In 2019 the Eagle’s On-Time-Percentage (OTP) at its end points was 29.1 percent. In 2018 the OTP was 46.4 percent; in 2017 it was 60.7 percent. The comparative OTPs for the long-distance trains were 42, 48.6 and 52.1 percent over the same period.
Ridership on the Texas Eagle declined from 346,000 in FY17 to 321,700 in FY19 or by approximately 7 percent. The decline in ridership between 2018 and 2019 was approximately 4.2 percent.
Ridership on the long-distance trains increased .9 percent between 2018 and 2019, but it declined 4.9 percent between 2017 and 2019.
Undoubtedly, multiple factors contributed to the decline in the Eagle’s ridership. Near the top of the list, I suspect, is OTP. Most people I know are not going to sit around for hours waiting for a consistently late running train.
I’ll bet it is on time in both directions when I ride the Texas Eagle again in a few weeks. Always seem to luck out in that respect. I think they should drop some of the small town stops they added on the route. Hope, Arkansas seems to be a good candidate for a drop. There is one station South of St. Louis as well that it seems nobody ever gets on or off but the train stops there anyway.
I wonder what would have to be done to the ticketing – probably with properly-systems-integrated e-ticketing, not much – to make many of these stops ‘flag stops’ if the train falls behind schedule in realtime (not net of padding) and there are no passengers to get off. Be simple to coordinate the fact of ticket sale timed for a flag stop, and then to develop some physical indication that would let a ticket holder ‘set’ a physical flag that signals the conductors to get the engineer to stop. (You could also coordinate with the passenger if the train is already late so that the stop could be a one-minute Japanese or DB-style affair losing little actual running time. Greyhound is notorious for doing a version of this, intentionally running early and blowing past any ‘stop’ that doesn’t have passengers there at least half an hour early. Do NOT expect me to justify that in any way for Amtrak!!
Amazing how the Eagle, with its miserable OT record, is punctual for you, while you always have a complaint about being delayed on the Hiawatha, even though it achieves one of Amtrak’s best records. Seinfeld’s bizarro world, redux???
I forgot to include in my original posting the average number of minutes an Eagle rider could expect to be late in 2019. For the 12 months ended September 30, 2019, it was 112 minutes or nearly two hours.
Its not hopeless! There is hope for Hope. In 2018 1,650 riders got on or off the train in Hope. Maybe they hoped to have a gander at Billy Clinton’s famous or infamous pick-up.
Amtrak’s conductors have a scanner that tells them who will be getting off or on the Eagle, as an example, at every station. It also tells them whether the rider is in coach or sleeper.
Of the six stations between Fort Worth and San Antonio only two have an agent on site. If no one is getting on or off at one of the unmanned stations, e.g. McGregor, Taylor, etc., which is rare, the train will stop momentarily, and then proceed. On the other hand, if riders are entraining or detraining from the sleeper and coaches, the train has to make two stops because of the short platforms.
I recall when I rode it Chi-Dal five years ago, it was on time all the way to Longview. We lost 20 minutes from there because we had to follow a UP freight at 50mph.
Mentioned above. I suspect it is because it uses a different and less congested METRA rail route to Union Station. Everytime I ride the Eagle it is early into both Chicago and Dallas. Can’t explain it other than I ride the Eagle during the Christmas Holiday and I expect that most railroaders take vacation then and the traffic on the rail line is significantly lighter. UP does really well handling the Eagle between Chicago and St. Louis up and until that God awfully old bridge over the Mississippi held together by rubber bands and bailing wire. Thats a pain to endure all the time. Hopefully it will get replaced soon.
If the “Texas Eagle” got stuck behind a Metra suburban train, it would probably be on a detour. The only Metra service on the regular route is the Heritage Corridor between CUS and Joliet. The service consists of three inbound trains in the AM rush and four outbound trains in the PM rush. None of them conflict with the “Texas Eagle” schedule.
It is scheduled inbound to arrive in early afternoon, moving against the commuter outbound trains on that Metra line. So the answer is what Hegewisch said. There is no Metra conflict, even if the Eagle is 2 hours late. But for charmed CMStPnP, it’s always on time, improbable as that seems. But not for his Hiawatha trip up to the MKE area, because Joe Lunch Bucket on Metra gets in his way.
Rail stats are generally not understood in this forum and I am frequently contradicted by folks that don’t even ride the trains. I remember someone contradicting me on some of the Chicago to Milwaukee trains being standing room only for part of their trips. Couldn’t be possible I was told, the stats do not support it. Though you can google and eventually find the official statement by WisDOT that 3-4 of the 7 trains are indeed standing room only for part of their Chicago to Milwaukee trips. Anyhoo, I ride the trains, I know what I see.
So now here we go with the Texas Eagle. It has a bad performance average…so every single day of the year it has to have a bad time keeping performance. It’s just a basic misunderstanding of what the word “average” really means. It does not mean every single data point. It means when the data points are “averaged” together and the peaks and valleys smoothed out.
So you are saying the OTP when you ride the Eagle is an outlier. I think forum readers understand descriptive statistics much better than you give them credit.
The following stats are not averages or medians, though it would be useful to have that data along with standard deviations. Amtrak reported for 2018 that the Eagle’s OTP for each station was 37%. “On-time performance” (OTP) is defined as the percentage of stations at which a train arrives within 15 minutes of the time in the public schedule. JPS1 said, "In 2019 the Eagle’s On-Time-Percentage (OTP) at its end points was 29.1 percent. In 2018 the OTP was 46.4 percent; in 2017 it was 60.7 percent.
Where did CMStP&P say anything about on time at stations enroute? All I recall him saying is that he was OT into Chicago, and whether or not he understands sophisticated stochastics the relevant statistic will be the corresponding ‘half’ of JPS1’s statistic (in other words, the OT arrival percentage at Chicago). Stats for intermediate timekeeping are irrelevant, and to me at least introducing them as if they ‘meant something’ against his understanding seems to have substantial red-herringness…
I must be missing something in all the acrimony, but can’t figure out what it’s supposed to be.
Yeah you missed the endpoint data. OTP at endpoints (Chicago is one) is pretty bad, well less than half the time. But he claims he is always on time, which is certainly possible, but an outlier.
Apparently you conclude that it is an irrelevant red herring that the train is late at all the intermediate stations but still manages to arrive at the endpoints on time? "I have a bridge, or swamp land… "
Charlie Hebdo always takes these ridiculous contrary positions and then uses data that supports what I said earlier. I don’t get it but he did prove my point about statistics. I don’t need to be an outlier to arrive on time or early in Chicago or arrive ontime or early in Dallas. The stats he posted underlined that fact.
Oh and BTW, as I stated in earlier threads the train is early into St. Louis and other intermediate points, the train pauses there until scheduled departure. You don’t see the early stats anywhere…which tells you what about what Amtrak did with them? BTW, other folks chimed in they had the same experience on the Texas Eagle on earlier threads. It is more than just me stating this. It’s not my fault a reader can’t put two and two together here and imply we all must be lying or hallucinating because that is not what the stats say or it only one or two data points in the year. Puleeese, get serious.
Stats are being interpreted incorrectly as they were with the Milwaukee to Chicago cooridor when it was stated that Wisconsin did not need to add more trains because it’s load factor was too low to make a case it needed more trains. Which of course ignored the standing room only on at least 3 of the 7 existing trains between those two cities. So again stats were being interpreted incorrectly and more broadly there then they should have been.
Then we have the 15 min Amtrak argument. I was told that no rail operator would ever consider a 5 min or less standard…and yet there is a publication mentioning a German rail operator showing both a 15 min and 5 min standard. 15 min standard shows everything is just great 90-93% ontime. 5 min standard shows on time performance is deteriorating over time. So there is yet another example.
The defense rests its case.
Though I do want to mention the “railroad armageddon” scenario mentioned if BNSF adds just one passenger train between Denver and Pueblo…we can save that for another thread though.
