The load factor is meaningless these days, it is the revenue per flight vs the fixed cost of the flight. You can have a full flight and lose money because a lot of airlines dump empty seats on discount ticket resellers to get as many seats filled as possible…that doesn’t mean they make money doing that, it just means they lose less money than they otherwise would have. The $1.2 Billion Delta made is spread over how many flights? Also how much was due to just flight revenue? I am sure some of their flights make money these days with the extra fees and baggage charges but I am also sure a good percentage are marginally profitable and some even losing money…as it is with most transportation businesses.
BTW, $1.2 Billion in revenue / 180 million passengers carried annually = $6.66 per passenger carried.
If LD passenger trains make money, let somebody COMPETENT run them. Amtrak - a government agency (quack quack) - can’t run a customer service operation. NO government agency ever has or ever will.
A bus will ALWAYS be cheaper than a train. Period. Run buses where they make MORE sense. BUT, trains - in congested areas - can be better than buses because buses are stuck in the same traffic with cars.
Why does it always break down to a battle between trains OR buses OR airplanes? Each has it’s place in providing CONVENIENT transportation. THAT should be the goal. LD trains, running once a day, chronically late, and when NOT late - running at 40 mph average speeds are NOT convenient. THOSE trains are pathetic.
As to LD servicing “small towns”. Amtrak is BAD service, period. And, Amtrak serves a fraction of the urban areas in the US. There are almost 20,000 incorporated areas in the US. Amtrak says it has 500 destinations (and THAT includes their through-way buses). But, regardless, 500 is only 2.5 PERCENT of incorporated areas. It’s NOT a national system, and never has been.
And, due to Americans thinking all trains are bad BECAUSE of the reputation of Amtrak and LD trains, we probably never will get GOOD trains. LD trains are ruining ANY chance the country has for a USEFUL train system.
Amtrak, in its current incarnation, is a pathetic joke.
Also, undermining most of your argument despite not understanding the Constitution as written, is the fact that most of the LD routes today formed the foundation of the Corridors they run on. If they are yanked as you want, what happens to the Corridor frequency you also remove that they run across? Is it replaced or left vacant? You will note that some of the corridors that started, started with just a LD train at one frequency. Note the emerging Chicago to Twin Cities corridor. Served by just one LD train but soon will have it it’s own corridor train. The LD train provided both the initi
You missed my point about airlines cutting capacity. They don’t have full flights because they give tickets away, they have full flights because they have “right sized” capacity. Besides, that’s $6.66 more per passenger than Amtrak makes…
Bad service: For the elderly and handicapped who cannot fly, the only service, to the tourist who wishes to see the country in comfortable surroundings, the Only Service. Remove the LDTs and you have zero service for them.
Whar about Amerillo or Rawlins or Hinklley with no Amtrak rail service? Within a three-hour drive to Amtrak rail service, and in many cases there are Amtrak Throughway Bus connections.
If he or she wants Amtrak around just for when he or she is sick, let he or she pay for ? Already paid for in taxes that have already made improvements in the NEC. Or: If the Connecticiut, New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester commuter to Manhattan insists on a seat instead of standing, let he or she pay for it.
Three hour drive to get on an Amtrak? Never happen, Dave. You’ve lost touch with America. There are so few people who “can’t” fly that it’s not worth the cost. I saw the scenery on Amtrak when I took it to Chicago. The South Side was even prettier than I could’ve imagined. People would rather jump on a plane for 2-3 hours and get a couple more days at their destination. Many people can only get away for a week at a time and don’t want to spend half of it getting there and back.
Charlie, your friend who rode Amtrak from Harrisburg to Chicago: What did he find uncomfortable about the Amfleet and/or Horizon and/or Superliner coaches? Was something not working properly? Megsbus may be something special, more ccomfortable than either Greyhound or Trailways. I never complained about them when I rode them, but I certainly did not find them as comfortable as Amflleet one, let alone Amfleet two or Superliner coaches. I never ever found any Amrak coach uncomfortable for long distance service, except the non-reclining Harrisburg - Philadelophia recylced heritage coaches which fortunately rode only in their intended short-distance service.
What exactly bothered him, outside the lateness, seious enough in itself.
Backshop: Apparently, there are enough people who do not meet your description to provide patronage. How many posters can post instances of riding LDTs with less than 40% occcupancy at a specific point in the jouirney? There must certainly be cases, but there probably are a lot more from the trip reports I receive, both from friends and on the website, that run sold out.
That’s nice – so they pay for themselves as a result and aren’t a ‘drag’ on the general taxpayer base.
Oh wait … you’re telling me they don’t?
Subsidizing patronage for a full train that loses money is not much more of a justification for ‘privilege’ than for one that runs wastefully unpatronized. It’s a bit like the argument ‘when we can’t make a profit on margin we’ll make it up on volume’ except that the tacit assumption is that the IRS compels people to pay for something they don’t ride and don’t value. If you’re going to take on that responsibility you’d better have something to tell the great majority of taxpayers that justifies their unrequested and compelled sacrifice.
I’m tempted to mention at least one way this could be handled (it is similar in many ways to a similar addressing of the abortion/choice question): let taxpayers agree to earmark some proportion of their tax to Amtrak, much as current tax policy allows a setaside for election funding. This might extend up to a fairly large percentage of actual tax payment (and include some money from expected-tax advance payment as well) earmarked very specifically for LD trains (as opposed to ‘subsidized’ corridors or other service expected to pay its full way) and perhaps allowing further earmarking to specific areas or trains of importance to that taxpayer. Give this an adequate time to work before relaxing (or redirecting, most probably to something like Gateway in the near term) a proportional amount of existing LD subsidization.
In other words, get the folks who want the service to continue, or who want a particular outcome at someone else’s expense, to commit to providing it. (Think o
When all costs are considered, your analysis applies just as well to the heavily patronized multi-freuency NEC as much as it does to the Southwest Chief.
Again, why should people in Kansas and Colorado subidize billion-dollar improvments to the NEC if they cannot get even one train a day?
I answered the incorrect assumption that nobody rides. Now I point out that every Amtrak rider is subsidiized, including those on the NEC, when all costs are considered.
What people need to remember is that this whole thread is based on a WSJ article. That has a lot of influence on the people who make the real decisions…
I’m thinking the LD routes are even more heavily subsidized if you take into account that the ROWs on which they operate are built and maintained by taxpaying private enterprises. Amtrak pays a pittance. Furthermore, if you think people in Kansas are subsidizing anything outside the Jayhawker province, I have a bridge for you.
Charleli, I am zeroiing in on subsidies to Amtrak by the USA taxpayer, and in that direction: I do not believe it is only a pittance, and yes Kansas citizans certainly to help pay for Amtrak imiprovements in the NEC, just like all the other USA taxpayers.
Still, interested in what made your friend uncomfortable.
The per capita balance of payment with Federal government in 2017 for a KS resident was $797. For aNew Yorker, it was negative $1217. The numbers are similar with most NEC states compared to more rural states. So please stop with the inaccurate information.
My friend said that the ride was rough, the seats in coach Superliner uncomfortable and the train was about 5 hours late,often sitting in sidingsor moving at a snail’s pace. You haven’t lived here for many years.
Here’s a recent comment from a WSJ reader of the article. I think this is what it comes down to.
(Don’t niggle about splitting costs. All accounting is based on estimates. Decisions have to be made).
“This reminds me of the United States Postal Service. On one hand you have Congress mandating the business be run a certain way and the other hand mandates the service make money. Those two things are in conflict. If Congress wants to have rural service maintained on long distance routes then they need to acknowledge that this service will probably never be profitable. These types of lines should be broken out separately in Amtrak’s books. The taxpayer’s can then plainly see what these rural line costs and make a more intelligent decision if it is worth it financially to keep these lines active with subsidies. Amtrak executives can then focus on keeping the shorter routes profitable and not feel like these long routes drag down the overall financial picture.”
You are correct. Every rider on Amtrak is subsidized to some extent on a fully allocated cost basis. What is unknown with certainty is the amount of the total subsidy per service line.
Assuming the NEC wears 80 percent of Amtrak’s depreciation, interest, and other capital expenses, which may be a bit high, with the remainder allocated equally between the state supported and long-distance trains, the fully allocated average loss per rider in FY18 for the NEC was $10. The corresponding average loss for the state supported trains was $12. For the long-distance trains it was $138.
In FY18 the NEC had an average operating profit per rider of $43 compared to an average operating loss per rider of $6 for the state supported trains and $120 for the long-distance trains.
The operating loss for the state supported trains is understated. Amtrak accounts for the state payments as revenue. However, it is paid by the state’s taxpayers and, therefore, should be counted as a taxpayer subsidy. The average state payment per rider in FY18 was $19, which brings the average taxpayer subsidy per state supported rider to $25.
Cents have been rounded to the nearest whole dollar. Also, it is assumed that 100 percent of the losses are covered by the federal and/
I must accept your accounting, since I don’t have any basis for disagreement. My point would be that the Long Distance trains see Different People day-to-day, while the corridor and even some state-supported trains see mostly repeat riders. Thus, the subsidy Per Citizen, Per Taxpayer, the individual riding rather than each ticket or each ride, minimizes or even reverses the difference,
Take an exteme case. A long distance train has different riders each day. So each rider gets a $120 (approximately) subsidy over the year.
A corridor trains sees exactly the same riders each Weekday. There are 261 weekdays each year. So at ten dollars a ride, each rider gets a subsidy of $2610 each year.
This is an extreme case, but illustrates the point I am making.
And I believe my station restaurant take-out scheme can drastically reduce food costs and thus reduce the subsidy to the long-distance traveler.
Whether 100 people get 1 subsidy or 1 person gets 100, it costs money. I cannot understand why you think it is ok for one, but not the other.
Your station restaurant scheme fits very well with my RDC scheme. That is, the RDC’s would not offer significant food service, nor would they offer sleeping. To do that, one gets off the train and avails oneself. Much like driving. At least, on that, we seem to agree.
It is not my accounting. It is Amtrak’s accounting for the most part. With the exception of my assumption about the percentage of capital expenses allocable to the NEC, the numbers come from Amtrak’s published financial and operating statements.