Where should there be frequent corridor service?

Has anyone talked about Boston - Montreal?

The best route would be Boston - Manchester - Concord - White River Junction - St. Albans - Montreal, but of course someone would have to pay to relay track between Concord and Lebanon. And it'll be a cold day in hell before the State of New Hampshire spends one cent on rail.

I'd expect Montreal-Boston to be a good route along that same path you mentioned, but I don't think it would perform as well as some would expect. Boston/Montreal only has 5 flights a day and 4 buses a day. No flights from Montreal to Manchester. Compare that with Montreal/NYC which has 28 flights a day and 8 buses a day (and having been a former Greyhound driver who did Montreal at least once a week, we rarely sent extra buses on schedules to Boston but the New York ones often had 2 or 3 buses on the overnight schedules). I guess with that being said, I could see Montreal-Boston operating at about half or 1/3rd the level of service as NYC-Montreal, but still a viable corridor.

Seems to me the point is to add service on parts of a LD route at different times of day. Leave Chicago in the AM, get back before midnight. As a local, the train could offer stops not used by the LD. So you would end with 2x a day Chicago to Kansas City & back. 2x a day Chicago to Omaha & back. The new train would be all coach or business with no sleepers & a diner lounge for some meal service.


If you do 10x a day Chicago-Milwaukee maybe 1x a day to St Paul, 1x a day to Madison etc.

I’d be here for that CHI-MKE plan, Mr. Woodle. Maybe 10x round trips CHI-MKE, of which two round trips each continue to Madison and St. Paul, and one daily to Green Bay via Appleton. I’m pretty heavily skeptical of Amtrak actually buying DMUs and splitting/joining trains en route, but smaller destinations like Green Bay could feasibly be served via DMU effectively.

I believe that this is a corridor that would perform very well on Induced Demand. In other words, if the corridor was faster, more comfortable, and overall a better experience than driving people would take it. The reason that there isn't very frequent service currently is that most people simply choose to drive. It is not that far. I'm thinking if Brightline chose to do service on this corridor, that could work. If they start off service Boston (BON) to Concord, then they could lay the tracks to White River Junction and construct a second track from there on out. I believe that it would be easier to get people to go out of their cars and onto a Brightline train here than in Florida. In Florida, they are trying to convince people who have never ridden on a train to make the switch. Here in Boston, everybody has gone on a train so it would be a much easier change with a successful advertising campaign.

Unless the Brightline / Virgin Trains model really takes off, so much depends on state involvement. (Amtrak and Congress seem to agree on that too.) Historically it's been readily apparent which states are actively interested and which are not. States like Ohio and New Hampshire would seem to be good candidates but they've done little over the years.

Even when Ohio was offered capital funds during the Obama Administration it didn't want to deal with the operating costs. The old 403(b) program offered further Federal incentives but nothing like it seems to be coming a back.

Wherever states have more than one major metro area (>1m), there should be frequent corridor service between. In places like Michigan that have already connected the dots in one direction, they should be connected at the other end as well (the Detroit hub.)

Whenever there are neighboring states with major neighboring metro areas, they should also be connected. For instance, Chicago to Indianapolis to Louisville to Nashville to Birmingham to Atlanta to Florida cities as separate corridors, whether operated as a single train or in segments.

I’m not saying it’s going to happen, that it will have enough financial support, or that it’s entirely feasible (looking at South Carolina where there simply never was a railroad between Columbia and Charleston), but that should be what American passenger rail should aspire to reach.

eolesen wrote:Agree. You can't look at population alone. There has to be a logical tie-in for why people would need to travel, i.e. a university, business center or center of government, etc. that would drive natural traffic between the two places.

I have an unofficial "five Walmarts" rule to determine if a community can support service from an airline hub. Walmart's very deliberate about where they open a store, and even moreso about staying open 24/7. Once there's a population large enough to support five 24 hour Walmarts, it's a fairly safe bet to consider the local economy has demand and disposable income for outbound travel.

Find a few of those along an existing rail corridor, and you just might be able to make it work.

Correct. You have to have people going between two points or between a couple points along a route for this to work. That is why I am generally against adding another train between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia except as a bone to get support for SEPTA in western PA.

I think the focus should be expanding the branches off the Northeast Corridor and adding new services. For example, an undeserved area transportation wise is Delaware. 2-3 roundtrips from New York Penn to Dover or Georgetown via Philadelphia would be an interesting experiment.

rcthompson04 wrote:Correct. You have to have people going between two points or between a couple points along a route for this to work. That is why I am generally against adding another train between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia except as a bone to get support for SEPTA in western PA.

I think the focus should be expanding the branches off the Northeast Corridor and adding new services. For example, an undeserved area transportation wise is Delaware. 2-3 roundtrips from New York Penn to Dover or Georgetown via Philadelphia would be an interesting experiment.

That seems an odd assertion that there wouldn’t be more people traveling between PGH and PHL with how busy the Turnpike is at all hours. Can you back that up, or is it anecdotal?

That said, I agree that Dover-PHL and on to NYP is a worthy experiment. Georgetown no, but Salisbury maybe.

mtuandrew wrote: (looking at South Carolina where there simply never was a railroad between Columbia and Charleston), but that should be what American passenger rail should aspire to reach.

Sorry incorrect : SOU RR at one time had at least 2 maybe 3 RT trains. Ponce DeLeon was one ?.

east point wrote:

mtuandrew wrote: (looking at South Carolina where there simply never was a railroad between Columbia and Charleston), but that should be what American passenger rail should aspire to reach.

Sorry incorrect : SOU RR at one time had at least 2 maybe 3 RT trains. Ponce DeLeon was one ?.

Huh, I’m not sure why I thought there wasn’t a line between. Even more reason to consider it for in-state corridor service, since it’s all under the same ownership.

The PONCE DE LEON was a Cincinnati-Atlanta-Jacksonville train that Southern eventually truncated out of existence in 1968.

In South Carolina, the route with the most potential is Charlotte to Columbia. While it will never be high speed because of curves, Charlotte is the next Atlanta with its suburbs spilling over into SC in Fort Mill and Roch Hill and then on to Columbia, the state capital, with maybe stops at it’s northern suburbs of Ridgeway and Blythewood.

Southern’s Augusta Special made no less than 9 stops over the 100 miles taking well over 2 hours. NS goes by the the existing Columbia station.

mtuandrew wrote:

rcthompson04 wrote:Correct. You have to have people going between two points or between a couple points along a route for this to work. That is why I am generally against adding another train between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia except as a bone to get support for SEPTA in western PA.

I think the focus should be expanding the branches off the Northeast Corridor and adding new services. For example, an undeserved area transportation wise is Delaware. 2-3 roundtrips from New York Penn to Dover or Georgetown via Philadelphia would be an interesting experiment.

That seems an odd assertion that there wouldn’t be more people traveling between PGH and PHL with how busy the Turnpike is at all hours. Can you back that up, or is it anecdotal?

That said, I agree that Dover-PHL and on to NYP is a worthy experiment. Georgetown no, but Salisbury maybe.

My analysis is partially anecdotal/partially statistical. The number of Pittsburgh / Philadelphia flights is relatively low compared to other cities from Pittsburgh. Turnpike traffic counts are pretty low between Breezewood and Carlisle as well. The existing Pennsylvanian service has New York as the most popular destination from travelers from Pittsburgh as well.

Then there is the whole Pennsylvania is really a couple different states mashed into one thing.

I don't see any value in a discussion of rail-hostile SC or Boston-Montreal in a thread regarding FREQUENT CORRIDOR SERVICE in the US of 2019 where it will take tens of billion$, decades of political change and service growth, and the abolition of sections of PRIIA to make it happen. Lots of other threads for that sort of chat.

There are plenty of places in the US where all the federal investment available could be poured into, generating billions of yearly passenger-miles, by the expansion of track capacity (e.g. DC Long Bridge, Glenview IL siding NIMBYs), or cars available for service especially in Superliner/Talgo country, or figuring out tricky expansion limiting station issues such as with Atlanta.