Today's Corning Leader story about passenger rail quotes a number of local officials, including Eric Massa. There's general agreement that passenger rail in the area is not going to dip down into the Southern Tier.
“In order to justify this kind of billions of dollars in investment, you have to have the population to use it,” Massa said. “We don’t have the ridership to do that. There would never be any hope for a self-sustaining transportation system.”
And Massa, Patterson, and all the others believe there will be enough customers on the Buffalo - Albany run? Not unless it connects to high speed to NYC and other points east of Albany, and other points west of Buffalo. Until then, Buffalo - Albany will fail to be financially self sufficient and will be an expensive waste of taxpayer money.
I agree that the NYC run is key - but the difference between enhancing the "Empire" route and building a new Southern Tier line is that the "Empire" route already has passenger service and traffic. In other words, they aren't starting from zero.
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“In order to justify this kind of billions of dollars in investment, you have to have the population to use it,” Massa said. “We don’t have the ridership to do that. There would never be any hope for a self-sustaining transportation system.”
And Massa, Patterson, and all the others believe there will be enough customers on the Buffalo - Albany run? Not unless it connects to high speed to NYC and other points east of Albany, and other points west of Buffalo. Until then, Buffalo - Albany will fail to be financially self sufficient and will be an expensive waste of taxpayer money.
I agree that the NYC run is key - but the difference between enhancing the "Empire" route and building a new Southern Tier line is that the "Empire" route already has passenger service and traffic. In other words, they aren't starting from zero.
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