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SkiingAway t1_j6knaw8 wrote

This would cost an insane amount of money that Vermont quite literally does not have, and would in many cases be incredibly slow.

You keep using the Ethan Allen Express extension as an example of something cheap. It only achieves it's "cheap" status, by being slow, extremely infrequent, and on track that already exists, was fairly straight, and was already in fairly tolerable shape.

VT estimates it'll be another $250m just to upgrade the two existing services to FRA Class 4 track (79mph). Which does not mean the average speed of travel will be 79mph, to be clear - because that doesn't mean the many, many curves limiting speeds are all going away.

Building rail lines that have never existed through valuable property in topographically difficult terrain, will be billions of dollars. VT could vote for the highest taxes in the country and somehow acquire the highest % of federal spending in the country, it's still never going to have the money to build it, and certainly won't have the $ to maintain it.

Rebuilding lines that once existed but haven't in a long time is only very slightly more plausible (and will also piss off a lot of people who enjoy the rail trails they've often become)....and doesn't change that even in the peak of rail many of those lines were very slow.

As reminder, the historic criteria for getting people to ride a train was "is this service better than walking or riding a horse". Because that was the competition. That is not the competition today for getting people to ride a train.

Many of these routes can't even generate enough public transit demand to make a bus pencil out very well on ridership - and that's with the bus going a lot quicker than the train likely would.

I would pretty much throw the whole idea away and replace with investing every dollar VT has or can acquire into:

  • Continued speed improvements on the two existing services + extension to Montreal.

  • Attempt to partner with other states on extending more trains into VT for more frequencies on those lines. Extending Springfield/Valley Flyer runs to WRJ (or Burlington/MTL) or Empire Service runs Rutland/Burlington is the most obvious.

If we ever manage to hit 5x+ a day and/or actually decent travel times, maybe then you can re-examine something new. The state's plans are for Albany-Bennington-Rutland(or Burlington) as the most likely future expansion beyond MTL.

(And the state rail plan basically agrees with me, as this is more or less their listed priorities).

Transit ridership is: speed, frequency, convenience. I don't see the scatterbrained approach as going to achieve any of them.

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DrToadley OP t1_j6ktbid wrote

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. As someone who both enjoys trains and wants to see them (and Vermont) thrive, my foremost goal is to improve upon what we have so far, and part of the reason why I put my idea out into the world in the first place is so I could understand its shortcomings. Your criticisms make a lot of sense. I just hope that people in Vermont aren't too afraid to dream a little bigger when it comes to transit.

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SkiingAway t1_j6l7w9g wrote

Re-reading, I suppose that sounds harsher than intended - so I do apologize for that.

I'd love to see VT dream bigger when it comes to transit, to be clear. I just think it's best bets on that are the incremental work to improve services/expand services on the best/most cost-effective corridors it has to work with.

There's a reason it's (for example) a pain in the ass to go East-West across VT even by car - it's hard to build through there even for a road, building a decent rail line would be exceptionally high $.

I also do think that the economics are immensely difficult even if you are fine with large subsidies for many of these proposals and the realistic ridership they could achieve.

Regarding plenty of these ideas: Do the cheap trial. Contract to run a bus under the Amtrak thruway bus program or something, and/or beef up the local public transit schedules linking parts of the state, too.

Yeah, a train is nicer than a bus and would get more people using it - but if the bus ridership is shit even with efforts to get people to use it/make it decent, the train's unlikely to be some big winner either.

To pluck an example, I'll pick that Route 9 corridor.

SEVT Transit/MOOver currently runs 2 buses a day each way on Route 9 Brattleboro-Bennington and it takes about 1:20, not much worse than driving yourself.

Looking at VT's AADT data, we can also see that there are a couple thousand people a day moving across that corridor, probably less than ~4k actually on the corridor for a decent length of time other than the brief overlap with Rt 100.

Even if you want to imagine the hypothetical train might achieve some unrealistically high mode-share....there are simply not a whole lot of people traveling this path to move today, and it's probably not because they just don't own cars.

In contrast, you can look at something like I-91, and you can see that up through WRJ/I-89 and you're pulling ~10-20k on the corridor.

But if you want to run a trial for a few years - go make that hourly or half-hourly service or something. If you're not getting some solid ridership, spending huge sums on a train isn't likely to fix it.

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DrToadley OP t1_j6l9dvh wrote

Very well-reasoned and realistic thinking. I do believe with the right frequency and really good branding, buses could be more successful in Vermont, which could bring more trains.

Really, I believe what it comes down to is that I think Vermont needs to start seriously building lots and lots of high-density housing in its cities and major town centers NOW. No more single-family housing - way too cost-ineffective and bad for the environment. The state is uniquely situated to be far ahead of the curve on the climate crisis, and if it had ample housing, it could see both a huge population and economic boom with tons of benefits for all of its current residents. Then, connect it all via trains - boom, now we've maintained all of the state's natural beauty and made it more livable while everywhere else will be struggling (although they could do the same thing...). This I do believe to be the real pipe dream, though.

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SkiingAway t1_j6llqiq wrote

I think "high-density" is a bridge too far for VT, but larger areas of "medium-density" is perfectly realistic and arguably the only real solution to VT's housing crisis. The local downtown is not going to be harmed by a couple more blocks of 3-6 story buildings....like the ones that are already in the part of the downtown area as it is.

They're also the only places in VT that typically have the utilities in place to really support significant amounts of housing.

And yes - having more people living in town centers also makes transit as normal transportation choice more viable. "Last-mile" is a big issue otherwise.

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DrToadley OP t1_j6lm39n wrote

"High-density" in the context of VT, haha. Agreed on all counts.

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