Talk:Amtrak Cascades

Removal of factual information

Hi, SounderBruce (talk · contribs), why have you reverted my addition of factual information? The fact that partial preclearance applies on cross-border services is not contentious, and I see nothing unreliable or contentious about the Urbanist. Stifle (talk) 10:09, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

The Urbanist is a self-published blog and is still under the threshold of reliability among local sources. The preclearance section would have worked better as a standalone rather than being slotted into the history section. SounderBruce 10:21, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

Canadian on the route map?

While Via Rail is distinct from Amtrak, the Canadian departs for Toronto from the same Vancouver, BC station as the northern terminus of the Cascades. Since we have the Empire Builder and Coast Starlight marked on the route map, should we have the Canadian included as well? Dralwik|^{Have a Chat} 21:18, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Recent Revisions

I have a few questions regarding recent revisions to the Amtrak Cascades page, mainly for SounderBruce (talk · contribs). Firstly, thanks for organizing the citations by year.

Second, I realized you removed the Connections column from the station stops because of the WP:NOTGUIDE guideline, but I included that because other Amtrak route pages include connections (such as the Carolinian or Empire Service). Should I only include connections with major transit agencies, such as Sound Transit and Greyhound, and not include smaller agencies? I aim to increase parity between all of the Amtrak route pages so I'd like your thoughts on this moving forward.

Finally, I included the ticket revenue statistics because it was included on another route page with the ridership. Would those stats (and the OTP %) work better under a different heading, perhaps "Performance"?

Thank you for your help! Stormykara (talk) 00:03, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Connecting agencies and rail routes should be included. However, individual bus routes shouldn't be listed - it would take far too much effort to keep the list up to date. Northeast Regional is a good example of a well-organized table.

We don't need giant tables of statistics. Important changes in revenue and OTP can be discussed in the text (particularly when sources discussing the changes, not just raw stats, are available), and the most recent year can always be included in the text, but tables of these statistics are not relevant in the article. Ridership is more pertinent, but even then, prose and/or graphs are more valuable than a table of raw values. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 00:13, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Alright, that all makes sense. I will include all connecting agencies in the station stops table, but I will omit individual bus routes. I also will include graphs for ridership data instead of tables. Thank you for your help! Stormykara (talk) 01:13, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Tables should be kept simple and free of repetitive icons and links. Since many stations have quite a few bus operators linking up to them, I feel it's best to limit it to other rail services and intercity bus operators instead of listing every local transit agency. It's also far easier to source than ever-changing local bus schedules. SounderBruce 03:53, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree about duplicate links. The icons are a personal preference - I personally find they make the tables much easier to read, which is why I include them. As far as what agencies to include, I think it should either be by mode (ie rail routes only) or include all agencies, with my preference for the latter. There's a substantial blurring of the line between local and intercity bus, especially for western routes. It doesn't make sense to include, say, a Greyhound connection with one daily round trip, but not an 40-mile local bus connection with 10 daily round trips - or a local bus operator with hundreds of trips per day. While individual local routes may change, it's relatively rare that a given operator will actually add or discontinue service to an Amtrak station - particularly since the station is often their hub. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 19:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I also like using the icons, I think they make the tables easier to read and decipher. I think it would be the easiest and the best if for the connections only major agencies are included (such as Amtrak, Greyhound, substantial city transit agencies). To make the criteria clearer, perhaps only connecting agencies that have established pages on Wikipedia? Stormykara (talk) 23:15, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Decorative icons are not appropriate. For Cascades stations, the majority of intercity connections are done by a handful of private companies rather than public agencies. WSDOT has a pretty explicit distinction between the two that can be used to filter them out for such a list. SounderBruce 02:22, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I would argue that these icons serve as visual cues that aid the reader's comprehension. Regardless, both of these issues (icons and what connections to include) should be raised as a larger forum (likely WikiProject Trains) as they affect numerous articles. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 03:15, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

north bound

Does the route include boarding in Longview, going North to olympia? 131.150.232.227 (talk) 18:04, 4 May 2022 (UTC)

Name Change

I was thinking that we could change the name of this article to be just Cascades. I feel like that the Amtrak part is unnecessary. We recently made a similar change with the Hiawatha. Endrias Kassa (talk) 22:15, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

The train's name, even on the Amtrak website, is "Amtrak Cascades". In common use, it is also "Amtrak Cascades". There is absolutely no reason to shorten it, as the current name is already clear and has the advantage of natural disambiguation. SounderBruce 22:19, 25 November 2024 (UTC)