Regional New England Rail (Amtrak & State DOT & NEC)

[F-Line to Dudley]

Back when Burlington Union Station reopened, I wondered if it might spark any interest in upgrading the Winooski Branch to allow the Vermonter to serve Burlington directly instead of its stop 5 miles outside of town in Essex Junction. I’m sure a healthy proportion (maybe even the majority) of Essex Junction’s inbound ridership is people headed to Burlington. It would add time to the total trip, since trains would have to back out of Union Station and return to the mainline like the Downeaster does to serve the Portland Jetport station, but in practice there’s only one stop north of Essex Junction: St Albans, which does about 4,000 riders per year. The cost of upgrading the branch was estimated at $4 million a decade ago, but I haven’t seen any interest yet. Maybe it’s just not worth the operational hassle.

Given that VTrans's #1 pax rail priority in the state is getting the Vermonter re-extended to Montreal, there would be zero interest in such a self-kneecapping reroute. There's a large ridership affinity between Vermont and Quebec, and Essex Junction already has Green Mountain Transit bus #2 pinging from there to Downtown every 20 minutes. GMT's website even highlights the bus slots that time directly with Vermonter slots. Re-routing to Burlington Union Station adds very little new ridership since nearly all of it would just migrate laterally from Essex Jct. And it would be a schedule-killer if you tried to shoehorn all of the above into one routing, as the connecting branch is 7-1/2 miles long one-way and traces a very indirect perimeter around the city before diving downtown.

 

[riptide]

Re-routing to Burlington Union Station adds very little new ridership since nearly all of it would just migrate laterally from Essex Jct. And it would be a schedule-killer if you tried to shoehorn all of the above into one routing, as the connecting branch is 7-1/2 miles long one-way and traces a very indirect perimeter around the city before diving downtown.

This is what I was wondering. If stopping in downtown Burlington wouldn't make the Vermonter a significantly more appealing travel option for people headed to Burlington (i.e. 75% of Essex Junction ridership shifts to Union Station PLUS you get another Essex Junction's worth on top of that), then it wouldn't be worth the operational hassle.

And yes, once trains are running to Montreal, you'd inconvenience way too many riders by running this service patterns. I was only thinking of it as something you'd do in the interim. And judging by the way CN hasn't been playing ball with Amtrak on the Adirondack (same route the Vermonter would take through Quebec), "the interim" could be a long while.

I'm not aware of any proposals to extend the Ethan Allen Express to Montreal (which would be the other way passenger trains might use the Winooski Branch). Wouldn't that be the more attractive of the two routings through Vermont for passengers originating in Montreal? Direct service to Burlington at roughly the same length of time it takes to reach NYC as the Vermonter.

 

[themissinglink]

I'm not aware of any proposals to extend the Ethan Allen Express to Montreal (which would be the other way passenger trains might use the Winooski Branch). Wouldn't that be the more attractive of the two routings through Vermont for passengers originating in Montreal? Direct service to Burlington at roughly the same length of time it takes to reach NYC as the Vermonter.

There has been serious talk about extending the Ethan Allen Express to Essex Junction, allowing for a transfer with the Vermonter.