New Hampshire and Vermont officials are still working on a plan to salvage Amtrak's Montrealer train line, the only interstate passenger rail service in Vermont and New Hampshire.
The Montrealer runs from Washington D.C. to Montreal daily. Twenty-thousand people use the White River Junction, Vt., stop annually. Amtrak said in December that it would eliminate the line because it was losing too much money.
"That is our intention, to halt the service," said Amtrak spokesman Rick Remington.
The issue now is "whether we can come up with a replacement service that would start April 2," said Vermont Deputy Secretary of Transportation Glenn Gershaneck.
Amtrak has placed a Feb. 23 deadline on a plan to save the Montrealer.
Congressional delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Vermont proposed a new plan to replace the service, according to an article in the Valley News.
The proposal would introduce a day train that would run through Springfield, Mass. and Hartford, Conn. and would end before crossing the Canadian border.
"The lowest loss at the moment involves a train from New York to Springfield. If we're able to make the numbers work so some state-level subsidy would be approved, it would be along that line," Gershaneck said.
Amtrak has said the new proposal would require a subsidy of $2 million, according to the Valley News, but the newspaper also reported that a sponsor of the alternate plan said that figure is $1 million too high.
"I know that if they get enough pressure from Congress, [Amtrak] might be able to bend on it," said Kent Morgan, a spokesman for the New Hampshire Department of Transportation.
According to the article, U.S. Senators Democrat Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and James Jeffords, R-Vt., signed the proposal and sent it to Amtrak's president last Thursday.
New Hampshire's U.S. senators refused to sign the letter. They argued that Amtrak received $952 million in subsidies this fiscal year, the article said.
Lisa Stocklan, the press secretary for Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., said "The Senator's position on Amtrak is that he encourages the move toward privatization [to make it] a more efficient and cost-effective rail system,"according to the Valley News.
This plan could cut expenses by close to 63 percent and would save the train two hours in running time, the Valley News reported.
If the Montrealer is canceled and no replacement route is found, Dartmouth students will not have train service to and from the College.
Jim Mitchell, manager of Dartmouth Travel, said about 500 students a year utilize the train's services.
According to an Amtrak public report, ending the Montrealer's run north of New York City would result in savings of $5.96 million.
But a Jan. 31 Valley News article said the $6 million figure is deceiving, because $2.9 million account for operating losses, while the other $3.1 million is the revenue a rival service would incur as a result of the Montrealer's cancellation.
According to the article, Vermont is projected to lose between $20 and 30 million if its passenger rail service is eliminated.
"If you stopped White River, you'd lose ridership in the Burlington area and Amtrak's real expenses come in the Canadian leg," Morgan said.
Massachusetts consultant Thorn Mead is the spokesman for a separate group, Vermont and Connecticut Railroad, which has proposed a private replacement for the Montrealer.
Mead met with Vermont Transportation Secretary Patrick Garahon on Monday, according to the Valley News.
The group envisions a daily passenger train that would run between New London, Conn. and St. Albans, Vt. and would be operated under contract to Amtrak, the newspaper reported.
The new service would preserve stops in Claremont and White River Junction, Vermont.
"What we're offering is a lower cost way to provide the service ... A much lower deficit than practically any train they run in the country," Mead told the Valley News.
He has not asked for state subsidies.
The group plans to hire a new crew at lower wages, cut the sleeper and dining car services and advertise more, an article in the Valley News said.
Amtrak officials will receive a copy of this proposal this week. It does not appear likely that the proposal will be taken too seriously.
"In our negotiations with Amtrak, we're talking about a public train," Gershaneck said. Labor agreements might not allow a private group to provide rail service through Amtrak, he explained.
Mitchell said ticket prices will also be more expensive if the Mead proposal were implemented.
According to Mitchell, it is currently much cheaper to ride the train out of White River Junction than to take the bus to most big cities. It is $20 less expensive to New York City and $50 less expensive to Montreal, he said.
Amtrak is "so well utilized and so dramatically underpriced," he said. "We're not losing Amtrak service [in White River Junction], we're losing rail service."
There is an Amtrak bus out of White River Junction to the train station in Springfield, Mass. which will continue to operate after April 1, Mitchell said.
