Proposed Equipment Change and Service Upgrade
Amtrak had urged the state of Vermont to purchase diesel multiple unit (DMU) trainsets for use on the New Haven–St. Albans stretch of the line. These DMUs would have been a smaller and more efficient alternative to the current locomotive-pulled configuration. Instead of remaining in the same passenger coaches while the crew switched locomotives at New Haven, passengers would have had to change trains. Amtrak offered a $2 million grant to help make the switch and market the new service. The new cars would purportedly have saved $4.25 million over three years, being four times more fuel efficient than a locomotive-hauled train. In 2008 the Vermont state legislature approved the purchase of five cars from Colorado Railcar at the cost of $18.2 million, but the decision was pending the approval of Governor Jim Douglas when the company closed, and with no other manufacturers of DMUs that comply with US regulations for DMUs, the plan has since been dropped.
Amtrak and the State of Vermont have also tentatively discussed adding another train between White River Junction and Springfield, Massachusetts that would enable greater flexibility in passenger travel times.
Read more about this topic: Vermonter
Famous quotes containing the words proposed, equipment, change and/or service:
“It has been proposed that the town should adopt for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling nine times round.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“At the heart of the educational process lies the child. No advances in policy, no acquisition of new equipment have their desired effect unless they are in harmony with the child, unless they are fundamentally acceptable to him.”
—Central Advisory Council for Education. Children and Their Primary Schools (Plowden Report)
“If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he’s really needed.”
—David Hockney (b. 1937)
“We could not help being struck by the seeming, though innocent, indifference of Nature to these men’s necessities, while elsewhere she was equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim’s shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop-shell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)