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Re: Trump Administration wants to cut service south of Eugene
Author: les
Date: 08-28-2019 - 12:18
"the current Portland-Eugene Amtrak service actually proves " nothing.
Of course nobody will ride a line that goes slower than a speeding tortoise-motive. Once they move the speeds to comparable auto speeds or better, and then add a few additional runs the Eugene-Portland will add patronage, no doubt about it. Then they can expand south.
> Option 2 is proven to far better attract ridership
> than option 1. Of course you could run more
> trains, but at a far higher cost, and basically
> running around empty trains. (the current
> Portland-Eugene Amtrak service actually proves
> this - the buses that run much more frequently are
> heavily utilized, have almost zero public subsidy,
> and actually are more fuel efficient than the two
> trains a day whose average load factor is
> somewhere in the 30s and the train spends more
> fuel pulling around its own dead weight.)
Of course nobody will ride a line that goes slower than a speeding tortoise-motive. Once they move the speeds to comparable auto speeds or better, and then add a few additional runs the Eugene-Portland will add patronage, no doubt about it. Then they can expand south.
> Option 2 is proven to far better attract ridership
> than option 1. Of course you could run more
> trains, but at a far higher cost, and basically
> running around empty trains. (the current
> Portland-Eugene Amtrak service actually proves
> this - the buses that run much more frequently are
> heavily utilized, have almost zero public subsidy,
> and actually are more fuel efficient than the two
> trains a day whose average load factor is
> somewhere in the 30s and the train spends more
> fuel pulling around its own dead weight.)
