by lordsigma12345
BandA wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 1:29 pm Presumably, when you contract for trains, you hire the one with the lower bid, the one with the lower costs. So which of these two likely has lower costs?I don't think the IIJA Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail grant program has a requirement for a competitive operator bid for a new service so NH could probably just present a proposal with Amtrak as operator. When CTDOT did the Hartford Line much of the funding came from the Obama stimulus bill and I believe some of the funding they got did require them to do a competitive bid for the operator of the CTrail service. Although CTrail resembles a commuter service I believe it's officially an intercity feeder service due to the way the work was funded.
There are also questions about if you can get more Feddybucks by hiring Amtrak than hiring a state agency.
Given available equipment and crew, Amtrak will run whatever number of trains the state wants to pay for and charge whatever the state says, just like Hartford Line. If they hire the MBTA they can just extend existing trains, if they go with Amtrak they have to get MA to agree to subsidize the MA portion of the route and to provide train slots.