Save Cornwells Heights
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
about us/me contact archives Bucks County TMA
The
eight pages of Cornwells Heights main talking points that are about to be
mailed out to politicians and press alike tomorrow are available here. Expect
more hyperlink depth soon.
Please
also visit the archives of past publication dates
for this site.
A
new edition should be out tomorrow.
Anyone
who wants to communicate with me directly, regarding the issues raised and
discussed on this website, is welcomed and encouraged to do so by writing to
me, Rick Booth, at rick@savecornwellsheights.com.
Washington’s
Amtrak Bureaucracy Says
to
Bucks County’s Cornwells Heights Station…
“We
promote our service. We don’t advertise
Union Station in Washington, D.C., and people use that.”
My
response to Amtrak’s cavalier statement of the day is…
Dear
Amtrak,
Begging to differ, how does Amtrak consider itself to be “promoting its service” by not sending a single promotional supply – like schedules – to the Cornwells Heights station for the past two years? The station manager there doesn’t even know when your trains will stop, and the word “Amtrak” cannot be found anywhere at that station on either side of the tracks!
Further
begging to differ, how does Amtrak consider itself to be “promoting its
service” by placing its only Northeast Corridor schedules in New York’s Penn
Station that list Cornwells Heights as a stop… in the Acela waiting area
and in the exclusive Club Acela?
Every publicly available Northeast Corridor train schedule in New York
City’s Penn Station, aside from the ones in the Acela lockdown zones, says the
Northeast Corridor stops at Trenton – because you have let New Jersey Transit
print all the Northeast Corridor schedules for us ordinary Manhattan
commuters, and Cornwells Heights is not in New Jersey!
And
finally, how is it that the only map I can find at Penn Station showing
commuting routes out of New York City shows a black, meandering, stationless
rail line connecting Trenton to Philadelphia? Could it have something to do with the fact that it is
distributed by New Jersey Transit?
Not to belabor the point, Amtrak, but we’re absolutely, positively not in New Jersey. We’re not even on the one map that shows the Northeast Corridor crossing the Delaware into Pennsylvania from New Jersey.
Now
seriously, Amtrak, how did you think New York urbanites were ever going
to discover the pleasures of suburbia and those 800 free empty
parking spaces that were specifically built for them at your station, sitting
there completely unused since 1997, 62 minutes from the heart of Manhattan
aboard your very own trains? There’s a
rat race for Northeast Corridor parking and access all the way from Princeton
Junction down to Trenton. None of them
know that if they would just relax for about 11 more minutes on their Amtrak
train instead of running off at Trenton to get to their cars in the two seven-story
parking garages there, they would discover Northeast Corridor Commuting Heaven
at Cornwells Heights. I am literally
wheels-down sitting in my own home, petting the dog and raiding the
fridge, before most of the Trenton
commuters have reached the Trenton city limits (which virtually all of them do,
especially considering that two thirds of them drove in there from Bucks
County, Pennsylvania!).
Begging
your pardon, Amtrak, but does your Union Station in Washington, D.C. run up
against these sorts of problems, too?
Right
now, I’m pretty busy saving the best New York City commuting location south of
Princeton Junction from extinction.
Once I’m able to get over the hump with saving Cornwells Heights, I’d be
glad to help out you guys down there in Washington, too!
-- Rick Booth, 4-year veteran Pennsylvania-to-New York City
Amtrak commuter
P.S. Today, I’m putting my money where my mouth
is: $50 to the first person to find another Northeast Corridor Amtrak station
that can’t even give away free parking to, say, 500 or more commuters. (I’m trying to be sporting here. We have 800, but I don’t want to set the bar
too high.) $10 to every single person who is first to put me in touch with a
station manager at a stop serviced by Amtrak trains, where they haven’t
received any Amtrak schedules for two or more years. (This is not limited to the Northeast
Corridor. Amtrak lists over 800
stations around the country on their website.
Surely a few more of them have gotten lost in the shuffle. I doubt that I’m going to be out much more
than a few hundred dollars, but you never know.)
P.P.S. This site is not just about Cornwells
Heights. It’s about bringing Amtrak
back on track in general. If they treat
their finest hidden gem this badly, I can only imagine the nonsense that goes on
around the rest of the country. I’m
sure Amtrak wastes tons of money needlessly (considering the lost revenue of
covertly running a station on the Northeast Corridor for eight years), and they
really do need to be reformed and saved from themselves, but they may need
continued public support and a change in management in order to realize the
dream. Amtrak runs wonderful trains,
which is just the thing we need right now, with gas prices going through the
roof. I am energetically
pro-Amtrak-service. I am energetically
anti-Amtrak-service-resource-management-stupidity. I’ll be glad to help them out as best I can, when I go to
Washington.