A lot of this depends on whether you are counting passengers or counting passenger miles. Counting passengers is what they do with respect to transit systems – a person has to get to work, and if that person takes the bus there needs to be a bus, and if that person goes 3 miles or 15 miles to get to work, it is the same service rendered – getting to work. Also, transit system tend to charge flat rates (with exceptions such as “BART cards”), so passenger boardings are the metric.
If passenger miles are the metric, the LD-corridor balance swings back towards the LD trains.
The part I don’t understand about the LD trains being money pits is that contrary to what many may think, Amtrak gets the tracks for the LD trains for cheap. In that case, the LD trains should like running a steel-wheeled bus company. But their costs are multiples of what it costs Lamars to run buses. Why?
It might be that Amtrak LD trains are providing a whole lot more service than a bus, or perhaps even an airliner. You have the option of paying extra fare for a private room (sleeping room), you are not restricted to your seat the whole time and can get up and walk around and stretch, you can have those social-bonding sessions with strangers in the lounge car, you can have a sit-down meal in a dining car. Perhaps all of those things cost money, especially if you want to pay people a living wage to provide those services
Revenues and costs per passenger mile are important indicators of the efficacy of an operation. At the end of the day, however, people use trains, planes, cars, etc. And very few of them use the long distance trains in the United States.
Long distance trains, irrespective of their social value, which is subjective, require a disproportionate taxpayer subsidy. Sleeping car passengers, who are amongst the better heeled users, get a considerably higher subsidy than coach passengers.
The long distance train is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future. My goal is to get Amtrak, as well as those who support it, to think outside of the box about how it should be restructured. I frequently share my views with Amtrak and my elected representatives. I urge others to do likewise.
I have ridden the Tilt Train on two occasions. It is a good service. I will be in Australia at the end of this month. Whilst I am there I will ride the train from Adelaide to Melbourne and from Melbourne to Sydney.
I agree with the severe shortage of sleeping car compartments. But even more important is the sheer lack of enough equipment to actually provide long and medium distance services. The Coast Starlight has only two operating trainsets. They each come through our area, one of the most scenic in Northern California at 2 am. All that can be seen is darkness. One cannot get a ticket at any time during the travel season. No one wants to board a train (if even on time) at 2 pm to ride to the Bay Area and arrive midmorning. Until Amtrak is given capital funds to purchase new trainsets, the long distance and medium distance trains will not survive.
Mike Actually the Coast Starlight has four sets of equipment assigned. Summer consists run to twelve cars winter consists operate with nine or ten, you make an argument that needs to be brought up. During the peak travel periods it is darn near impossible to board the Coast Starlights SB at Redding or other midway stations as the trains are sold out. Two P-42s should be capable of pulling fourteen to sixteen cars on the Coast Starlight route but there is not enough equipment to supply all of the LD trains. I’m sure if more equipment was available the LD trains would give a much better account of themselves. This has always been one of the major problems of the LD trains.
The fact that there is an equipment shortage indicates there is a need for the equipment, and although the percentages may be low, there are enough people who use long distance sleeping car service and who want to but cannot because of the shortage and who think they may want to if only when a particular vacation plan makes it appropriate or when airplanes have a problem, althogether to make the USA public want to continue the serivce. The Superliner sleepers obviously were a step ahead of the heritage sleepers, at least in terms of number of people handled comfortably in a singe car. Can some kind of double-deck sleeper be designed to fit restrictive clearnaces in the east, the way the LIRR and NJT have found to design commuter cars that are double-deck and fit those clearances? Obviously, the Viewliner sleepers were not an optimum soluton, and I wonder if a better one can be found? Perhaps the answer is the shell of the LIRR-NJT commuter cars, with the three-across deep reclining seats mentioned, with a blanket and pillow provided for each passenger, and the old Pullman green durtains drawn around each seat to provide some degree of privacy when sleeping. Two people traveling together would logically use the two across on one side of the aisle and those alone the single seats, but one could buy space on two adjacent seats at a premium price if the car was not sold out. But there may be better answers.
Most Amtrak dining car meal experiences, today, are positive, and to label them mediocre, on average, isn’t accurate in my opinion, from sampling the trip reports on these forums. I do think the Diner-Lounge concept has merit on most long distance trains. It isn’t new with Amtrak, and there is no reason why excellent service and excellend food cannot be provided in such a car. Its basic advantage over a full diner is that it is use all the time, not just during meal hours.
I tip my hat to many of those who make the case for the long distance train. No matter how dismal the financial data associated with these trains, someone finds a silver lining in the proverbial dark cloud and a reason to keep arguing for them.
Add more trains or cars! Change the fares! Improve the schedule! Increase the load factor! Do these things, they say, and she’ll be right. Well, Amtrak has tried most of those things. And they have not worked. Here is just one more example.
In FY 2008 the load factor on the long distance trains increased 4.8 per cent over FY 2007. So the loss per passenger mile should have gone down! Nope, they lost more money per passenger mile before interest and depreciation in FY 2008 than FY 2007, whilst the NEC trains increased their contribution and the state and other short distance corridor trains reduced their loss.
Over the past three years I have eaten at least one meal on the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, Capitol Limited, Lake Shore Limited, Empire Builder, California Zephyr, Acela, and San Joaquin. None of the meals were as good as what I get at Denny’s, which is not exactly a four star restaurant. And the prices were nearly double what I pay at Denny’s.
The real challenge to long distance passenger trains is posed by the geography of the Continental United States. East of the Mississippi we’re relatively compact with lots of large population centers. This area could be laced together with viable modern high speed short and medium distance rail corridors. The West Coast is characterized by North-South development all within one hundred miles of the coastline and modern high speed corridors would work there too. The trouble is that between these metropolitan conurbations there is next to nothing for almost 2,000 miles ( sorry Denver! ). In a perfectly rational world, it would probably make sense to choose just one corridor to link the the West Coast with the East and let the others go. That would at least accomodate the transcontinental “fear of flying” types. AMTRAK assets could be concentrated on this link which would be extensively modernized with state-of-the-art equipment and perhaps even a dedicated right-of-way. Once they had crossed this “empty quarter” passengers could be handed off to the networks at either end to reach a variety of destinations.
I still maintain that Amtraks major problem has always been a shortage of cars and power. If one looks at the number of trains prior to Amtraks startup and the number of trains on Amtrak day there is a major difference in those numbers of trains. Also remember Amtrak only started with certain cars (ie Budd) then went back and purchased additional cars from the RRs when it was found they had major shortages. Many good cars had already been scrapped or turned into maintenance of way equipment or sold to Mexico etc. Amtrak has never been able to overcome its car shortages since its inception and that is a major problem even today.
Its first venture into diesel power was with the idea that if Amtrak failed the power would be purchased by the freight RRs for powering freight trains. After a series of derailments on certain RRs the big units were replaced with F40s that soldiered on for many years at the head of all Amtrak trains outside the electrified NE corridor. They did not have much better luck with big electrics in the NE corridor either.
Amtrak has probably purchased about a third as many Superliners as were actually needed. They replaced the Heritage sleepers with fifty Viewliners, again about a third of what was actually needed. Twenty Acela train sets are probably half the number that should have been built.
Gasoline is only going to go up again, enjoy the lull while you can I see gas at 5.00 to 7.00 a gallon in the not to distant future.
If President Obama and Congress want to get the country on the right track in a stimulus package I suggest we build a series of Nuclear Generating plants across this country to bring cheap electricity to all Americans. It is my understanding that each Nuclear generating plant employees 70,000 people during the construction phase. Then I would encourage the RRs to electrify most main lines by issuing tax cred
Like most government services, Amtrak’s problem is that it is spread too thin. To many routes for the equipment and manpower available. One train a day will never draw a major customer load, even if it runs on time. To be usefull transportation it needs to run frequently, and on time. In short, it needs to be clean, well maintained, convenient, and dependable.
The Crescent is running with one sleeper lately. Saturday’s train has at least 8 roomettes and 2 bedrooms still unbooked between Atlanta and DC! (It is also down to 3 coaches, now, too) (8 and two are the max the Amtrak website will display - there are likely more available.)
Saturday’s Silver Meteor also has at least 8 roomettes and 2 bedrooms available between Jax and Wash DC.
Saturday’s LSL has at least 8 roomettes and 2 bedrooms available between Chicago and Albany.
Saturday’s California Zephyr Chicago to Denver, same thing.
Where is the demand?
If Amtrak bought an addtional 50 Viewliners, there’d be 50+ of them sitting stored at Bear DE. now.
You could probably fill some of them in the summer vacation months, but is it wise to invest $2M for an asset you only use 25% of the time to provide subsidized leisure travel for the middle class?
Remember Amtrak brought on many of there problems years ago when they first took over passenger services. They tried operating Santa Fe cars system wide when no one outside the Santa Fe knew how to operate there steam injector system A/C units and that was just one of the horror stories. I many ways Amtrak was there own worst enemy in the early years and nearly every newspaper in the country was writing Amtrak horror stories and there were plenty to go around. The one thing I will give Amtrak today is that the equipment is able to be worked on at all terminals. There is no reason for Amtrak to have the problems with the equipment they have.That doesn’t mean that it was in working order when it arrived at a terminal and for how long it was out of order is another matter. Via Rail Canada was a much better example of how it should have been done. Probably the finest example of RR service in the United States is represented by the Alaska Railroad.
Amtrak needs to have every employee trained by Southwest Airlines or American Airlines for six weeks before they ever see there first passenger. I would like to say they should have been trained by Pullman or the Santa Fe but there are probably none of those still serviving. Maybe they should look at the books produced by Pullman for the employees and learn something about serving the traveling public. If you want the passengers to ever come back to rail travel then it has to be packaged and presented differently then it is today, and I certainly don’t mean that it has to be presented like the former American European Express trains or anything like it. First whether it be LD or SD the trains must be on time. They must be clean and comfortable and the crews must be able to attend to the passengers needs. I don’t care if it sounds like the dumbest question in the world or one that has been asked a thousand time that crew member should smile and answer that travelers question. There should be
Al - in - Stockton, if the Southern had gone into Amtrak at the beginning, there would have been some A/C men who had knowledge of the steam injector A/C. Perhaps I should find one of my copies of the Passenger Equipment Register and see what other roads also used this system. I know there were not many.
I notice YOU chose a low volume day to quote your numbers. Anyone wanting to travel from Atlanta to DC for the weekend isn’t going to take the Saturday Crescent. It arrives Sunday mid morning.
It wasn’t just the steam injector A/C but RRs ordered cars custom built to there specs and every RR had there own idea what a passenger car should be and what equipment should be on it. Look at the CB&Q they used a prewar truck design through the 1956 Denver Zephyr. How many different types of trucks were in use on the different RRs and how many shop forces were familiar with more than one or two types. Even when the BN merger took place they did not let the passenger equipment stray far from the previous home rails. But when Amtrak took over they had AT&SF cars running in New York, Florida and everywhere in between as one example and it created nothing but problems. If Amtrak would have eased into the passenger business by training personel before the takeover in the different types of A/C and troubleshooting it and trained the RR engineers and fireman in the steam injector secrets it sure would have saved many passengers who were willing to give Amtrak a chance.
Amtrak PR people should have been out there countering every negative newspaper article and pointed out some of there good points though few they may have been. For a logo they chose the pointless arrow kind of ironic as that really did seem to fit them in most peoples minds. Passengers were tired of all of the lame duck excuses why trains were late and for those already on the trains if they were running late was it such a big deal to pick up a microphone or inform the entire crew so they could let the passengers know what the reasons for the delays were. In many cases this would have put the passengers minds at ease and maybe th