California’s three trains The Capitol Corridor, San Joaquins and Pacific Surfliners are reporting ridership is 51% of Northeast Corridor.
Al - in Stockton
…but 12% of the revenues.
Taken together, though, California and the NEC carry 55% of Amtrak’s passengers and 57% of the revenues. The NEC has 35% of the passengers and CA has 20%.
Those 20 Acela train sets alone account for 25% of Amtrak’s revenue and 10% of the passengers.
Here’s how the routes stack up for June w.r.t covering their direct costs: (the eye opener here, for me is how the Carolinian and Piedmont do compare to the “Silver” trains and the Crescent.)
| train | direct cost/revenue |
|---|---|
| Acela | 28% |
| Regional | 35% |
| Hiawathas | 47% |
| Keystone Service | 51% |
| Chicago-St.Louis | 53% |
| Illini | 56% |
| Carolinian | 59% |
| Washington-Newport News | 59% |
| Piedmont | 63% |
| Adirondack | 66% |
| Ethan Allen Express | 67% |
| The Downeaster | 70% |
| Pere Marquette | 73% |
| Cascades | 73% |
It would be interesting to see how NARP and similar groups in the advocacy community interpret those figures. The high percentages for the long-distance trains are not that different than comparable numbers from the pre-Amtrak era and go a long way in explaining why Amtrak exists and why privatizing long-distance passenger service isn’t going to happen.
Some complain about how allocation of shared costs unfairly burden the LD trains, so I purposely just compared the direct cost.
Now, you can spend capital to reduce operating costs, and the avg higher speeds on the NEC, that have been purchased with capital, certainly help both the revenue and cost side of things.
But, when the Carolinian, which is not a short haul train, and has pretty lousy time keeping, and runs on a circuitious and fairly pokey route, can easily cover it’s direct costs and the Silver trains and Crescent don’t come close, I can only draw one conclusion…
There may be hope for sleepers and food service, but it ain’t the status quo.
The numbers surprised me for a few services. The question is not what the rail advocacy community makes of the numbers; but why do services come out the way they do. Obviously it’s not just sleepers and diners.
Given an average ridership of 46 passengers per train for the Hiawathas and a give-away commuter fare averaging only $7.30 a trip, it’s amazing the cost/revenue comes out so well.
The biggest anomaly would seem to be the Hoosier State coming in at 340%, the worst, while the long-distance Cardinal comes in at 194%, 57% better.
The Auto Train does very well for a long-distance train coming in at 80%, comparable to many corridor trains and better than the Palmetto on the same line (while not named for the bug, the connotation is unfortunate) and the “Silvers.”
The Wolverines do poorly at 112%, while CSX and the State want to change the Pere Marquette that is compratively successful at 73%.
Another mystery is why the Palmetto comes in at 107% while its counterpart, the Carolinian, achieves a respectable 59%.
Amazing to me we’re a really big chunk of Amtraks ridership yet we cannot get any sort of HST program past the planning stages, yeah I know all the reasons given, just really amazing to me that a state that has so much ridership is still slogging along at 50mph.
The obvious places to look are equipment and crew cycles. That’ll take a bit more doing than just looking at Amtrak’s reports. I suspect the Hiawatha’s get pretty good equipment and crew turns.
Another thought on the Palmetto vs. Carolinian. Florence/Charleston/Savannah aren’t quite the metorpolitan areas that Raleigh/Cary/Durham/Greensboro/Charlotte are.
Here’s some more numbers:
| train | rev | labor | other |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carolinian | $14.50 | $3.00 | $5.50 |
| Palmetto | $10.40 | $3.60 | $7.40 |
Ridership for June:
Carolinian 218k
Palmetto 128K
You gotta run where the people are…and stop to pick them up.
For the month of August the Pacific Surfliners carried 313,570 and Acela Express carried 250,440. This is the fourth month in a row that the Pacific Surfliners have outshone the Acela Express services.
And just as important the Capitol Corridor route was ranked #1 in customer satisfaction.
Al - in - Stockton
Nice stat, but I’m not sure it tells me anything. A better comparison might be coach vs. coach i.e. NEC regional vs Surfliner. Acela is 100% business class. …and lets not count passenger miles [;)] …or revenue. …or contribution.
The Surfliners are great. I had a chance to ride LA to SC last summer. Train was full (but previous train out of LA was annulled…). Smooth ride. Speed crept up into the high 80s a few time per my GPS. I can see why people are riding them!
The Capitols seem to be growing nicely, too. They finally passed NJT’s Philly to AC line in ridership.