRIIA. It will not fluctuate in the manner mentioned.

All of that being said F-line repeats the very valid criticisms and as usual does a very good job of making a case for the Inland Route.

If I were going to really throw something out there I would propose twice a day departures from Waterville, one for each route option (Back Road - Lewiston, Lower Road - Augusta). If we really wanted to mix it up one could take the Inland Route and the other could travel via Providence. Note very carefully here that the two route options in Maine are so close together as to effectively almost be a single corridor, with the likely benefits of such from a frequency standpoint. Regardless, I don't think that's what would happen but I do think the twice daily departures, one leaving in the extreme early am (no earlier than 4am) and the other leaving at a more reasonable morning hour (no earlier than 7am) would provide some very interesting arrival and departure times further down the route.

I do think farebox recovery would be exceptionally high and that NNEPRA would consequently be able to benefit from the operating surplus in MA/NH as a result. This is why Waterville is potentially realistic on an operational basis. If that's really too far afield then at least service could almost certainly be operated from Portland. F-line correctly points out that the weekender crowd from New York is a major potential source of fares, but so too is the crowd out of CT, MA, and to a lesser extent NH. There are huge population centers on either route that are constantly driving to and from "All Maine Points" which could almost certainly afford a train fare whether for business or leisure travel.

TIGER grants get filed at the state level, municipal level, or other locally-based (MPO, gov't authority, district, county, tribe, etc.) level. They do not allow one state to initiate a project in another state against the wishes of that state. The Maine alphabet-soup agencies do not have any conduit for laundering money into Massachusetts. There is either a Massachusetts-submitted application to upgrade the bypass track on PAR, or nothing at all. Everything goes through MassDOT all the same, and MassDOT is the decider on the project's value judgment when it chooses whether to sign off or not. TRNE might want to pick up a copy of the U.S. Constitution or punch up "States' Rights" in Wikipedia for a Cliff's Notes read as to why no authority in Maine can impose its will over Massachusetts on this. Or just click on the "About" page on the TIGER grants website where it lists the who's-who of who can initiate a filing.


And...no, no, no...Amtrak is not going to have "excess" single-level rolling stock laying around aplenty. The Horizons are not appropriate for regular NEC use without being put through the rebuild program no one is going to put them through, and what few Amfleets are scattered abroad are not enough for initiating new routes when they get sent back east. The freed-up numbers get absorbed into the fleet padding so more ailing Amfleets can get appointments for regularly-scheduled shop time instead of being run until they break. Furthermore, the bi-level order puts all of the non-Downeaster and non-Cascades NPCU's into storage where Amtrak would ideally prefer those oddballs to be instead of on the road. There will be no net increase in cab cars (not that you can fit an NPCU through Penn to begin with), and NNEPRA and WSDOT will likely be forced to pay higher maintenance rates for retaining their residual cabbage fleets because they'll be very very out-there system outliers once the Midwest pool is taken out of daily service and Caltrans returns its lease units. The DE may be the one route in the land that actually has to make some (if paper-only) compromises on account of the changing national fleet makeup. At least until there are "Viewcabs" ordered to re-supply the East Coast push-pull routes. This is also something incredibly basic that TRNE et al. should fully understand by now. Yet they flap their gums to their own peril regardless.

There are very substantial numbers of Amfleets in use right now in Illinois. Probably at least two dozen. Another 10 or so in California. The Horizon cars could end up being used in a whole slew of different locations and I would not be surprised if they were rebuilt with train line doors. Regardless, we simply disagree on possible fleet decisions.

In regards to applications NNEPRA has applied in the past for funds in MA and received them as a result. Granted this was on MBTA trackage but I doubt MassDOT would oppose a TIGER grant for tracks in MA. In fact I would expect them to support Class IV track conditions on the P&W and PAR.

gokeefe wrote:There are very substantial numbers of Amfleets in use right now in Illinois. Probably at least two dozen. Another 10 or so in California. The Horizon cars could end up being used in a whole slew of different locations and I would not be surprised if they were rebuilt with train line doors. Regardless, we simply disagree on possible fleet decisions.

Sure, the Horizon cars can be used in a number of locations. The immediate Northeast Corridor is not one of them. A cold + damp winter weather portion of the immediate Northeast Corridor most definitely isn't one of them given their longstanding performance issues in cold+damp weather, and fait accompli strategic sunsetting from the fleet that will never see them undergoing a midlife overhaul to address those specific NEC + weather operating issues. This conversation has been hashed to death in all the various fleet threads, as well as why New England is the most unfavorable of all regions for any Horizon reassignments. Cherry-picking it in isolation in another thread does not shine any new light on it. The Downeaster was already dissected to death in the H's-specific threads. You know this, because you were a direct participant in those discussions.

In regards to applications NNEPRA has applied in the past for funds in MA and received them as a result. Granted this was on MBTA trackage but I doubt MassDOT would oppose a TIGER grant for tracks in MA. In fact I would expect them to support Class IV track conditions on the P&W and PAR.

No, that is false...and a very disingenuous interpretation at that. The cross-state filing you are referring to, the "Downeaster-MBTA Track Improvement Project" application of 2010, was the one that NNEPRA filed on behalf of the whole corridor. It had a $5.2M MBTA match funding commitment attached which became active upon the federal award, and to author that clause into the grant application at all required an explicit co-sign by Commonwealth of Massachusetts. NNEPRA could not have constitutionally filed that application if it obligated another state and another transit district to spend state-level funds without its consent. NNEPRA does not have jurisdictional authority over track in Massachusetts. It says where their authority begins and ends in every piece of cover letter literature they submit to the government on the record. Not one shovel gets overturned on MBTA property without MassDOT's consent, not $1 of MA taxpayer money gets spent without the consent of the entire MassDOT Board of Directors. That filing required $5.2M of Massachusetts taxpayer money to be directly spent. Co-signing is legally mandatory. The fact that the TIGER rules require one party to be the filing party of record does not obfuscate the fact that MassDOT co-sign was mandatory for the filing to be legally eligible.

Furthermore, you do not see any of the other NNEPRA grant applications that touched one inch of New Hampshire terra firma (at least one of those apps did involve NH but not MA because scope was strictly limited to PAR-owned Western Route track)...issued without an explicit support statement from NHDOT. Though NHDOT was not a direct paying party on the PAR track like MassDOT is on the MBTA, it is utterly inconceivable with how cutthroat the national competition is for TIGER grants that any application would ever be considered without vociferous support statements from each individual state along a given transportation corridor demonstrating that each link is the chain is 100% sympatico with the primary stated goals of the grant. There is no "meh...when in Rome, shut up and take the ancillary freight bennies" nipping along the fringes with project extracurricular that will suffice for the rigors of the application process. USDOT and the FRA throw that application straight in the trash on first look, because for every incidental dinging of an ancillary benefit like that there are 200 other applications demonstrating more worthy pan-corridor support statements that go square at the core goals of the application. No sane filing party would even put a postage stamp on an application with justification that soft for how much harm it would do to their leverage in future TIGER rounds.


But even assuming you could slip one of those by in this case, there is zero legal mechanism that can get this done for the Boston bypass. The bypass train schedule would run on FOUR segments owned partially or completely by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Worcester Union Station (owned by Worcester Redevelopment Authority), the Fitchburg Line (MBTA) between Ayer station and Willows Jct., the NH Main (MBTA) between North Chelmsford Jct. and Bleachery Jct., and the Haverhill Line (MBTA) to the border. To operate on any of them requires not just a support statement, but an official operating, platform access rights (yes, including on the Gardner Branch side of Worcester Union), and trackage rights agreement signed by Commonwealth of Massachusetts beforehand tentatively covering all 4 different places and their associated cost sharing. And then there's the matter of P&W, who owns the Gardner Branch and cannot have any grant action initiated by a state it does not run in, does not run anywhere near, and has no quantifiable economic leverage over.

You cannot "meh...freight upgrades [*shrug*]" a way passively around any of that. That is legally impossible. There must be binding co-signs by multiple MA government agencies to operate a passenger train on that route as a prerequisite for filing a TIGER grant. Full-stop. No support statements, vigorous or non-vigorous. A binding contract. Or else the application is invalid for submission. Basic middle-school Civics class Constitutional Law 101.



Resort to whatever more improbable sleight-of-hand "But what if. . ." scenario TRNE wishes, this train legally does not run without a contractual agreement from MassDOT approved by their Board of Directors and debriefed by the Governor or his deputies to the Legislature and the taxpayers as to why Boston would and should be deprived of access to this train--as well as a net loss of Inland Route and Downeaster slots taken up by this train--with justification as to why that is their personally co-signed recommendation.

They will not do that. EVER. Do business with Boston, or the NYC-Maine train does no business at all. There is no end-run. No legal end-run, no statistically possible end-run. It goes to Boston, or it never exists.

F-line,

Not intention to deceive or otherwise twist the facts. I had completely forgotten about the MBTA match. And while I am most certainly understanding of the requirement for state support sign off I was thinking in the same vein as you mentioned with NHDOT.

In regards to the Horizons, yes I completely agree, not suitable for operation in the Northeast, however it seems possible they could displace Amfleets currently used in operations further to the south. Perhaps the Carolinian and the Palmetto. But as you rightly note those theories depend on the idea that the Horizon cars would get a midlife overhaul as opposed to being scrapped or retired. I am of the frame of mind that there is at least a chance that Amtrak will in fact overhaul these cars, if only because the single level acquisition process seems to be making so little progress at this point.

Regardless, speaking to your most direct point, I agree, there is of course no end run.

I disagree that there is no support in Massachusetts for this option because I have been told directly by people involved with this proposal, of whom I have no reason to discount or otherwise disbelieve, that there is in fact support for this service. For the moment that support is not coming from the MBTA or MassDOT that I am aware of, but it is (or was at the time) supposedly coming from legislative members and municipal leaders.

I think there's plenty of room to make the case, as I expect you will, that the T and MassDOT simply won't support/allow/acquiesce to this idea. However, I will say that I think this idea has a serious chance of moving forward and that the barriers and obstacles do not appear as high as they would have as recently as 5 years ago.

F-line,

Regardless of how fast the schedule is, I don't think direct NY-Portland service is going bring Maine into the NY weekend-in-the-country orbit, and I say this as a New York City resident with a lifelong love of the Pine Tree State. It's true that as the traditional Long Island and Jersey Shore resorts get increasingly congested and/or pricey, people are looking farther afield. However, farther afield in this case is the upper Hudson Valley, the Berkshires, or at the very outside Southern Vermont, particularly the Dorset/Manchester area, which is only 1:15ish by car from Albany.

The Ethan Allen was mentioned above as a train catering to a weekend crowd out of NY. Rutland is 200 miles from Midtown Manhattan. If you draw a 200 mile arc from Midtown east across New England, you hit the coast at Newburyport, MA. It's just too much of a stretch for me to imagine you're going to get many people willing to go farther than that for Friday-Sunday.

Now, that being said, I do think there's a leisure travel market here. New York City has grown, quite a lot. The population of the 5 Boroughs has increased by 1.1mm since 1990, according to the Census Bureau. And we're probably the least car-friendly city in the United States, hands down. No new roads have been built to handle those extra million people. Insurance is expensive, and parking, in Manhattan at least, is outrageously pricey. Between traffic congestion and cost, many people who could otherwise easily afford a car choose not to get one.

Bottom line is, don't count on any State of Maine service out of NY becoming the new LIRR Cannonball or even the Night Cape Codder. There are going to be vacationers on it, for sure, but they're going to be heading up to Maine for closer to a week, and probably renting a car when they get there.

Well, yeah. But that's why you stick as close as humanly possible to an Inland-begats-Downeaster on the operating side (which is faster anyway). The seed you're planting for long-term NYC-Portland growth has to be able to live within the low, low ops cost margins of:

1) Attaching a Viewbag and couple extra coaches out of one daily round-trip of a Boston-bound Inland originating at NYP.
2) Any ops overhead related to shuffling around of schedules such that separate Inland slot and DE slot get taken by a unified NYP-POR slot. This would obviously skip a few more low-margin stops than a typical NYP-New Haven Regional, Shuttle/Inland, or DE for sake of keeping end-to-end times within reason for a route of that length. But that has its own attractiveness for the core Inland and core DE audiences who ride it in halves to gain an express slot.
3) Staffing costs for sending a crew all the way to Portland (unless they think they can crew-change quickly at the BON reverse, switch to a regular DE crew all points north, and taxi the NYP crew to/from Southampton St.)
4) Any ticketing/discounting overhead such that a regular Inland and a regular Downeaster ticket will be honored on the respective overlapping halves, and thru passengers pay their fare + the baggage service not usually offered NYP-Boston. I would guess this is trivial since that's S.O.P. for the Vermonter's overlap with Springfield Shuttle patrons.


Very, very low bar for squeezing out a net gain, which is why this route is attractive despite the meagerness of today's NYP-POR demand. As seed-plantings go, that's an easy one that can break-even now and profit if you leave it alone with a not-awful schedule for 10-15 years when it'll start accumulating a little bit of genuine business traveler audience. Just don't overcomplicate things (TRNE, that's you) and this is like shooting free throws. On the capital side it would be even cheaper than a Cape Codder revival, which is pretty low-hanging fruit, and would contribute its pocket change year-round instead of in-season.

Anybody know how the executive bus service between Ogunquit and NYC went? And let's note: it was a summer thing only, not year round. That may be saying something about the level of demand.

Good question. I haven't heard anything, good or bad, about the OGT-NYC bus. It's worth noting that Ogunquit is a town of 1,000 residents that essentially shuts down between Columbus Day and Mother's Day. I don't think any sane person would expect that service to be anything other than seasonal. Portland is a city of 70,000 (125,000 if you count its immediate neighbors) with year-round attractions and more restaurants per-capita than any city on the US East Coast. Demand for NYC-POR or POR-NYC service is likely to be very, very different than its OGT counterpart. I would also expect that service to draw riders from as far away as Augusta and Biddeford. You're looking at more than half of Maine's population if you count the entire Augusta-Biddeford region.

MEC407 wrote:Demand for NYC-POR or POR-NYC service is likely to be very, very different than its OGT counterpart. I would also expect that service to draw riders from as far away as Augusta and Biddeford. You're looking at more than half of Maine's population if you count the entire Augusta-Biddeford region.

It's not just about New York City. No need for the "end point mentality" as we all know. There are significant benefits to access to the intermediary destinations, to include stimulating future development that does not exist right now because of a lack of reliable transit to those destinations.