Direct v. connecting service: Passengers know the difference

Amtrak-watchers occasionally clamor for Amtrak to extend the Heartland Flyer south to San Antonio and reroute the Texas Eagle west from Fort Worth to El Paso. Under this scenario, passengers who want to travel from, say, Texarkana to Austin would have to change trains in Fort Worth. As would passengers from L.A. to San Antonio. Currently these are one-seat rides on the Eagle.

But here's a news flash from the UK: Passengers are smart enough to know the difference between direct and connecting service.

Residents of Sunderland will know tomorrow if Britain's rail regulator will allow a new "open access" carrier onto the East Coast Main line--giving them a one-seat ride to London. Current service involves a change in Newcastle. At best.

Sunderland isn't exactly a wide place in the road. Grand Central Railways claims "more than a million people" in its proposed service area. And in a country where 70% of all train service has one endpoint in Greater London, direct service there is a very big deal.

It's one thing to draw lines on a map--quite another to change human behavior.

We saw that on the Amtrak system about a decade ago, when Amtrak's board cut all but one western full-line train to less-than-daily service. The consultant who cooked up this plan figured that travelers would simply adjust their schedules to fit the train's. But they didn't. As the Amtrak board learned the hard way, people want to go at their own convenience.

As Amtrak's network expands, a key goal should be to expand the number of city pairs with direct service. For example, your conductor favors one-seat service from Milwaukee to St. Louis, Indianapolis or even Detroit. That would require run-thru capability at Chicago Union Station. The good news: The track is already there. All that's needed is targeted capital investment to make it passenger-train-friendly.