This proposal probably will never see the light of day. There have been several major events that has caused different Commuter RRs and Amtrak to need surge equipment. Examples are among others VRE carrying Metro shutdown passengers, SEPTA now, NJT, LIRR on Fridays, MBTA, Amtrak to saratoga race track, Amtrak Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc, & others. Certainly others can list other examples.
It may be time for a national pool of single level cars and locos to be in various locations to provide surge capability. Certainly SEPTA and VRE could use some right now.
Who would pay to build such ? Well that is the reason nothing will ever be done. Just another stick it to the ptraveling public.
Maybe someone who actually already has equipment in various stages of re-build (Iowa Pacific, Corridor Capital, ??) might find a business opportunity in having a fleet ready to rent/lease to whoever might need them.
Heh, we still have 1970’s passenger equipment in dead lines throughout the country that could be rebuilt to Amtrak standards and that would be cheaper than a new car. It will never happen because Amtrak wants standardization of parts and systems.
There is also the Amtrak deadline of equipment that has been wrecked or otherwise out of service needed major repair that also could be rebuilt or repaired before it would be feasible to start up a new car building line.
Above two, makes me optimistic that at some point we will see either a new corridor or a private company take advantage of one of the above two and either introduce new service or bid against Amtrak on a existing route and take it over.
Also, I think we should have a national standard for passenger cars to produce them economically using one design. I think Amtrak’s existing standards has a lot of thought and experience put into it and we should at least adhere to that as much as possible if we are to build new Long Distance Cars.
Private companies also like to continue with an existing line of designed cars instead of switching to an all new one. Case in point: the Rocky Mountaineer going all the way to Europe to get it’s former Colorado Railcar Ultra Domes replicated via Stadler railcar contract in Europe. Thats going to cost probably more than if they were built in the United States by the former Colorado Railcar but by the same token the Rocky Mountaineer folks are happy with the existing design and would rather not test a totally new one.
BTW, why we are on the topic, I wonder who owns the old Budd car designs and the old Superliner Car Designs? If we ever get a major LD railcar building program underway. I for one would vote to restart Superliner production and perhaps this maybe dreamland but would it kill Amtrak to buy 15-20 new Vista Domes based on the Budd design for the East?
Although Amtrak has days when it sells out, at least on some routes and for some classes of travel, its average load factor does not suggest it is seriously capacity constrained.
In 2015 the average system load factor was 51.3 per cent, which was down 9/10s of one per cent from 2014 and a full per cent from 2011.
The average load factor on the long distance trains in 2015 averaged 58.7 per cent. It too was down slightly from 2014, which was 59.1. It was down from 62.8 per cent in 2011.
The average system load factors, as well as the average load factors for each of Amtrak’s segments, has remained fairly steady over the last five years.
Whether the fully allocated marginal cost of “surge” equipment would be covered by the incremental marginal ticket revenues is the important financial question. Otherwise, having equipment standby for marginal use that does not cover the cost - expenses - would not be a good business decision.
How do they measure capacity in a Sleeper? All beds occupied OR just the compartment rented? It would be interesting to find out because it seems to me that Amtrak loses the rail fare for each empty bed in a sleeping car as they have no surcharge for single occupancy in a multi-occupancy compartment.
I don’t know how Amtrak measures the capacity of its sleepers. If they tell the public, I don’t know where to find the information.
When I have calculated the load factor for a sleeper, I have used the number of beds as the base line. Also, I have used the number of rooms and assumed that the occupancy rate was 1.5 persons per room. I don’t have any data to justify the average occupancy rate per room - 1.5 - assumption. It is a WAG. If the attendant occupies one of the rooms, as is the case on the Sunset Limited, I reduced the number of beds by two or the number of rooms by one.
Either way, except for a small number of days each year, at least based on the loads for the trains that I have looked at, which is not a scientific survey, Amtrak does not appear to be capacity constrained.
The only justification for surge equipment is that the marginal revenues cover the marginal costs and expenses is the main point.
A search of fares from El Paso to Tucson for mid-September shows that the accommodation charge for an Economy Room is $47.55 higher for two people than for one. This is for daytime occupancy in an Economy Room.
I don’t do overnight on Amtrak’s trains. Leaving on a Jet Plane became my theme song shortly after an overnight train trip from New York to Florida. It is much more relaxing to fly to my destination and spend the night in a hotel if necessary. Moreover, my wife make it crystal clear. A train from New York to Washington was OK. Overnight? No way!
OK, I was just curious anyways how detailed the stats were. Amtrak is notorious for not being transparent in Passenger Train accounting. Some people say that is the industry but I have a hard time believing that FEC will operate that way with All Aboard Florida (Brightline) or that Rocky Mountaineer operates that way.
Both Brightline and Rocky Mountaineer do/will operate only one type of service. Amtrak has multiple (and, in some cases, overlapping) types of service (NEC, long-distance, corridor, revenue from others using Amtrak-owned infrastructure, etc., etc.). Not to excuse what appears to be Amtrak’s loosey-goosey accounting, but …
Personal opinion, but this is the way I’d look at occupancy rates…just whether or not the room is booked, not how many people it can hold and how many are in it. Simple example, you have a 10 bedroom car(not a real example, just a simple one), but each room can hold say 3 people, which would mean a capacity of 30, but if you have 1 person in each room, then the car is 100% booked, full capacity. In other words, you can’t double, triple or quadruple up single people, therefore you have to take into account just whether the room is booked or not, not how many occupy the space vs how many it can hold.
Though it’s been ages since I took the train anywhere(time constraints), I’d much prefer to travel via train(even overnight) than fly, but then again, I can sleep sitting up in an airport chair, so sleeping is not an issue.
In 2015 the Texas Eagle’s four train sets had an average of 25 passengers in sleeper class. The Sunset Limited had 32. I calculated these averages from the public information that Amtrak makes available in its Monthly Operating Reports.
The Texas Eagle has one regular sleeper and one transition sleeper. The regular sleeper has 13 economy rooms (assumes one of the rooms is used by the attendant), a family room, a handicapped room, and five bedrooms. The transition sleeper has eight economy rooms that are sold if the economy rooms in the regular sleeper sell out.
If one assumes that only one person occupies a room, the occupancy rate on the Eagle is a relatively high 89.3 per cent. However, I have never been on a sleeper where all of the rooms were occupied by just one person. In most instances they were occupied by two or more persons. I don’t know the exact breakdown; only Amtrak knows, and as far as I can determine, they don’t share this information with the public.
The actual load factor in the sleepers probably is somewhere between the figures obtained by using the available beds vs. the available rooms for sale.
I am not convinced that Amtrak is capacity constrained overall, although it undoubtedly has a few days a year when it could profitably use additional equipment.
I am not a big fan of government run commercial enterprises. Having said that I don’t think the people at Amtrak are stupid. If they had an average 89 per cent occupancy rate on their sleepe
When this poster started thread was looking for coach equipment not all the other equipment. IMHO it is a matter of have the most capacity for the buck. There are just too many times when one agency or another needs surge equipment because of weather, equipment malfunction ( SEPTA ), or what ever.
We are also finding out that the various Heritage fleets are nearing the end of their life for regular service
Did not look for very high density cars but single level cars.
That standardized design you argue for is exactly what was the goal of the corridor car design committee. That was a concept first put forward by Angel Trains, by its North American representative. Like the PCC all the potential buyers were represented on the committee. Too bad NS has screwed it up so bad.
I guess you missed the news that Statler is opening a temporary manufacturing facility in Salt Lake while it looks for a permanent locationin the US.
At first thought would agree. But let us look at some facts and some not so being confirmed speculations.
Amtrak did not have enough internal financial resources to exercise the V-2 option for a final 70 cars which probably would have been coaches ?
Congress did not provide the ~~ $280,000,000 needed to purchase the 70.
As of today there are only 12 serviceable Heritage diners left. Note that the Star last year and LSL as of today lost diners. Without new diners the Amfleet dinettes would be overextended which may happen if the new diners are not in service before another(s) Heritage goes out of service.
Numbers are not accurate but there are 10 - 20 serviceable Heritage bags left.
8 of those serviceable bags are needed for the ridiculous CN requirement of minimum of 32 axels. So you either use undeeded Amfleet coaches there or as baggage cars.
For single level trains the shortage of Baggage cars would have been to use Amfleet-1 which is very inefficient probably delays trains more. Also that reduces Amtrak’s potential revenue from smaller trains.
The Superliner Bag - Coaches do not have enough capacity for the heavier use baggage lines although Amtrak did its best with them on the Eagle and City of NOL.
Expenses for a Heritage bag 5 year extension could be derived from the performance reports of ~ $1.0M and for Heritage diners ~
Priorities. If you lack sufficient coaches and non-revenue cars, which do uou get first? Or at least at the same time, some of each? It’s not rocket science, but apparently too hard for Amtrak.
Once again the need for surge coaches becomes evident. The Delta computer meltdown has stranded many passengers. An example the Crescent ATL <> WAS for yesterday and today has alternated between full and one or two vacancies.
Granted a surge fleet would not even make a dent in stranded persons but the revenue bump for Amtrak would be significant.
The old railroads always had plenty of spare equipment. Don’t know whether they kept it around out of a sense of responsibility or opportunity or because it didn’t even have scrap value. In any case, they always had extra capacity for those holidays and college vacations.
Amtrak hasn’t been around for as long as the old railroads, but has been on the scene for 45 years, which is long enough to have accumulated some of that spare capacity. If they haven’t done so, for whatever reason, including intimidation by Congress – shame on them.