(The following article by Rich Exner was posted on the Cleveland Plain Dealer website on September 28.)
CLEVELAND — As late as two years ago, Amtrak riders could select from five routes that crossed Ohio.
By next spring, that number will shrink to three with Amtrak’s plans to eliminate its Three Rivers train through Ohio, closing stations in Youngstown, Akron and Fostoria.
This is the latest blow in what has been a bumpy history in Ohio for the 33-year-old company.
“You look at what Ohio had [two years ago] and what they will have, it represents a service decline of 45 percent,” said Ken Prendergast, head of the Ohio Corridors Campaign for the Railroad Passengers advocacy group. “We’ll be down to the lowest service level in Ohio in Amtrak’s history.”
There are no plans to cut the three remaining routes, two with daily stops in Cleveland and Elyria and a three-times-a-week train through Cincinnati, said Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari. Amtrak said next year’s cut is necessary because it is getting out of the business of carrying mail, which largely supported the Three Rivers route west of Pittsburgh.
Another train designed mainly to carry express packages, though it did pick up passengers in Cleveland and Elyria, was eliminated 20 months ago.
The Three Rivers train typically has about 15 mail cars and five passenger cars in Ohio. People boarding or getting off the train accounted for less than 10 percent of Amtrak’s 130,000 riders in the state last year.
Overall in Ohio, Amtrak lost nearly 50,000 riders from 2001 to 2003.
Maintaining the national Amtrak system will be tied to continued financial support from the federal government, Magliari said. Amtrak says it needs double the $900 million proposed by President Bush.
Rep. Steven LaTourette, a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, met with Amtrak earlier this month and said he was told that $1.5 billion could do.
“We have this fight every year,” the Concord Township Republican said. “We will do everything we can to get them there.”
Amtrak never had more than five routes in Ohio and once stopped in Canton, Columbus and Dayton.
“We don’t need to waste time mourning the loss of trains that weren’t making the grade financially,” said Jim Seney, director of the Ohio Rail Development Commission, in a statement after the latest cut was announced Sept. 3.
“What we need to be doing is moving forward on developing trains that make financial sense and get people where they want to go.”
One idea being floated is a possible $5 million investment to create a link near Ravenna so Cleveland-to-Pittsburgh trains could easily stop in Akron and Youngstown, rail commission spokesman Stu Nicholson said.
In November, the commission plans to release its Ohio Hub Plan detailing the best options for serving Ohio cities.
Other states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, contribute money toward the operation of extra routes, something Ohio has not done.
“I think at this point it would be a dead end,” Nicholson said of seeking money from the Ohio budget.
A common complaint about the Amtrak routes is scheduling. All four daily departures from Cleveland, for example, are scheduled between 1:08 a.m. and 4:21 a.m., and the schedules are often unreliable.
Mayfield resident Sheldon Lustig, a former railroad official who tracks Amtrak’s arrival times from data available from Amtrak, says the on-time performance is normally under 20 percent for a series of Eastern trains he monitors. Hours-long delays are not unusual, he said.
Nancy Slater experienced just that problem when she took her grandson to New York City this summer to celebrate his 11th birthday. Their train was scheduled to leave Elyria at 3:27 a.m., but she said the train didn’t pick them up until about 8:30 a.m.
Fortunately, she didn’t go to the station early, staying at her grandson’s North Olmsted home and calling for updates every 45 minutes or so. She lost sleep and a half-day of planned sightseeing in New York.
But she said she would take Amtrak again because she enjoyed watching the scenery and arriving in Manhattan, within walking distance of their hotel. “You get off the train and you’re there,” she said.
Magliari said delays are a problem, especially on the busy track used to reach Cleveland. Almost all the track Amtrak uses is owned and controlled by the freight railroads. Amtrak trains in Ohio go up to 79 mph, but at times must wait or slow down for freight trains.
Prendergast said that beyond limited schedules, unreliable timetables or a lack of state help, Amtrak suffers from something else – a lack of a high profile.
“I was talking to a woman about a trip I was going to take to Arizona,” Prendergast said. “When she asked how I was going to get there, I told her to guess. She asked if I was going to fly. I said, ‘No.’ She asked if I was going to drive. I said, ‘No.’ She asked if I was going to take a bus. ‘No.’ She looked totally blank, and said, ‘Helicopter?’
“Helicopter was on the list before the train. That shows how far Amtrak is out of people’s minds.”