The former Central Union Terminal was funded and built by the New York Central Railroad Co. (at the same time the city was building its competition Toledo Express Airport using general taxes) in 1950. The facility is now owned by the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority (which also owns the airport nowadays) and has renamed it Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza.

 

Today, MLK Plaza is mostly offices, but also has an Amtrak station on the ground floor. Greyhound will relocate here later this year, using the front of the station below this overhead walkway as its bus loading/unloading area....

 

The Greyhound ticket office will be on the other side of this wall....

 

The station was busy when I was taking these pictures because it was Toledo's contribution to National Train Day -- the May anniversary of the Golden Spike ceremony to complete the nation's first transcontinental railroad. About 7,000-9,000 show up each year at Toledo's NTD event (it was May 2 this year):

 

National Train Day includes equipment displays, such as these double-deck Superliners that are used on the Chicago-Cleveland-Washington DC Capitol Limited that travels east/west through Toledo each night:

 

Toledo is the only station in Ohio that has multiple passenger tracks:

 

However, only two of them are used. In this case, the Washington DC-Chicago Capitol Limited (left) and the New York City/Boston-Chicago Lake Shore Limited (right) were annulled at Toledo in the Fall of 2014 due to severe freight train congestion between Toledo and Chicago. A bus bridge using dozens of buses was used to shuttled hundreds of train passengers around the worst area of rail congestion. Major capital improvements and permanent detouring of some freight traffic has eased the congestion this year:

If those backwards guys we call "legislators" downstate don't start changing their ways that 7th most populous designation will keep falling....

 

To be fair, only two of the 3C metro areas are growing in population, and it ain't the upstate one. However, I think they could be growing more quickly (as could Cleveland) if we all had quick, convenient and affordable rail services within and between our cities. Sacramento is growing even faster. It has a growing, higher-usage transit system with bus services focused around trunk-line light-rail corridors and connected with frequent (30 trains a day) to/from the Bay Area at average speeds initially of 39 mph but since raised to an average of 45 mph that carry 1.6 million passengers a year (or 3x what 3C was projected to carry). And it has Amtrak services from the state capital to Fresno and Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley, east into the Sierra Nevada mountains and beyond to Reno, Salt Lake City, Denver and Chicago; north to Northern California, Portland and Seattle; and south to San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

 

Unlike Columbus, Sacramento is a very rail-connected city both within its metro area and to the entire state and beyond.

 

Here is one issue with current rail.  You mentioned some of the connected areas of California and I do know people that live in San Luis Obispo.  I can tell you that it takes about 3-1/2 hours to drive from San Luis Obispo down to LA.  My friends thought they would try rail down to LA and if I remember correctly it took them somewhere between 8-10 hours by train.  They never took rail again.   

 

Rail will never be what it could be if that is the best it can do when it comes to being a transportation service.  Rail goes slow and it makes too many stops.  When you fly somewhere, your plane doesn't land in every city along it's route.  When a person drives to a destination, you don't make frequent stops.  San Luis Obispo to LA is a direct drive by car down 101 and you have no need for stops.  Unless you are one of those annoying passengers or drivers that drink coffee, then you'll have to add several stops for constant restroom breaks, lol.

 

My point being is that for rail to work, it needs to have minimal stops.  Streetcars and buses are expected to make frequent stops as they are very local.  LRT is expected to go farther distances and with farther distances for stops.  Rail should be similar to air travel and should not be stopping at every village along the way.  Could you imagine lifting off on an airplane flight and after you hit 30 feet in the air your plane comes back down to pick up more people.  It would make you feel like you are getting nowhere.  I might be exaggerating a bit, but not by much.  Therefore rail needs to be high speed rail between major metro areas, not the molasses express.   

 

I am all for rail travel, not fail travel.               

And yet the Amtrak route you used as your example the second-most heavily traveled in the USA. BTW, it takes 5.5 hours by train where only two daily round-trip trains are offered St. Luis Obispo-LA. Six round-trip trains are offered south of Santa Barbara (not including the overlay of Metrolink which makes even more stops than Amtrak does). Eleven Amtrak round trips per day are offered south of LA to San Diego (again, not counting Metrolink and Coaster commuter trains). And yes, there are more station stops north of LA than south of LA. There is a balancing act between station stops (you can't get riders if you don't stop to pick them up) and having too many stops (the folks at the outer end of the line are less likely to ride from one endpoint to the other with so many stops). It may not have worked for your friend, but the Pacific Surfliner route carries the passengers. Lots of them.

 

There is no one-size fits all approach to making rail work. Some routes have lots of station stops. Some have few stops. Some routes that have evolved to offer frequent service with a mix of local and express service. Using anti-thought-provoking tag lines like "fail rail" is a attempt at waiving our responsibility to consider that there multiple ways to move forward based on demographic, infrastructure, political and economic environments surrounding the rail project. What worked for California may or may not work here. But their experience is nonetheless worth observing and considering.

All Aboard Ohio ‏@AllAboardOhio  57s57 seconds ago

50 miles of I-65 between Chicago-Indianapolis-Cincinnati closed indefinitely! Take #HoosierTrain, @amtrak #Cardinal! http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/destinations/2015/08/12/interstate-65-bridge-indiana/31556813/

I was truly disappointed when Kasich pulled Ohio's funding for the 3C rail.  At the time, I had a lot of short term assignments at Wright-Patterson AFB, so I was looking forward to this as an alternative to driving.  I would even have paid more for the ability to sleep on these journeys.  Of course, this is moot now, as I no longer go down there.  But it would have been nice.

^In a Republican-controlled, freeway-dominated/oriented state, where the capital city -- the largest in the State, doesn't even have ANY Amtrak service at all, Megabus' 3-C nixing is not surprising.  Study after study after study after study have pointed out that human beings are far more open to using trains that buses, with the former seen as comfortable, relaxing, safe and positive with the latter seen as all-things negative.  But the GOP, their friends the Koch Bros in tandem with endless right-wing super-Pacs, have spent billions and worked triple overtime to convince the Ohio populace that train travel is just some gold-plated, social-engineering, tax-grubbing, Rube Goldberg-ean folly geared toward shuttling poor and minority, oft criminally-oriented hordes to a nice lily-white neighborhood near you -- all dreamed up in the heads those Bernie-lovin', Occupy Wall Street uber-wacko, Limousine Libs.

 

Megabus' 3-C cancellation was due to falling gas prices and people -- again, we're talking Ohio, where trains and transit have been systematically sledge-hammered by the Right -- have been lured into drive their cars everywhere but esp to/from their suburban and ex-urban cul-de-sacs, malls and non-city office parks along the beltway.

 

Still, how much would a train ticket on a high-speed line cost to get to Columbus vs. a Megabus style ride or simply driving?  Once in a place like Columbus, or even Cincinnati, how is one to get to their final destination unless it's right near a train station? 

 

Right, Megabus was cancelled due to a lack of demand.  That's how business works.  No demand, no service.  Yet, somehow a vastly more expensive high-speed train line linking the 3Cs was going to work and sustain itself when even Megabus couldn't survive?

 

I'm a public transit supporter but this whole high-speed train line from CLE-CIN never really made economic sense.  The high-speed train cancel by Kasich issue should be dropped, and quickly.

Buses and trains aren't equal substitutes. Take a look at travel markets in the USA with similar or lesser populations with multiple daily passenger trains and see what their business services are like and report back.

^In a Republican-controlled, freeway-dominated/oriented state, where the capital city -- the largest in the State, doesn't even have ANY Amtrak service at all, Megabus' 3-C nixing is not surprising.  Study after study after study after study have pointed out that human beings are far more open to using trains that buses, with the former seen as comfortable, relaxing, safe and positive with the latter seen as all-things negative.  . . . .

 

Megabus' 3-C cancellation was due to falling gas prices . . . .

 

Still, how much would a train ticket on a high-speed line cost to get to Columbus vs. a Megabus style ride or simply driving?  Once in a place like Columbus, or even Cincinnati, how is one to get to their final destination unless it's right near a train station? 

 

Right, Megabus was cancelled due to a lack of demand.  That's how business works.  No demand, no service.  Yet, somehow a vastly more expensive high-speed train line linking the 3Cs was going to work and sustain itself when even Megabus couldn't survive?

 

I'm a public transit supporter but this whole high-speed train line from CLE-CIN never really made economic sense.  The high-speed train cancel by Kasich issue should be dropped, and quickly.

 

First, remember that the train Kasich killed would not have been high speed, but rather similar to the speed of driving, and the ticket prices would have been lower accordingly.  But we have to start with that "slow speed" train and incrementally improve it to ever hope to get high speed travel.  Watch what is happening on the Chicago-St. Louis corridor and the Detroit-Chicago corridor.  Ohio is not leading the midwest in improved travel between its major cities.

 

If I had business that took me from Cincinnati to Cleveland (or let's say Avon), I'd much rather take the train and sleep or work, and then rent a car or take a taxi to my final destination, than to waste an entire day making the drive.  My parents can't make that drive any more.  And that will be true of more and more of us.

 

Second, no transit system is self-sustaining.  We are all paying for the highways, whether we use them or not.  We pay for the roads for trucks and MegaBus, why not pay for rails for freight and passenger rail?  How many times have we bailed out the airline industry?  Who pays for air traffic controllers?  Not the airlines.

As a transit advocate, why do you think that trains should be self-sustaining?  (Transit services might come close to covering operating costs, but not capital costs.)

 

Third, Uber has made it far easier and more reliable to get a taxi and get around our cities.  And perhaps a rental car company would locate near a train station just like they do near airports.

 

Finally, as to MegaBus's business,  their claim of "lack of demand" doesn't tell us much, if anything, about whether there would be demand for train travel on the same route. 

Megabus may have lost customers due to lower gas prices, which made it easier for the people with cars to drive themselves, and maybe MegaBus (and its reputation as a low-cost carrier) couldn't raise prices sufficiently to cover their other costs and still be cheaper than their competition (Greyhound).  Maybe health insurance for drivers and maintenance workers is their biggest expense -- I know ours went up 20% again this year (down from the 30% annual increases of a few years ago, but still . . . .) and ridership failed to keep up with the rising costs.  Maybe including Columbus created a problem in scheduling buses throughout their network.  Maybe they didn't have the right arrival/departure times.  It could be a lot of things. 

 

MegaBus canceling the route at this time tells us very little about whether a train would be a popular alternative to driving or taking the bus.

 

 

Megabus canceling the CLE-CIN route only tells us there was little demand for the current service Megabus provided. That could be because of the frequency, cost, quality of their buses, or just the very fact it was a bus. If you want an opposing correlation, might as well point to the air service from Burk that has been successful.

 

Quoted for posterity because it can't be said any simpler than this:

 

MegaBus canceling the route at this time tells us very little about whether a train would be a popular alternative to driving or taking the bus.

^In a Republican-controlled, freeway-dominated/oriented state, where the capital city -- the largest in the State, doesn't even have ANY Amtrak service at all, Megabus' 3-C nixing is not surprising.  Study after study after study after study have pointed out that human beings are far more open to using trains that buses, with the former seen as comfortable, relaxing, safe and positive with the latter seen as all-things negative.  But the GOP, their friends the Koch Bros in tandem with endless right-wing super-Pacs, have spent billions and worked triple overtime to convince the Ohio populace that train travel is just some gold-plated, social-engineering, tax-grubbing, Rube Goldberg-ean folly geared toward shuttling poor and minority, oft criminally-oriented hordes to a nice lily-white neighborhood near you -- all dreamed up in the heads those Bernie-lovin', Occupy Wall Street uber-wacko, Limousine Libs.

 

Megabus' 3-C cancellation was due to falling gas prices and people -- again, we're talking Ohio, where trains and transit have been systematically sledge-hammered by the Right -- have been lured into drive their cars everywhere but esp to/from their suburban and ex-urban cul-de-sacs, malls and non-city office parks along the beltway.

 

Still, how much would a train ticket on a high-speed line cost to get to Columbus vs. a Megabus style ride or simply driving?  Once in a place like Columbus, or even Cincinnati, how is one to get to their final destination unless it's right near a train station? 

 

Right, Megabus was cancelled due to a lack of demand.  That's how business works.  No demand, no service.  Yet, somehow a vastly more expensive high-speed train line linking the 3Cs was going to work and sustain itself when even Megabus couldn't survive?

 

I'm a public transit supporter but this whole high-speed train line from CLE-CIN never really made economic sense.  The high-speed train cancel by Kasich issue should be dropped, and quickly.

Buses and trains aren't equal substitutes. Take a look at travel markets in the USA with similar or lesser populations with multiple daily passenger trains and see what their business services are like and report back.

 

Thanks for the homework assignment but why don't you do that; I can save you some time though: there are no high-speed trains connecting any U.S. city, closest is Acela.  Sorry not everyone is ''all aboard'' in Ohio about this fantasy rail network you advocate.  The best is you imagining tall, dense office buildings surrounding downtown train stations in cities like Youngstown, Akron etc.; you are living in a different world if you think there will be a vast Midwest network of high-speed trains connecting to Chicago, the ultimate black-hole money pit of the U.S. 

 

Cincinnati and Columbus should work on developing local transit systems and, for some reason, both of cities are pushing for high-speed trains to Chicago.  CIN has maybe 1 or 2 trains per week; COL has no service at all.  Local transit in both cities is abysmal.  So with both of these cities lacking even decent local public transit, it's time to build a high-speed train line to Chicago?  So delusional.

 

Also, your All Aboard Ohio organization is interesting and good for you that you are passionate for trains.  The summer get together in Cleveland looked like a great day for retirees to spend the day riding Cleveland's rail lines.

Important to note that Megabus was kicked out of DT Cincinnati in recent years.  Originally it loaded on 4th St. in the center of downtown until condo residents across the street complained about idling buses disrupting their sleep.  Megabus now loads in an obscure parking lot on the west side of I-75, about a mile from fountain square, literally in the middle of nowhere and not visible from any prominent road.  People can't take public transportation to reach it (but they can reach the Greyhound station via bus).  More often they use Uber or Lyft or are dropped off/picked up by a friend. 

 

No doubt this ignominious spot has hurt business. 

Well, there are plenty of rail advocates who were hard against the 3C proposal as it last stood before Kasich killed it. Just because it's passenger rail doesn't mean that it is the best solution. But let's face it, there were a lot of compromises to the 3C corridor because it was a starter package - much like how other well used lines began out - like St. Louis to Kansas City and Chicago to St. Louis. Both of those lines I listed are seeing major improvements to bring speeds up to 110 MPH. Do we need high speed rail criss-crossing to every major town and port? No, but 79 MPH is a starter - and if it does well enough, it's a bargaining chip for even faster (think 110 MPH or more) service.

 

And the Megabus discussion isn't all that relevant. Because Megabus refuses to build actual stations or co-op in existing facilities, their ridership numbers hurt. Sure, you can get a seat for a buck (sometimes but often not at all), but you get no amenities (shit Wi-Fi is not one of them). And do you expect people to wait out in the cold or sultry summer days for buses in derelict or open areas? (I'm looking at you, Cincinnati)

 

Megabus, as a company, is notoriously hard to deal with. They got into a stink in downtown Cincinnati because they let their diesel buses idle non-stop, which produces noxious fumes and particulates. They refused to move into a shelter or a more secure location and instead moved to an isolated pad that isn't near any public transportation (as jmecklenborg[/member] noted).

^In a Republican-controlled, freeway-dominated/oriented state, where the capital city -- the largest in the State, doesn't even have ANY Amtrak service at all, Megabus' 3-C nixing is not surprising.  Study after study after study after study have pointed out that human beings are far more open to using trains that buses, with the former seen as comfortable, relaxing, safe and positive with the latter seen as all-things negative.  . . . .

 

Megabus' 3-C cancellation was due to falling gas prices . . . .

 

Still, how much would a train ticket on a high-speed line cost to get to Columbus vs. a Megabus style ride or simply driving?  Once in a place like Columbus, or even Cincinnati, how is one to get to their final destination unless it's right near a train station? 

 

Right, Megabus was cancelled due to a lack of demand.  That's how business works.  No demand, no service.  Yet, somehow a vastly more expensive high-speed train line linking the 3Cs was going to work and sustain itself when even Megabus couldn't survive?

 

I'm a public transit supporter but this whole high-speed train line from CLE-CIN never really made economic sense.  The high-speed train cancel by Kasich issue should be dropped, and quickly.

 

First, remember that the train Kasich killed would not have been high speed, but rather similar to the speed of driving, and the ticket prices would have been lower accordingly.  But we have to start with that "slow speed" train and incrementally improve it to ever hope to get high speed travel.  Watch what is happening on the Chicago-St. Louis corridor and the Detroit-Chicago corridor.  Ohio is not leading the midwest in improved travel between its major cities.

 

If I had business that took me from Cincinnati to Cleveland (or let's say Avon), I'd much rather take the train and sleep or work, and then rent a car or take a taxi to my final destination, than to waste an entire day making the drive.  My parents can't make that drive any more.  And that will be true of more and more of us.

 

Second, no transit system is self-sustaining.  We are all paying for the highways, whether we use them or not.  We pay for the roads for trucks and MegaBus, why not pay for rails for freight and passenger rail?  How many times have we bailed out the airline industry?  Who pays for air traffic controllers?  Not the airlines.

As a transit advocate, why do you think that trains should be self-sustaining?  (Transit services might come close to covering operating costs, but not capital costs.)

 

Third, Uber has made it far easier and more reliable to get a taxi and get around our cities.  And perhaps a rental car company would locate near a train station just like they do near airports.

 

Finally, as to MegaBus's business,  their claim of "lack of demand" doesn't tell us much, if anything, about whether there would be demand for train travel on the same route. 

Megabus may have lost customers due to lower gas prices, which made it easier for the people with cars to drive themselves, and maybe MegaBus (and its reputation as a low-cost carrier) couldn't raise prices sufficiently to cover their other costs and still be cheaper than their competition (Greyhound).  Maybe health insurance for drivers and maintenance workers is their biggest expense -- I know ours went up 20% again this year (down from the 30% annual increases of a few years ago, but still . . . .) and ridership failed to keep up with the rising costs.  Maybe including Columbus created a problem in scheduling buses throughout their network.  Maybe they didn't have the right arrival/departure times.  It could be a lot of things. 

 

MegaBus canceling the route at this time tells us very little about whether a train would be a popular alternative to driving or taking the bus.

 

All this speculating about Megabus; health insurance increases etc are ridiculous.  If a few people weren't willing to shell out a few bucks for a short-ride bus ride to COL on a Megabus, then why would many people shell out many more bucks for a high-speed train ride to downtown COL?

 

Megabus tells a lot about whether a train would be a popular alternative to driving or taking the bus.  Just drive to COL!

 

 

 

All this speculating about Megabus; health insurance increases etc are ridiculous.  If a few people weren't willing to shell out a few bucks for a short-ride bus ride to COL on a Megabus, then why would many people shell out many more bucks for a high-speed train ride to downtown COL?

 

 

Because a train would be able to attract a very different & wider demographic than Megabus. Sherman Cahal[/member] already articulated those points quite well above

You might see more of 'those' people PHS14[/member].

 

Now to jump on the serious bandwagon, I know that Kasich made good on his promise to dismantle the 3C proposal. But it seems that he has increased public transportation funding during his tenure. My curiosity is how much of that (and with prior administrations) regulated by the House and Senate? Does Kasich really dislike public transportation or was he just dead-set against the 3C because he couldn't see it becoming a growth opportunity?

You might see more of 'those' people PHS14[/member].

 

Now to jump on the serious bandwagon, I know that Kasich made good on his promise to dismantle the 3C proposal. But it seems that he has increased public transportation funding during his tenure. My curiosity is how much of that (and with prior administrations) regulated by the House and Senate? Does Kasich really dislike public transportation or was he just dead-set against the 3C because he couldn't see it becoming a growth opportunity?

 

He didn't see it becoming a growth opportunity and considered it to be a boondoggle of cost, expense and long-term maintenance.

You might see more of 'those' people PHS14[/member].

 

Now to jump on the serious bandwagon, I know that Kasich made good on his promise to dismantle the 3C proposal. But it seems that he has increased public transportation funding during his tenure. My curiosity is how much of that (and with prior administrations) regulated by the House and Senate? Does Kasich really dislike public transportation or was he just dead-set against the 3C because he couldn't see it becoming a growth opportunity?

 

He didn't becoming a growth opportunity and considered it to be a boondoggle of cost, expense and long-term maintenance see it gaining traction politically.

 

FTFY

Well, there are plenty of rail advocates who were hard against the 3C proposal as it last stood before Kasich killed it. Just because it's passenger rail doesn't mean that it is the best solution. But let's face it, there were a lot of compromises to the 3C corridor because it was a starter package - much like how other well used lines began out - like St. Louis to Kansas City and Chicago to St. Louis. Both of those lines I listed are seeing major improvements to bring speeds up to 110 MPH. Do we need high speed rail criss-crossing to every major town and port? No, but 79 MPH is a starter - and if it does well enough, it's a bargaining chip for even faster (think 110 MPH or more) service.

 

And the Megabus discussion isn't all that relevant. Because Megabus refuses to build actual stations or co-op in existing facilities, their ridership numbers hurt. Sure, you can get a seat for a buck (sometimes but often not at all), but you get no amenities (S**t Wi-Fi is not one of them). And do you expect people to wait out in the cold or sultry summer days for buses in derelict or open areas? (I'm looking at you, Cincinnati)

 

Megabus, as a company, is notoriously hard to deal with. They got into a stink in downtown Cincinnati because they let their diesel buses idle non-stop, which produces noxious fumes and particulates. They refused to move into a shelter or a more secure location and instead moved to an isolated pad that isn't near any public transportation (as jmecklenborg[/member] noted).

 

Perhaps Cincinnati should develop quality local public transit service before expanding to high or any speed train lines to any destination.  I hear more about CIN efforts to gain more service and higher-speed rail access to Chicago than to Cleveland anyway.  If the demand was there already, why is Amtrak only hitting CIN on a very limited weekly basis?  What is the rational for high-speed service to Chicago?

Why does Cincinnati have three-day a week service - at night? Here is a rundown:

 

1. CSXT controls most of the line and having frequent service would require the installation of more sidings and possibly lengthy double-track segments so that passenger trains have priority.

2. The Buckingham Branch Railroad, a Class III, is a combination of many former railroads in Virginia. The route Amtrak uses is very congested with traffic shared with CSXT. Lengthy sidings would need to be constructed for passenger priority.

 

The Cardinal has around 113,000 passengers, which is near its record high ridership of 116,000 it had in 2012. It also has record revenue - $7.7 million in 2013.

 

For more reliable and faster service, you will need politicians at the state and federal level advocating for more sidings and double track. It's not a cheap move and CSXT carries a lot of weight.

 

The Cardinal will never be high speed by nature of its route - it goes through mountainous territory on lines that are over a century old.

You might see more of 'those' people PHS14[/member].

 

Now to jump on the serious bandwagon, I know that Kasich made good on his promise to dismantle the 3C proposal. But it seems that he has increased public transportation funding during his tenure. My curiosity is how much of that (and with prior administrations) regulated by the House and Senate? Does Kasich really dislike public transportation or was he just dead-set against the 3C because he couldn't see it becoming a growth opportunity?

 

He didn't becoming a growth opportunity and considered it to be a boondoggle of cost, expense and long-term maintenance see it gaining traction politically.

 

FTFY

 

You can play edit games all you want but the reasons stated go hand in hand with gaining traction politically.  He will gain political traction if the All Aboard Ohio types bring up the 3C rail nonsense; a plan he killed and can then point to bus service not being able to survive.

Greyhound is still doing 6 buses in each direction between Cincinnati and Columbus. 

 

 

He didn't see it becoming a growth opportunity and considered it to be a boondoggle of cost, expense and long-term maintenance.

 

Megabus has been chopping Midwest routes regardless of ridership. If they don't make enough money for shareholders, they're gone. The Cleveland-Chicago route has been one of their most successful and they've chopped it down to one round trip a day. The Pittsburgh-Detroit route was a tremendous success ridership-wise but Megabus completely eliminated it after only two years because it wasn't profitable enough.

 

You really need to read up on what happened with this project behind the scenes (much of which I've already posted in this thread). But to save you from sifting through 157 pages... Gov. Kasich knows zip about passenger rail. He has no experience with it nor did any of his advisers. But they do listen to another major employer with campaign money. So CSX came to his campaign staff with check in hand in 2010 and told them to kill the 3C passenger trains because ODOT wasn't investing enough in new track capacity to accommodate their projected growth in freight traffic. Kaisch's campaign staff and advisers (include an active petroleum retailers lobbyist) concocted the lies about it being a 39 mph train and went to the editorial boards of major newspapers to affect their editorial content. So when Forest City Enterprises and Value Recovery Group planned a major real estate development at Riverside, next the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, they wanted a 3-C station with it. The value-capture from that development alone would have more than funded the annual operating subsidy of the 3C trains. Plus there were other station-area developments planned in downtown Springfield, Dayton and Sharonville (suburban Cincy station). There were numerous attempts to change the minds of Kasich's campaign staff as well at get news coverage of this value-capture mechanism but to no avail. Kasich was making political headway with the 39 mph 3C train and the whole "stop Obama's slow trains" mantra.

 

Meanwhile Ohio remains as the nation's most populous state without a state-support passenger rail program. All of our surrounding states except Kentucky have passenger rail programs, with 110 mph service in operation or under construction next year. And by the way, Kasich also killed the state and federal engineering funds to design the increase in speeds of the 3C trains to 110 mph in phase 2.

He didn't see it becoming a growth opportunity and considered it to be a boondoggle of cost, expense and long-term maintenance.

 

Megabus has been chopping Midwest routes regardless of ridership. If they don't make enough money for shareholders, they're gone. The Cleveland-Chicago route has been one of their most successful and they've chopped it down to one round trip a day. The Pittsburgh-Detroit route was a tremendous success ridership-wise but Megabus completely eliminated it after only two years because it wasn't profitable enough.

 

You really need to read up on what happened with this project behind the scenes (much of which I've already posted in this thread). But to save you from sifting through 157 pages... Gov. Kasich knows zip about passenger rail. He has no experience with it nor did any of his advisers. But they do listen to another major employer with campaign money. So CSX came to his campaign staff with check in hand in 2010 and told them to kill the 3C passenger trains because ODOT wasn't investing enough in new track capacity to accommodate their projected growth in freight traffic. Kaisch's campaign staff and advisers (include an active petroleum retailers lobbyist) concocted the lies about it being a 39 mph train and went to the editorial boards of major newspapers to affect their editorial content. So when Forest City Enterprises and Value Recovery Group planned a major real estate development at Riverside, next the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, they wanted a 3-C station with it. The value-capture from that development alone would have more than funded the annual operating subsidy of the 3C trains. Plus there were other station-area developments planned in downtown Springfield, Dayton and Sharonville (suburban Cincy station). There were numerous attempts to change the minds of Kasich's campaign staff as well at get news coverage of this value-capture mechanism but to no avail. Kasich was making political headway with the 39 mph 3C train and the whole "stop Obama's slow trains" mantra.

 

Meanwhile Ohio remains as the nation's most populous state without a state-support passenger rail program. All of our surrounding states except Kentucky have passenger rail programs, with 110 mph service in operation or under construction next year. And by the way, Kasich also killed the state and federal engineering funds to design the increase in speeds of the 3C trains to 110 mph in phase 2.

 

That's an interesting story but the 3C high-speed rail line did not happen. I've suggested letting this go since Kasich will use turning down Obama train money and pointing to Megabus failure for even more political mileage.

I think this is the point that we should just start ignoring him (her?).

 

So, back to restarting rail service in Ohio's 3C corridor...

 

Moderator note: this thread has been pruned. Please keep it friendly.

As someone living in the Cincinnati area, the 3C line was never about going to Columbus or Cleveland for me.  I definitely would have taken it to Cleveland to visit relatives, but I liked it because from Cleveland you can get to the east coast.  Also, investments in a terminal and rail through the city could have made a better connection to Chicago (or other cities) from Cincinnati more feasible in the future.  I just saw it as a step to beef up Cincinnati's ties to the Amtrak network, because our current Amtrak service is abysmal.

Why does Cincinnati have three-day a week service - at night? Here is a rundown:

 

1. CSXT controls most of the line and having frequent service would require the installation of more sidings and possibly lengthy double-track segments so that passenger trains have priority.

2. The Buckingham Branch Railroad, a Class III, is a combination of many former railroads in Virginia. The route Amtrak uses is very congested with traffic shared with CSXT. Lengthy sidings would need to be constructed for passenger priority.

 

The Cardinal has around 113,000 passengers, which is near its record high ridership of 116,000 it had in 2012. It also has record revenue - $7.7 million in 2013.

 

For more reliable and faster service, you will need politicians at the state and federal level advocating for more sidings and double track. It's not a cheap move and CSXT carries a lot of weight.

 

The Cardinal will never be high speed by nature of its route - it goes through mountainous territory on lines that are over a century old.

 

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

Why does Cincinnati have three-day a week service - at night? Here is a rundown:

 

1. CSXT controls most of the line and having frequent service would require the installation of more sidings and possibly lengthy double-track segments so that passenger trains have priority.

2. The Buckingham Branch Railroad, a Class III, is a combination of many former railroads in Virginia. The route Amtrak uses is very congested with traffic shared with CSXT. Lengthy sidings would need to be constructed for passenger priority.

 

The Cardinal has around 113,000 passengers, which is near its record high ridership of 116,000 it had in 2012. It also has record revenue - $7.7 million in 2013.

 

For more reliable and faster service, you will need politicians at the state and federal level advocating for more sidings and double track. It's not a cheap move and CSXT carries a lot of weight.

 

The Cardinal will never be high speed by nature of its route - it goes through mountainous territory on lines that are over a century old.

 

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

 

Do you got some details or what?

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

 

The State of Indiana already funds more frequent service between Indianapolis and Chicago, so there's no reason it couldn't be extended to Cincinnati. I know that I would take that to Chicago instead of driving or flying or even taking Megabus. Also, that segment could easily be upgrade to higher speeds over time. It's the part of the route between Cincinnati and DC that goes through mountainous areas and can't be upgraded to high speed.

No, he's just coming back to troll some more.  He really, really wants the oil companies to make money so hopefully he volunteered for the Iraq war and is signing up his sons for the next oil war. 

 

The Cardinal runs through Cincinnati in the middle of the night because Robert Bird legislated that it travel through West Virginia during the daytime.  That was back in 1970 or 1971 and here we are, almost 50 years later, with the same absurd situation intact.

 

The Cincinnati metro has a larger population than the entire state of West Virginia.  But the schedule of the Cardinal is in Amtrak's original charter and there is nothing that can be done about it.  It can't be defunded without eliminating Amtrak entirely.  The current route to Washington, DC would make a lot of sense if there were two trains in each direction every day.  Then it could actually be useful -- right now you have to plan your entire trip to Washington around the every-other-day return date. 

 

 

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

 

Amtrak officials tell me otherwise. A daily Cardinal is actually looking better now that coal traffic is way down, CSX has built three passing sidings between Cincinnati and Chicago, and the FAST Act includes Sec. 11104 which we expect to have an appropriation in FY2017. But thanks for your concern.

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

 

Amtrak officials tell me otherwise. A daily Cardinal is actually looking better now that coal traffic is way down, CSX has built three passing sidings between Cincinnati and Chicago, and the FAST Act includes Sec. 11104 which we expect to have an appropriation in FY2017. But thanks for your concern.

 

You're welcome.  Hopefully, Sherman Cahal reads this since he or she is the one putting out the downer news on this issue.

No, he's just coming back to troll some more.  He really, really wants the oil companies to make money so hopefully he volunteered for the Iraq war and is signing up his sons for the next oil war. 

 

The Cardinal runs through Cincinnati in the middle of the night because Robert Bird legislated that it travel through West Virginia during the daytime.  That was back in 1970 or 1971 and here we are, almost 50 years later, with the same absurd situation intact.

 

The Cincinnati metro has a larger population than the entire state of West Virginia.  But the schedule of the Cardinal is in Amtrak's original charter and there is nothing that can be done about it.  It can't be defunded without eliminating Amtrak entirely.  The current route to Washington, DC would make a lot of sense if there were two trains in each direction every day.  Then it could actually be useful -- right now you have to plan your entire trip to Washington around the every-other-day return date.

 

You need to keep up with KJP's response to my posts regarding this topic.  For some reason, he doesn't convey the same info to you or Sherman Cahal.  Sounds like you all need to group focus on this Amtrak-CIN topic so us lay-folks can decide who has spin or actual facts. 

Why does Cincinnati have three-day a week service - at night? Here is a rundown:

 

1. CSXT controls most of the line and having frequent service would require the installation of more sidings and possibly lengthy double-track segments so that passenger trains have priority.

2. The Buckingham Branch Railroad, a Class III, is a combination of many former railroads in Virginia. The route Amtrak uses is very congested with traffic shared with CSXT. Lengthy sidings would need to be constructed for passenger priority.

 

The Cardinal has around 113,000 passengers, which is near its record high ridership of 116,000 it had in 2012. It also has record revenue - $7.7 million in 2013.

 

For more reliable and faster service, you will need politicians at the state and federal level advocating for more sidings and double track. It's not a cheap move and CSXT carries a lot of weight.

 

The Cardinal will never be high speed by nature of its route - it goes through mountainous territory on lines that are over a century old.

 

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

 

Do you got some details or what?

 

This was a respone to Sherman Cahal's gloomy post.  Geez.

No, he's just coming back to troll some more.  He really, really wants the oil companies to make money so hopefully he volunteered for the Iraq war and is signing up his sons for the next oil war. 

 

The Cardinal runs through Cincinnati in the middle of the night because Robert Bird legislated that it travel through West Virginia during the daytime.  That was back in 1970 or 1971 and here we are, almost 50 years later, with the same absurd situation intact.

 

The Cincinnati metro has a larger population than the entire state of West Virginia.  But the schedule of the Cardinal is in Amtrak's original charter and there is nothing that can be done about it.  It can't be defunded without eliminating Amtrak entirely.  The current route to Washington, DC would make a lot of sense if there were two trains in each direction every day.  Then it could actually be useful -- right now you have to plan your entire trip to Washington around the every-other-day return date.

 

Obviously the focus of the Cardinal line is not Cincinnati despite its metro size.

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

 

Amtrak officials tell me otherwise. A daily Cardinal is actually looking better now that coal traffic is way down, CSX has built three passing sidings between Cincinnati and Chicago, and the FAST Act includes Sec. 11104 which we expect to have an appropriation in FY2017. But thanks for your concern.

 

What are the Cincinnati ridership numbers on the Cardinal? 

Why does Cincinnati have three-day a week service - at night? Here is a rundown:

 

1. CSXT controls most of the line and having frequent service would require the installation of more sidings and possibly lengthy double-track segments so that passenger trains have priority.

2. The Buckingham Branch Railroad, a Class III, is a combination of many former railroads in Virginia. The route Amtrak uses is very congested with traffic shared with CSXT. Lengthy sidings would need to be constructed for passenger priority.

 

The Cardinal has around 113,000 passengers, which is near its record high ridership of 116,000 it had in 2012. It also has record revenue - $7.7 million in 2013.

 

For more reliable and faster service, you will need politicians at the state and federal level advocating for more sidings and double track. It's not a cheap move and CSXT carries a lot of weight.

 

The Cardinal will never be high speed by nature of its route - it goes through mountainous territory on lines that are over a century old.

 

So, the current Cardinal line generates about 724 passengers per trip?  The entire line at 3 times per week?  How many passengers get on this line in Cincinnati?

If Sherman's annual ridership is correct, and that figure counts all passengers between Chicago and Washington or vice-verse, it's actually 306 per train per direction.  The number who board or get off in Cincinnati at 3am must be incredibly low, probably fewer than 50 per train. 

 

I know a grand total of 2 people who have taken The Cardinal from Cincinnati to Washington and 0 who have taken it to Chicago.  Again, the boarding and arrival time for each train is between 2am and 4am.  The hours literally couldn't be worse.   

I've ridden the Cardinal 7 or 8 times out of Cincinnati. Anecdotally, ridership is normally around 20-50 people training and detraining per trip at Union Terminal.

 

One thing to keep in mind is that in it's normal configuration the Cardinal's capacity is around 175 riders (50 per coach + 25 in the sleeper). So that 306 riders each direction includes each seat turning more than once. Amtrak is short cars right now. They were able to bump the Cardinal to 4 coaches  and 2 sleepers during the holidays, but that required rearranging the maintenance schedules, and it's running with only 2 coaches right now.

 

Normally about 3/4ths of a coach turns at Cincinnati. I think that's impressive giving the crappy call times and schedule.

Why does Cincinnati have three-day a week service - at night? Here is a rundown:

 

1. CSXT controls most of the line and having frequent service would require the installation of more sidings and possibly lengthy double-track segments so that passenger trains have priority.

2. The Buckingham Branch Railroad, a Class III, is a combination of many former railroads in Virginia. The route Amtrak uses is very congested with traffic shared with CSXT. Lengthy sidings would need to be constructed for passenger priority.

 

The Cardinal has around 113,000 passengers, which is near its record high ridership of 116,000 it had in 2012. It also has record revenue - $7.7 million in 2013.

 

For more reliable and faster service, you will need politicians at the state and federal level advocating for more sidings and double track. It's not a cheap move and CSXT carries a lot of weight.

 

The Cardinal will never be high speed by nature of its route - it goes through mountainous territory on lines that are over a century old.

 

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

 

Do you got some details or what?

 

This was a respone to Sherman Cahal's gloomy post.  Geez.

 

Well I didn't read it as gloomy, I read it as a few easy steps to get the service moving much faster, since I believe KJP and others have said that the cost is not that high to make these improvements, compared to say Interstate beltways, etc.  I also read it as saying the Cardinal in general won't become high speed because of the terrain east of Cincinnati, but the terrain from Cincinnati to Chicago is not difficult, it is mostly all very flat.  Because I didn't read the gloomy, it came off that you were trolling.  Apologies for coming off that way.

Why does Cincinnati have three-day a week service - at night? Here is a rundown:

 

1. CSXT controls most of the line and having frequent service would require the installation of more sidings and possibly lengthy double-track segments so that passenger trains have priority.

2. The Buckingham Branch Railroad, a Class III, is a combination of many former railroads in Virginia. The route Amtrak uses is very congested with traffic shared with CSXT. Lengthy sidings would need to be constructed for passenger priority.

 

The Cardinal has around 113,000 passengers, which is near its record high ridership of 116,000 it had in 2012. It also has record revenue - $7.7 million in 2013.

 

For more reliable and faster service, you will need politicians at the state and federal level advocating for more sidings and double track. It's not a cheap move and CSXT carries a lot of weight.

 

The Cardinal will never be high speed by nature of its route - it goes through mountainous territory on lines that are over a century old.

 

Doesn't look good for Cincinnati having expanded Amtrak service, let alone a high-speed line to Chicago.

 

Do you got some details or what?

 

This was a respone to Sherman Cahal's gloomy post.  Geez.

 

Well I didn't read it as gloomy, I read it as a few easy steps to get the service moving much faster, since I believe KJP and others have said that the cost is not that high to make these improvements, compared to say Interstate beltways, etc.  I also read it as saying the Cardinal in general won't become high speed because of the terrain east of Cincinnati, but the terrain from Cincinnati to Chicago is not difficult, it is mostly all very flat.  Because I didn't read the gloomy, it came off that you were trolling.  Apologies for coming off that way.

 

Thank you, apology accepted but this forum certainly doesn't like questions or anything that is not ''all aboard''.  How do activists in any area expect to gain support if folks maybe not as up to date etc on a topic are disregarded and condescended to because questions are asked. 

 

Anyway, good luck with with the 3C rail project.

No, he's just coming back to troll some more.  He really, really wants the oil companies to make money so hopefully he volunteered for the Iraq war and is signing up his sons for the next oil war. 

 

The Cardinal runs through Cincinnati in the middle of the night because Robert Bird legislated that it travel through West Virginia during the daytime.  That was back in 1970 or 1971 and here we are, almost 50 years later, with the same absurd situation intact.

 

The Cincinnati metro has a larger population than the entire state of West Virginia.  But the schedule of the Cardinal is in Amtrak's original charter and there is nothing that can be done about it.  It can't be defunded without eliminating Amtrak entirely.  The current route to Washington, DC would make a lot of sense if there were two trains in each direction every day.  Then it could actually be useful -- right now you have to plan your entire trip to Washington around the every-other-day return date.

 

Your 1st paragraph is so off the wall to the point of being bizarre, coming across as a bit unstable.

Many of the people on this forum are "all aboard" because, at minimum, they have personally experienced quality passenger rail services in many parts of North America and indeed the world. They have personally witnessed its benefits in terms of how people productively use their time while on board, or enjoy its comfort, or saving of money, or happenstance social interactions among its passengers, or connectivity with the landscapes riders pass through or the connectivity to each of the small towns and big cities served.

 

All the rest of the benefits are dry statistics for us policy wonks to fill in the blanks of policy papers, legislation and grant applications. Maybe you've ridden a 100+ mph train in Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania or Rhode Island, or in Ontario and Quebec. Maybe you've tried it a couple of times and found that it's not your style. That's fine, but you were able to exercise a choice. And it is the style for many people, plus you would still benefit from it whether you use it or not...if public policy allowed that choice here in the 7th-most populous state in America.

this forum certainly doesn't like questions or anything that is not ''all aboard''. 

 

[digression]

 

Oh, au contraire.  I can attest to that.  My own skepticism is likely even more cynical than yours.  It's based on my belief that every town along the route is going to clamor for a stop, and so much for "high speed".  That and 80mph isn't really high speed rail anyway....

 

This is anything but a cheerleader place.  Every so often someone comes in here all gung ho for (or against) something and bails because they encounter questions or skepticism

 

[/digression]

^There are express and local trains everywhere in the world and have been for the past 150 years.  Of course, when there is just one train every other day that shows up at 3:14am, there aren't many options. 

Your 1st paragraph is so off the wall to the point of being bizarre, coming across as a bit unstable.

 

It's not off the wall. 

 

What if we had let the Big 3 dissolve in 2008 and permitted scavengers to pick apart their assets...then the federal government set up some sort of bootleg, vastly under-funded company to produce 1/10th the cars that those three companies produced just a few years earlier?  What if in that environment, $500 billion were thrown at public transportation and intercity rail? 

 

The reverse, of course, is what actually happened.  The Penn Central went bankrupt in 1968 for a variety of reasons, one of them being the ICC's fine on profits above 6%. Capitalist hyenas like Cincinnati's Carl Lindner scooped up vast Penn Central assets for pennies on the dollar.  Amtrak was established to take over Penn Central's passenger service and then the ICC relieved the other railroads of that task and brought them into Amtrak. 

 

Outside of the northeast, Amtrak's service has always been pretty weak.  It is forced to run money-losing routes like The Cardinal for political reasons.  All of this can be fixed, but the car and oil companies have been dictating national policy for 70 years. 

 

Americans do not "love their cars", they are forced to own them because the car companies have kept viable alternatives out of nearly every corner of the country. 

 

 

 

The reverse, of course, is what actually happened.  The Penn Central went bankrupt in 1968 for a variety of reasons, one of them being the ICC's fine on profits above 6%.

Whoa, didn't know about that one.  I knew the ICC was one of the worst examples of government overreach ever and that they basically caused the Panic of 1907, but that may top it all.

 

Once again, non-crony capitalism gets the bad rap but was not the offender.

The reverse, of course, is what actually happened.  The Penn Central went bankrupt in 1968 for a variety of reasons, one of them being the ICC's fine on profits above 6%.

Whoa, didn't know about that one.  I knew the ICC was one of the worst examples of government overreach ever and that they basically caused the Panic of 1907, but that may top it all.

 

Once again, non-crony capitalism gets the bad rap but was not the offender.

 

That was news to me, too.  And it's the kind of thing that is really huge within a specific industry but just not big enough in a general sense to make it into economic history books.

 

Of course, these days, Amtrak would love to be operating at a +6% profit margin.  On the flip side, I'm pretty sure freight rail gets higher margins than that, and if they had profit margin caps, that would have been absurd from the perspective of increasing our national logistics capacity, given how efficient freight rail is per ton-mile compared to just about every other way of moving freight except by ship.

 

As for skepticism and optimism, I'm generally in the last-mile-first camp and therefore have been skeptical about the 3C concept even as I've been a strong cheerleader for bringing back streetcars within urban cores, followed by commuter rail between the cores and any inner-ring suburbs that have enough density or could have enough density to justify it (i.e., you could make it happen in Upper Arlington, maybe, but Powell is close to a lost cause at this point).  But the kind of legwork groups like AAO do, even just in terms of being a ready store of information about rights of way, track conditions, and so on is valuable, considering that otherwise that information would likely be only in the hands of private companies, who might not exactly treat it as company secrets but really wouldn't have any incentive to make it readily available to the public.

I'm going by memory but I believe the ICC was established in 1906 and reached the height of its powers during WWI when the federal government took over operations of all of the nation's railroads.  Again by memory, I believe operations were returned to ownership on Jan 1, 1919.  The federal takeover kept the railroads from price gouging during wartime, and at least according to some stuff I have skimmed, led to unprecedented efficiencies.  Basically everyone was shown that the physical railroads *should* be publicly owned as they are in every other country in the world and that their operation should be a highly regulated if not entirely public operation, again, as they are pretty much everywhere else in the world. 

 

So when trucking emerged in the form we are familiar with now in the 1950s, anyone could buy 50 trucks and start their own company using the brand-new government-built superhighways.  You couldn't do the same thing with railroads since the railroads owned the actual railroads.  Specific companies had monopolies on the specific track that they themselves built 100 years earlier, but that turned out to be a disadvantage when faced with trucking competition.  The ICC was necessary in the first half of the 20th century to keep the railroads from gouging the customers on lines that they owned, but then when Penn Central and others went bankrupt in the 1960s, the time was right for the federal government to go in and buy up everything for super-cheap.  It surely could have been purchased for much less money than, say, the Vietnam War.  But railroad dysfunction was critical to the continued growth of the auto and trucking industries, so it didn't happen.   

 

 

I did a quick google search and it appears that the excess profits penalty was relaxed or completely eliminated after WWII, but by that time many of the categories of business that the railroads were built around (and leveraged their debt upon) were under attack from all directions.  What's interesting is that the railroads were issued an excess profit credit that they could apply toward less-profitable years or years in which they reported a loss.  But the problem with all of that is that it made railroads less attractive to investors.  Meanwhile, there was nothing holding back the car companies other than a corporate income tax that was significantly higher than our current one (45% instead of 35%). 

 

When you do real research on these subjects there are moments when you want to scream out loud in the library.  I remember almost doing that when I read the financial statements of the Cincinnati Street Railway when they sold off all of the overhead copper wire from abandoned lines and had to pay 45% on the proceeds.  If that tax had been collected but had stayed local that would have been one thing (since the money that had built the street railway network was all local), but instead it drifted up to the federal level where it paid for the Korean War and H-bomb tests. 

Except there was a wartime ticket tax enacted in 1942 to raise revenue for the war effort and to discourage unnecessary rail travel so soldiers would have the ability to get seats. Guess when that tax was rescinded? Not until 1962. Many passenger trains were discontinued by then. Five years later, after an airline executive became postmaster general, mail contracts with the railroads were canceled and moved to the airlines. When that happened, a slew of passenger trains were discontinued. The number of passenger trains in the Northeast-Midwest east of Chicago/St. Louis, including those serving Ohio cities, were immediately chopped in half. Some routes lost all passenger service and those that didn't were left with one-car passenger trains that often left prospective passengers on trackside platforms because they couldn't squeeze onto the trains. Or trains were scheduled to intentionally miss connections to discourage ridership (like the Toledo-Detroit train that was scheduled to leave Toledo five minutes before the train from Cleveland arrived). Or the railroads used a switching crew to remove a passenger car enroute to put it on a connecting train, but that crew was charged entirely to the passenger service even though they also moved freight cars around at the nearby rail yard. This is why we have an Amtrak (although in retrospect it should have been a program of grants or tax credits offered to railroads to provide desired services).

 

Ironically, the new FAST Act (passed in December) created a grant program for any railroads to operate passenger service. There's a tax credit program for short-line freight railroads, and it could be expanded to include passenger service too. And Florida East Coast Railroad's parent company which also has a real estate arm created a private subsidiary to develop passenger service and real estate at stations with each increasing the value of the other. That may become a model for other railroads to follow.