I did some analysis on the timetable that trains.com published this morning if anyone is interested!
Most connections are maintained but the east coast to Chicago suffers with all three trains (other than one Chicago - NY Cardinal) operating on the same days…
https://trainreview.com/news/breaking-amtrak-thrice-weekly-long-distance-train-timetable-leaked
Here’s my view–which is somewhat less sanguine.
Here, alas, thanks to Bob Johnston’s chasrt posted at Trains Newswire is a critique of Amtrak’s tri-weekly plan. Note there are numerous mis-connections between eastern and western services at Chicago.
Broadly the LAKESHORE LIMITED/CAPITOL LIMITED trains westbound from the east-coast arrive Chicago on Monday, Thursday and Saturday and the Chicago-west-coast EMPIRE BUILDER and SOUTHWEST CHIEF depart on those same days. The CZ makes the connection Monday and Saturday, but weirdly leaves on Wednesday instead of Thursdays for the third trip and thus never makes a same-day connection for that departure. The Wednesday CZ is an isolated step-child from all same-day connections from the east on the LSL/CL and even the CARDINAL.
The TEXAS EAGLEs are timed to meet the SUNSET at San Antonio and thus NEVER makes a same-day connection south/westbound at Chicago from the LSL/CL. North/eastbound it connects to the east on Mondays and Saturdays, but not on Wednesday. Very confusing!
Eastbound the EMPIRE BUILDER, CZ and SW CHIEF will all arrive Chicago on Thursday, Saturday, and Monday and happily the LSL/CL connections thus work if trains 8, 6 and/or 4 are reasonably on-time. But the TEXAS EAGLE will arrive Chicago from San Antonio on Wednesday, Saturday and Monday–so as noted above the Wednesday connections are broken.
The beat goes on! The CARDINAL can not make some of these connections at Chicago westbound either, as it arrives on Mondays and the TEXAS EAGLE at least will depart on Tuesday. It will connect to the SW CHIEF on Monday, but how many east-coast riders will be willing to devote over 24 hours to the NYC/CHI trip (and will Amtrak add a sleeper and coach to expand CARDINAL capacity)?
The Thursday westbound CARDINAL’s theoretical connection at Chicago to the CZ is not until Saturday–a 48 hour +/2 night wait. Why? The same thing (albeit for only one night off-train) happens with the eastbound CZ into Chi
Here’s a further analysis of the “criteria” Amtrak claims will b e used to justify resuming daily long haul services in June of 2021–based on data from February, 2021!
Amtrak has released it’s purported criteria for resuming daily service after cutting its entire long-haul/inter-regional fleet to tri-weekly in October. That the “plan” could have been worse is small comfort. I have uploaded jpg copies of this document below.
The greatest concern I have about this report is the repeated use of a poorly defined 90% criteria for bookings as a restoration trigger. This is very confusingly described.
It would be impossible after cutting 57% of weekly departures (4 of 7) to ever reach 90% of normal ridership on only three remaining trips. Is it 90% of what was typical on the surviving days–or 90% of the within COVID daily ridership, or what? Amtrak’s language here is so poorly phrased that it’s very squiffy. Criteria 2 and 3 may conflict.
Criteria 2 alone might work–is 2021 advanced booking equal to 90% of the same month in 2020? But then it’s undercut by criteria 3–current performance. They propose to apply the 90% test here against a performance “plan” that they could easily set in such a way that it couldn’t possibly be met. How many months must ridership hit the 90% criteria? And why mid-February to evaluate the summer ahead?
This will all apparently be tested as of February 15, 2021–but my experience in 35 years of selling Amtrak travel was that most of our bookings for the summer/fall came on/after tax time in April. We generally had no more tan 15-20% of our summer clients booked by mid-February.
Amtrak admits in this report that LH ridership dropped 81%–compared to 95% system-wide–yet only this product line is subjected to such complete loss of service 57% of the days of each week.
This plan is not satisfactory!
Sean Gail at the RPA has posted an a
The website “Trainreview” has indeed posted a somewhat easier to read chart and analysis of the tri-weekly connecting plan. There are some interesting new observations here.
One correction in the Trainreview piece: The CZ westbound does NOT connect to the three east-coast-Chicago long hauls on any of its Wednesday departures. The LAKESHORE, CARDINAL and CAPITOL all will arrive on Thursdays mid-week.
Key Question! How many long-distance train travelers switch to another long-distance train?
Amtrak does not say as far as I am able to determine. But it does gives us the number of passengers that transfer to or from the long-distance trains to the state supported trains or the NEC.
In FY17, 227,000 (rounded) riders transferred to or from the long-distance trains to the state supported trains. And 27,000 riders transferred to or from long-distance trains to or from the NEC.
So, in F17 4.8 percent of the long-distance riders transferred to the state supported trains. And 57 hundredths of 1% of the long-distance riders transferred to the NEC.
Looked at another way, transfers to or from the long-distance trains were 1.5 percent of the state supported riders and 22 hundredths of 1% of the NEC riders.
My guess is the percentage of long-distance travelers that transfer from one long-distance train to another is very small.
And when connections are eliminated - the number is even smaller.
True! But a real business, which is a foreign concept for Amtrak, looks at the metrics, and does not over value minuscule inputs or outputs.
If a competitive business over focuses on the small change, it will be gone in a relatively short time.
So then just book a different day. Or layover in Chicago. To me thats a minor inconvienance given the awesome Chicago Hotels within a short cab ride of CUS. They do not charge that much if you book in advance via the internet. I always get decent rates at Chicago’s Palmer House Hilton when I need to stay in Chicago.
I have 4 weeks of free hotel stays via Bonvoy as well.
Also, personal preference but I personally would not book two LD trains end to end with no layover. I like riding trains but not marathon rides like that.
Thank you! This one has been updated!
Amtrak’s circle tours are arranged in that fashion. The layovers work out pretty nicely and city tours are included in the package.
What would be an example of an Amtrak circle tour?
.
The AP News story on this pointed out that a ‘circle’ tour doesn’t necessarily have to be a full circle; they started in Arizona on the Sunset, took the Crescent from NO to Washington, then the Capitol Limited to Chicago, the Empire Builder, and then 4-hour layover in Portland to connect presumably with a Coast Starlight.
They said they did this on a 15-day pass for $459 per person, plus they bought sleeper space as they went for ‘about $1000 for five compartments, six nights on board’. This was in ‘early winter’ 2018 (story published in March), and they noted they stayed in hotels as necessary during the layovers.
Just longer layovers if the routes no longer line up with the ‘new’ timings. Presumably any passes would be extended to account for this, but I wouldn’t trust Amtrak to be fair in this regard any further than I could throw a Superliner.
The circle tours I took were the Northern Rail Experience (Empire Builder, Coast Starlight & California Zephyr) and Southern Rail Experience (Empire Builder, Coast Starlight, Sunset Ltd & City of New Orleans). Both were booked under those titles through Amtrak Vacations.
Rilway age extensive article on how Amtrak is cutting back LD without real evidence. Notice that LD is retaining a larger percentage of passengrs than SD and the NEC
https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/intercity/third-in-a-series-is-it-money-or-ideology/
In FY19 the long-distance trains had an average operating loss of $104 per passenger compared to $4 for the state supported trains and an operating profit of $45 for the NEC.
Per passenger mile the long-distance trains had an operating loss of 19 cents compared to 3 cents for the state supported trains while the NEC had an operating profit of 28 cents.
Assuming that 80 percent of Amtrak’s depreciation, interest, and other capital charges are worn by the NEC, which is problematic, with the balance allocated equally between the state supported and long-distance trains, the average lost per passenger mile for the long-distance trains was 23 cents compared to 7 cents for the state supported trains and 6 cents for the NEC. When the state operating subsidies are added to the results for the state supported trains, they had a loss of 18 cents per passenger mile.
It is not just the revenues that management must consider. It has to look at the toatal financial picture, i.e. revenues, expenses, etc. No matter how one slices and dices the numbers, the long-distance trains are a financial drag. And there is nothing short of a miracle that will turn it around.
The fly in the ointment is labor, which makes up 63.9 percent of Amtrak’s operating expenses and 64.5 percent of revenues. If Amtrak is able to scale down its labor expenses, the
The article was written by a Jersey lawyer and LD train advocate. He’s hardly an objective analyst.
So a article written by a village idiot that is a LD train opponent would be more objective?
Not his point. Excessive zealotry is usually as much a cause of truth suffering as is too much analysis … and stupidity underlying arguments not far behind that.
Your ‘village idiot’ might be just as ‘hardly an objective analyst’ whether you happen to agree with his underlying beliefs or bias. Truth does matter, as jcburns loves to say, and it is not safe to adopt only the truths that best fit your preconceptions.
I’m surprised some on here suddenly find anything from a lawyer is acceptable. Usually they are denounced by many members. This one has a long history of frivolous kertuffles with various commuter districts. So I suppose it depends on whose truth you like.