Has anyone heard any rumors when the Sunset Limited will lift the suspended service from New Orleans to Orlando? To go to Delray Beach FL (from Houston TX) this November, AMTRAK is routing me from Houston to Longview, TX, by Motorcoach (Bus) and on to Chicago via The Texas Eagle, then from Chicago to Washington DC via The Capitol Limited, and finally from Washington DC to Delray Beach via The Silver Meteor…for a total of three days!! I like trains, but not this much… I am thinking of Greyhound…
I have little idea how restoration of Sunset service between New Orleans and Jacksonville or Orlando would be prioritized. Being a Yankee, I would say the Sunset has a very low priority unless there is a demand for regional services that also share the route, such as New Orleans - Biloxi - Mobile and Mobile - Tallahassee - Jacksonville.
You touched on the question of whether CSX will relocate farther inland. How is that going?
The talk was for some kind of LRT being built on the former grade close to the ocean front.
Wasn’t the Sunset Limited the Amtrak train that had the highest subsidy per passenger? Something like $750 per passenger who travelede the entire route? And the last I looked (granted it was a few years ago) there was decent bus service between New Orleans and the major cities to the east for those who didn’t want to fly.
The Sunset Limited failed to cover its variable operating expenses by 48.5 cents per passenger mile in FY 2007. A passenger traveling from end point to end point on the Sunset in FY 2007 received a subsidy of $968 before other operating charges, e.g. interest, depreciation, unallocated charges, etc. These charges, when allocated to the Sunset, probably added another 10 per cent to the variable operating subsidy, bringing the total to $1,064.80.
For the first six months of FY 2008 the red ink for the Sunset jumped to 54.3 cents per passenger mile. Thus, the subsidy required to cover the end point to end point loss increased to $1,167.72.
Greyhound has one bus a day from New Orleans to Jacksonville. It takes approximately 15 hours to complete the run. It has two buses a day from New Orleans to Orlando. The travel time is approximately 17 hours.
Southwest Airlines has seven flights a day from New Orleans to Orlando. It has four daily flights to Jacksonville. Delta has one nonstop flight a day from New Orleans to Orlando. The fare is $77. Delta and the other carriers serving New Orleans offer another 59 flights, mostly one stops through Atlanta or Charlotte, from New Orleans to Orlando. Equally good service is offered from New Orleans to the other major cities along the Gulf Coast served previously by the Sunset.
Restoration of the Sunset from New Orleans to Orlando makes no sense. I believe Amtrak management knows it. This is probably the reason the Sunset Limited has not been restored between New O
I was hoping that the Sunset would be restored as my family and I would like to travel from Florida to Texas for vacation. I’ve flown before on a South West Airlines 737 from Texas to Florida. What an uncomfortable, bumpy ride that was! Cramped seats and it seemed that we hit every other airpocket along the way. I had one nasty headache after we landed. Fly again? No thanks.
I don’t want to drive and don’t want to spend 17 hours cramped in a 45ft MCI bus and eating at fast food joint stops.
I’ll take a train any day going that way.
Operation of the Sunset, even on it’s 3 day a week schedule, overtaxed the capacity of CSX and their line between Flomaton, AL and Chattahoochee, FL…that line segment is Dark, single track territory. With out major capacity enhancement, funded by Amtrak, I doubt that the Sunset will operate East of New Orleans again.
I’d be surprised if the Sunset ever ran east of New Orleans again.
You might think about cobbling together your own route.
I looked at the reverse of your trip:
Try Amtrak to Jacksonville, the hound to Atlanta, then the Crescent and the Sunset to Houston. You’d need a night’s lodging in Atlanta and New Orleans, though. (there is an overnight bus to Atlanta which dovetail’s pretty nicely with the Meteor at Jax - about 5 hour layover. The bus makes a good connection to the Crescent in Atlanta - about 2 hour layover- and a sleeper from Atlanta to New Orleans is really cheap ~$40) Getting from Greyhound to Amtrak in Atlanta is pretty simple. Greyhound is right at Garnett MARTA station. Take MARTA north to Arts Center Sta, then Rt 23 bus (or simple one mile walk) to Amtrak Sta.
The whole trip would start at 9AM on day one and end at 9 PM of day 3.
How does one find any data regarding the Sunset’s utilization? If that is low, wouldn’t it make more sense to put it out of its misery and add the equipment to LD routes that essentially run close to sold out, especially in sleeper? Can you afford to do that and risk losing political support from those locations that are being dropped from service?
Or is the opposite true – the lack of daily service and the poor on time performance is the essential problem, and if you were to fix those problems, plus perhaps a real connection at Phoenix, the need for the massive subsidy would be either be gone or reduced to a much more modest level?
It seems to me that continuing with the current situation is the worst of the possible choices. Samantha’s numeric data is usually very on target, and as it is we should just be buying each passenger an airline ticket for the trip.
If one Amtrak train three days a week “over-taxed” CSX, some serious capacity improvement is needed for freight even without passenger service.
This gets back to what I was trying to say earlier: rail improvements for freight shouldn’t hold passanger services hostage. If enegy efficiency is a national priority, if existing rail capacity is a constraint, and if railroads’ ability to secure funding in the private sector is limited, then the federal government should provide some kind of assistance.
At the same time, new or expanded passenger services will require additional investments and sharing in the costs for increasing capacity.
Signaling CSX for 205 miles between Flomaton and Chattahoochee would cost $61.5 million using a recent Amtrak estimate for Illinois proposals.
I’m just guessing the 413 miles from Flomaton to Jacksonville would need upgraded track for 79mph passenger speeds and cost another $82.6 million. This assumes CSX has substantial traffic between Flomaton and New Orleans and has maintained track to a level that would facilitate passenger services.
Assuming (I have only the vaguest idea from up in Chicago) 10 controlled passing tracks would be needed and that adds another $50 million.
That work alone brings the cost to $194.1 million. One train? I think not!
By the way, Mobile-Jacksonville is a lot farter than I thought. It definitely needs northern and western (get-a-way from the brown) connections for vacation traffic to the Gulf Coast to augment regional travel.
I do remember reading about 3 years ago that John McCain was a very harsh critic of the Sunset Limited. He questioned David Gunn several times regarding the justification for this train’s operation, even though ridership had increased overall.
If McCain questioned the Sunset Limited, I’m impressed. Most politicans wouldn’t have bothered. From what Samantha is saying, everyone should be questioning it. I mean, a $1,000plus subsidy per passenger traveling the entire trip? That puts it right up there with the huge Federal subsidies for some millionaire farmers in my estimation. And for those who say they don’t like to fly or ride the bus so the government should provide them with rail service no matter what the cost, all I can say is they need to wake up and realize the world doesn’t revolve around them.
Information regarding load percentages for Amtrak’s trains can be found in the Monthly Operating Report. They are posted on Amtrak’s website. The numbers usually require some restating and analysis.
In FY 2007, the Sunset had an average load of 52.16 per cent per passenger mile. A little more than half of the seats, on average, were occupied per mile over the 1,995 mile run from end point to end point. It is possible that the train was sold out (100 per cent) for one or more segments (station to station), or it could have been sold out from end point to end point, but that is unlikely. Moreover, it is probably ‘sold out’ rarely, i.e. around a few holidays and perhaps a few days during the peak vacation season.
Some folks have opined that Amtrak needs to expand its capacities because its trains frequently are sold out. However, ‘sold out’ can be deceiving. For example, the Sunset could be sold out leaving New Orleans or Los Angles. But a significant number of the passengers m
[quote user=“Samantha”]
Information regarding load percentages for Amtrak’s trains can be found in the Monthly Operating Report. They are posted on Amtrak’s website. The numbers usually require some restating and analysis.
In FY 2007, the Sunset had an average load of 52.16 per cent per passenger mile. A little more than half of the seats, on average, were occupied per mile over the 1,995 mile run from end point to end point. It is possible that the train was sold out (100 per cent) for one or more segments (station to station), or it could have been sold out from end point to end point, but that is unlikely. Moreover, it is probably ‘sold out’ rarely, i.e. around a few holidays and perhaps a few days during the peak vacation season.
Some folks have opined that Amtrak needs to expand its capacities because its trains frequently are sold out. However, ‘sold out’ can be deceiving. For example, the Sunset could be sold out leaving New Orleans or Los Angles. But a significant num
Samantha, your observations on the Empire Builder is interesting. I have seem some agitation for a Chicago/Milwaukee/Twin Cities train, and what you saw would seem to support starting a train like that. It would be about an 8 hour run, so conceivably you could get a round trip out of each trainset without getting too far into the wee hours. I believe Amtrak now attempts to deal with that situation by adding an extra coach to that portion of the Empire’s run.
Does that same opportunity exist on a portion of the Sunset’s route? For example, New Orleans and Houston are about the same (timetable) distance apart. Is that portion of the route much more noticably patronized? Is there some other city pair that enjoys much heavier patronage than the rest of the route?
I’m aware of the difficulty that could be encountered if multistate funding had to be procured to do such a route, but I’m not sure if the opportunity exists in the Sunset’s case.
I don’t know the passenger loads on the Sunset from New Orleans to Houston. Amtrak does not publish for public analysis the loads by segment, or at least I cannot find them.
The population of New Orleans was estimated in 2007 to be 273,000, 60% of the pre-Katrina figure and an increase of about 50,000 since July 2006. It does not have the population base, even when considering the metropolitan area, to be good candidate for more frequent passenger rail service.
There are two segments on the Sunset route that could be candidates for development as rapid rail corridors. One is from Houston to San Antonio. Both cities (Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas) have populations in the millions (Houston = 5.6 million, San Antonio = 2 million). The other is Tucson to Phoenix. They have a combined population of 5.1 million.
It is approximately 210 miles from Houston to San Antonio. The Sunset takes 5 hours and 10 minutes to run from Houston to San Antonio. It takes 4 hours and 45 minutes to go the other way. If the time could be reduced to roughly three hours, which would probably require a significant upgrade of the line; frequent, comfortable, dependable, and economical trains might be able to compete with the alternatives, e.g. air, bus, car, etc. But I don’t think it will happen until air and road congestion becomes a major problem, and they are not there yet.
The Arizona Department of Transportation has studied the feasibility of de
[quote user=“passengerfan”]
[quote user=“Samantha”]
Information regarding load percentages for Amtrak’s trains can be found in the Monthly Operating Report. They are posted on Amtrak’s website. The numbers usually require some restating and analysis.
In FY 2007, the Sunset had an average load of 52.16 per cent per passenger mile. A little more than half of the seats, on average, were occupied per mile over the 1,995 mile run from end point to end point. It is possible that the train was sold out (100 per cent) for one or more segments (station to station), or it could have been sold out from end point to end point, but that is unlikely. Moreover, it is probably ‘sold out’ rarely, i.e. around a few holidays and perhaps a few days during the peak vacation season.
Some folks have opined that Amtrak needs to expand its capacities because its trains frequently are sold out. However, ‘sold out’ can be deceiving. For example, the Sunset could be sold out leaving New Orleans or Los Angles.&
My experience with Amtrak reservations has been very good. I always use the on-line site to make my reservations. It is one of the best on-line reservation sites that I have used.
I have taken five trips on Amtrak over the past year. I booked all of the space (coach, business class, and first class) on-line. The process was simple to follow, and there were no errors in my reservations.
I have used the system since it was launched. In fact, when I lived in Australia, I booked my Amtrak travel plans from Melbourne, via my computer, for travel when I was back in the States on home visits. Again, I never ran into a problem.
I just looked at the system to see if I could book a sleeper from Austin to LAX for next May 1st. No problem! I don’t think you can book more than a year in advance, at least on-line, and I would be surprised if you could on the telephone.
Southwest Airlines only opens its reservation system for booking six to nine months in advance. I believe most of the other airlines follow the same procedure. Very few people need or desire to book more than a year in advance. Accordingly, building the capability to do so would not be a good business decision.
Amtrak has a lot of challenges. But its on-line reservation system is as good as any airline system that I have used. And I have been booking reservations on-line since the Sabre System was opened up to Prodigy users in the 1990s.
Samantha’s posting about possible corridors in the southwest says it all. The market is possibly there–but not at speeds of 40 to 45 mph. The NEC (basically) works for many reasons but one of the main ones is the train speed. There is no hope of establishing good passenger rail service in most areas of the country unless speeds can be increased and the freight roads currently have no incentive to do so.
For corridors, speed is relative. Fast is relative to highway congestion and driving time and to alternative air service for trips over 100 miles.
The Hiawatha #330 that is carded to arrive in Chicago at 7:57am averages just 50.6 mph. I suspect some of the slow running is due to compromises for Metra trains carrying as many as 1,400 passengers. Most Hiawathas are scheduled for 89 minutes for a 58.0 mph average.
Fast also does not trump convenience of suburban and strategic intermediate corridor stops that may add time; but also reach more riders and origin-destination pairs. I think the Hiawatha service should add stops at Gurnee and Truesdale (Kenosha) which would add six minutes.
Houston and San Antonio were cited as potential corridors on the Sunset Route; but there are only small travel markets outside the two urban areas. Stops may not generate enough riders to offset the the longer travel lost with a small increase in time. Only the convenience of a suburban stop would make rail service a more viable option than back-tracking to a downtown station for half the respective area’s population.
Without sizable on-line markets to attract riders to the two cities, rail would face difficult competition from both air and highway travel. The driving time is 3 hrs, 4 min according to Google Maps. This is further exacerbated by a longer rail route and curvature frequently limiting speeds to 50 or 65 mph for conventional trains. Unless highway congestion increases travel time and aggrevation beyond a train’s, there is little market for rail in this corridor.
- Use rail service as a development tool along the rail corridor.
- Explore volume pricing to attract more riders and revenue that exceeds the incremental cost and justifies a train rather than a bus as a congestion mitigation strategy.
Passenger rail can compete with air or other surface transport options only when air and highway congestion becomes so great that enhancing the airways or highways becomes cost prohibitive. The Houston to San Antonio corridor, or for that matter, any of the potential corridors in Texas, is a long way from that point. But it may happen some day.
Houston and San Antonio, as is the case with all Texas cities, are spread far and wide. The western suburbs in Houston and the eastern suburbs in San Antonio extend for west or east for more than 35 miles. As Harvey points out, several suburban stations would be required in both areas to make the trip convenient for people - that’s most Texans - who don’t and will not live near the city centre.
Greyhound figured it out years ago. It has suburban stops in every major Texas city that it serves. If it can do it, surely the planners for a serious train option could figure it out. Well, maybe!
Many people assume that the train would run downtown to downtown, thereby being inconvenient for people living east of Houston or west of San Antonio. But the service could start 25 miles east of Houston and 25 miles west of San Antonio, depending on the population in those areas. Undoubtedly, this would add to the time to complete a trip from one extremity to the other, but when drive time to the airport is considered, it may not be an impediment.
Maps can be deceiving. In addition to the population on the east side of San Antonio, New Braunfels and San Marcos are less than 25 miles from the rail line. Texas State University - San Marcos is a large state university with many students from the Houston area, who could be candidates to use a train.
As I stated in my post, the running time would have to be chopped to at least three hours or less from downtown to downtown to complete with alternative transport options. Greyhound has 11 schedules a