Re: Amtrak / Regional Rail Discussion Thread
I think getting a second frequency ALB-SPG in some fashion ought to be in that as well. The LSL runs pretty much full between those points even with it's atrocious timekeeping.
I'm fully aware that the segment itself is not and never will be time-competitive with driving, but most of the people on it are connecting passengers for whom it doesn't make sense to go all the way down to NYC and back up again.
People going from points west of Albany to Boston, transferring to the Vermonter, or destinations on the Springfield Line (as well as Springfield itself) isn't that insignificant.
I think the market is bigger than 1 badly timed (even if on schedule) train a day in each direction, especially with the vastly increased service to points beyond Springfield this would represent.
That's not to say that I would suggest doing that before most of these proposals, but I'd have it on the radar.
The LSL can certainly join the party post-improvements. There's mix-and-match opportunities @ Springfield as well to see if there's north-south demand to tease out for a cross-platform Albany connection that would in turn provide the safety in numbers for dipping toes in the shallow end on a +1 BOS-ALB
Shuttle frequency. It most definitely is difficult for people from Greater Hartford to get to Albany because of the pick-your-poison of I-84/I-91 through Hartford or I-84 to I-87 through the Waterbury-Danbury-Newburgh slog of despair. So the trick will be seeing what Boston + Connecticut demand can be stacked up, and then finding the right connection match at Springfield to funnel the two largest ridership sources.
The study talks of Vermont wanting a New Haven short-turning
Vermonter as a sort of #3 frequency. That's probably a bit of a reach for Day 1 because VTrans will have its funding hands full signalizing 50 miles of NECR track north of White River Junction. But if that becomes a later add-on, seems like an appropriate candidate to match with the LSL's time slot.
We will have to temper expectations a bit on Albany, though. The Empire Corridor is its own messed-up world and needs a lot of cross-state improvements of its own before the LSL attains any sort of schedule reliability. Especially on that return trip east. Doing light reliability upgrades to the B&A through the Berkshires to build off of the major upgrades east of Springfield is probably something they want to defer till later when it's clearer what NY State is going to do about Albany-Buffalo and setting aside its feud with CSX. Albany Hub's stability depends greatly on that plan snapping into focus before it clicks well enough to capitalize on low-margin starter frequencies like a BOS-ALB
Shuttle. Ball's in NY's court on that one.
My biggest concern is the actual travel time from Boston to Montreal. Almost 9 hours!
I've done that drive many a time for Bruins, Sox and Revolution games up there and even with traffic at the border, 6 hours is an overly conservative drive time.
As much as I'd like to serve the service created, I fail to see how it could be competitive for business travelers and vacationers who value time over cost.
Except...it's not going to be 9 hours because the study explicitly omits upgrades on the Canadian side of the border. Right now the absolute dog-slowest most excruciating part of the
Adirondack is between the border crossing stop at Rouses Point, NY and St. Lambert, QUE just outside Montreal. It takes 90 minutes of transit time (i.e. time not stopped at Customs) to cover only 45 miles, and that's because Canadian National RR's unsignaled Rouses Point Subdivision between the border and St. Jean-sur-Richelieu barely cracks 25 MPH and has unprotected grade crossings galore. CN doesn't give a damn about spending one Canadian cent on track improvements, because they only run on it once a day to pick up at the NECR interchange. Any
Adirondack or
Montrealer studies have had to treat this as an everlasting condition because CN doesn't care, Quebec province has been unable to convince CN to care, and up until the election a few months ago the former Harper government didn't care about lifting a finger to help Quebec or pressure CN.
That's changed now under the Trudeau Administration, as the Canadian federal gov't has ID'd these two international trains as priorities. So if they address this, even getting the Rouses Point Sub. up to the same modest 60 MPH as NECR in northern VT lops an hour off the schedule right then and there. Poof. All the
Adirondack and
Montrealer need are confirmation of the final plan of action on the Canadian side of the border, and the times quoted in these studies get updated.
BTW...there'll already be an hour shed on the
Adirondack in the next 18 months when the Customs pre-clearance platform opens at Gare Central in Montreal. They're constructing an enclosed platform there and setting up both U.S. and Canadian Customs right at the station, eliminating the need for the Rouses Point and Lacolle Customs stops on either side of the border and ensuing 1-hour schedule allowance. All part of a new treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate last year.
Adirondack will drop the St. Lambert stop and run "sealed" nonstop from Rouses Point to Montreal.
Montrealer would similarly have no need to stop for Customs between St. Albans and Montreal like it did in its last incarnation pre-1995, and likewise run "sealed" on the other side of the border.
