Corbett reaches deal to pay to maintain Amtrak route to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review-Mar 21, 2013 Tom Corbett said the state will pay $3.8 million a year to subsidize Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian route, a daily round-trip that provides the only …California is already paying over $30 million to run each of their existing State services and each produce much more…

Excerpt from the March 7, 2013 LOSSAN TAC Meeting Agenda. The Coast Starlight has maintained positive ridership growth since September 2011 including a significant increase of 19.3 percent in January due to a combination of improved reliability, fare actions, and maintaining the summer consist with more cars . March 18, 2013 Part 1  March 18, 2013 Part…

SPRINTER Rail Service To Shut Down Due To Bad Brake Rotors KPBS- Mar 8, 2013 North County Transit District’s SPRINTER rail line, which runs between Escondido and Oceanside carrying 7,800 passengers a day, will be taken off the tracks at midnight Friday for 60 to 120 days to replace worn brake rotors. The NCTD said…

The report by the Brooking Institute that this story is based on concludes that Amtrak can make “money” by running corridor trains and having the States subsidize operations instead of the Federal Government. So where is this State Money suppose to come from and what will keep the States from running these services themselves and…

This new Federal bill could increase the State’s payment to Amtrak up to 25 million dollars from about 100 million which would blow a hole in the budget of State Rail Program. The service which would be charged more is the Surfliner. This is because 3 Surfliner Trains which predate the State subsidizing local service…

Many of the problems at Metrolink stem from previous management which lacked leadership and failed to understand the mission of Metrolink which is stated in the name of the body running it: Southern California Regional Rail Authority. A better name for Metrolink would be SoCal Rail. Previous management was under the illusion that Metrolink was…

CONCLUSION:This is the third trial of an “express” service on this corridor. The dropped stops were reinstated after a similar decrease in ridership in the earlier trials. The same declining pattern repeats with 2011 – 2013 express train. The corridor as a whole is overall holding steady on ridership and overall up on revenue during…

Amtrak last September after the end of the 2012 Fiscal Year ballyhooed the fact that they had recovered 85% of their OPERATING costs and only needed $361 million extra in 2012 to cover operations. But the final figure for Federal funds for Amtrak is $1.418 billion. The biggest chunk at $623 million is for Capital…

LA Subcommittee To Discuss Metrolink Connection To ONT Los Angeles Daily News Jan 22, 2013 Last week, Councilman Bill Rosendahl introduced a motion requesting that Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s office and officials from Los Angeles World Airports work with Metrolink to consider options for connecting the Ontario airport to the rail line.His motion also suggested there…

The Surfliner Express has been around since February of 2011. Ridership has continued to drop since then and is lower than the all stops service this express train replaced. In October 2012 ridership was 29 percent lower than October 2011. This experiment should end as soon as possible. What is needed is to reduce running…