A new station will be at Leavenworth WA starting next November. The station is now funded. Design and construction to follow. That little town had a great RR history until the tracks were relocated to Chumstick canyon. Read all about it.http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/344836_amtrak25.html
nanaimo73 wrote:The town is a tourist draw, like Essex, MT. The town's population is not the deciding factor in how busy the station will be.
Essex is a flag stop, gets about 3,500 patrons a year, and has been declining. Perhaps averaging ten a day isn't all that bad for what is just a station platform, owned by the nearby hotel, no actual station. The three stops that directly serve Glacier Park -- West Glacier, East Glacier, and Essex -- don't generate all that much traffic for Amtrak and seem to come at peak ridership times, which means that other people are being kept off the trains when the seats sell out. I'm not convinced there's a plus there for Amtrak given its current fixed equipment policy.
On the other hand, other than stopping the train, Amtrak incurs zero costs for that particular "stop" -- no building, no agent, no maintenance -- those 3,500 passengers may be the most profitable customers Amtrak has. Maybe its a business model ...
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