Amtrak’s westbound Pennsylvanian is crossing over to the track closest to the boarding platform in Alliance, Ohio.
The image was made on May 16, 1999. The Pennsylvanian no longer operates west of Pittsburgh but Alliance continues to be served by Amtrak’s Chicago-Washington Capitol Limited.
The station waiting room in Lincoln, Illinois, has been temporarily closed.
Amtrak did not say in a service advisory why the station has closed or when it will reopen.
Passengers will continue to have access to boarding platforms for Lincoln Service and Texas Eagle trains.
Amtrak has begun start selling Interline Thruway Service in Oregon from Eugene to Florence and Eugene to Oakridge.
The buses are operated by Pacific Crest Lines.
Buses 8191, 8192, 8193, 8194, 8195 and 8196 will offer service between Eugene and Oakridge, with an intermediate stop at Westfir.
Buses 8612, 8613, 8614 and 8615 will offer service between Eugene and Florence, with intermediate stops at Veneta, Mapleton and Florence (Three Rivers Casino).
The agency seeking a return of Amtrak service to southern Montana now has 12 counties as members.
The Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority could hold its first meeting next July at which it will appoint officers and begin strategic planning.
Half of the 12 counties that comprise the Authority are located along the route of Amtrak’s former North Coast Hiawatha, which operated between Chicago and Seattle until being discontinued in early October 1979.
The agency needed 10 member counties to qualify as a government entity under Montana law.
Missoula County Commissioner Dave Strohmaier said the agency will work with Montana State University’s local government center.
Amtrak will be getting competition over part of its route of the California Zephyr.
Tour train operator Rocky Mountaineer recently announced plans to launch a two-day service between Denver and Moab, Utah, that will begin operating next summer.
Plans are to have 40 departures over 10 weeks between Aug. 15 to Oct. 23.
Passengers will spend the night in Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
Rocky Mountaineer currently has three rail routes in Western Canada although that service was suspended earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Canadian routes link Vancouver with Banff, Lake Louise and Jasper.
“The work to find a new route has been underway for several years as we needed to find a special location with many of the same features we have in western Canada — incredible scenery, iconic destinations and the option for an all daytime, multiday journey that is best experienced by train,” said Rocky Mountaineer President and Chief Executive Officer Steve Sammut said in a news release.
The U.S. service will be named Rockies to the Red Rocks. Prices for the U.S. excursions will start at $1,250 per person plus tax.
More information is available at the Rocky Mountaineer website.
Rocky Mountaineer has been in business for 30 years.
Brightline said its line to Orlando is about 45 percent completed.
The route is expected to be completed in 2022 and will link with the carrier’s current northern terminus in West Palm Beach.
An Orlando station facility is about a quarter completed. It is expected to have 109,000 square feet of space.
Brightline may share 28 miles of tracks in the Orlando area with commuter railroad SunRail, which would enable Brightline to reach Walt Disney World while allowing SunRail to serve the Orlando airport.
Although Brightline hopes to eventually create an extension to Tampa, it has yet to reach an agreement for a lease of right-of-way with the Florida Department of Transportation, Orlando Utilites Commission, and the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority.
VIA Rail Canada said recently it doesn’t expect to operate a third Toronto-Vancouver roundtrip of the Canadian.
The intercity rail operator said that although it expects to continue operating its flagship long-distance train, its current business model is “no longer sustainable.”
Those conclusions were shared in a summary for the passenger carrier’s 2020-24 corporate plan, which is posted on the VIA website.
The document said the finances of the Canadian’s model have been hindered “predominantly due to host railroad actions.”
That has created a service incapable of serving short-distance travelers and the tourism market.
The Canadian has suffered from poor on-time performance with some delays stretching up to 43 hours. In 2019 the Canadian’s on-time performance was 55.9%.
In recent years the scheduled running time of Nos. 1 and 2 has been lengthened by 10 hours. Revenue growth has stalled while operating costs have risen.
VIA said it will explore options to revitalize the Canadian and other services in Western Canada but did not say what that might involve.
The Canadian last operated three times a week in 2019. It has been suspended for much of this year due to the CVOID-19 pandemic.
VIA also said a tri-weekly Canadian needs five train sets but it lacks enough equipment to create a fifth set because some equipment has been diverted to the Ocean, which operates between Montreal and Halifax.
Modernization of VIA’s heritage fleet has been scaled back due to “unexpected issues.”
Some of the heritage fleet is more than 70 years old and needs to be replaced.
VIA also said it continues to work toward creating its own dedicated right-of-way for portions of its Toronto-Montreal-Quebec City corridor.
It also plans to address the need to ensure access to Toronto Union Station and Montreal Central Station, where 46 percent of its passengers begin or end their trips.
That will require access agreements with host railroads that “feature best practices regarding punctuality and capacity management.”
The report said that in 2019, only 67.3percent of VIA’s corridor trains were on time.
VIA said its base funding level need to increase from $146.8 million to $300 million, with “extended funding” of $550 million, or $110 million per year, to address a current funding gap and allow for long-term planning throughout the five-year period of the plan.
There was still some good fall foliage to be had in Pesotum, Illinois, in early November when I caught Amtrak’s northbound Saluki.
On the point is a Siemens Charger leading a consist of Superliner cars that likely have been bumped from long-distance train service when most of those trains shifted to tri-weekly operation this past October.
Amtrak warned yet again on Monday that further service cuts are possible unless Congress increases its federal funding for the passenger carrier in fiscal year 2021.
Funding for Amtrak and other federally-funded programs is currently being provided under a continuing resolution approved by Congress in late September that expires on Dec. 11.
That resolution calls for interim funding in FY2021 to be at the same levels as FY2020, which ended on Sept. 30.
“If the current level of funding is extended in a continuing resolution beyond Dec. 11 . . . and supplemental funding isn’t provided we’re going to be unable to avoid taking fairly difficult actions that could have long-lasting effects on our Northeast Corridor infrastructure and the national rail system,” said Amtrak CEO William Flynn.
Flynn said the carrier needs additional emergency funding for the remainder of the fiscal year.
If Amtrak funding continues at its current levels, Flynn said as many as 1,600 workers operating state-supported trains could be furloughed.
Amtrak Senior Executive Vice President Stephen Gardner said decisions on job and service cuts will be made based on how long the uncertainty remains.
In a news release, Amtrak said during FY2020 its operating revenue, including payments from state-supported routes, decreased 31.9 percent to $2.3 billion when compared with FY 2019.
Ticket revenue was down $1.24 billion or 47.3 percent.
During FY2020 Amtrak posted an unaudited operating loss of $801.1 million, which it attributed largely to lost ridership during the pandemic.
The carrier also reported advancing $1.9 billion in infrastructure and fleet work.
Amtrak Board Chairman Anthony Coscia said the passenger carrier projects that under current trends and future projections, ridership and revenue are expected to be down 63 percent by the end of fiscal 2021.
That would be worse than the 50 percent decline Amtrak management had predicted earlier when it announced its plans to reduce the operating frequency of most long-distance trains to tri-weekly.
Coscia said Amtrak intends to move forward on $2 billion in critical infrastructure work “that includes safety and reliability measures that we believe will permit the company to come through the pandemic with a railroad that was playing and will play in the nation’s economic recovery.”
He said Amtrak has more than $5 billion of additional investments that could contribute to recovery following the pandemic.
Amtrak said it provided 16.8 million customer trips in FY 2020, down 47.4 percent with a year-over-year decline of 15.2 million riders.
In recent months, ridership has dipped by 20 to 25 percent of pre-COVID levels.
Amtrak in the Heartland 
‘Amtrak Joe’ May Favor Passenger Rail, But That Doesn’t Mean a Pending Passenger RenaissanceHeadline
November 24, 2020President-elect Joseph Biden is known by some as “Amtrak Joe” because during his time in Congress he commuted to Washington aboard Amtrak.
The Biden administration won’t be taking office for another two months and it remains to be seen what policy positions it will take and how those will affect rail passenger service.
I would not expect, though, Biden’s election to presage the type of robust passenger rail renaissance that rail passenger advocates have dreamed about for decades in which federal funding spigots gush forth billions of dollars to fuel large scale rail passenger expansion.
What might be more realistic is the type of stimulus funding for specific improvement projects that the Obama administration pushed through Congress in its first two years.
That did not, though, result in any expansion of Amtrak’s long-distance network and only a minimal effect on corridor services.
It remains to be seen what the new administration’s position will be toward federal funding of intercity rail service, particularly the long-distance routes. Past administrations have sought to shift funding for the latter to the states served by those routes.
There has been just enough political support of federal funding of the long-distance routes on both sides of the aisle in the House and Senate to keep that funding flowing. I would expect that to continue during the Biden years.
I would expect a Biden administration to be less hostile toward funding Amtrak’s national network.
You won’t see budget proposals calling for replacing long-distance trains with buses as a first step toward phasing out federal funding of the long-distance network.
Biden budget proposals might seem to favor expanding the national network through a proposed infrastructure program.
But don’t expect to see anytime soon, if ever, increased frequencies of service on existing routes, say, two or three trains a day between Chicago and New York, or new long-distance routes.
Likewise, what position will the Biden administration take on supporting federal funding for corridor service? Many passenger advocates want repealed a federal law requiring routes of less than 750 miles to be paid for by state and local funding. Getting that done won’t be easy.
A Biden administration will be receptive to spending federal dollars on such Northeast Corridor projects as the Gateway Project to build new tunnels leading into New York City.
There is a long list of capital improvements for the NEC on Amtrak’s wish list, yet it remains to be seen how many of those will benefit from federal funding directed their way with the help of Biden administration support. Some probably will but not necessarily all of them.
The future of rail passenger service hinged on how much money Congress is willing to spend on it.
We’ll get a preview of that soon because lawmakers must approve another continuing resolution to extend authorization for federal spending in fiscal year 2021, which began more than a month ago, or approve an FY 2021 budget plan.
Amtrak has been adamant that without more money than it asked for earlier this year – just over $2 billion – it will have to furlough more workers and make additional service cuts.
It is not yet a sure thing that Amtrak will get the additional funding it wants.
There continues to be talk about another round of emergency pandemic spending and, of course, Amtrak wants a cut of that, too.
Yet the same conservative senators who opposed a stimulus package before the election can be expected to continue to balk at what they view as excessive pork barrel spending that further balloons the national debt.
How much money the Biden administration will be able to get for transportation spending will hinge on the makeup of the next Congress. Democrats have retained control of the House of Representatives, albeit by a slim margin.
In a best-case scenario for Biden, the Senate will be split 50-50 between the two parties with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking tie votes. Yet Republicans may well continue to control the Senate.
In his interview with Trains, Downs predicted it would be some time before Biden’s influence over Amtrak and passenger rail will be felt.
The incoming president’s initial agenda will be dominated by responding to the pandemic and other pressing national and global needs.
How many times a week Amtrak’s Southwest Chief operate is not on that list.
Perhaps the best that will happen during a Biden administration is Amtrak’s route network eventually will return to whether it was in January 2020.
Most long-distance trains will operate daily again and all of the suspended state-funded corridor service will be restored. That won’t happen overnight.
I expect more studies, lots of speeches and many proposals couched in how environmentally friendly passenger rail is.
Those don’t cost much, but when it comes down to actually paying for those ideas, that’s another matter altogether,
That why rail passenger service in the United States remains limited and will continue to be so other than, perhaps some incremental changes.
Tags:Amtrak, Amtrak funding, Amtrak long distance trains, Biden administration, commenaries on transportation, Joseph Biden, on transportation, Posts on transportation, Thomas M. Downs
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