I do believe there has been a leadership failure at Amtrak in not promoting a medium-term plan for expanding service or explaining what could be done with certain equipment orders. From what I can tell, Amtrak has mostly stayed back and let states take the lead rather than working to promote either expanding LD service (not a state function) or corridor service (a more complicated animal, since some corridors are destined to be multi-state tangles in need of coordination). The Viewliner IIs are an exception to this, but even then there's no clear talk about "If we get X, we can do this with it. If we get Y, we can do this other thing with it."
For example, there have been serious examinations of restoring the North Coast Hiawatha, Desert Wind, and Pioneer over the last five years. There have also been visions proposed for the NEC, many of which could swallow decades of HSR funding. Why has there been no serious proposal for expanding the LD system pushed? Where is an attempt to take the seriously-proposed regional systems, add a few new LD links or "daily doubles", and produce a "National Network Vision 2030" in the vein of similar NEC documents. While the political environment in a number of places isn't terribly friendly to Amtrak, there's also the tendency of Amtrak service to beget local support and politicians to suddenly mellow when they have "their train" to protect.
I do recognize the costs of adding new services:
-LD services would need $50-100m each in the East (for a Viewliner/Amfleet set), and $100-150m out West (for a Superliner set, or arguably for a longer single-level set to match capacity). You'd also need capacity improvements and whatnot that the host railroads would negotiate for, likely bringing your total to $300-600m in the East or $500-1,000m out west.
-Corridor services seem likely to run around $100-200m per round trip, all expenses included, depending on the length of the route and existing congestion, assuming you're not going for massive speed upgrades (i.e. anything over 79-90 MPH).
Of course, nothing is going to happen if nobody puts a "vision thing" out there in terms the public can comprehend. NARP's proposed system map doesn't count for this. On the other hand, Amtrak is busy proposing tens of billions in upgrades for the NEC beyond needed fixes (i.e. Gateway, bridge replacements, and some speed upgrades)...and frankly, supporting it with numbers that don't seem to reflect reality (witness my earlier discussions on ridership trends and the tendency of Amtrak to dump all sorts of ridership onto the Acelas or their successors while overlooking the Regionals).
Even if it might take 10 or 20 years to make such a vision a reality, you can't sell an expanded network if you never talk about expanding the network. Amtrak isn't going to grow if they only promote what has broad support...but if they took the numerous of studies done over the last ten years or so and worked to develop a competent passenger rail expansion program with it, you'd probably have something that could sell in a lot more places.
For example, there have been serious examinations of restoring the North Coast Hiawatha, Desert Wind, and Pioneer over the last five years. There have also been visions proposed for the NEC, many of which could swallow decades of HSR funding. Why has there been no serious proposal for expanding the LD system pushed? Where is an attempt to take the seriously-proposed regional systems, add a few new LD links or "daily doubles", and produce a "National Network Vision 2030" in the vein of similar NEC documents. While the political environment in a number of places isn't terribly friendly to Amtrak, there's also the tendency of Amtrak service to beget local support and politicians to suddenly mellow when they have "their train" to protect.
I do recognize the costs of adding new services:
-LD services would need $50-100m each in the East (for a Viewliner/Amfleet set), and $100-150m out West (for a Superliner set, or arguably for a longer single-level set to match capacity). You'd also need capacity improvements and whatnot that the host railroads would negotiate for, likely bringing your total to $300-600m in the East or $500-1,000m out west.
-Corridor services seem likely to run around $100-200m per round trip, all expenses included, depending on the length of the route and existing congestion, assuming you're not going for massive speed upgrades (i.e. anything over 79-90 MPH).
Of course, nothing is going to happen if nobody puts a "vision thing" out there in terms the public can comprehend. NARP's proposed system map doesn't count for this. On the other hand, Amtrak is busy proposing tens of billions in upgrades for the NEC beyond needed fixes (i.e. Gateway, bridge replacements, and some speed upgrades)...and frankly, supporting it with numbers that don't seem to reflect reality (witness my earlier discussions on ridership trends and the tendency of Amtrak to dump all sorts of ridership onto the Acelas or their successors while overlooking the Regionals).
Even if it might take 10 or 20 years to make such a vision a reality, you can't sell an expanded network if you never talk about expanding the network. Amtrak isn't going to grow if they only promote what has broad support...but if they took the numerous of studies done over the last ten years or so and worked to develop a competent passenger rail expansion program with it, you'd probably have something that could sell in a lot more places.
