Amtrak has posted its schedule for the second daily train that will serve the Lynchburg-Washington route starting Oct. 1, along with a round-trip fare of $58 weekdays.
The train, to be known as the Northeast Regional, will originate in Lynchburg at 7:38 a.m. Monday through Friday, reaching Washington in about four hours.
That’s later in the day than the business-oriented groups that advocated the new train had hoped.
“It will effectively eliminate day travel for business purposes to Washington, D.C.,” said Charlottesville rail advocate Meredith Richards in a letter to Rex Hammond, president of the Lynchburg Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Hammond said he plans to attend a regional roundtable meeting sponsored by Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, on Thursday in Charlottesville. Business and government officials from Lynchburg, Charlottesville and Culpeper will discuss how they can make the best use of the new train service.
Despite the departure time, Hammond said, the additional daily train is an asset for Central Virginia that should be celebrated.
Richards is president of the Charlottesville-based Piedmont Rail Coalition, which worked with Lynchburg-area leaders to urge Amtrak to launch the service and Virginia state officials to provide supplemental funding for three years.
Amtrak had said in January 2008, in a letter to the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, that it thought the train could depart about 5 a.m. and arrive in Washington before 9 a.m.
The adopted schedule “is far different from the proposed schedule,” Richards said in the letter to Hammond. The letter also said the Charlottesville group has heard questions and concerns from business, government and academic officials.
The new train’s southbound schedule, arriving in Lynchburg about 8:30 p.m. and potentially carrying travelers from both the New York and Washington areas, “will certainly benefit the tourism and hospitality industry,” Richards wrote.
According to a 2004 survey Amtrak did with its passengers, business travel accounted for just more than 10 percent of riders on Amtrak’s Crescent train, which stops in Lynchburg twice a day on its trips between New York and New Orleans.
Tourism and family travel accounted for the bulk of Crescent passengers’ trips.
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 about 10 p.m.
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