Dumb question: Isn’t food and beverage a loss leader on cruise ships and overseas airplane flights ? Any transportation company over 8 hours enroute time wihout food stops certainly seems to have food. Wonder if any of our congress criters would take a 12 hour cruise without food ?
It appears that many folks do not really understand the concept “loss leader.” A loss leader is pricing one item or segment of your offerings to retail customers at or below your cost to attract more customers. But an essential ingredient is that the business overall must be profitable or close enough to breaking even so that the additional customers gained will push the operation into (farther) into blue ink.
Cruise lines and the airlines are mostly profitable, unlike Amtrak.
Amtrak loses a lot of money on LD operations. Cutting charges more or giving away the food, thus using F&B as an even bigger loss leader (it has been running at a loss for Amtrak’s entire history) would accomplish nothing but add to the losses. Nobody expects F&B to make a profit, just to cover costs, as it is required to do by federal law.
With the Congress we have now and and those that we have had since I became an adult - I suspect they have passed more ‘laws’ that can only be violated and not complied with than they have laws that can actually be complied with. WTF there are laws about balanced budgets that haven’t be complied with since before I was born.
PTC is a law that will not be complied with by it’s effective date for a variety of technological reasons - not from a lack of the carriers trying.
Congress should lock themselves away at Jimmy Hoffa U - for the same reasons Jimmy Hoffa was locked up - racketeering and corruption.
"A loss leader is pricing one item or segment of your offerings to retail customers at or below your cost to attract more customers. But an essential ingredient is that the business overall must be profitable or close enough to breaking even so that the additional customers gained will push the operation into (farther) into blue ink."
The Federal government pays out more for automobiles accdients outside of insurance programs than all the Highway Trust Fund receipts. Does that mean that Intercity automobile travel was a loss leader to get enough usage on the roads to make them politically safe all at the expense of converting safer common carrier travel to automobile travel?
In regards to passenger intercity trains they have a declining Average Cost curve, so yes encouraging volume by having a relatively minor “loss leader” ($80 million out of the Amtrak budget) does lead to better ecomonics per passenger mile. Don’t forget that Amtrak rolls a lot of fixed costs into their monthly numbers. You could see the real numbers in one of the recent 5-year financial reports if you know where to look.
Apples and oranges. The concept “loss leader” has nothing to do with government infrastructure.
There has been a sea-change in the restaurant industry in the US since RR attempts at “fixing” F&B costs. It’s time to let hostpitality industry experts take care of Amtrak hospitality…for what it’s costing Amtrak to provide, riders should expect more than they are getting.
You’ve made this claim before. Can you cite any law or policy that states the federal government is paying for medical claims from traffic accidents beyond being the secondary (20%) to auto insurance through Medicare and Medicaid? Paying more than the auto insurance companies?
Sure have, and a link was posted in the past instances as well.
Here is one version from USDOT/ NHTSA in 2015:
http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812013.pdf other calculations record cost to governments outside of insurance payments (general fund draws) at $0.02 to $0.03/automobile mile, the average State and Federal gas tax brings in less than $0.02/automobile mile on a highway. I didn’t say the government pays more than others, just that it is more than the Highway Trust Fund take.
The real losers however are motorists themselves as they rarely have enough insurance to make them whole. As an example, I have the recommended disability policy to cover lost income and it is three times my automobile insurance cost, though automobile accidents are a large causation factor. Should I go without and become disabled in a car wreck the state would be on the hook though Medicaid for example after my bankruptcy.
This led to the loss leader comment, the U.S. pays for automobile accident costs to governments out of a separate general fund so the Highway Trust Fund could spend anything at all, defying private company norms where liability would have to first be met prior to investment.
So if the U.S. pays for a meal to induce me off the road, and this avoids the accident costs borne by the general fund and a much larger private economy loss, why would this not be equally as good?
I would agree with Oltmannd that it is time to figure out who to get NRPC out of self performing food service, I just don’t know how on an existing route unless it would be one of the competively bid route schemes in the Senate bill.
A quick glance suggests some fundamental inappropriate assumptions in your reasoning. The primary valid arena for passenger trains’ shifting people off roads would be off Interstate highways. It appears that governments at all levels are only picking up ~20% of the total costs. And unless trains were available as a competing mode for all Interstate travel, the role of a dining car as an incentive on LD trains is really a non sequitur, at best. The loss leader analogy is yet another example of your derailed cognitions.
Yes, and the costs are quite high, so the government 20% is $0.02 to $0.03/automobile mile, while the real loser is the individual as those losses are often uninsured.
Your logic escapes me. Additionally, the “study” had a disclaimer by the DOT. A torrent of numbers used to obscure flawed assumptions.
Silver Meteor 1st delayed 3+ hours at DC - setting out bad ordered diner. Train departed DC at 2300 with Engineer going HOS at 2331.
Further to my anguished notes last week, at this link is the remarkably decent diner-lite menu which Amtrak offers on every run of the CARDINAL. Everything is pre-mde and heated/plated/properly table-served on-board. I’m a CARDINAL rider and I can tell you this is a very reasonable fascimile of a “real” diner, the food tastes good and is EXACTLY what Amtrak should have offered on the SILVER STAR if the diner experiment was actually mean to succeed. But of course this requires a two-person crew.
http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/667/966/Cardinal-Dining-Car-Menu-0515.pdf
Carl Fowler
Unconfirmed reports that Amtrak has admitted by iternal notice that the passenger notifications of diner cancellation is not enough notice to public. Also all Star stations are supposed to get an additional notice to post. Anyone got a link to either of these.
Passenger complaints are coming in in large numbers. Amtrak cannot post the cause but wouldn’t it be interesting if some one could pass out flyers putting this right at the feet of congress ? NARP – how about it ?
See this post over on Trainorders.com Passenger forum:
We may have some idea of why the " test " was implemented. Per Railpace Newsmagazine there were 7 diner delays cancellations substitutions from Aug 1 - Aug 16. 6 were shopped for various problems —brakes, bolster, other unknown items and 1 slow ordered to 80 MPH due to rough riding on the NEC.
Compare menu for selections and price with Deutsche Bahn:
Warme Speisen
What has been largely missed is the companion “experiment” that of the City of New Orleans reincarnation of “dinner-lite”. I recently tried it in August with out planning to do so.
The combined cafe/diner car was staffed by two people. The cafe attedent only handled her side and as far as I could tell while the single upstairs diner attendent handled all ordering, drinks (one fill only), plating of reheated type meals, and packaged frozen cheesecake type desert.
There may have been a kitchen employee but with around a 45 minute wait for food it would not seem so. The sleeper attendent cleaned the tables.
On the return trip there seemed to be an extra employee helping out, or perhaps the cafe attendent helped. You could get a refill on coffee but breakfast had no hot eggs, just a croissant, yogurt, and cereal. An adjacent table had a milk allergy so were largely out of luck, having not heard of the new menu.
This gets back to people expecting a certain thing and just not having the time to research all aspects of a trip. But this gets into a “fool me twice” situation next year. The only way out of this is more throughput through a diner not less.
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schlimm (quoting Fred)
So come to my rescue, my fellow food lovers. I board at 3 p.m. I’m bringing dinner to eat that evening, plus breakfast and lunch the next day. What is both delicious and guaranteed safe to eat that night and the next day?
Two peripheral things come to mind:
One is that these trains should be equipped with microwave ovens, probably with enough sophistication in their power settings and cycle controls to make reheating even fairly delicate items a possibility. Failing that, I have seen small microwave ovens (made for the over-the-road truckers’ market) that could be adapted to be packed in a carryon and used in a sleeper accommodation…
The other is that insulation and Peltier cooling/heating are now so good that a small and comparatively cheap ‘powered cooler’ could be brought along – one of those “six-pack sized” units might be enough for the “perishable” constituents of a number of meals, and an adapter to plug into the 110V outlet in a modern Amtrak car keeps things cool as long as necessary.
What I’m now wondering is whether Amtrak might provide different amenities on a ‘dinerless’ train – a bank of passenger-accessible and user-friendly microwaves, or refrigerators with individual sections or bins to keep your food (and keep it separate or safe from the usual ‘roommates with munchies’ issues!).
While this is not necessarily a full analogy, Whole Foods provided a fairly large range of condiments free to its dine-in patrons. Much of the problem with ‘portable’ meals, especially sandwiches or burgers, is that things like mayo or ketchup can’t be put on when made and then left for hours – but it’s inconvenient or
I go to Florida a couple of times a year by train and will not go via the Silver Star until full meals are restored. I will take the Silver Meteor and bus from Orlando to Tampa instead.