Well, it's official...for a eye popping price of hundreds of millions of dollars in right-of-way upgrades at our expense, AMTRAK has agreed to keep traveling through the State of Colorado without stopping at a single major city on its way from Southern Californian to Chicago. Yes, you read this correctly. AMTRAK will make its one and only stop as before, in the small community of La Junta in the far south, and then pass right through Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Denver without stopping on its was to Chicago.
How many people might board at or get off at La Junta? Barely a handful, if AMTRAK is lucky.
You must be very happy about this. You were lamenting that Amtrak should upgrade BNSF's track after a truck ripped out a rail. Now they are going to upgrade the track in your state. Remember you said Amtrak is responsible for overall safety. You are now getting exactly what you demanded.
Well Mountainman New Jersey Trainset,, I mean "Transit", dose the same type of thing with it's schedule. Or if they do make a stop somewhere, the times are so off the wall that it's no use to any one. I feel that they do it to keep the ridership down, so they don't have to offer more service... I drive back and forth to work everyday in sight of there mainline but don't use it, because of the way they have their time table set up. It's still cheaper, quicker, more reliable, and more convenient for me to drive 80 miles in each direction then to use their service. Please don't be angry with me GEC when I say that NJT is not a real railroad, they should stick to driving busses. When they change there ways ,I will change my opinion of them. As far as the $$$ for the upgrades. NJT owns the track it rides on, so it's a different story, I can't comment on that one.
Prairie Trains Wrote:You must be very happy about this. You were lamenting that Amtrak should upgrade BNSF's track after a truck ripped out a rail. Now they are going to upgrade the track in your state. Remember you said Amtrak is responsible for overall safety. You are now getting exactly what you demanded.
And you are wrong, because AMTRAK isn't paying a penny. They got the
taxpayers of Colorado to pay for their upgrade without providing one iota of service to us in return.
Pays to
read posts before responding to them.
When talking About Amtrak its the tax payers dollar they operate on regardless of state. For my tax dollars I either go to Cleveland or Toledo in the middle of the night -oops! Late Shore Limited runs when it pleases so,I may have hours to wait.
Here's a link to an organization trying to restore train service along the front range:
<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://colorail.org/">http://colorail.org/</a><!-- m -->
This seems like such a no-brainer to me.
MountainMan Wrote:Well, it's official...for a eye popping price of hundreds of millions of dollars in right-of-way upgrades at our expense, AMTRAK has agreed to keep traveling through the State of Colorado without stopping at a single major city on its way from Southern Californian to Chicago. Yes, you read this correctly. AMTRAK will make its one and only stop as before, in the small community of La Junta in the far south, and then pass right through Pueblo, Colorado Springs and Denver without stopping on its was to Chicago.
I guess I don't understand the problem. The SW Chief doesn't go through Pueblo or Denver. It couldn't stop at either of those places if they wanted to. In order to get to Pueblo it would have to reroute 60-75 miles north, then turn east and come another 60 miles or so to get back to its route. In order to serve Denver it would have to run north and then backtrack along the same route to get back "on track". The only other alternative would be to run north to Denver then go east which means you would be asking Amtrak to eliminate ALL rail service to Kansas so you could add a second train east out of Denver. Not likely.