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http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/...ay-end-673327/

Pittsburgh-to-Harrisburg Amtrak route may end

Service called too slow to justify hefty subsidy

February 4, 2013 12:13 am



By Jon Schmitz / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
One of Pittsburgh's two remaining Amtrak routes, the one serving Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York and points in between, may be on the chopping block come October.

That's the deadline for Pennsylvania to decide whether to foot the estimated $5.7 million bill for subsidizing the service, a cost currently paid by Amtrak.

No decision has been made but remarks from Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials indicate that the route is in trouble unless it can be shown to benefit large numbers of passengers connecting at Pittsburgh to or from cities other than Harrisburg.

"If you look purely at that (Pittsburgh-to-Harrisburg) segment, it is hard to justify," PennDOT spokeswoman Erin Waters-Trasatt said. She noted that it is much faster to drive between the two cities than to take the 51/2-hour train trip.

Elimination of the route would end Amtrak service to Greensburg, Latrobe, Johnstown, Altoona, Tyrone, Huntingdon and Lewistown. It would leave Pittsburgh with no direct passenger train connections to Philadelphia and New York. Only one Amtrak route, the Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington, D.C., would continue to stop here.

The funding change is mandated by the federal Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, which required Amtrak to develop and implement a consistent formula for sharing costs with states on corridor routes of 750 miles or shorter.

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