Realistically Amtrak is here to stay whether we like it or not. So we should try to make it better at what it is designed to, which is moving people from point a to point b.
Eliminate long distance trains or make them into land cruises. - Realistically with airplanes trains over very long distances don’t make sense as a practical form of transportation. These routes should be either eliminated or they should be made into land cruises and tours for railfans. These trains should be operated like the Napa Valley Wine train, Alaska Railroads Passenger service, or the rockey mountaineer.
Meal Cars on Shorter Distance trains - You can eliminate meal cars or turn them into automats. Much of the meal cars on Amtrak trains are fancy convienience stores with microwaves and a guy standing there. These increase labor costs and don’t offer much for the customer experience. You can also have food delivered to trains at stations and for many shorter distance routes you could simply have people buy and eat at stations.
Labor efficiency - From anecdotal experience Amtrak trains are atrocious when it comes to labor efficiency. An Amtrak train will have a meal car, an engineer who drives the train and often two, three or even more conductors. The conductor spends most of his time going up and down the train, opening doors and inspecting tickets. This job is basically unncessary with modern technology. Crew sizes should be no larger than 2 people, 1 engineer for driving the train and a 2nd conductor safety purposes, such as flagging crossings. Realistically many passenger routes could be done with 1 person crews without problems. Many of these conductors could be retrain to be engineers to enable more frequent service. Having fare/ticket gates would much more economical, though would require some upfront cost. You could also probably replace the ticket offices with e-ticketing and ticket machines.
This article explains the importance of labor efficiency.
Nice post! Some of us have made similar suggestions. But having people get food at station stops en route is 19th century Fred Harvey, a non-starter today.
I want to clarify something here because a lot of railfans presume incorrectly about the Alaska Railroad Passenger service. It would run regardless of the tourists or cruise ships and it did so prior to the cruise ships being popular with Alaska. So my point is the Alaska Railroad provides YEAR ROUND passenger service to residents in the State of Alaska that live near the tracks but not accessible by roads. So you cannot classify all their passenger trains as purely a “cruise” train service. They run regular passenger trains to carry regular passengers and goods some on a flagstop basis and they do so year round. If I am not mistaken I believe the state DOT subsidizes that year round service.
Realistically Amtrak is here to stay whether we like it or not. So we should try to make it better at what it is designed to, which is moving people from point a to point b.
Eliminate long distance trains or make them into land cruises. - Realistically with airplanes trains over very long distances don’t make sense as a practical form of transportation. These routes should be either eliminated or they should be made into land cruises and tours for railfans. These trains should be operated like the Napa Valley Wine train, Alaska Railroads Passenger service, or the rockey mountaineer.
Meal Cars on Shorter Distance trains - You can eliminate meal cars or turn them into automats. Much of the meal cars on Amtrak trains are fancy convienience stores with microwaves and a guy standing there. These increase labor costs and don’t offer much for the customer experience. You can also have food delivered to trains at stations and for many shorter distance routes you could simply have people buy and eat at stations.
Labor efficiency - From anecdotal experience Amtrak trains are atrocious whe n it comes to labor efficiency. An Amtrak train will have a meal car, an engineer who drives the train and often two, three or even more conductors. The conductor spends most of his time going up and down the train, opening doors and inspecting tickets. This job is basically unncessary with modern technology. Crew sizes should be no larger than 2 people, 1 engineer for driving the train and a 2nd passenger routes could be done with 1 person crews without problems. Many of conductor safety purposes, such as flagging crossings. Realistically many passenger routes could be done with 1 person crews without problems. Many of these conductors could be retrain to be engineers to enable more frequent service. Having fare/ticket gates would much more economical, though would require some upfront cost. You could also probably replace the ticket offices with
The long-distance luxury cruise/vacation train seems to work in Australia, what do the operators of the modern Indian Pacific and Ghan have that the American Orient Express did not?
Rocky Mountaineer has been by far the most successful and profitable private operator on this continent, but they don’t run sleeping cars and the mountain scenery is their big draw.
LD trains already are cruises to me. I really hate to fly, and my wife refuses to, but if I had to get somewhere fast, I could. But to me, my vacation starts when I step on the train, not when I get to the other end. I can sit in a comfortable seat, I can walk around, I can visit the club car for a drink or snack. Try doing those on a plane. And no middle seats. I can watch beautiful scenery out my window. don’t market it as getting from A to B. Market it as a leisure form of travel.
Amtrak is a quasi-government, subsidized passenger operation chartered to provide transportation. Land cruises are not basic transportation. They should be private operations. If they mostly have failed, it is because not enough people are willing to pay the cost plus profit.
I can answer that. American Orient Express was never a scheduled service that ran once a day. It only ran on specified dates similar to the Rocky Mountaineer.
Now then why does the Rocky Mountaineer still survive when the American Orient Express failed. For starters the American Orient Express was only one class of service, all luxury. Number 2 I would suspect is AOE never sold the packages that Rocky Mountaineer does (like a cruise ship), significantly more profitable than passage on the train if you ask me but thats just an opinion I have. Rocky Mountaineer uses pre-prepped dishes for the dining service that just require final assembly and serving. So their dining car chef is largely supervisory over the rest of the kitchen staff. AOE I believe attempted to prep and cook things entirely on board like the old streamliner passenger trains…requiring more skilled and much higher paid dining car staff.
I rode Rocky Mountaineer twice and partook in two of their packages. Their hotel add a night was at their negotiated rate with their added markup, so they made money on that even though it was not their hotel. Their tour of icefields parkway was pretty expensive and again they used the hotel facilities for that (again probably negotiated) for the pickup, provision of box lunches, movement of baggage, etc. The price they charged for that add-on was probably three times what it cost them to provide it…plus they used their own bus fleet vs charter…additional money to their bottom line. You would never see Amtrak take on business like that. The AOE was only interested in the train ride and hotel packages along the way and the hotel packages it provided were a
The intent of Congress was to preserve the model of the privately run passenger train as it existed in 1969-1970 not run a stripped down service with no frills and nothing but seats. People want to eat on the train if the train trip is over a few hours and they want to sleep on the train if the trip takes a few days. Even the state DOT’s realize this when they pay for a subsidized trains. So I have no clue where your getting that interpretation from. “Basic Transportation” does not appear anywhere in Amtraks Charter nor have I heard anyone from Congress use it when talking about Amtrak.
Amtraks idea of converting the Long Distance trains to “Experience Trains” should be tried or attempted with at least one train I think. Amtrak has never had any funds to experiment with on a LD train scale and I think it would be an intelligent use of money to see if they could bring LD train running costs down. If nothing else perhaps they pick up on some money making innovations that can be applied to the corridor trains.
Maybe LD trains should die off then. I don’t see why an automat wouldn’t work, the level of service would be the same as what they offer today. I see no problem with eliminating that feature. Bus like train designs have succeeded, Germany’s railbus was very successful.
I suggest you read the Wiki history of Amtrak’s beginning. Bare bones at best. I rode some of their eastern LD trains in the early 70s, a pale shadow of the trains of the 60s, in scheduling, numbers and interior amenities.
OK so you mention Wikipedia which is only as good as the smarts of the last person that updated it. And you provide a link that basically repeats what I said in my post on page 1329 of the linked document.
So I am confused. Are you trying to refute what I said or are you agreeing? If your attempting to refute, read page 1329 where the amenities of Long Distance trains are mentioned specifically as components to be taken into account of the basic system. To me that sounds like preserve what we had running at the time. Nowhere does it say basic transportation it says basic system or in my interpretation framework system.
Some of the trains including the Twin Cities Hiawathas were run very well until Amtrak turnover. Show me a train today with a skytop lounge and Super Dome that runs regularly. Same deal with the Super Chief and several other trains. they were not all crap in 1971. Amtrak was cash strapped at startup and even though it attempted to do so, really did no
I’ve ridden a German scheinenbus- they do ride rough and are noisy. There is much better equipment running over there like the Talent railcars that are both electric and diesel powered. They have a nice comfortable ride, large windows and a drinks/snacks trolley. Quite pleasant and I think they would do well in North America.
Automat service would fail for the simple reason that it can’t server alchoholic drinks. You need a person for that (at least in the USA).
Also, since nobody has brought it up, many long distance trains provide service to locations with little or no other nondriving alternative. The fact that they include not very luxurious sleeper accomidations and food service does not make them land cruises.
I would like to see how the contractual changes required in any change in crew sizes would be negotiated. Labor efficiency, whatever that means, is not something that will be imposed unless union busting is considered to be a valid tactic.