• Salt Lake City to Seattle. Annual ridership estimated at 102,000 passengers, producing $11.6 million in revenue and projected operating loss of $25 million.
• Denver to Seattle. Ridership estimated at 111,000 passengers, with revenue of $13.1 million and annual operating loss of $33.1 million.
• Salt Lake City to Portland. Ridership estimated at 82,000 passengers, with revenue projected at $7.6 million and operating loss of $28.3 million.
Are these "add on" costs to the $493 million? I know that the cost would include a lot of new track work around Boise and Pocatello. What about the proposed change in the route down from Cheyenne..along BNSF lines to Boulder and Ft. Collins and Denver?
I don't think $493 million is unexpected for the overall costs. I know the revenue to operating loss is significant. However, these are just projections and the ridership and popularity of the route can't be realized until the route is up and running, if the route is ever restored.
Richard
Posted by notelvis (Member # 3071) on :
Are the former UP tracks running southeastward from Boise back to the mainline still in place or have they been removed?
A new Pioneer takes a huge hit if Boise is at the end of a 16 mile branch line and can't be serviced by the passenger train.
Using BNSF to access Boulder would be a nice improvement. Getting back into downtown Cheyenne would be pretty remarkable too.
Posted by yukon11 (Member # 2997) on :
David, here is more informatin on the track around Boise. I get the impression the 16 or 18 miles of track, east of Boise, is owned by both Boise and UP. I believe Boise owns the station, itself. It doesn't say anything about the condition of the track..but it seems that if the spur line, into the station, is in place they need a lot of work on it to make up to to standards for passenger traffic.
The alternative with be to have Nampa as the closest station.
Whether this goes or not depends solely on who the Fairy God Congresscritter is ... and how critical his vote is to healthcare.
$14M a year loss isn't chump change in anyones world except the aggregate US budget. Fact of the matter, it's about a 1/2 of 1% kicker on Amtrak's current grant.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
The Pioneer, the Amtrak passenger train linking Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City and Denver -- and many small rural towns in between -- was losing $20 million a year when it was shut down in 1997. But passenger rail has gathered speed and strength since then. And now Amtrak is studying whether there's a cost-effective way to resurrect the Pioneer. I hope there is.
It was a great train ride. When I last rode the Pioneer, about two weeks before the train's last run, I took the train from Portland to Salt Lake City. The trip up the Columbia was stunning, with views across the Columbia Gorge on one side, and glimpses of Multnomah Falls and other sites on the other. When we turned east, across the Blue Mountains, I saw herds of elk feeding on the sloping hills high above the tracks. Ring-necked pheasants spooked by the passing railcars rocketed out of the grass alongside the train. The seats were comfortable, the food was good. It was a great way to travel across the West.
Now this "brief passage' from the same column raises the point that it is government's obligation to provide transportation to those persons who can not/should not/will not operate a motor vehicle. I don't think there is any law of the land, such as there is requiring any child under the age of 16 to be enrolled in an approved curriculum of primary and secondary education.
The Pioneer also served as an essential source of transportation for many small towns in Eastern Oregon and the other states served by the Pioneer that had no air service and little or no bus service. At every stop we made on the Pioneer, I met people, often older people, using the Amtrak service to get to or from Portland, or Salt Lake, or Denver, and who said that had no other reasonable way to get there.
The Amtrak era service was inaugurated on a political whim during the 80's when 'a train' was something any "pol with clout" brought back to "the folks' - usually about the time those folks had to go through that little "inconvenient ritual' either every two or six years.
Even if I personally do not hold that a role of publicly funded rail passenger transportation is to provide scenic excursions or even transportation of last resort for those choose to make it such, Mr. Pullman's immediate thoughts cannot be dismissed. If such comes to pass, then look out as here comes the flood of "Mountaineer's', "Potomac Specials', "Hilltoppers', el alia.
Posted by PullmanCo (Member # 1138) on :
Allow me a bit of clarity.
$14M is not a paltry sum. If the Pioneer comes back, it's because some Fair God Congresscritter is needed so bad that Congress will increase its deficit by $14M/annum to give him a train for healthcare.
So: Any ideas on who the Fairy God Congresscritter is?
Posted by DeeCT (Member # 3241) on :
"brief passage' from the same article raises the point that it is government's obligation to provide transportation to those persons who can not/should not/will not operate a motor vehicle."
GBN - That is not my interpretation of that paragraph. No where do I get the sense that it is "government's obligation" to provide train service for those who for whatever reason do not drive. Rather that it defines (in part) who will/could benefit from it.
On another note - I have to wonder by how much the $493 could be reduced by removing the "fluff" that seems to accompany any Government financed project.
Dee
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Dee, in my posting, I made an egregious error in that I improperly labeled the quoted piece as from an article, when it should have been labeled opinion, or column. My posting has been edited to reflect this error on my part.
In the process, I was also unfair to The Oregonian, which as mid-market papers go, is considered to be 'a good one".
Now with the mea culpa out of the way, the columnist has expressed by his tone that someone, AKA the Government, has an obligation to the constituency I noted. I of course hold otherwise; if one desires a lifestyle in which a private motor vehicle is not the focal point of transportation, then they had best consider residing in an urban area. Even if I have not persionally been near it in over thirty years, I understand Portland OR represents a mid-sized urban area in which there are sufficient mass transit options to carry out a middle class lifestyle without the need for a personal motor vehicle.