March 2012 Preliminary Numbers

[Anderson]

Well, it only took a little bit of rote data entry, but I've got the March 2012 ridership numbers. Unfortunately, I can't post the file at the moment, but I can give a quick rundown of the percentages:

Acela: 1.10%

NER: 10.46%

NEC Total: 7.41%

Ethan Allen 9.92%

Vermonter 1.14%

ALB-TOR -2.32%

NYP-ALB 4.64%

NHV-SPG 8.91%

Adirondack 14.44%

Keystone 1.19%

Downeaster 4.05%

CHI-STL 9.42%

Hiawatha 5.16%

Wolverine 1.75%

Illini 5.15%

IL Zephyr 6.15%

Heartland Flyer 9.68%

Pac Surfliner 1.62%

Cascades 0.35%

Cap Corr 2.91%

San Joaquin 15.85%

Blue Water 10.07%

WAS-NPN 20.24%

WAS-LYH 31.68%

Hoosier State -5.32%

KCY-STL 11.96%

Penny 1.65%

Pere Marquette 9.62%

Carolinian -31.37%

Piedmont 38.77%

Shorts Total 4.75%

Silver Star 1.36%

Silver Meteor 5.98%

Palmetto -42.27%

Cardinal 13.59%

Empire Builder 13.38%

Capitol Ltd. -2.61%

CA Zephyr 5.51%

SW Chief -0.13%

City of NO 3.68%

TX Eagle 13.90%

Sunset Ltd. 0.04%

Coast Starlight 17.13%

Lake Shore Ltd. 4.01%

Crescent -0.78%

Auto Train 6.69%

LD Total 4.10%

Overall Total 5.62%

I'll post the full data table as soon as I can get it up here.

 

[afigg]

What is impressive about those ridership increases, is that most of the trains with ridership decreases can be attributed to service interruptions - planned and unplanned. The Carolinian and Palmetto were clobbered by the Monday to Thursday CSX track work for the entire month. The Capitol Limited was likely hurt by the NS derailment that forced bustitution between Toledo and Chicago for 3+ days. I believe the Crescent was blocked from Atlanta to New Orleans for a few days, but I can't recall if that was in February or March. Only Albany-Niagara Falls-Toronto and the Hoosier State have actual declines and those decreases are pretty small in actual passenger numbers.

The trend line on NE Regional growth is impressive with +10.4% in February and +10.5% in March, with +8.2 for October to March. The total number of NE Regional passengers in FY11 was 7,514,741 (which does not include Virginia Regionals, Keystones). A +8.5% for the fiscal year, would be close an additional 640 thousand customers taking NE Regionals in FY12. Or close to 1800 more a day.

 

[Anderson]

*nods*

The Maple Leaf decline was 798 riders and the Hoosier State was 196. That's 994 riders lost that can't be accounted for by service disruptions out of over 1.2 million. I'm inclined to call that statistical noise...the Hoosier State is irrelevant at this point, and the Maple Leaf situation...well, 26 out of 27 ain't bad. The only other train with a dip for the month was the Chief (off a whopping 43 riders), but it's having an alright year overall.

On the Virginia Regionals, the ridership increase is truly dizzying. The WAS-NPN route was probably buffered by the fact that the Palmetto wasn't running many days while the Star was booking-locked at RVR heading north on those days, forcing some folks onto the Regionals instead (and that ridership is likely non-trivial). However on the Lynchburger...I don't even know what to say. +31%...that's a new monthly record that came together without a season of some sort to credit/blame/explain it, solidly trouncing last April (which had Easter). Per-train ridership is up to 298.0 (vs. 226.3 last year), which suggests that we'll be solidly over 300/train for April and for most of the summer if the trend holds.

The other train with a massive increase was the Piedmont, which...I can't quite figure how the Palmetto/Carolinian situation played into it, but I'm inclined to think that's to credit/blame for the degree of the increase, since I thought the Carolinian was only cut back to Raleigh most days?

A worthwhile question: Does anybody know what the DRPT is doing with all of this credited revenue? I know that some money is coming off of the Lynchburger to cover the fifth train to Richmond, but unless my numbers are wrong...at this point, those two operations are in the process of swinging into the black net of one another (the total net cost for them combined near the middle of 2011 was $168,262 per a Commonwealth Transportation Board briefing on section 209; add about 50,000 riders to the two trains and tell me where that puts the numbers under the current calculations).

Briefly moving on: The Surfliner actually staggered into a ridership increase for the month, which actually surprises me; the revenue numbers there will be very interesting. The fact that the San Joaquin also spiked nearly 16%, though, suggests that it's a function of gas prices.

 

[Blue Marble Travel]

Gentlemen, thank you (both of you) for your ongoing ridership posts. They are useful, thoughtful, and much appreciated. If there were a "like" button, I'll bet many people would push it.

 

[afigg]

Gentlemen, thank you (both of you) for your ongoing ridership posts. They are useful, thoughtful, and much appreciated. If there were a "like" button, I'll bet many people would push it.

Why, thank you the for kind words! :blush:

Thinking about the ridership growth on the NE and VA Regionals, we should contemplate what would be the effect on the NEC of a continued growth of 800K to 1 million passenger a year? If we add up possible growth in the NE Regionals, the Acelas, the VA Regionals with additional growth thrown in from the new service to Norfolk, the Keystones, the Carolinian, the LD trains operating between NYP-WAS, Amtrak could looking at increases in the ballpark of 800K to a million plus per year - almost every year.

Not just the capacity limits in rolling stock which people have focused on. But how about the stations? NYP came in just under 9 million Amtrak passengers last year. Both NYP and WAS can get jammed with long lines waiting to board the trains. NYP fortunately has Phase 1 of the Moynihan station project for expanding the West End Concourse funded which will help. There are long term plans to expand the passenger boarding area at WAS over the lower tracks, but I don't know the status of those plans. I think PHL, BOS are ok on capacity to handle more Amtrak passengers. Which of the other NEC stations could get overwhelmed in a few years of sustained ridership growth? There are plans to redo BWI, but that has to find funding.

How about track and system capacity to add more NE Regionals and Acelas, setting aside the issue of coach cars? Expect the ACS-64 locomotives will help with adding NE Regionals if Amtrak has enough Amfleets to go around.

 

[Anderson]

Gentlemen, thank you (both of you) for your ongoing ridership posts. They are useful, thoughtful, and much appreciated. If there were a "like" button, I'll bet many people would push it.

I'll echo afigg's thanks for the kind words.

In reply to his comments, I don't think it's just the NEC that is about to run into ridership...issues. Thinking of VA, parking issues are present at NPN on a perpetual basis (as often as not, I try to get as ride to this station), and there is no parking at WBG that I know of (though at least on weekends, William and Mary's campus a few blocks away tends to be a safe bet. On weekends only, however; weekdays are a total non-starter there). RVR is also getting pretty full, and RVM has very little (if any) overnight parking available. Even WAS gets rather stressed in this regard. And NPN is probably unique among these in probably having space to add to parking. Further up the line in Fredericksburg...well, let's not talk about the fill-in stations the VRE is having to use because of capacity problems. Over on the Lynchburger, IIRC CVS still has a gravel/sort-of-paved parking lot.

On station space: RVR is holding up well enough, and if RVM is added to most trains at some point, that will take most loads off. WBG is also holding up pretty well most of the time. NPN, however, is massively overloaded and in need of at least an expansion.

Up the NEC, WAS is getting crowded...but I think there's still a little wiggle room to be had in the station (parking is entirely another story at this stage). I don't know what the numbers are, but if worse came to worse you could probably kick Sbarro and McDonalds (or a few others) out and grab another 100-250 seats; you might also be able to expand the seating areas on the left side (upper-level tracks) back by 10-20 feet as well if you could extend the platforms back that far, but I don't know about the physical ability to do so...the "through tracks" inherently have a lot more space to fiddle with.

In my experience, PHL seems to have capacity to spare; I don't have enough stops at BOS to say either way. NYP does need more space, however.

One thing I'll say is that having long lines when a train gets called is somewhat unavoidable...you get this in airports, too, and that's only slightly cut back by calling boarding by sections (which results in lots of people sitting around instead of lots of people standing in line) and limited by the size of planes (notwithstanding the super-sized airliners for intercontinental trips, you can't get 500 people onto a plane for the most part. A 10-car Regional can get well over that).

So, rolling stock and engines aside, the biggest jam I can find at the moment is probably parking, and there is no easy fix for that in some cases.

Finally, track capacity: I think things are mostly fine on the NEC. In VA:

-CSX really needs to restore the old northbound tracks on the Peninsula Subdivision. The capacity issues here seem legitimate enough, and I think CSX wants to do this.

-Going into Norfolk, there's plenty of capacity per the NS agreement...well, at least for the moment. There's room for three trains right now, and they seem more willing to work with adding more as time goes by than they were in the past.

-However, getting north of Richmond, the old RF&P line has become a royal mess, with one of the bridge expansions tied up in red tape with the railroad right now.

 

[afigg]

Up the NEC, WAS is getting crowded...but I think there's still a little wiggle room to be had in the station (parking is entirely another story at this stage). I don't know what the numbers are, but if worse came to worse you could probably kick Sbarro and McDonalds (or a few others) out and grab another 100-250 seats; you might also be able to expand the seating areas on the left side (upper-level tracks) back by 10-20 feet as well if you could extend the platforms back that far, but I don't know about the physical ability to do so...the "through tracks" inherently have a lot more space to fiddle with.

The plans for DC Union Station are to about double the size of the passenger waiting and boarding area by building an expanded concourse area northward over the lower level tracks. I assume the plans include new escalators and elevators to the lower track platforms for improved ADA compliance and faster access. The building of the expanded concourse may be tied in to the construction of the air rights building to go above the tracks north of Union Station. A google search for DC Union Station Master Plan will turn up the 2010 draft plan. Meanwhile WAS often has very long lines stretching pass multiple gates for the Regionals.

As for parking at WAS, never have had a problem finding a space. The parking garage is pretty big. Just rather expensive at $22 a day.

 

[Anderson]

Up the NEC, WAS is getting crowded...but I think there's still a little wiggle room to be had in the station (parking is entirely another story at this stage). I don't know what the numbers are, but if worse came to worse you could probably kick Sbarro and McDonalds (or a few others) out and grab another 100-250 seats; you might also be able to expand the seating areas on the left side (upper-level tracks) back by 10-20 feet as well if you could extend the platforms back that far, but I don't know about the physical ability to do so...the "through tracks" inherently have a lot more space to fiddle with.

The plans for DC Union Station are to about double the size of the passenger waiting and boarding area by building an expanded concourse area northward over the lower level tracks. I assume the plans include new escalators and elevators to the lower track platforms for improved ADA compliance and faster access. The building of the expanded concourse may be tied in to the construction of the air rights building to go above the tracks north of Union Station. A google search for DC Union Station Master Plan will turn up the 2010 draft plan. Meanwhile WAS often has very long lines stretching pass multiple gates for the Regionals.

As for parking at WAS, never have had a problem finding a space. The parking garage is pretty big. Just rather expensive at $22 a day.

Well, parking costs are up 10% since the last trip I parked there (it was $20 then, IIRC)...and I've had trouble on one or two occasions near the holidays, but I can probably kick the blame for that (at least in part) to a combination of the season (Christmas) and shopping. For most of my longer trips, it's actually cheaper to throw in for a train to RVR than to park at WAS.

It's good to hear about the expanded concourse, but at the same time, I don't think that's going to solve the long line problem. At least for the Regionals on the left side of the concourse (on the through tracks, that is), I think they might be better off just using two of the gates and then channeling people to one escalator behind the gates. They can use the higher-letter gates for just about any of the tracks over there, after all, because of the setup.

 

[afigg]

Amtrak has posted the March 2012 monthly report on their website. We already have the ridership numbers, so nothing to add on that. The report provides the revenue and expense numbers with the total revenue for the first 6 months of the FY coming in at $19.3 million less than the budget while total expenses are $25 million above the budget. The big drivers on expenses over the budget are Salaries, Wages, and Benefits with more employees than budgeted and Data Processing services. Amtrak is going to need a very good last 6 months of the FY in revenue to meet their goals for net operating loss for the year.

The report is STILL missing the detailed financial data.

The On-Time Performance table has more green (improvements) than red (getting worse). The NEC, VA Regionals, Empire Corridor are doing pretty solid on OTP. We know the Wolverine/Blue Water OTP will be bad through May. Taking hits on OTP are the Heartland Flyer, Piedmont, the Cardinal (ok, this is a well, what else is new item), the Sunset Limited, and the east coast LD trains (AT, the Silvers, Palmetto).

The April ridership and revenue numbers will be interesting with the spike in gas prices, but we may not see the numbers until the April monthly report is posted next month.

 

[Anderson]

Well, March was pretty good overall. The question is whether Amtrak can keep to the March trend or not, which while it won't fill the YTD hole, would at least cap those losses. The big problem is the Acela, which has basically been cannibalized by the Regionals.

One thing that the report noted is that those Southwest pullouts from a few markets have sent Amtrak ridership through the roof (PHL-BOS and PHL-PVD have nearly doubled), and probably been largely responsible for "fixing" the NE Regionals' situation vs. the budget.

Of interest, I think the Lynchburger broke $1 million in monthly revenue for the first time. It's more symbolic than anything, but this is still an impressive line for a once-daily train to cross, and it puts it second only to the Carolinian in terms of once-daily non-LD trains. A point of amusement: If the Lynchburger could somehow continue its trend for another two years, its revenue would likely exceed that of the Capitol Limited. Actually, a secondary point of amusement is that the Carolinian only needs one good year to manage that, and the latter already exceeds the Palmetto in terms of revenue. Something seems odd about this to me...

Really, other than the smash-up on the Carolinian/Palmetto from track work, there's nothing big. March was a good month, and it's good to see the fare increases "sticking" for the time being. PPR was up almost across the board off the NEC, and it held its own on the NER...it's really just the Acela having trouble right now.

By the way, what's this mention in the report about track work on the Surfliner?

On the wage front...nearly $50 million for the year is a lot (it's about 2.5% over budget). Any idea what's gone haywire here that wasn't accounted for in the budget?

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

I was under the impression that the TE is the fastest growing Amtrak LD train, but for some reason the CS is actually booming like crazy. Then again, the TE and EB are stll expieriencing large growth, but the EB one is probably seasonal.

Why is the TE growing like crazy anyway?

 

[Anderson]

I was under the impression that the TE is the fastest growing Amtrak LD train, but for some reason the CS is actually booming like crazy. Then again, the TE and EB are stll expieriencing large growth, but the EB one is probably seasonal.

Why is the TE growing like crazy anyway?

My best guess is that they added a coach in the mix somewhere. That's just a guess, though.

In the cases of the Builder and the CS, I think those were both having mild issues at this time last year. With the Builder, do prepare to see some hilarious percentages this summer.

 

[trainviews]

Notworthy is also that the rising fares on the Surfliners seem to have kicked in with full effect. In spite of very low growth in ridership (1.6%) the revenue is up a whopping 22.3%! And way over budget too.

I actually find it quite impressive that you can raise fares that much without hurting ridership.

 

[Blackwolf]

By the way, what's this mention in the report about track work on the Surfliner?

I don't have details, but after riding the Surfliner last week all the way down to San Diego, there is a bridge getting replaced in the vicinity of Camp Pendleton on the portion where I-5 straddles the tracks. We slowed down considerably for the work crew while going through there. Another bout of noticeable track work was just north of the Old Town stop, on the single-track section that winds along those sandstone cliffs.

 

[Anderson]

Notworthy is also that the rising fares on the Surfliners seem to have kicked in with full effect. In spite of very low growth in ridership (1.6%) the revenue is up a whopping 22.3%! And way over budget too.

I actually find it quite impressive that you can raise fares that much without hurting ridership.

Oh, ridership took a hit. YTD, ridership is off 5%, and IIRC October wasn't that bad in terms of ridership. November-February was pretty rough, though. The whole system had a really good month, though, and if you look at the San Joaquin's numbers (on course to break 1.1 million this year)...$4 gas will make a dent. Basically, a big fare increase was offset by a bunch of other factors. YTD revenue is up about 9%, but we might be able to hope for +12-13% if trends hold up well, which would put revenue around $60-62 million.

Of course, with the fare spikes throughout the system, one can't help but wonder how high Amtrak could force fares if they hit a capacity wall and/or wanted to "tread water" on ridership.

By the way, looking at the revenue numbers, it looks like the Lynchburger is on course to land somewhere in the $11-12 million range for the year as far as revenue goes. The WAS-NPN service is on course for $34 million or so in ticket revenue as well (remember, Oct-Mar includes the three weakest months of the year; last year's revenue was about 2.25*Oct-Mar). That would offer a pre-subsidy, farebox-only profit on the VA services of something like $13-14 million for Amtrak ($7-8m off of the WAS-NPN leg and $7m off of the LYH leg) if last year's trends hold up and the budgeted expenses hold.

Edit: Just for percentages, that's about 140% CR on services in Virginia, give or take a bit. Mind you, some of that goes to the VA DRPT, but that's...pretty good.

 

[afigg]

I was under the impression that the TE is the fastest growing Amtrak LD train, but for some reason the CS is actually booming like crazy. Then again, the TE and EB are stll expieriencing large growth, but the EB one is probably seasonal.

Why is the TE growing like crazy anyway?

The Texas Eagle is growing because more people are taking the train between TX and Chicago? The TE has been the solid growth performer for the LD in the first 6 months of FY12. Would be interesting to see where the growth is coming from. In longer range TX to StL-Chi traffic or shorter range local traffic within TX?

For the once a day trains, only takes a short service interruption or severe track work delays to bounce the month to the previous year monthly comparisons around. Even more true for the Cardinal or SL. Should use a longer period to get a more accurate read on whether there is a real ridership increase. The Coast Starlight is up +5.7% in ridership for Oct-March FY12, but was down -4.0% for FY11 (compared to FY10). The March +17.1% increase for the CS could just be a short term spike or the CS was canceled for a day or two in March 2011.

As Anderson noted, the EB and for that matter the California Zephyr, will see big percentage increases this summer because they were canceled or severely curtailed for long periods last summer because of the floods. If there are no similar LD train shutdowns this fiscal year, the LD trains as a group will show something of a pop increase in ridership for FY12 over they would have gotten otherwise. The EB is the busiest LD train with 533K passengers in FY10 which was off -12% (469K) in FY11. Has an effect on the year to year comparisons.

 

[Swadian Hardcore]

Who know if there will be floods this summer?

The TE does not seem like it has more cars now. For some reason, when I tried to check TE fares, the train dosen't even show up. Does that mean Coach is sold out? The TE surely needs more cars!

 

[John Bredin]

The TE does not seem like it has more cars now. For some reason, when I tried to check TE fares, the train dosen't even show up. Does that mean Coach is sold out? The TE surely needs more cars!

What city-pair are you checking? On the days where Sort-of High Speed Rail trackwork is ongoing south of Springfield (SPI), the Texas Eagle is taking a different route between Chicago and St. Louis that skips the intermediate stops, which of course will still be served by the Lincoln trains CHI-SPI and bus-titution south of Springfield. If you check CHI-BNL (Normal) or CHI-SPI fares & availability for trackwork days, only the Lincoln trains appear.

 

[afigg]

Who know if there will be floods this summer?

We are now in mid-May. The historic Midwest floods last year started in April caused by spring run-off of snow melt and storms dumping huge amounts of rain over large areas. By mid-May, it is apparent that there will not be a repeat of anything close to the scale of the spring floods last year that lasted into summer. Hurricane season is still ahead of us, so tropical storms or hurricanes on the eastern seaboard could happen again.

 

[johnny.menhennet]

Anderson, I am truly appreciate of the work have put into these posts month after month. I like being able to see all of the stats you post, and feel they are helpful in reading other posts too. Example, I see that the Adirondack figures continue to rise by large percentages. While we currently have a thread on the Montreal service, I find this great. Anyway, I was wondering why you found it so surprising that the Surfliner ridership grew. I know it grew less than other California trains, but that is not really surprising. Just wondering why you think that.

 

[Anderson]

Anderson, I am truly appreciate of the work have put into these posts month after month. I like being able to see all of the stats you post, and feel they are helpful in reading other posts too. Example, I see that the Adirondack figures continue to rise by large percentages. While we currently have a thread on the Montreal service, I find this great. Anyway, I was wondering why you found it so surprising that the Surfliner ridership grew. I know it grew less than other California trains, but that is not really surprising. Just wondering why you think that.

Thank you for the kind words. I enjoy putting the data together and sorting through it, but I'm always glad to see that other folks get some utility from it. Hopefully I'll be able to round up some more reports and whatnot and I'll be able to get most of it up on a site Charlie's helping me set up.

On the Surfliner ridership increase being surprising: Primarily YTD relative performance. In January and February, you had a ridership drop of about 9% and in October-December it was 6-7.5% with no other obvious cause but the hard spike in fares. The drop was a lot harder than any other non-trackwork-related route. In light of the overall spike in ridership, I would have expected a reduced decline...the swing to an increase is a pleasant upside surprise, but it's still a surprise.

 

[Guest]

On the Surfliner ridership increase being surprising: Primarily YTD relative performance. In January and February, you had a ridership drop of about 9% and in October-December it was 6-7.5% with no other obvious cause but the hard spike in fares. The drop was a lot harder than any other non-trackwork-related route. In light of the overall spike in ridership, I would have expected a reduced decline...the swing to an increase is a pleasant upside surprise, but it's still a surprise.

There was extensive track-work causing a significant number of delays and train cancellations from October through February (possibly some in March as well, I'm not 100% sure).