Overview; By almost all measurements Amtrak has had a record month for July 2010, Longer trains, more available seats, most passengers (beat June 2010, July & Aug 2009), highest load factor 60.7% (same 3 months) (however load factor is much harder to quantify due to: How many revenue seats considered in sleepers?, coach over 100% certain legs on some trains if non revenue space occupied happens especially train 171 which often picks up stranded MARC passengers; how dead head cars counted?; Private cars?) Record revenue and expenses. Net loss down. Note Amtrak is being very conservative in FY projections. Have my own theory. . Note: FY is also trending up. Capital spending is still under budget for various reasons. May be due to contractor problems ex: the frequency converter upgrades and replacements are not working as planned? System fuel consumption (Gallons/mile) is more probably because of longer trains but until route specific information available very hard to compare. Ex: A three loco Cal Z (over mountains) vs a 1 loco 4 car flatlands Illinois service? Fuel cost up. I estimate trains used 7,711,200 Gallons of fuel = TM x G/M. Add + 5% other = 8.096M gallons?
On time is down (Worse than any month since before Oct 2008 may be due to more freight trains on routes, some trains slightly longer, maybe longer dwell for the more passengers? All this with essentially same train miles even though 1 more weekend day in 2010. Note: some metrics lack a sufficient definition and so ma
Question: In working out the seat-miles/gallon figures, what is your accounting for the Diesel-gallon equivalent of the kW-Hr electric portion of Amtrak energy usage?
Ideally, we would have train-miles, seat-miles, and passenger-mile figures separated by route, or failing that, separate figures for the electric and Diesel portions of the Amtrak network. But Amtrak famously pools all of their numbers.
For example, one could argue that electric trains use a “free” source of energy because in theory, the electric power could come from nuclear or renewables without depending on oil imports, even though electric in this day and age has substantial environmental impact – coal, and even gas when you consider the environmental effects of the shale gas they are tapping.
On the other hand, large portions of Amtrak will continue to be Diesel powered for the forseeable future, including many of the regional trains such as the new one from Madison to Milwaukee. Since Amtrak doesn’t separate electric from Diesel, assigning some “Diesel equivalent” to the electric power usage at least gets a handle on the energy usage of the Diesel trains.
I agree 100%. That was part of the reason I emphasized that so much. I am very skeptical of the figures especially fuel miles in particular. As you say do they combine electric in or not??