Passenger Trains > Impressive Showing by Bedford Virginia

Residents lined up very early morning demonstrating for an Amtrak stop on the new Roanoke to Boston train.

http://www.wdbj7.com/content/news/Supporters-of-Bedford-Amtrak-stop-hold-rail-side-rally-456397533.html

Neat! 176 had about 110 passengers board in Roanoke today, 65 in Lynchburg and about 125 in Charlottesville. CVS (Charlottesville) is getting to be a huge stop, in both directions on Friday and Sunday. Train 51, the westbound Cardinal is detraining 130 passengers in CVS today. Even midweek, 176/171 seem to do triple digit business in CVS. Fare structure seems to discourage passengers from using 19/20 for travel between Lynchburg-CVS and the NEC...perhaps due to the horrible on time performance of that train the past few years. It is amazing what these small to mid sized cities do in regards to ridership.

cabsignaldrop Wrote:
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Fare structure seems to discourage
> passengers from using 19/20 for travel between
> Lynchburg-CVS and the NEC...perhaps due to the
> horrible on time performance of that train the
> past few years.

I'd guess that Amtrak is restricting the Crescent from sale at Charlottesville so that it keeps the train open for sale for the longer-distance business, the overhead business. I imagine you could always sell out the Crescent between New York, Washington and Charlottesville, but then they'd have little chance of reselling all of those seats south of there to Atlanta. Maybe the train refills at Atlanta for the trip to Birmingham and New Orleans. I don't know. Now that the Regional train serves Charlottesville and Lynchburg on a similar schedule, it makes much more sense to push the passengers toward those trains and leave the Crescent open for longer-distance travel.

Great news. Now that Virginia picked a democratic Governor how does the future of expansion and funding look for Virginia?

bluesboyst Wrote:
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> Great news. Now that Virginia picked a democratic
> Governor how does the future of expansion and
> funding look for Virginia?

It already had a Governor who was Democrat. But I believe the most recent Republican Governor of the Commonwealth was a supporter of passenger rail, too.

ts1457 Wrote:
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> bluesboyst Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Great news. Now that Virginia picked a
> democratic
> > Governor how does the future of expansion and
> > funding look for Virginia?
>
> It already had a Governor who was Democrat. But I
> believe the most recent Republican Governor of the
> Commonwealth was a supporter of passenger rail,
> too.

Legislation enacted during Republican Governor Bob McDonnell's term provided the transportation funding for recent improvements to Virginia's passenger service.

Train #51.  How  many  coaches  if  you happen to  know?   Probably  very  little food  left  for the rest of the journey!! Amtrak probably needs the  entire station back??  Lots of  other places to  eat in that  great town.

The standard 3 coaches. It normally drops to two coaches after the Christmas/New Years time frame.


cutboy2 Wrote:
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> Train #51.  How  many  coaches  if  you
> happen to  know?   Probably  very  little food
>  left  for the rest of the journey!! Amtrak
> probably needs the  entire station back??  Lots
> of  other places to  eat in that  great town.

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