Quote:
Originally Posted by Atlas
Connecting Salt Lake City to Las Vegas via St. George seems like a curious omission to me. It's a route that has significant ridership potential and would connect those two long east-west routes together nicely, albeit the terrain could be difficult/expensive for new rail in some areas. That said, I-15 has a large median for pretty much the entire route with the notable exception of the portion that runs through the Virgin River Gorge in Arizona.
|
Amtrak has tried that train before with many different train operation modes, it failed even Amtrak's easy standards.
Desert Wind history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Wind
"The original Desert Wind was a day train with Amfleet equipment. The northbound train left Los Angeles mid-day and arrived in Ogden the following morning to connect with the eastbound San Francisco Zephyr. The southbound departed Ogden in the middle of the night after the arrival of the westbound San Francisco Zephyr from Chicago and arrived in Los Angeles in late afternoon. The 811-mile (1,305 km) journey took eighteen hours.[5] Beginning in 1980, the Desert Wind exchanged a Chicago – Los Angeles through coach with the San Francisco Zephyr at Ogden; this service expanded in 1982 to include a sleeping car. After the renamed and rerouted California Zephyr began using the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad main line in 1983, the Desert Wind began connecting with the Zephyr at Salt Lake City.
Later, the Desert Wind and the Seattle-bound Pioneer would operate together with the California Zephyr from Chicago to Salt Lake City, where the trains separated. This created a train of 16 Superliner cars running from Chicago to Utah, the longest that Amtrak had ever operated aside from the Auto Train. With Amtrak needing at least four locomotives to pull this massive train through the Rockies, the Pioneer began splitting off at Denver in 1991, while the Desert Wind continued to split from the Zephyr at Salt Lake City.The Desert Wind was discontinued on May 12, 1997, a victim of Amtrak's recurring budget cuts that also eliminated the Pioneer days earlier."
811 rail miles in 18 hours, that's averaging 45 mph between LA and Odgen.
18 hours is too long for a day train, which is probably why Amtrak added a sleeper car to the Desert Wind train. In fact, 811 rail miles is longer than the 750 rail miles for the train to be considered a long distance train, where Amtrak would not get any state subsidies to fund any loses.
All studies in the last 10 years along this corridor involve a day train between LA area and LV. I am not aware of any EIS studies for a train on tracks north of LV, hence why this train is not on Biden's or Amtrak's map.
I suggest waiting for either LA to LV trains to enter service, then try extending it later after completing the require EIS studies. The one mode Amtrak has not tried in the past is a true high speed train. Although I think 811 miles is too long for a HSR line to attract enough premium paying passengers to fund. Using the 3 hour rule, 811 rail miles / 3 hours = 270 mph average speeds, which is by far more than the maximum speeds present HSR technology supports. Doubling the elapse time to 6 hours would halve the average speed of the train to 135 mph, which is doable with HSR technology today. But at 6 hours elapse time, how many premium passengers will there be willing to pay HSR premium fares? I suggest not enough. I believe there are valid reasons why no one is planning a train between LV and SLC today.