Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee
We all know what European modern regional DMU's look like so I won't post a bunch of sexy rolling stock porn here. But I will post one photo from Australia that I've always felt represents a very transferable look and feel to Amtrak, in that it has a stocky ruggedness that you don't see as much in the euro DMU's and would likely be a better fit for regional longer-distance Amtrak trains here in the States:
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Australia seemingly has a much deeper tradition of using DMUs than we do here in the US, but they also have a lot of regional services with tightly-spaced stops, connecting a small city to a much bigger one. They don't have the same service patterns as Amtrak.
It seems like the DMUs "down undah" are largely used for an intermediate/regional level of service that's longer than typical US commuter trains, but not as long as Amtrak's intercity lines. Service frequencies are also much closer to US commuter operations than to a typical Amtrak service - trains come hourly off-peak. This means that (assuming constant demand) each train can be smaller. (In reality, more frequent service leads to greater ridership overall, but not in proportion to labor/operating cost, so the subsidy per passenger still goes up).
In the US, Amtrak's barebones network is mostly split between corridor services connecting major cities at a regional distance, which have a higher demand than DMUs can serve, or long-distance services that need specialized cars and will also end up being loco-hauled. We do have a few regional train lines similar to the ones in Oz, but the service levels are pretty sad. Service from Champaign to Chicago is only three times a day, and only makes four intermediate stops over 130 miles. Similar story for service to Grand Rapids or Port Huron. If your "regional services" are only 10-15 train runs every day across the entire Midwest, why invest in a whole separate fleet of DMUs?
The Northeast has a few more regional services, but those are all oriented around New York, so they have to have electric mode to operate through Penn Station's tunnels.