>>1651890Maybe back east, but on the west coast it's inevitable that corridor service builds long-distance service and vice versa. Already we got attempts to more or less rebuild SP's San Joaquin Daylight across the entire San Joaquin valley, rather than the current hacked-together setup south of Sacramento. Eventually, this will force expansion north to Redding and then Oregon like the original Shasta Daylight. Same for eastbound services, Nevada and Utah still want a daily Zypher train connecting them to the Bay Area, and there is a legitimate financial argument for service between Utah and Denver, and Denver and Chicago. The problem is that Illinois don't care, California don't care, Northern Nevada has no money, Colorado half cares and Utah is full of migatards that are busy backstabbing their own legislative delegation. And the Zypher has the greatest loss per mile of any western LD route, although it doesn't have the big losses the Sunset Limited does. The Southwest Chief could be made profitable if Amtrak could get a dedicated source of money for it.
That's mostly where I agree things are going to change. Trump was successful in that he implanted the idea of putting corridor services first and either killing LD routes or forcing individual states to subsidize them. I think California could pull it off with the Zypher and Starlight but not the Chief and Sunset routes, even though they are potentially more profitable. There's agreement between leaders in San Jose, Sacramento, Reno, Utah and Denver for an Amtrak connection but there isn't such agreement between leaders in LA, Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Wichita and Kansas City. Las Vegas couldn't even justify their own corridor service to LA, neither could Phoenix - meanwhile Reno could justify a billion-dollar train trench.
