SUNSET LIMITED, A SIMPLE SOLUTION

The eastern leg of the Sunset limited was fatally flawed in three ways. Some of the stations and their locations were terrible. Making a 90 degree turn from east-west to north-south at Jacksonville was an expensive waste of Amtrak's resources. Scheduling and frequency was deplorable for virtually all of the 'new' cities along it's route.

I'll use the example of a department store. Imagine we built a 100,000 square foot store, with locations in each of the towns served by the eastern Sunset Limited. Next we make a decision based on a handful of nocturnal customers to open our store 3 days a week from midnight until 5 am. How long do you think we'd last?

Running a daily, daylight train over this former Gulf Wind Route from New Orleans to Jacksonville would serve this market much better then the overnight schedule ever did. Amtrak proved it could run a coast to coast train, but the actual numbers making the trip beyond New Orleans in either direction was minuscule. A daylight train could serve as a second New Orleans - New York train through it's connections in Jacksonville.

Extending the Palmetto train into Florida south of Jacksonville would offer connections to lower Florida,. Jacksonville is now planning a downtown train station with a large enough rail side to handle of the switching plus commuter rail.