Literalman wrote:In reply to a couple of comments above: I think that the Cardinal goes to New York not to handle passengers between there and Chicago but because New York is Amtrak's biggest market, and a lot of the passengers from Virginia and West Virginia would be traveling to New York and other Northeast Corridor points north of Washington. A guaranteed connection at Washington might work well enough if the Cardinal reliably ran on time. At one time it was a Superliner train with end points in Chicago and Washington.
The Cardinal goes to NYP because people in Charlottesville want to go to NYP. C
VS-NYP is the #1 city pair by revenue for the Cardinal! (and #5 by ridership).
This goes back to a point made by ThirdRail7: the Cardinal is two corridor trains, CHI-CIN and CVS-NYP, that happens to roll overnight between CIN and CVS (and, to my mind, can't quite get the timing at CIN right, but makes a decent CVS-CHI), much the same way that the Silver Star is two corridor trains: MIA-JAX and Pinehurst SC to NYP, that happens to roll overnight between JAX and Pinehurst.
The middle can only be as strong as:
1) If end-to-end makes sense (on the Cardinal it doesn't on the Crescent and Star its somewhat better and the Meteor and AT seem to do well)
2) If the 9p to 12m and 5a to 7a can hit decent sized midpoint markets
3) If the 1am to 4am doesn't miss big cities (something the Crescent misses (CLT) and Star misses (SAV and CLB))
4) If the midsection doesn't last too long (ideally, a big market at 11pm and big one at 7am, on the Star, Pinehurst and JAX hit these times exactly)
If Virginia was paying for a state overlay (for a second daily frequency) they could be counted on to be interested in the train as far as Clifton Forge (Homestead resort/Hot Springs VA) - Staunton (Midway between VMI/W&L & JMU) -Charlottesville. (There's a danger that since they can only turn a train at either ROA or LYH that they'll never invest in a good turning station anyplace else)
The Greenbrier would then want it extended to White Sulfur Springs, just 35miles and 50 minutes further, and maybe they or WV would pay in the name of tourism (and daily tourism at that). That's got to work about the same way that other lines like MARC into WV and MBTA into RI get done: a short extension is cheap and if ridership is good it makes sense.
After that the corridor--and the need to get to/from NYC-- ends real fast, and you see this in the ridership numbers.