Students at Iowa State University are being offered a chance to take a train and avoid planes and automobiles to get home for the holidays. Amtrak is offering a bus service to take students from the Ames campus to their station in Osceola. Amtrak spokesman, Marc Magliari, says it’s a test.
“This is an entrepreneurial experiment where we’re looking to see if we offered bus service on a more regular basis between Ames and Osceola how much more business it would attract,” Magliari explains.
http://www.radioiowa.com/2013/12/09/amtrak-tests-market-for-bus-to-train-connection-at-isu/
Nice initiative. Hope it gets used. Unfortunately there's only one train per day in each direction.
CZ westbound departs Osceola at 8:09p
CZ eastbound departs Osceola at 7:40a
I wonder how close to capacity the coach cars on the Zephyr are. It might make sense to add a coach for the Chicago-Denver or Chicago-Omaha portions of this run if this experiment attracts additional riders. Of course, I am assuming there are spare Superliner coaches somewhere in the system, and I don't know that is the case.
For that matter, a similar service between Cedar Falls (Univ of Northern Iowa) Iowa City and Mt. Pleasant might make sense at least until the service to Moline starts.
Edited to add: This morning the eastbound Zephyr of the 8th is reported in Nebraska running 6 hours late. Although there is extreme cold in the upper plains, the time was lost back in Nevada and Utah. This bus service doesn't make sense without better timekeeping.
The real limit on the CZ's length for the time being is the temporary platform in Denver while Union Station is rebuilt.
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