Save Cornwells Heights
April 3, 2006
If you are looking for the “usual” SaveCornwellsHeights web pages…
click here:
The usual pages, last updated 2-13-2006
NE Corridor Group
Ticket Tag Team “Torch”
to Arrive in
Washington on August 30th
Although no true month-or-more-long job commuting groups got organized last week, I am happy to say that we do now have a powerful political card – er… set of cards – to play in August. Using residents of each of the Northeast Corridor states, a series of groups of affected Northeast Corridor riders will pass a “virtual torch” from Massachusetts (starting August 23rd) to Washington, D.C. (arriving August 30th), touching each individual state for a stop along the way, using Amtrak’s 90% discount tickets sold at rates far below what job commuters must pay. That means 6 riders on each of 8 trains on 8 days! We should be able to get press on this.
It was tough to organize, but at the very last minute it all came together, and the tickets are all printed and ready for the ride. We may not be large in numbers, but the story we can tell the press at each stop will be very powerful and perhaps worthy of the national attention it may take to restore the Northeast Corridor to fare/fair sanity with respect to its most loyal and vulnerable passengers, the daily job commuters. Handing Philadelphians, and others up and down the Corridor, fare increases equivalent to up to $10,000 cuts in salary last year will not go unchallenged. I’m particularly looking forward to getting the Philadelphia area stirred up for another “revolution” this year. The United States of America will be 230 years old on July 4th, and that means Philly will get special attention for the decade mark, and we’ll show them we still have the spirit!
Here are the fares printed on our torch bearers’ tickets:
$1.10 - August 23rd, Boston, MA,
to Providence, RI
$2.80 – August 24th, Providence,
RI, to New Haven, CT
$2.90 – August 25th, New Haven,
CT, to New York, NY
$3.40 – August 26th, New York, NY,
to Trenton, NJ
$2.30 – August 27th, Trenton, NJ,
to Philadelphia, PA
$2.30 – August 28th, Philadelphia,
PA, to Wilmington, DE
$3.20 – August 29th, Wilmington,
DE, to Baltimore, MD
$1.30 – August 30th, Baltimore,
MD, to Washington, DC
______
$19.30 – total fare
for 8 connecting corridor rides to “pass the torch”
I bought a tank of gas today for $34.31.
The combined cost of sending 4 torch bearers all the way down the Corridor from Boston to Washington using 32 separate Amtrak tickets on 8 separate Amtrak trains will have been $77.20. Yet Amtrak charges $50 a day to take Philadelphians to and from their New York City jobs.
A few other “solo” (non-torch) group rides will happen as well, at least one in May, plus the Cornwells Heights commuter ride on June 1st, plus a few other miscellaneous ones in August, including a group-of-six ride from Virginia to Washington, DC, even though the group discount isn’t available there. I had been encouraging correspondents to go for August tickets to maximize the time we have to play to the press, and nudge up closer to the mid-term elections.
When I can post a $1008 Philadelphia-to-New York City monthly pass on this website right next to tickets for interstate joy rides at $1.10 to $3.40, this thing just may work. I love it when a plan comes together. We have an “A Team.”
The next posting to this website will most likely be just before or just after Easter. I’ll have more details, dates, and organizing/press suggestions by then.
Thanks to everyone who wrote in, helped, and purchased. Please keep those cards and letters coming! Especially New England, where we’re still a little thin.
I’m not going to call in the lawyers now. I don’t think we’ll need them. This has to be an all-American upbeat grass roots campaign to show what salt-of-the-earth, good, hard-working Americans, descended by birth or spirit or both from the patriots of ’76, can still and ever do.
Have a wonderful Easter, all. Well done.
–
Rick