I am hopeful that passenger rail service will return to the Gulf Coast. In 2005, I took the Sunset Limited to Los Angeles before Hurricane Katrina struck.
http://www.northescambia.com/2016/01/vip-train-will-roll-next-month-as-officials-study-rail-service-return-to-gulf-coast (http://www.northescambia.com/2016/01/vip-train-will-roll-next-month-as-officials-study-rail-service-return-to-gulf-coast)
Quote"We are on the cusp hopefully of retrieving our lost rail service," Jerry Gehman, Atmore's representative to the Southern Rail Commission, announced Wednesday. "The specifics have now been nailed down to where we will have a train event in our city February 18. There will be what is called a VIP train, or an inspection train, that Amtrak will run from New Orleans to Jacksonville, FL. On that train, it's intended purpose is to build support at the state level for funding the cost of this train as far as the state's share is concerned. Source: http://www.northescambia.com/2016/01/vip-train-will-roll-next-month-as-officials-study-rail-service-return-to-gulf-coast
If it returns, it won't be stopping in Jax, from what I understand. It will pass through Jax and terminate in Orlando.
The FAST Act sets aside funding for the creation of some sort advisory group for the restoration of the route.
Quote from: thelakelander on January 19, 2016, 01:37:54 PM
If it returns, it won't be stopping in Jax, from what I understand. It will pass through Jax and terminate in Orlando.
Is that because of the awkward nature of getting to our Amshack?
Yes.
Could this change if we ever brought Amtrak to the Terminal on Water St?
^Presumably. There was a thread discussing this before, and the Prime Osborne is much closer to place Amtrak branches off to go south compared to the badly located Amshack. It's pretty dumb for them to come through what was once one of the major stops on that branch and not actually stop there. But them's the breaks.
I thought Jacksonville no longer had an Amtrak station once the main terminal was closed down, so I learned something new.
The current station looks kinda sad though, at least judging by what you can see on Google maps.
God, been waiting for the train to come back since Kitrina.
Its still not a sure thing.
ALDOT has said they dont have any money in their budget to support an Amtrak restoration.
Since the state of Alabama is currently in an austerity budget (except for Nick Saban's staff) they dont forsee this happening for a few years still.
Here we go again! This train is doomed to be the whipping dog of the whole Amtrak system, a flop, failure among failures... Amtrak hasn't enough sense in the long-distance train department to pour water out of a boot with instructions written on the heel. To wit, missing 1.4 million people on a route because:
1. They can't read a map and see a route from this mainline up the westside of Jacksonville parallel to Jones Road through the intermodal yard and into the mainline NW of our resident Amshack. Thus from the Amshack south on the same lines used by the other trains.
2. They can read a map but are being coward into a corner by CSX and afraid of the repercussions of forcing the issue using the teeth in the Amtrak Act.
The Florida portion of the route is hopelessly underpopulated, its a scenario I see like this. You can open a C-Store in a City of 1 million persons but you can only open three hours per day, would you choose 1pm - 4pm or 1am - 4am? We might agree that you would have some degree of sales in a city that large no matter which time frame you chose. Plop that same C-Store into a city of 7,000 persons and you'd be lucky to see a dozen customers a day, choose that night option and you might as well stay in bed. Yet this is exactly what Amtrak keeps proposing, over and over.
Any attempt to revive a tri-weekly schedule is a guarantee fail. Anyone considering taking the train will have to work out whether it left on a day they wanted to leave and returned on a day that they wanted to return. The 2 + 2 + 3 day nature also dictates that the equipment short Amtrak System keeps an entire pool of equipment idle for 24 non-revenue hours.
Not only is the idea of missing Jacksonville so 'Amtrak-Like,' so is the absolute stupidity of consolidating DeFuniak Springs and Marianna's Station into a single 'bus-stop-like' stop in the metropolis of Chipley. Thus two of the larger panhandle towns on the route now requires those dozen or so daily customers to not only match if they arrive or depart on the right day, but now must commute 20/30+ miles to the depot... at 2:30 am! Sounds like its either a case of business suicide or Amtrak "planning".