JPS1 - Again a better metric is revenue passenger miles not passengers. Do you have those figures ? If the boy scout count decreased and also the KCY cuto off was not year around then ?
SFbrkmn All is redundent anyway w/the better than 50/50 chance the Chief will be abolished within the next yr, there will be no need in extending service north out of OK anyway
Why do you believe there is a 50/50 chance the Chief will be abolished?
Ridership on the Southwest Chief declined by 8.8 percent between 2017 and 2018. It declined 9.8 percent between 2016 and 2018.
The Chief still carried 331,200 riders in 2018. If the pattern for the first nine months of FY18 holds, it will carry approximately 320,000 riders in FY19.
There seems to be sufficient political support to keep the Chief chugging for years to come.
I live in Wichita. I at one time supported this but all that has been heard since 2011 or so is "another study" Every yr another such study is conducted. All and any issues concerning running through KS should have already been conducted. Burn out on it. Total false hope. Tired of it and wish the nail in the coffin would be hammered for the final time. All is redundent anyway w/the better than 50/50 chance the Chief will be abolished within the next yr, there will be no need in extending service north out of OK anyway
I was reading through the 2011 KDOT Study (below) on extending the Fort Worth Heartland Flyer from Fort Worth to Kansas City. They stated in there that Amtrak is asking for three new trainsets (lol - can't see Kansas paying for that) for the daytime option. They do not want to add a Sleeper (shocker to me) nor do they want to add a Dining Car. Instead they want to have four Coaches and a Cafe car but the stipulation on the Cafe Car was the current Amtrak Cafe Car menu was unacceptable. They wanted upgraded to Deli Lunch offerings at a minimum. This was Amtrak 2010-2011 management prior to Andersens arrival. The also preferred the current push-pull configuration. They widely speculated in the report that the Midwest High Speed Rail Compact could be used and the new trainsets added onto the order (that was before shifting to Siemens single level cars, they speculated they would be bi-level). I am not sure the Midwest would pay for this either...........is this really part of the Midwest or is it Southwest? Somewhat interesting reading...
http://www.ksdot.org/PDF_Files/PDF-Passenger-Rail-SDP.pdf
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