According to the 2005 study by the DOT IG, sleeping car passengers required a substantially greater subsidy than coach passengers. The data is old, but I have not seen anything to refute these findings. What has changed in the price/cost relationship?
The Manhattan Institute published a study in 2015, if I remember correctly, on Amtrak’s food and beverage costs. It indicated that the average compensation package for Amtrak’s on-board employees was worth more than $41 per hour, which tends to substantiate your point.
What is the basis for questioning how Amtrak allocated costs? Without access to Amtrak’s books, it is impossible to make this conclusion. Or at least it is an improper accounting conclusion.
For the first five months of FY16, compared to the same period of FY15, the number of sleeping car passengers on the Silver Star increased from 12,970 to 13,694, an increase of 5.6 per cent. During the same period sleeping car passengers on the Silver Meteor decreased from 17,960 to 16,799, a decrease of 6.5 per cent.
Although it is too soon to tell, it appears that a lower priced sleeper without a sit down meal appeals to a significant number people traveling by train to and from Florida.
The loss per passenger mile before depreciation and interest for the long distance trains decreased 1.2 cents. The loss for the Silver Star decreased 3.9 cents, while the loss for the Silver Meteor d
Amtrak’s cost-allocations are an eternal debate item. The FAST Act specifically directs a new look at Amtrak’s cost allocation methodologies. With respect to sleepers the DOT IG report was highly challenged by NARP and the advocacy community, for among other things its cost-allocations. For an alternate view you might find this interesting. http://www.narprail.org/site/assets/files/1036/whitepaper_sleepers_06.pdf
The situation on 91/92 (SILVER STAR) vs the SILVER METEOR is mixed. Overall STAR ridership indeed went up in sleepers, but on the METEOR the return per passenger is greater.
I agree that cruise fares include an allowance for food. I spent 33 years working full-time as a surface transport specialist travel agent and sold thousands of cruise and rail berths. Amtrak sleeper fares also include a generous allowance for meals. Part of the current problem was John Mica’s attempt to refuse to recognize this cross-over revenue. The FAST Act does allow that after Amtrak exhausts every other effort to cut food costs this could ultimately be a way to show “no loss” compliance.
Premium fare services are always the cash cows of transportation. The small First and Business Class areas of international flights typically take in nearly as much revenue as the entire Economy section. The one First Class car on the ACELA sets is invariably full, with a typical return per seat of $125-150 over the base fare–compensated for by a “free” meal and some drinks.
I support reasonable efforts to constrain food costs–even extending to potentially privitizing the First Class and meal services, but my clients showed me again and again that even coach riders wanted more than a microwaved burger on a cross-country trip. Faced with at best Subway level meals ridership simply will not be sustained on longer journeys and Amtrak can not live long without customers willing (as they are on
The data in the NARP push-back to the IG report is not properly supported. The footnotes explain how NARP re-worked the numbers. NARP does not provide an audit trail to the primary accounting documents, probably because it did not have access to them.
NARP has a dog in the hunt. It is an advocacy group with its own agenda. The IG, on the other-hand, is an relatively indpendent, objective appraisal organization within DOT. It does not have a dog in the hunt. The IG was not vested in the outcome.
There is no indication that NARP had or has any access to Amtrak’s books, which would be essential to draw any conclusions regarding the propriety of Amtrak’s cost accounting methodologies.
When I see an independent study similar to that perform by the IG, with verifable numbers, stating that Amtrak’s sleeping car passengers cover their costs, I will accept it.
The average load factor for the Acelas from 2010 through 2015 ranged from 60 per cent in 2010 to 63 per cent in 2015. It is hard to believe that the first class section had a higher load factor than the train as a whole.
The Star show an increase in sleeping car passengers, while the Meteor showed a decrease in the same class of passengers. This is the relevant point in response to the ascertion that people will not pay for sleeper class unless they have a classic dining car experience. The absence of a dining car did not seem to impact ridership in the Star’s sleepers, although five months is not long enough to reach any solid conclusions.
Both JPS1 (new handle but familiar content) and Carl presented a treasure trove of data and thoughts. Much appreciation for the thought and effort. My question still remains for Carl the following. Forgetting about NEC costs (NEC track conditions and the private freight RoWs are apples and oranges) for now, why not attempt yet another pairwise comparison experiment, as on the Silvers?
Try comparing the CZ with the EB. Provide a full-service dining car with all the trimmings as in the 1950s on one, Cardinal-type service on the other. Require patrons to pay for the full labor cost only for both (no overhead) if they choose to use.
I would have no problem at all with trying a “Pay As You Go” approach as an experiment on a ong haul train–with full-service and think it a very good idea.
It is interesting to note the difference in meal prices between the silver cafe and the other trains where it is assumed table service of a type still exists. There seems to be a $10 additional price, which would cover labor for a single server for about 50-70 people a meal and then some. The entree itself better not cost more than $12 including the supply chain or therein lies the problem. I am not sure I would want to pay the cost difference with no fresh food preparation and a long wait between ordering and arrival.
However, cutting volume through the food service car is not the way to go. Why couldn’t there be a goal to serve say 200 meals a meal period?
It costs about $3/carmile (+/- $1 due to varying conditions) to field a car on an existing train, which is why sleepers as incremental additions to an otherwise coach only train make sense. It takes just a few $0.5/mile rooms to recover costs and contribute to the train. Even the old ICC knew that passenger trains were suited to volume carriage, aka they have a declining average cost curve (wrt) passenger volume. There are several sources to back this up or one can figure it out with an engineering economics study.
My concern is Amtrak has no way as far as I can tell to understand or express variable costs to Congress and even when requested to provide variable costs in PRIIA could not do so after a half decade, therefore their accounting system is ill suited to its purpose and quite in doubt. Honestly, why don’t we lobby for contracted food service as the next experiment on the two western pairs mentioned, with locally based labor and locally sourced food being added in route at various points.
Passengers need meals. A sleeping car passenger, on average, will eat one or two more meals on the train than a coach passenger. But there are a lot more coach passengers on the long distance trains. It is hard to believe that the incremental meal(s) consumed by the sleeping car passengers are proportionally greater than the meal needs of the coach passengers who make up 85 per cent of the load.
I don’t have access to Amtrak’s books, so I don’t know the per cent of coach passengers that eat in the dining car. Neither does anyone outside of Amtrak unless they have access to the books, i.e. GAO, DOT IG, etc.
Most of my trips are in coach. I have a rough feel for what the coach passengers want and what they do. But it is only an impression.
If the dining car has wide appeal for all passengers, how come Amtrak has to bake the meals into the sleeper fares, thereby guaranting a captive audience for it?
As noted above removing the dining car from the Silver Star does not seem to have had a negative impact on its sleeping car bookings. Sleeping car passengers on the Star increased by 5.6 per cent during the first five months of FY16, but they decreased 6.5 per cent on the Silver Meteor.
Not to be excessively paranoid, we also might want to keep in mind that other factors, or some aspect of the reporting, may be manipulated in order to produce the effect - here, the ‘reasonable man’ conclusion that eliminating the classic dining-car service on the Star might not only have saved money but increased patronage on the train… apparently at the expense of the ‘other’ train that retained its diner. I find it interesting in context that they’re re-introducing a higher level of meal service, perhaps in an attempt to find a ‘sweet spot’ between Congressionally-agitated cost-effectiveness and customer howls…
Although one would think we’ve typed ourselves hoarse, as it were, on this topic, perhaps that’s not the case.
I find myself in complete agreement with two previous comments: those of MidlandMike (above) and dakotafred. Nothing will satisfy Amtrak critics such as John Mica. Nothing. Let’s not decieve ourselves into thinking some kind of dining car reforms will change such ignoramuses into champions of passenger trains; nothing short of the abolition of Amtrak is what they want.
(D)akotafred makes the point that the few million dollars at stake (no pun intended) is tolerable in such an enormous federal budget; every one of us could think of a way for the Feds to stop wasting similar amounts of money.
Shouldn’t railfans be friends and advocates of Amtrak and its historically and pathetically underfunded services, instead of apologists for those who would hack away at Amtrak until there is nothing left, or nothing worth saving? Isn’t that appeasement of tin-horn dictators such as Mica? We ought to be advocating for better dining cars, not ever-cheaper ways of providing some kind of food.
And yes: Raise my taxes to pay for better dining cars and a better Amtrak. I’d rath
One can be a railfan, a senior, pro-passenger rail and anti-Mica and his cronies without supporting nostalgia rail. I do not care for suggesting hewing to the NARP “party line” on this is the only position. In fact, I believe supporting an out-of-date position on passenger rail only: 1. Gives Mica more ammo to sink most of Amtrak as a boondoggle or pork, and 2. hinders efforts to get a 21st century rail service for the US.
No matter what kind of food it serves, or in whatever car, Amtrak has got to do better than those “multi-car lines” on the Star waiting for a crack at a single attendant, as described by Railvet in his OP.
Standing in line for an hour for a sandwich or a drink – not on my list of passenger-train pleasures!
Surely Amtrak can come up with some variation of the reservation system it uses on the trains I have ridden. So that maybe the line goes back only one car!
And NKPGuy above says it all on the necessity of us standing up for what makes a passenger train, rather than letting yahoos like Mica decide the operation.
In the fast casual sub shop I owned and managed, 90 seconds from point of order to delivery of food was the standard. And we are talking making the sub. filling the soft drink and cooking the fries in that time…very aggressive considering the cook time of fries. Still it was the standard we tried to meet. During busy times it would stretch to 3-5 min. Any longer than that and you need to start threatening to fire people. If I had a 3-5 min wait time and the line was not at least out the door, I would be on the line threatening people to move faster or get replaced and…it really was not a sweat shop it’s just that the 18-22 year old crowd likes to move at a slower pace and chit chat more than they should. Amtrak as a manager, well…they not only would tolerate a 6-12 min wait time…they would think that was fast.
JPS1, using passenger miles as the proportion, sleeper passengers are 25% of meal requirements on LD trains. If the other 75% of potential meals are the coach passengers, and only 1 in 5 of the coach passengers meals are in the diner, then that adds up to 40% total of all meals are served in the diner. While this is still not a majority of the meals, it is a much more significant number than the 15% you keep going back to.
Yes the 5% shift in bookings to the Silver Star no frills train is noted, as people try this new thing. If next year that keeps up, then you will have something. If next year the passengers go back to the Silver Meteor, then we can say they tried. If those people decide that Amtrak has hit bottom and never comes back, then we have a problem.
There is some more associated with this. The Waffle House prides itself on the ‘magic twenty’ - their execution is to reduce the entire dwell time of a customer to a minimum. [Note that this good execution does not necessarily imply hustling the customer to eat fast and get out as soon as their food has arrived, as the Waffle House often tries to do… [;)]] Just as higher-speed equipment with quicker turnaround gives better equipment utilization, eliminating any possible source of delay – whether in the ‘downsized’ meal-ready-to-eat Star experiments or in a full diner – is a key source of efficiency. The ‘fun’ thing, where the Amtrak management needs to actually perform more management, is to keep all the crew on their toes with ‘smiles free’ even when it isn’t a rush.&n
dakotafred
Standing in line for an hour for a sandwich or a drink – not on my list of passenger-train pleasures!
In the fast casual sub shop I owned and managed, 90 seconds from point of order to delivery of food was the standard. And we are talking making the sub. filling the soft drink and cooking the fries in that time…very aggressive considering the cook time of fries. Still it was the standard we tried to meet. During busy times it would stretch to 3-5 min. Any longer than that and you need to start threatening to fire people. If I had a 3-5 min wait time and the line was not at least out the door, I would be on the line threatening people to move faster or get replaced and…it really was not a sweat shop it’s just that the 18-22 year old crowd likes to move at a slower pace and chit chat more than they should. Amtrak as a manager, well…they not only would tolerate a 6-12 min wait time…they would think that was fast.
There is some more associated with this. The Waffle House prides itself on the ‘magic twenty’ - their execution is to reduce the entire dwell time of a customer to a minimum. [Note that this good execution does not necessarily imply hustling the customer to eat fast and get out as soon as their food has arrived, as the Waffle House often tries to do… ] Just as higher-speed equipment with quicker turnaround gives better equipment utilization, eliminating any possible source of delay – whether in the ‘downsized’ meal-ready-to-eat Star experimen
You’re insulting an Atlanta institution… the politically correct term is ‘Woeful House’ (unless you had one of the ‘steak expert’ meals; then it’s Offal House…)
I mentioned them specifically because they value the twenty-minute metric so highly, and have such a carefully-evolved set of operating systems, procedures, and priorities for accomplishing it. Do other restaurants have a similar defined policy for client dwell with good perceived satisfaction?
Keep in mind that I am NOT discussing the actual quality of the food (or lack of same) or the cleanliness of the facilities (or lack of same); it’s the operation and execution and management concentration on quick turn in all respects. Waffle House is notable for being a restaurant that runs high-volume sit-down operations with a diverse fresh-cooked menu (I use the term technically, as opposed to microwaved, buffet, cold-only, etc., and NOT the build quality) in a comparatively small building with low fixed costs – an interesting parallel to what is required in a passenger-railroad application with different clienteles and required high throughput (with restricted client access) at certain times. That’s the real reason I brought them up; you can laugh, but their operational analysis and training are surprisingly well-thought-out…