ROBERT WILLISONConvenient train service in new pa is non existent. The Pennsylvanian needs to be extended to Cleveland and or Detroit, connecting those two markets plus Pittsburgh to NEC corridor. An early empire state train needs to be extended to Cleveland, giving Cleveland and Erie pa a daylight train to NYC.
Why connect a group of cities in population decline (and already served) to the east coast when there are booming metro areas (Houston, Dallas, Phoenix) with little or no service where corridor services could be viable?
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
More train frequency would be a major step forward followed by incremental improvement in train speed, much like what the state of pa did with the key stone service between Philly and Harrisburg.
Convenient train service in nw pa is non existent. The Pennsylvanian needs to be extended to Cleveland and or Detroit, connecting those two markets plus Pittsburgh to NEC corridor. An early empire state train needs to be extended to Cleveland, giving Cleveland and Erie pa a daylight train to NYC.
alphas As someone who lives in State College, the Tyrone to State College spur is way too much wishfull thinking. It seems to think that the students and other travelers would be agreeable to take the bus west to Tyrone even if they were actually wanting to go east to Philly and NYC or south from Harrisburg to Baltimore and DC (east and southeast is where a significant majority of the students are traveling to and from). That's not going to happen due to the aditional 90 miles if one travels west to Tyrone, then heads east to Harrisburg. However, they could try connecting buses to both the Lewistown station [for east bound] and Tyrone [west bound]. By far most of the student travel to and from State College takes place on Friday afternoons and Sunday evenings. Those 2 days there are special dedicated buses to and from State College serving the major communities, usually non-stop, that would beat or equal the travel times by train and at a lower ticket price. As for the weekday service, there are local greyhound buses between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh via State College that do take awhile due to frequent stops. However, there is also Mega Bus which has expreses running non-stop between NYC and State College over I-80 and then non-stop on to Pittsburgh and vice versa. Connections are made in State College to Mega Buses going to/from Philly, stopping only in Harrisburg. The biggest western Pa passenger railproblem is the loss of population. PA dropped all attempts year ago in regards to building a higher-speed rail service between Philly and Pittsburgh due to the population loss in the Pittsburgh and surrounding area. What might be possible would be to extend one more of the NYC to Harrisburg corridor trains to go on to Pittsburgh and return. Bus service between State College and Lewistown could again be resurrected to see if the east to and from traffic would justify it, while the same would be true for resurrecting the State College to Tyrone bus service for the west to and from traffic. The roads between State College and Lewistown are better now while Tyrone is only about 25 minutes away due to the completion of I-99. Both routes saw bus connections from downtown State College to the railroad stations back in the days of the Pennsy, although the Tyrone connection only existed for a few years in the early 1960's. The state probably should be studying restoring service from the west and Harrisburg to Baltimore and DC as well, via Columbia and Perryville [the former Northern Central is probably gone forever]. Its probably a long-shot but it should be looked at. In the March NARP news they give a synopsis of this study and its three highest ranking options ranging from a low of $1.47 billion to a high of $13.08 billion. Based on these numbers it doesn't appear there will be action any time soon. A more practical and doable scenario would simply extend one of the present KEYSTONE schedules to Pittsburgh around a rescheduled and repurposed PENNSYLVANIAN. It's time Amtrak institute the long discussed thru cars via the CAPITOL LTD. A sleeper and coach from the LAKESHORE LTD. would suffice initially. Eastbound the present schedules for both trains would suffice with some tweaking. Westbound the PENNSYLVANIAN would leave several hours later for a better connection with the westbound CAPITOL LTD. An earlier departing KEYSTONE train could be the early NY-Pittsburgh schedule.
As someone who lives in State College, the Tyrone to State College spur is way too much wishfull thinking. It seems to think that the students and other travelers would be agreeable to take the bus west to Tyrone even if they were actually wanting to go east to Philly and NYC or south from Harrisburg to Baltimore and DC (east and southeast is where a significant majority of the students are traveling to and from). That's not going to happen due to the aditional 90 miles if one travels west to Tyrone, then heads east to Harrisburg. However, they could try connecting buses to both the Lewistown station [for east bound] and Tyrone [west bound].
By far most of the student travel to and from State College takes place on Friday afternoons and Sunday evenings. Those 2 days there are special dedicated buses to and from State College serving the major communities, usually non-stop, that would beat or equal the travel times by train and at a lower ticket price. As for the weekday service, there are local greyhound buses between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh via State College that do take awhile due to frequent stops. However, there is also Mega Bus which has expreses running non-stop between NYC and State College over I-80 and then non-stop on to Pittsburgh and vice versa. Connections are made in State College to Mega Buses going to/from Philly, stopping only in Harrisburg.
The biggest western Pa passenger railproblem is the loss of population. PA dropped all attempts year ago in regards to building a higher-speed rail service between Philly and Pittsburgh due to the population loss in the Pittsburgh and surrounding area.
What might be possible would be to extend one more of the NYC to Harrisburg corridor trains to go on to Pittsburgh and return. Bus service between State College and Lewistown could again be resurrected to see if the east to and from traffic would justify it, while the same would be true for resurrecting the State College to Tyrone bus service for the west to and from traffic. The roads between State College and Lewistown are better now while Tyrone is only about 25 minutes away due to the completion of I-99. Both routes saw bus connections from downtown State College to the railroad stations back in the days of the Pennsy, although the Tyrone connection only existed for a few years in the early 1960's.
The state probably should be studying restoring service from the west and Harrisburg to Baltimore and DC as well, via Columbia and Perryville [the former Northern Central is probably gone forever]. Its probably a long-shot but it should be looked at.
In the March NARP news they give a synopsis of this study and its three highest ranking options ranging from a low of $1.47 billion to a high of $13.08 billion. Based on these numbers it doesn't appear there will be action any time soon.
A more practical and doable scenario would simply extend one of the present KEYSTONE schedules to Pittsburgh around a rescheduled and repurposed PENNSYLVANIAN. It's time Amtrak institute the long discussed thru cars via the CAPITOL LTD. A sleeper and coach from the LAKESHORE LTD. would suffice initially. Eastbound the present schedules for both trains would suffice with some tweaking. Westbound the PENNSYLVANIAN would leave several hours later for a better connection with the westbound CAPITOL LTD. An earlier departing KEYSTONE train could be the early NY-Pittsburgh schedule.
The Keystone West High Speed Rail Study, a PennDOT/FRA report reviewing alternatives for increased Pittsburgh-Harrisburg passenger service that was recently released for comments, is posted on Western Pennsylvanians for Passenger Rail's (WPPR) website, www.wpprrail.org. Comments should be sent to keystonewest@planthekeystone.com by March 31. Also posted is WPPR's response to PennDOT.
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