I think Amtrak should pivot to Concord- Manchester - Worcester - Woonsocket - Providence - the Boston Surface proposal, basically. All of that infrastructure would also benefit MBTA CR ops into NH and RI intrastate rail, and the MBTA doesn't have the track rights to do it, so it's always be Amtrak.
Huh, that's an interesting idea. It's unfortunate that the track layout requires this route to just miss Lowell. If this route coordinated with
Northeast Regional schedules and had a reliable timed transfer at Providence, you could perhaps pick up some intercity travelers heading to Connecticut, New York, and points south.
Hmm...
goes off to look at Google Maps, a bunch of intercity bus schedules, and do some back-of-the-napkin math
Huh. This might actually not be such a crazy idea.
Concord-Worcester-Providence is roughly 120 miles. Assuming all the tracks were upgraded, perhaps we could estimate an average speed of 45 mph, once we take curves and stops into consideration (which is also consistent with the
Downeaster's average speed Portland to Boston). That would lead to an end-to-end travel time of 2h40m.
A journey from Providence to New York takes between 3h and 3h30m, depending on how many stops you make. Let's assume 10m for a cross-platform transfer at Providence (citing precedent for the current Valley Flyer transfer at New Haven). That would put a Concord-NYC journey at roughly 6 hours. (Assuming Amtrak can guarantee priority for its trains against freight -- in theory, a solvable problem with the right political support.)
There are no intercity buses direct from Concord (or Manchester) to NYC that I could find. (Though there is direct service from
Hanover/Lebanon and from
Portsmouth.) The best I can find is to take a Greyhound bus to Boston, have a ~1 hour layover, and then take the bus to New York. Total travel time is just over 7 hours, including that layover.
So... that's actually not too bad as a starting point. For NH-NYC riders, an Amtrak journey could potentially be competitive. (Worcester-NYC is currently advertised on Peter Pan as 3h30m, so it's probably less competitive there -- though, again, if Amtrak can guarantee priority for its trains, it's possible that the reliability of a rail schedule might be preferable to the traffic-dependent delays of a busy.)
But beyond the NH-NYC journey, there's a whole universe of other journeys that open up. Of course, you have your local commuters within the corridor -- NH to Worcester, for example, and Worcester-Providence; I wouldn't expect these numbers to be astronomical, but I think they'd contribute.
But you'd also provide access to points throughout Connecticut (New Haven, Bridgeport, Stamford). And then on top of that you'd open up access to the rest of the Northeast Corridor -- two-seat timed transfer rides from New Hampshire to New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington DC and Virginia.
Add those all together (NH-NYC, local commuters, NH-CT, Worcester-CT, NH-Northeast Corridor)... and you
just might have something.
