Celebrating the Start of New Amtrak Line
Published: September 3, 2009
After several years of negotiating with Amtrak and the state rail agency, the date for a second passenger train from Lynchburg to Washington, D.C., has been set.
For those who have been looking forward to the second train, to be known as the Northeast Regional, news of the scheduled trip was greeted with cheers. The train is scheduled to make its maiden run beginning at 7:38 a.m. Oct. 1. It will return to the city by about 8:30 p.m. for a round-trip fare of $58.
Despite the good news about the new schedule, some grumbling could be heard in Charlottesville over the later than anticipated start for the train. When it comes to transportation issues, it seems, there’s always some grumbling in Charlottesville.
Business groups in Charlottesville had hoped for an earlier start to accommodate business travelers to the nation’s capital. In a letter to Rex Hammond, president of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce, Charlottesville rail advocate Meredith Richards said the schedule will “effectively eliminate day travel for business purposes to Washington, D.C.”
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Come now. The later-than-hoped-for departure time may interfere with some business schedules, but it will hardly “eliminate” trips for business purposes in Washington. It would still provide four to five hours for business transactions.
Despite the departure time, Hammond said the additional train is an asset for Central Virginia that should be celebrated.
Amtrak currently operates a train that runs through Lynchburg and neighboring communities once a day as it travels from New York to New Orleans and back. But that train is often full and has a sketchy record of being on time. The northbound Crescent departs Lynchburg at 6:07 a.m. and arrives in Washington at 10:10 a.m., according to Amtrak’s Web site. The Crescent’s evening trip from Washington arrives in Lynchburg at about 10 p.m.
Richards is president of the Charlottesville-based Piedmont Rail Coalition, which has worked with leaders in the Lynchburg area to urge Amtrak to launch the rail passenger service. The coalition has also worked with state officials to provide supplemental funding to get the rail service going.
In a letter to the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation in January 2008, Amtrak said it thought the train could depart about 5 a.m., arriving in Washington before 9 a.m. That would be ideal for business travelers needing a full day in Washington.
The actual schedule, as Richards has pointed out, “is far different from the proposed schedule.” She acknowledged that the southbound schedule arriving in Lynchburg about 8:30 p.m. and potentially carrying passengers from New York and Washington “will certainly benefit the tourism and hospitality industry.”
But tourism and family travel already accounts for most of the Crescent passengers’ trips.
It’s the business traveler that the new train is hoping to attract. But all is not lost. Business and government officials from Lynchburg and Charlottesville can work together to see how they can make the best use of the new train service. If there’s room some change to the schedule, perhaps that can be made to better accommodate business travelers who need a full day in Washington.
In the meantime, Hammond is right. Let’s celebrate the new passenger rail service by keeping the train full as often as possible when it pulls out of the Amtrak station on Kemper Street.
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Reader Reactions
I welcomed this new line. As a person trying to escape Alexandria, I’ve found Lynchburg a delightful place, and the train a positive option for commuting to DC once a week while still being able to live in a great place.
That means the majority my taxes and my spending money would be going to businesses and the City of Lynchburg.
Unfortunately, as I was getting ready to settle on a home here, I discovered that with this new train it appears Amtrak is ending the the discount rate ($40-50 in advance) for the other line. If I don’t want to get into my office at noon and leave at 3:30, it’s now going to cost me close to $120 to go back and forth to DC.
The majority of commuters on the train with me are from Charlottesville, but I’d hoped others would start to consider Lynchburg, too. There are too many beautiful but empty homes here (yes, I’m also a fan of the downtown). But with this rate hike on the Crescent I think that’s going to be unlikely.
$4 million for everybody to have an opportunity to ride? Sounds a hell of alot better than the billions spent so a few people could go buy cars they didn’t need, and only did so because the gov’t gave them $4500 a pop!
I would guess the college students would use it. Pretty cheap trip to DC if you don’t have a car handy!!
If you don’t like it that’s fine, but I do. Good job!!
Stick with the reality, here, people.
Don’t ignore the simple arithmetic.
We’re supposed to “celebrate” the inauguration of needless train service, by “keeping the train full” of riders (at more than $85 a pop in tax money plus the $58 fare) so as to encourage as many happy and well-subsidized Lynchburgers as possible to take their wallets and purses to D.C. to go shopping?
THIS is the master plan for success?
THIS is what our editors suggest is in our own best interest?
What a wonderful asset to our community!!
Great breakdown of costs Facts Please. A much better use of my tax money than the public school system. Do I get any money back since my kids are in private school?
What a great way to see the heart of Virginia!!
We don’t have the money to even cut the grass along the highway, we have holes in our bridges and all our rest stops had to be closed—- but—- we have $4.21 million just in tax money per year to run ONE train from Lynchburg to DC for tourists?
Let’s be clear. It’s going to cost $4.21 million just in tax money per year to run ONE train from Lynchburg to DC. By the most optimisic predictions, this will cost more than $80 PER RIDER. And then there’s another $58 in fares.
Money spent on a busy highway overpass instead of operating a train:
1. Will benefit tens or even hundreds of thousands of people every single day instead of the 139 people per day that Amtrak forecasts will use the train.
2. Represents a one-time capital outlay instead of a recurring annual expense.
Even at $.65 per mile by car (a riduculously high figure) a family of four would still save more that $200 by driving to DC and would have more time to visit and greater flexibility once they got there.
Finally, there’s a point that has so far been negelected in the debate. What about Lynchburg’s struggling businesses? Do you think it’s more likely that a family of four from Madison Heights is going to take their money out of town to visit DC and eat a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse or that a family of four is going to head from Rockville to Lynchburg to take in the ambiance at the T- Room?
The cost analysis by previous posters is not correct. $4.21 million per year ($0.54 per Virginia resident) is a fixed cost to the reader, whether or not s/he rides the train, just like the $1.7 BILLION in this year’s VDOT budget ($218.00 per Virginia resident) for highway maintenance is a fixed cost whether or not the poster touches his/her car. The poster will have to make 404 driving round trips to DC to have the fixed costs be the same per trip. (See the VDOT website for budget information.)
Second, plenty of reputable sources claim it costs between $0.52 and $0.65 per mile to drive a vehicle (depending mostly on total miles driven per year and age of vehicle). It may only cost you $50 for the 400 mile round trip in gasoline, but you’re forgetting the costs of maintenance, insurance and depreciation among others. When you work all of that in, all the reputable sources you’ll find say it’s about $0.55 per mile (or more). So a round trip to DC from Lynchburg costs you roughly $200 to $250. You just don’t spend it all on the day of the trip. With fixed costs added in, the round trip for a family of four on the train looks mighty cost effective.
Third, about Amtrak’s notoriously late service - can’t argue there. However the new train is different. It starts each morning IN LYNCHBURG. The Crescent comes from New Orleans, and getting stacked behind freight trains makes it late. The Lynchburg train won’t have that problem. And, Amtrak is going to have a lot of incentive to keep it on time or the state will drop its support.
So, unless your family of four plans to make 404 trips to DC this year, the train is cheaper, and it should be on time! Give it a try.
P.S. Ever tried to drive north through Gainesville on the way to DC in the morning (or home in the evening)? Seen the monstrous interchange being built there right now? I’m sure it’s costing us a whole lot more than $4.21 million right there in Gainesville just for one interchange that will be once again clogged up within a year or two.
I use the current Crescent line quite frequently and started doing so in the last two years. I fell in love with it as a reasonably affordable way to take get-away day trips to DC. Yes, driving is cheaper… but it also completely blows your day and can be exhausting if your intention is a day trip with no overnight stay.
On the current Crescent I get up early, have the option to doze on the train, read and/or eat, arrive relaxed at a decent time and have a full day in DC to do as I please. My only wish for the current schedule has always been a LATER return from DC for the sake of a good sit-down meal rather than eating on the train (for which I have worked out a nice routine, too, actually).
For an overnight leisure or business trip, the current and new schedules works even better.
Yes, I am personally using it for what amounts to tourist travel and not business. I can certainly see the complaints about the new schedule for business people and truly feel the 5 AM departure would have been better.
While I do agree that the hours are possibly a bit too tight for most business travel, it will work for many. And those totaling up the round trip travel time vs. time in DC are ignoring the value of riding the train vs. driving yourself. Those benefits include comfortable seats, bathrooms, ability to use your cell phone and laptop and seating at tables that can serve as impromptu desk space if you have paperwork and writing to do. Enough of the travel route includes high speed cell data access for my iPhone that I could get a lot done during those hours if I were working. Others can achieve even more with cell-connected laptops… a tool many business people rely on.
A LOT of work can be done very comfortably in those travel hours that you would not achieve if you are driving both ways. Yes, your hours “on the ground” in DC are less, but with scheduling that will often work for meetings. The day as a whole, however, can be a very productive one with the benefit of being outside of office chaos.
Finally, we’ll have to wait and see how their “on-time” record works out for this new service, but I suspect it will be quite good. This is a train that originates in Lynchburg for the sole purpose of DC round trips. It’s not a leg of a journey going from New Orleans to New York with all of the possible delays that can entail.
I’d like to see an earlier departure and a later arrival, but that’s my own selfish desire from a leisure travel perspective. Outside of that, though, I am in full support of the train and would like to see a growth in rail options for all the reasons cited above and more.
- Aaron
What IS it with this paper and this Amtrak boondoggle?
Virginia is spending $25.3 million it can ill afford to spend on this wasteful service over three years for this train and another one in Richmond.
This new train will cost Virginia taxpayers $4.21 million PER YEAR to provide Amtrak’s notoriously lousy and unreliable service.
Accepting the rosiest and most ludicrously optimistic ridership forecasts, 51,000 riders per year will take advantage of the new Lynchburg-DC service.
Of course, there won’t be any business travelers (who can do business by arriving in DC at noon?).
So, doing the math that the editors steadfastly refuse to do ($4.2 million divided by 51,000 riders), what do we find?
Well, if I take my family of four on an Amtrak jaunt to DC to the Smithsonian it will not only cost me $58 per person, or $240 in fares, but it will also cost Virginia taxpayers $82.63 PER PERSON, for another $330.72! Total cost of travel = $570.72.
Lynchburg’s median family income is $40,844 per year, GROSS. That amounts to under $600 per week, net.
Now who’s going sink nearly half a week’s pay to use this service, when one can drive to DC and back in a minivan for less than $50?
Let’s say I do. Assuming that the train arrives on time (which it doesn’t do much of the time) my family has about SIX MEASLY HOURS to navigate from Union Station, see the sights, and get back to Union station to catch the last train back to Lynchburg.
I cannot understand how any responsible civic leader, especially the editor of our paper, can get behind such a waste of scant resources.
At $58 a seat it is still cheaper to drive. Add another passenger and it is MUCH cheaper to drive. Add the cost of the millions in tax payer subsidy and it is MUCH MUCH cheaper to drive.
The union railroad workers, I am sure, are very appreciative of this effort, but, I’m not too sure there are many people from Lynchburg that have jobs or businesses in Washington with hours that run from 12 to 4.
In an age of telecommuting, cell phones and teleconferencing spending 8 hours on a train to get 4 hours in Washington seems a tad absurd.
It is my hope that the N&A will keep us all abreast of the ridership as the weeks turn into months. I would also appreciate knowing how much the taxpayers are paying to subsidize both the full and empty seats every time the train leaves Lynchburg and Washington.
If, as it appears, this will be predominantly a train for tourists, who will be doing the math to insure that Lynchburg gets back in tax revenue what the tax payers are paying out in tax subsidies to run the choo-choo? Anybody? Anybody?
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