Save Cornwells Heights

 

Tuesday, September 6, 2005

 

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New Notes of General Interest

 

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.

 

 

Please Make Contact

 

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.

 

 

Below This Point on This Web Page, Expect New Hyperlinks to Appear in the Near Future

 

 

Breaking News from the August 31st  Bucks County Courier Times


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.

 


 

rick@savecornwellsheights.com