Amtrak's 2035 Map Sucks
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- Опубликовано: 20 май 2021
- This is a rare current event video where I will talk about the Amtrak 2035 map and my problems with it. Along with what Amtrak should be adding along with bailing out the Northeast Corridor and giving us a pittance.
You are spot on concerning short vs. long distance routes/funding. Any six year old can see that they feed each other. One note about the N.E. and Chicago and higher levels of service: Both areas (I'm a Chicagoan) have rail travel culture almost in their/our DNA. We have generations that have traveled by rail to some extent. Taking a train within the Chicago city limits is done frequently, as Metra has numerous in-city stations connecting downtown with the 'burbs and the sprawl. Taking the train for business or a vacation to far/even overnight points is quite common. Amtrak should really promote Chicago-Denver like the Burlington did in the winter for ski trips. Amtrak also needs commissaries at intermediate cities, not just end points. Have you ever been aboard a very late train only to learn that the diner has only lettuce mac and cheese for dinner? Kinda sucks. Again, good job observing and commenting and keeping it real.
My point with New York and Chicago is more in the context of expanding service than existing service. If service is expanding, requiring that any service east of the Mississippi go to either limits the options Amtrak has. Like an overnight Carolinian, having it turn south into South Carolina would make more sense for growing the system than going to New York, even if that means it's DC to Columbia. But part of that is the problem with the board, Republicans are going to be dumb activists from states without public transit and most of the Democrats are going to be from the New York or Chicago areas, with the occasional honorable mention from my neck of the woods.
@@thetrainhopper8992 All valid points, especially about the elected empty suits who pass for representatives of "the people." I think that with a plan such as yours some of that money would have to go to yards and commissaries, both of which I support, and those would bring in additional railroad jobs, which would then stimulate further local economies and more people would benefit. When one looks at the passenger service map of 30 April 1971, one needs to break out the Kleenex. Looking forward to your next videos (and you should be on the Amtrak Board starting Monday).
Not to mention the jobs could be used to score political points. Making both Atlanta and Nashville into hubs (and others) would be a score politically along with the added service.
@@thetrainhopper8992 Agreed once again. Concerning funding, I remember a rather tongue in cheek remark in the old Rail Travel News, a mimeographed bi-monthly out of Berkeley in the 1970s, advising Amtrak that if it wanted more funding, it should change its name to Kartma on money requests and perhaps tricking the Empty Washington Suits that it was a small nation seeking money to fight communism.
@@thetrainhopper8992 Nashville will always be a stop not a hub like Chicago or even Atlanta. The only practical city that could become the next hub is possibly Denver for long distance & Atlanta for the 300 mile range sweet spot.
As a resident of the west, and amateur nerd, I believe your proposition for Amtrak California expansion is relevant and feasible, the Missoula to Billings service would likely fall into a once daily trip spanning the cities. The route in Washington would be appreciated yet unlikely to find success due to the sparsely populated and unincorporated towns in that area, I do think if it was extended to Spokane it could be a valid service if it swiftly connected itself to Seattle, it would have great scenery while serving 4 major cities in the state and could use Amtrak cascade stock. I’m highly skeptical of Amtrak service to Phoenix had such service been reliable a commuter operation would probably exist in such an expansive suburb.
The East coast fails to connect many routes together like in Atlanta, which until 2030 will have north south service but no east west service and for this reason Amtrak is largely irrelevant in the most states.
WINSTON SALEM NEEDS A TRAIN
Thanks for this!! I've long (like 50 years or so?) had a vision of a national system really pretty similar to what you've laid out here. The key would be to split up the long-distance lines into segments that could be operated independently of the hub-to-hub trains. Examples would be Pittsburgh-Chicago, Chicago-Denver, or Denver-Salt Lake City at convenient hours. And as a resident of Michigan I like the idea of extending trains north of Pontiac, Port Huron, and Grand Rapids. There could be a great market in bringing tourists to Traverse City and other northern towns. Summer, sure, but in winter there's cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, or whatever you want to do outside when it's snowy and cold. And I say this as a resident of the Detroit area who dearly wants to see trains as a way for a businessman to take the train from Detroit and environs to Chicago for a one-day trip without having a hotel stay as part of the deal.
There's a part 2 coming out around Thanksgiving and more videos about other subjects.
Great video! Just watching this now (a year later), with specific interest in the Midwest. Even the proposed 3C+D line is at risk due to a lack of state (Ohio :/ ) support- is the reason so much of focus is in NE due to those states actually being ready to partner? I would be interested in learning more about other non-NE states partnering well.
From what I understand, most of the money is going into the Corridor proper because it's "federal" infrastructure. And people wonder why I don't think the states should be consulted at all....
Well little update, 3C seems to be going well, as It seems The Gov has support for this project (unlike other governors in the past) *cough* Kasich *cough cough*
The 3 C s would work well in Ohio at 110 MPH Cleveland to CIncy in less than an hour, or 140 MPH electrified. It would be a money maker, but you would have to have 8 or 10 trains a day. The ridership would be insane...No driving I 71 or I 75 , no more taking land to build a third or fourth lane on those highways, would pay the upgrades to get 140 MPH
NEC gets the $ because we have the capital and density
Thank you for including Knoxville in your video, in both just the Nashville route and the Nashville to DC. I assume the only way we would get service would be the latter.
Bring back the Tennessean, The Tri-Cities needs it too!
That “Madison-Rockford” one that you pointed out would A. Provide an alternate route between Madison and Chicago and (not to sound biased here) passes through the city I currently live in, which has been searching for alternative ways to get to Madison without driving for years so that would work out well for us if they decided to add a stop
Appreciate in mention ing the holes in the Amtrak map. Especially the corners of in Pennsylvania.
Amtrak refuses to listen to what Texas wants. Texas wants the Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited to be DAILY trains. We want multiple trains for the Texas Triangle of Dallas-Houston-San Antonio, after all Texas is the second largest state in population and Amtrak's services SHOULD reflect this fact. Moving on, Texas wants the former Burlington Texas Zephyr returned running from Houston to Denver through DFW and Amarillo which would provide the eastern slope of Colorado their daily services, at least south of Denver. We want the former daily Rock Island Texas Rocket to return running from Houston to Minneapolis through DFW and KC.Pull the plug out Amtrak Joe!
Having to beg for daily services is an outrage for Texas. If Amtrak loses the support of the Texas Dems, Amtrak ceases to exist... Keep in mind not one Texas Dem bothered to pick up the phone for Amtrak's Heartland Flyer live steaming announcement. Texas has been there and done that with Amtrak. Yankee Amtrak carpetbaggers target Texas for the first cut...
The problem with this is that states don’t have a dedicated subsidy for “state” services backed by the federal government. I personally want their to be a federally backed subsidy like the highways have with the gas tax at the federal level. With each state getting a proportional subsidy to be used in their state and by Amtrak with impunity if a state like Ohio or Florida says no. There are other issues like Amtrak’s opaque accounting, which can be easily fixed by requiring the subsidy being used as if Amtrak were a contractor instead of their normal PRIIA 203 accounting system. Rail service and public transit in general, should be like education where everywhere has some basic level of service. It’s really fucked up that the Northeast gets a blank check, us in California have to override the state at the ballot box to get any additional service and if you don’t do that you get nothing.
Why not those lines as 220 mph lines?
@@ronclark9724 drop Amtrak from Texas let Texas central takeover you deserve better
@@thetrainhopper8992 woah 😳
Reno to Las Vegas should be a corridor train and Reno to Boise, Oklahoma should get more service too, also would the rapid city to chicago route be long distance?
I made a follow video where I went into what I would want out of Congress/Amtrak.
The heartland flyer is supposedly being extended, I wish it wouldn't take 15 years to get it done.
To Kansas City at least, in theory. Tulsa doesn't get any love.
@@thetrainhopper8992 that's because of Tulsa itself, ODOT has a big influence there and always scoffs at the idea of a train.
They say it would take to long because curves on the stillwater centrals line to OKC are no longer banked for higher speeds but that could easily be fixed considering it used to be.
I'd like to see them revive the Choctaw route west to Amarillo and include it in a connection to Tulsa but that'll never happen.
On difficulty in opening new routes is access to maintenance facilities. That is why Amtrak likes one end of a route to be a major city where it has maintenance facilities.
The not-so-proposed Scranton to Rochester routing is possible, but it would have to go Scranton - Binghamton - Elmira - Corning/Painted Post - Hornell - Silver Springs - Caledonia - Rochester. Lots of $$$$$ to upgrade G&W's Rochester Southern from Silver Springs. However, if it was re-routed to Buffalo Exchange St. - Niagara Falls via Attica it wouldn't really cost anything in infrastructure upgrades as the NS route is already pax train capable. The Buffalo - Scranton - NYP routing could also serve as an emergency detour for the Lake Shore Limited.
All Amtrak routes need to be 110 MPH Operations, so to remove cars off Interstates and service should be designed when people travel....Daylight Service....Stops should also be linked to College and industrial business travel spots.
Yes I totally agree…for those of us living in the Michigan areas to get to Dayton, Cincinnati to southern cities like Atlanta-Jacksonville does not happen!!! We have to travel to the east coast then head south to those cities…please consider all these other routes-don’t punish us for wanting to travel by passenger trains!!!
The *only* Midwest cities that have a chance to go to directly to Atlanta are Chicago and Indianapolis.
It seems like Amtrak is playing it safe with the expansion. But I'm just happy that thier expanding too my area,/at all. Hopefully this is the start of something great
There is no question that the Long Distance network is necessary and there needs to be daily service on every route both long and short distance. A tri weekly Cardinal and Sunset Limited just doesn't cut it. That said there are quite a few cities and towns that have very poor or nonexistent service such as Phoenix Columbus and Cincinnate plus others and places like those need to have more frequent and corridor type services like the new proposed Map suggests. While there should be more routes included and you do have good routing ideas we need to start somewhere.
One thing that I'm sure that we can all agree on is that Amtrak at the age of 50 is very far from where it should be in terms of services and provided and frequency of service. Over the years too many trains have been discontinued and too many places have lost service while there were too many routes that have been suggested and never even began. During the late 70s and early 80s there a report issued by Amtrak called the "Emerging Corridors" unfortunately not that many really had been developed. Amtrak and the nation needs to act to start providing frequent services to places and destinations with a large future potential.
The routes too look at are the Brightline proposed routes and the Texas Central proposed routes. There is no question that they see much potential in the routes that they are developing as they are doing in via private investments and if they can do it through private investment then there definitely is some great potential there since they are not asking for major government funding.
Mistake on 2nd map: Provo is on the California Zephyr route.
Idaho Falls to Provo isn't an existing route.
@@thetrainhopper8992 he meant that Provo is on the cz but on your map it’s not lined up with it
I agree with rapid city to Chicago,South Dakota finally gets train service. I would also want more service in the west like a corridor train from Reno to Las Vegas, or Reno to Boise.
@@poglol4130 reno to vegas is ridiculous.
The amount of train budget going in pockets of politics
Yes, Amtrak is far too NE Corridor-centric. Rail in this country could be so much more. I vote you to become the next CEO of Amtrak. Love your offerings. Your knowledge of rail past and present is so amazing. But, like the Simply Rail Guy, please show us who you are, your appearance and some stuff about you. I see some of your historical vids are hitting over 1k views-------which is great. keep up the great work. . Thanks train hopper.
EXACTLY!!!!
As someone who lives in Miami, the planned service expansions for Florida are simply awesome. I understand why the rest of the country could be upset. But going from 1 daily train that we have now to 6 daily trains by 2035 is simply a game changer. Travel times to Tampa and Orlando will be cut by 3 hours. Not to mention Miami will now have 2 DAILY trains to New York. Only 2 things are missing from a Miami perspective. 1. Restoring service between Jacksonville and New Orleans so we can connect with the west. 2. Connecting Nashville to Louisville so that Miami can have a direct connection with Chicago. But overall I give it a B.
Do you ride Brightline. Getting to Chicago from Miami by train seems unlikely. Louisville doesn't connect to Chicago. So connecting Nashville to Louisville gets you nothing. And nothing goes to Nashville until Savannah is connected to Atlanta to Chattanoga to Nashville. Do not hold your breath. Just take Brightline to Disney World and have fun.
@@davidjackson7281 Amtrak's proposed plan is to run a line up to Nashville from Atlanta, and run another line from Chicago to Louisville. Did you even look at it? The idea is to connect the two lines between Louisville and Nashville, so there is one through line from Chicago to Atlanta, and then down to Savannah.
Even if the line was connected from Nashville to Louisville, the train would be ending in Savannah. Why would you ever think it would go to Miami, something nobody wants or needs?
Brightline currently already has frequent trains between Miami and Orlando. They're already planning for a Tampa extension, and have trackage rights on the Florida East Coast Railway up to Jacksonville, making it viable for another extension there. As for long distance Amtrak there is a long distance study covering MIA to CHI and MIA to Dallas via the panhandle.
Hoping for rail connections between Chicago and Toronto and Montreal and Boston in the future.
You can get directly from Chicago to Boston now.
Long distance needs to be 2x a day spaced 12 hour apart so towns and cities don't only get served in the middle of the night. I think that covers the daytime coach routes you talked about near the end.
Corridor as a base should run every 3 hours which means most routes need 4-6RT a day
Amtraks so NEC focused because for 50 years they've been pushed to be profitable. They've now got enough money to order 800-1000 LD cars in addition to the 125-+ ALC-42 planned
Congress needs to give them 3-5 years out of capital funding and operations funding to make LD tickets cheaper and support a base level of service on corridors
We spent 350M a year making sure a handful of airports mostly in the lower 48 still have flights.
Re: Palmetto to New York. Yes, there are frequent trains NYC-Washington. But they don't have baggage car service and have much reduced seat pitch, reduced food service etc. Akin to buying first calls ticket but the first leg is in coach.
Prior to previous admin, you could not buy NYC-Washington tickets on those trains. The dirst destination available was Alexandria south of Washington. So the Palmetto betwene NYC and Washington only carrieed long distance passengers.
I don't know if that ever was the case. And the seats north of Washington, DC are the same seats as south of Washington, DC.
@@mikeymutual5489 If you asked Amtrak web site for New York to Washington, it would not provide the long distance trains as an option to buy. (the 2 Silvers, Palmetto, Crescent) But if you asked for New York to Alexandria, you could buy seats. Purpose was to keep availability for those doing long distance trip. During COVID many things changed so not sure of currejt status.
@@mikeymutual5489 Policy changed under Trump Was not very visible due to long distance trains being either reduced or suspended. Trump himself had mentioned you should be able to buy a NYP-WAS ticket on those trains (but he also named a new CEO who was dead set on destroying long dustance trains such as cutting food service since you don't get food on a new york to Miami flight)
@@jfmezei OK, thanks for the clarification. But the old policy must be back since ridership is up, and people need to have access to every train between NYP and WAS.
@@mikeymutual5489 The issue here is that a railway doesn't want to block seats for a $1000 ticket from New York to New Orleans because it has sold a $100 ticket from New York to Washington, with that seat remaining empty for rest of the way. (exagerating ticket prices here). However, at very last minute, they may release that capacity for "local" travel.
I think amtrak needs to connect to Sioux Falls
My biggest complaint with this map is a lack of understanding of routes.
1. You frequently cite routes east from Nashville. That railroad was abandoned 50 or 60 years ago. Currently there is no direct rail line connecting Nashville with Knoxville. By rail you have to go thru North Georgia and Chattanooga.
There are many other routes that are no longer class 2 rated tracks, ie allowing speeds of 20 mph or greater. To get these routes to be able to carry passengers would require rebuilding at a cost of approx $1,000,000 @ mile. Essentially rebuilding from the subroadbed under the ballast up.
Modern freight railroads are very busy operations. And the people running these railroads view Amtrak as a distraction.
www.openrailwaymap.org
What do you want from a naive fanboy?
What disappoints me is that I would like to get maglev, not just regular trains.
I think that would be doable in Pennsylvania and the Acella line.
I mean personally in my honest opinion, it's kinda asking for too much, incities metro improvements seems to be more likely than that. Though they do look cool, I just don't see it happening in the foreseeable future.
Oklahoma should fund a commuter route to Tulsa to OKC. Or 50/50 with Amtrak.
I also agree that 15 years on this proposal is a little too long. I wonder if the proposals outside of the NE Corridor are supposed to be at least partially state funded. Maybe the reason why they are asking for 15 years is because they don't have much confidence in getting these plans funded or implemented that quickly either. I am impressed that they have the routes proposed for Ohio considering that the last time they had been suggested such as the 3 C Corridor during the Obama years , John Kasich the former governor of Ohio rejected that plan. Has the new administration had a change of tune or is this plan supposed to be strictly federally funded which is something that I highly doubt? As I had said before the routes being worked on and proposed by Brightline and Texas Central really need to be paid attention to.
From what I can tell, the capital funding and some number of years of operations will be federal and then the states are expected to kick in after that. I live in California and even I doubt that much if anything will happen here let along in places like Ohio. California's state government is at best ambivalent towards public transit, which basically means nothing will get done.
The shovel ready jobs aren't shovel ready! That is why they won't complete this very modest yankee expansion of Amtrak within the next 15 years...
@@ronclark9724 so before they start any of the proposed "projects" they better do their homework and be sure that before they give out any money the project actually is shovel ready. So far I haven't heard the term shovel ready used to describe any of the projects in the map above (unless I missed it). I do remember that when Barack Obama and his secretary of Transportation talked about their projects being "shovel ready" it was actually BS and most if not all of their projects were not ready and only thing that Obamas's Shovel was ready for was to Shovel the SH T. At least the Brightline Projects and the Texas Central Projects are Shovel Ready or will be.
Devoured
The Jax-Pensacola Sunset resumption is now out permanently...CSX(How Tomorrow Mooves) eliminated the route connection at Baldwin, Florida...Guess CSX derailed Tomorrow...lol....oh and yesterday too...and prolly day after Tomorrow....efc...ad nauseum....
I knew this when I 1ST saw it, corridor only and this is their so called "expansion?" Let the states pay for these routes after 5 years, and I know most states aren't buying their claim either, I hope someone really wakes Gardner up on this since he's probably the main guy behind this!
Break up the long distance lines and boost frequency on several intersecting short haul lines and speed up the empire builder and California Zephyr to minimum 110 mph the whole way with 200 mph speed dedicated to replace the Reno -SF segment and Omaha to Chicago segment and Minneapolis to Chicago drop most of the southwest chief and replace the rest with high speed 150-220 mph dedicated tracks and have them run via new commuter rail lines in many southern state cities and Midwest cities that have no rail networks with local services provided by BRT lines to replace express buses and in very large cities monorail lines. Otherwise deinterline light rail and existing metro lines via new lines splitting routes off
Well, as other countries were putting down more railways. We tore ours up. There is a railway that the government and private companies use. But when it reaches Burnet, TX. It splits into two separate westward lines (one slightly North that the other and south of my town it splits into two parallel lines for 4 miles to handle the metro and fright traffic. Now if the whole line was updated and upgraded. It could help AMTRAK put more traffic on this line and fright traffic could potentially more traffic too. It all boils down to money railroads don't want to pay and taxpayers don't want government handouts to profitable businesses. But if they could come up with a sharing plan that both parties would agree to. I think that line could make money for both sides.
Why not connect Louisville with Nashville? Then you would have a Chicago to Florida route.
I would as a long distance train. I'm not sure how good of a "corridor" train or Palmetto like route it would make.
if yu want to go to chi from fla then take the upcoming gulf coast train to NO. From nashville have a line go to memphis which goes to chicago. Who wants to go to hellhole chicago anyway?
@@davidjackson7281 Stay in your cow town and never leave.
I believe that every conges person that is passing Amtrack legislation shud have used its services at least once
“Pensicola”
It's Shreeeeeport not Shreweport!!!
Let Amtrak die. It was created over 50 years ago. Conrail was successful and converted back to non-government. Amtrak is a little used major drain to resources. I LOVE trains, but passenger trains are NOT viable. Small inter-city routes have use. Let the local governments run those if viable.
If the NEC were viable, someone would purchase from the government and run. Trying to build reliable high speed rail on lines laid out in the 1830-1880 range is not realistic. Too many tight corners, narrow strips, and built up areas. Rail is expensive to maintain and ANY train ride over a couple hours will be cheaper and much faster than the airlines.
Wow, nothing you said was right. Congratulations.
@@mikeymutual5489 100% correct, try again