The future of Amtrak and the long distance trains

[Ryan]

What fantasyland do you live in where fuel taxes are sufficient to pay for all road construction and maintenance?

 

[Paulus]

What fantasyland do you live in where fuel taxes are sufficient to pay for all road construction and maintenance?

Fuel and related taxes should be enough to account for maintenance, that's pretty cheap (Wisconsin is about $5,000 per lane mile; about 2,500 cars per day at 14 cents per gallon and 25 miles to the gallon). Construction is another matter entirely, but subsidy complaints are generally in relation to operations, not capital investment.

 

[boxcarsyix]

Lets get back to the facts that air travel and road travel are heavily subsidized by the government. You ride on roads right? The tax payer funds the bulk of the repair work. If you make the argument that government is supposed to turn a profit or else discontinue service, there would be no form of transportation available. Many people who live in small cities and towns along Amtrak routes have no other option available for long distance travel. Isn't government there to serve the public interest in these areas?

Road construction and maintenance are backed by high fuel taxes and a trust fund. Similarly, airports are supported by rather high passenger fees (look at a recent ticket), landing fees, aviation fuel taxes, and there is a trust fund. I'm not claiming use of these tax revenues are prudent and the trust funds are well-managed, they are not, but the mechanisms for self-funding are there.
Passenger trains? Oh yeah, there's a trust fund, for retirement pensions. Sorry, there's no there there.

A lot of airport construction/upgrades are paid for by federal USDOT grants.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

First of all, before I begin with my reply, I need to apologize for the length of time my reply to my own questions have taken. I had some answers, which have changed a little with your response, but I have also been so far unable to fully rid myself of what I caught on my trip (actually, since my father has been ill with the same problem since well before my trip and has in fact contracted pneumonia, I suspect I got it from my parents. But whatever.) and thus have have not had the chance to reply.

Another quick point I want to make is to tell you not to try too hard to interpolate my general political positions either from my original post in this topic, or my reply here. You won’t succeed, mostly because my general political viewpoints do not particularly influence my positions on this job. I learned very quickly as an advocate in New Jersey that if I want to fight one war effectively, I can’t attempt to fight other wars in the process. So, as I remind some of my colleagues, I am in the business of fixing transit in New Jersey. I really don’t fight battles on behalf of national rail. I don’t fight other problems in New Jersey either, such as political corruption. I can try to fight for better New Jersey transit or I can fight the New Jersey political machine- I can’t do both.

Therefore, as in my New Jersey advocacy, I have learned to simply accept the reality in which I fight. Much of what Neroden outlined is pretty accurate about the changing facets of the parties. The political reality is this country is basically dysfunctional, with the vast majority of the public siding with the public image of one party or the other, many without either realizing its mostly a public face, or realizing that supporting that public image is generally more to their detriment than their benefit. I am not going to change that. You are not going to change that. Amtrak is not going to change that.

I do like traditional railroading myself. I wish there was a way to sustain and grow the system into a functional transportation network with many more trains and better coverage while maintaining Santa Fe Super Chief onboard levels of service, or even the pale facsimile of it Amtrak has been trying to provide since its inception. But there isn’t. This is a congress that likes attacking anything that might possibly be seen as an excess that serves the public. Living with that political reality, the purpose of this post was to try to sustain Amtrak’s Long Distance service through it in the best way possible.

Aging ridership on the long distance trains is a statistical reality, especially in the sleepers. Please don’t make the mistake of interpreting what you see with your own eyes- your eyes only see whats in front of you, and your brain only interprets it through the filter of your own beliefs. Your eyes are often bigger liars than the statistics Mark Twain was complaining about. We are not talking about the idea that as people get older they have a bigger chance of affording riding the train, especially in sleeper. That thinking almost killed General Motors. Oh, and by the way Neroden, I AM a state advocate, not a national one. I know some national people, but my focus is local and has been for years. Local New Jersey organized advocacy is aging into the grave.

My answer to aging ridership? Amtrak needs to recognize certain youth trends and recognize, for instance, that they don’t expect certain things that older people do, and cut those amenities in order to free up money for the amenities that younger people do want and expect. Younger people do expect free wi-fi on the trains, including long distance ones. (No, I don’t like it anymore than a lot of us would, but it is the truth!) Younger people consider the food on Amtrak absolutely fine. Concentrating on it is silly. Younger people, however, do not like the lack of cleanliness of long distance equipment, and especially the lack of showers for coach passengers. They don’t remember that trains never had trains in the past, or the traditions surrounding that. All they know is they want to take a shower and they can’t. More things along those lines are also relevant. Reconfiguring the “Ladies Lounge” in the Superliner coach might be a good idea.

The next point is food service losses on Long Distance trains. I thought about it. The Cross Country Cafe may have been a badly executed, poorly thought out idea that was nonetheless stabbing in the right direction. The Texas Eagle’s early model for Sightseer Lounge (I dunno if they still do it) of not staffing the lounge car might hit it right on the head. The big problem is labor. Another big problem is that in a lot of trains there is not enough lounge space.

Lets take the design of the Cross Country Cafe and play around with it a little. We replace the missing dumbwaiter, the removal of which was unquestionably a bad idea. We reconfigure the kitchen, allowing us to move the dumbwaiter all the way to one end of the kitchen (possibly less than idea, but with careful reconfiguration of the kitchen it may be possible to actually improve flow in the kitchen- I’m not sure, I’m not a chef). In doing this, we move the upstairs preparation all the way to one end of the car. We use the design of the CCCs preparation station, or something similar to it, to provide a snack counter facing the lounge car. We lose one set of seats, unfortunately. Some of the kitchen can probably be reconfigured for storage- with the modern food preparation, some of it is likely redundant. I have also redesigned the single level diner along similar lines, to show it can be done on the single level trains, too, and have provided redesigns of the lounge cars as well.

First of all lounge seating on Single Level trains goes up from 50 to 74 (almost 50% increase) and on Sightseers from the current configuration of 84 to 107. Diner space on single levels remains the same, and you lose 8 seats in the Superliner diner, same as a current CCC configuration. But this also allows for a complete change of the diner ordering and serving mechanism.

Sleeping car passengers are still be provided a meal with their rooms, however that meal (there is no reason that meal has to change from its current style/configuration/pricing under this model, by the way) will be ordered at the time of the dinner reservation, which will be done by the SCA and delivered to the dining car. That dinner reservation will include a table number. When that table is ready, their number will be called. They will go into the diner and sit at the table number according to their reservation. The meal will be delivered to the passenger. At the conclusion of the meal, the passenger leaves. Coach passengers will be served the same way, except they will order from the snack counter, and be given a similar reservation with table number and time.

There are huge advantages to this configuration. Since the meal will be delivered on trays, the dining crew does not need to set the table. They don’t need to take orders. All they have to do is deliver the food, and clear the table (no table cloth, easy clean surface, fast table clean). So you will have one food service car, staffed by three people. A chef, who will cook the food. An SA, who will serve the food. And an LSA who will staff the snack bar. This eliminates the lounge car LSA and one or two SAs. This should cut the labor cost for food service on long distance trains in half or better. For a few of those trains it will let the trains turn a profit on food service, and on others it will greatly reduce loss. I think it will in fact decrease loss by as much as $50 million a year.

But it should also largely preserve the bulk of the passenger experience. It should maintain reasonable food preparation on the trains. It should allow for sit-down meals in the dining car that we are all so fond of to continue for many years to come. It will be, perhaps, a little cut down in experience. But it will also cost a hell of a lot less money to operate. It does not require the implementation of unreliable technology. It does not exclude coach passengers from the meal experience. It should, in fact, increase diner throughput a little bit. And it should improve the lounge car seating and availablilty. And by the way, solutions like this were the kind of out of the box thinking I had in mind.

It also ties in to ordering the new cars for long distance services. It requires replacing dining cars with Diner/Cafe cars, and it requires designing lounge cars that are pure lounge cars. Since the lounge cars won’t have food equipment in them, and perhaps shouldn’t have bathrooms in them either, they should be cheap to maintain- no more expensive then a nice commuter coach. It also, of course, decreases the price of building these lounge cars. The cheaper they are, the easier they are to sell to Congress, or the easier it is for Amtrak to manage to afford self-funding it.

I also looked into that really fond idea of a bunch of people- the mid-priced/halfway sleeper. I don’t think they are economically viable. First of all, the only logical configuration for such a car is a sectional sleeper. Otherwise, the capacity of the car is not going to be high enough to ever justify. A pure section sleeper Superliner would have a capacity of 52 passengers, but the way the bed would have to be configured would leave an upper section that would be extraordinarily undesirable, and therefore probably not sell well. A pure section Viewliner sleeper, configured somehow to allow for unattended sleeper turndown (again required for economic viability) has a capacity of 40, and could be configured so it is desirable, but it would have to charge a minimum of 50% more for a ticket than a coach ticket. Feel free to debate this.

Here’s the important point- Amtrak claims that the long distance trains cost them $600 million a year in losses. I have also heard from several sources I trust that the actual cost savings of removing them from service is about $500 million a year. For various reasons, I choose to believe them, not that it matters. With sleeping car increases and coach car increases on the long distance trains, plus a cut in some of their losses, I think it is possible to bring the shorter long distance trains (Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Palmetto, Capitol Limited, Lake Shore Limited, Crescent, and City of New Orleans) to profitability. The Auto Train, by the way, is not capable of being profitable, nor is the concept. Allocating its full costs to it (including having its own stations and the cost of handling the damned automobiles) makes it one of the biggest money losers in the system. I advocate for its discontinuance. They could add a sleeper apiece to the Southwest Chief, California Zephyr, and Capitol Limited, and coaches to a bunch of trains with better chances of operational success.

IF WE CAN MAKE THOSE TRAINS PROFITABLE we can then convince congress that there is viability for 1000-1500 mile long distance trains. E.G. a third Florida frequency, a Broadway route train, a Denver Zephyr, a Spirit of California, a night train to Minneapolis, a night train to Montreal, a night train to Toronto, a Texas Chief, etc. That would be wonderful.

 

[tonys96]

First of all, before I begin with my reply, I need to apologize for the length of time my reply to my own questions have taken. I had some answers, which have changed a little with your response, but I have also been so far unable to fully rid myself of what I caught on my trip (actually, since my father has been ill with the same problem since well before my trip and has in fact contracted pneumonia, I suspect I got it from my parents. But whatever.) and thus have have not had the chance to reply.

Another quick point I want to make is to tell you not to try too hard to interpolate my general political positions either from my original post in this topic, or my reply here. You won’t succeed, mostly because my general political viewpoints do not particularly influence my positions on this job. I learned very quickly as an advocate in New Jersey that if I want to fight one war effectively, I can’t attempt to fight other wars in the process. So, as I remind some of my colleagues, I am in the business of fixing transit in New Jersey. I really don’t fight battles on behalf of national rail. I don’t fight other problems in New Jersey either, such as political corruption. I can try to fight for better New Jersey transit or I can fight the New Jersey political machine- I can’t do both.

Therefore, as in my New Jersey advocacy, I have learned to simply accept the reality in which I fight. Much of what Neroden outlined is pretty accurate about the changing facets of the parties. The political reality is this country is basically dysfunctional, with the vast majority of the public siding with the public image of one party or the other, many without either realizing its mostly a public face, or realizing that supporting that public image is generally more to their detriment than their benefit. I am not going to change that. You are not going to change that. Amtrak is not going to change that.

I do like traditional railroading myself. I wish there was a way to sustain and grow the system into a functional transportation network with many more trains and better coverage while maintaining Santa Fe Super Chief onboard levels of service, or even the pale facsimile of it Amtrak has been trying to provide since its inception. But there isn’t. This is a congress that likes attacking anything that might possibly be seen as an excess that serves the public. Living with that political reality, the purpose of this post was to try to sustain Amtrak’s Long Distance service through it in the best way possible.

Aging ridership on the long distance trains is a statistical reality, especially in the sleepers. Please don’t make the mistake of interpreting what you see with your own eyes- your eyes only see whats in front of you, and your brain only interprets it through the filter of your own beliefs. Your eyes are often bigger liars than the statistics Mark Twain was complaining about. We are not talking about the idea that as people get older they have a bigger chance of affording riding the train, especially in sleeper. That thinking almost killed General Motors. Oh, and by the way Neroden, I AM a state advocate, not a national one. I know some national people, but my focus is local and has been for years. Local New Jersey organized advocacy is aging into the grave.

My answer to aging ridership? Amtrak needs to recognize certain youth trends and recognize, for instance, that they don’t expect certain things that older people do, and cut those amenities in order to free up money for the amenities that younger people do want and expect. Younger people do expect free wi-fi on the trains, including long distance ones. (No, I don’t like it anymore than a lot of us would, but it is the truth!) Younger people consider the food on Amtrak absolutely fine. Concentrating on it is silly. Younger people, however, do not like the lack of cleanliness of long distance equipment, and especially the lack of showers for coach passengers. They don’t remember that trains never had trains in the past, or the traditions surrounding that. All they know is they want to take a shower and they can’t. More things along those lines are also relevant. Reconfiguring the “Ladies Lounge” in the Superliner coach might be a good idea.

The next point is food service losses on Long Distance trains. I thought about it. The Cross Country Cafe may have been a badly executed, poorly thought out idea that was nonetheless stabbing in the right direction. The Texas Eagle’s early model for Sightseer Lounge (I dunno if they still do it) of not staffing the lounge car might hit it right on the head. The big problem is labor. Another big problem is that in a lot of trains there is not enough lounge space.

Lets take the design of the Cross Country Cafe and play around with it a little. We replace the missing dumbwaiter, the removal of which was unquestionably a bad idea. We reconfigure the kitchen, allowing us to move the dumbwaiter all the way to one end of the kitchen (possibly less than idea, but with careful reconfiguration of the kitchen it may be possible to actually improve flow in the kitchen- I’m not sure, I’m not a chef). In doing this, we move the upstairs preparation all the way to one end of the car. We use the design of the CCCs preparation station, or something similar to it, to provide a snack counter facing the lounge car. We lose one set of seats, unfortunately. Some of the kitchen can probably be reconfigured for storage- with the modern food preparation, some of it is likely redundant. I have also redesigned the single level diner along similar lines, to show it can be done on the single level trains, too, and have provided redesigns of the lounge cars as well.

First of all lounge seating on Single Level trains goes up from 50 to 74 (almost 50% increase) and on Sightseers from the current configuration of 84 to 107. Diner space on single levels remains the same, and you lose 8 seats in the Superliner diner, same as a current CCC configuration. But this also allows for a complete change of the diner ordering and serving mechanism.

Sleeping car passengers are still be provided a meal with their rooms, however that meal (there is no reason that meal has to change from its current style/configuration/pricing under this model, by the way) will be ordered at the time of the dinner reservation, which will be done by the SCA and delivered to the dining car. That dinner reservation will include a table number. When that table is ready, their number will be called. They will go into the diner and sit at the table number according to their reservation. The meal will be delivered to the passenger. At the conclusion of the meal, the passenger leaves. Coach passengers will be served the same way, except they will order from the snack counter, and be given a similar reservation with table number and time.

There are huge advantages to this configuration. Since the meal will be delivered on trays, the dining crew does not need to set the table. They don’t need to take orders. All they have to do is deliver the food, and clear the table (no table cloth, easy clean surface, fast table clean). So you will have one food service car, staffed by three people. A chef, who will cook the food. An SA, who will serve the food. And an LSA who will staff the snack bar. This eliminates the lounge car LSA and one or two SAs. This should cut the labor cost for food service on long distance trains in half or better. For a few of those trains it will let the trains turn a profit on food service, and on others it will greatly reduce loss. I think it will in fact decrease loss by as much as $50 million a year.

But it should also largely preserve the bulk of the passenger experience. It should maintain reasonable food preparation on the trains. It should allow for sit-down meals in the dining car that we are all so fond of to continue for many years to come. It will be, perhaps, a little cut down in experience. But it will also cost a hell of a lot less money to operate. It does not require the implementation of unreliable technology. It does not exclude coach passengers from the meal experience. It should, in fact, increase diner throughput a little bit. And it should improve the lounge car seating and availablilty. And by the way, solutions like this were the kind of out of the box thinking I had in mind.

It also ties in to ordering the new cars for long distance services. It requires replacing dining cars with Diner/Cafe cars, and it requires designing lounge cars that are pure lounge cars. Since the lounge cars won’t have food equipment in them, and perhaps shouldn’t have bathrooms in them either, they should be cheap to maintain- no more expensive then a nice commuter coach. It also, of course, decreases the price of building these lounge cars. The cheaper they are, the easier they are to sell to Congress, or the easier it is for Amtrak to manage to afford self-funding it.

I also looked into that really fond idea of a bunch of people- the mid-priced/halfway sleeper. I don’t think they are economically viable. First of all, the only logical configuration for such a car is a sectional sleeper. Otherwise, the capacity of the car is not going to be high enough to ever justify. A pure section sleeper Superliner would have a capacity of 52 passengers, but the way the bed would have to be configured would leave an upper section that would be extraordinarily undesirable, and therefore probably not sell well. A pure section Viewliner sleeper, configured somehow to allow for unattended sleeper turndown (again required for economic viability) has a capacity of 40, and could be configured so it is desirable, but it would have to charge a minimum of 50% more for a ticket than a coach ticket. Feel free to debate this.

Here’s the important point- Amtrak claims that the long distance trains cost them $600 million a year in losses. I have also heard from several sources I trust that the actual cost savings of removing them from service is about $500 million a year. For various reasons, I choose to believe them, not that it matters. With sleeping car increases and coach car increases on the long distance trains, plus a cut in some of their losses, I think it is possible to bring the shorter long distance trains (Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Palmetto, Capitol Limited, Lake Shore Limited, Crescent, and City of New Orleans) to profitability. The Auto Train, by the way, is not capable of being profitable, nor is the concept. Allocating its full costs to it (including having its own stations and the cost of handling the damned automobiles) makes it one of the biggest money losers in the system. I advocate for its discontinuance. They could add a sleeper apiece to the Southwest Chief, California Zephyr, and Capitol Limited, and coaches to a bunch of trains with better chances of operational success.

IF WE CAN MAKE THOSE TRAINS PROFITABLE we can then convince congress that there is viability for 1000-1500 mile long distance trains. E.G. a third Florida frequency, a Broadway route train, a Denver Zephyr, a Spirit of California, a night train to Minneapolis, a night train to Montreal, a night train to Toronto, a Texas Chief, etc. That would be wonderful.

None of this will happen.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

*Citation needed.

 

[tonys96]

Will be withdrawn IF any of this ever happens. Fair enough?

 

[the Other Mike]

No matter how hard I try to read this topic, all I hear is an argument in a pet shop about a dead parrot :giggle:

 

[tonys96]

No matter how hard I try to read this topic, all I hear is an argument in a pet shop about a dead parrot :giggle:

 

[henryj]

GML, I will give you some answers. First of all, all you want on here is a bunch of BOBBLEHEADS nodding yes , yes, yes to everything you, Ryan and the rest post. You really don't want any other ideas. Second, you are obsessed with food. Third your ideas are bogus and will never happen. Fourth, Amtrak's citation of over 600 million in losses in 2013 are mainly bogus and that has been documented by many writers and rail analyst. There is no way trains running on some one else's track incur that much overhead. The largest expenses are maintenance of equipment, T&E labor, OBS labor, fuel and rent in that order. The LD trains incurred operating loses of around 120 million last year. Auto train is the biggest money maker Amtrak has in the LD market, not the biggest loser as you surmise. Food service costs are a minor irritant in all this and can easily be fixed. My suggestion is stick to fixing up New Jersey........it needs it, and forget LD trains. You don't know anything about them.

jf

*Citation needed.

 

[JayPea]

GML, I will give you some answers. First of all, all you want on here is a bunch of BOBBLEHEADS nodding yes , yes, yes to everything you, Ryan and the rest post. You really don't want any other ideas. Second, you are obsessed with food. Third your ideas are bogus and will never happen. Fourth, Amtrak's citation of over 600 million in losses in 2013 are mainly bogus and that has been documented by many writers and rail analyst. There is no way trains running on some one else's track incur that much overhead. The largest expenses are maintenance of equipment, T&E labor, OBS labor, fuel and rent in that order. The LD trains incurred operating loses of around 120 million last year. Auto train is the biggest money maker Amtrak has in the LD market, not the biggest loser as you surmise. Food service costs are a minor irritant in all this and can easily be fixed. My suggestion is stick to fixing up New Jersey........it needs it, and forget LD trains. You don't know anything about them.

jf

*Citation needed.

I was saving my last bag of microwave popcorn for a special occasion, and I think I have found just such an occasion.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

GML, I will give you some answers. First of all, all you want on here is a bunch of BOBBLEHEADS nodding yes , yes, yes to everything you, Ryan and the rest post. You really don't want any other ideas. Second, you are obsessed with food. Third your ideas are bogus and will never happen. Fourth, Amtrak's citation of over 600 million in losses in 2013 are mainly bogus and that has been documented by many writers and rail analyst. There is no way trains running on some one else's track incur that much overhead. The largest expenses are maintenance of equipment, T&E labor, OBS labor, fuel and rent in that order. The LD trains incurred operating loses of around 120 million last year. Auto train is the biggest money maker Amtrak has in the LD market, not the biggest loser as you surmise. Food service costs are a minor irritant in all this and can easily be fixed. My suggestion is stick to fixing up New Jersey........it needs it, and forget LD trains. You don't know anything about them.

jf

The last thing I want in this topic is bobble heads going yes. What I want, Henry, is valid arguments for or against my specific points, with valid data to back them up. Fine, my ideas are bad, in your opinion. Excellent. You think the LDs only lose $120 million? Excellent.

Fine then. First, cite some data to back up that which you are stating. Second, since my ideas are invalid and will never happen, I invite you to come up with your own ideas. The reports I have read state the loss is at $600 million. The internal information states the loss at $500 million. So, Mr. Accountant, if you can't back up your statement, I give you $500 million in losses. If you can back up your information, than you give me the loss numbers you have, specifically, backed up, and then you take those loss numbers and give me ideas on how to close them.

I want disagreement, yes. I want backed up disagreements and new ideas to supplement them. I'm totally and honestly serious here. Lets come up with some ideas for Amtrak's future given the actual political parameters we live in and the facts as they stand (I feel I laid them out correctly, but feel free to cite information that disputes them, and then sort it out using the facts you have found). We both have accounting backgrounds, Mr. J. I can read the data you provide. But fight with facts, not vitriol.

If my supplier and I can argue civilly over a $25,000 balance disagreement, and solve it by trading paperwork back and forth, than I see no reason why intelligent, reasonable people can't have an unemotional debate about Amtrak and back up each point with facts and citations.

 

[tonys96]

"The internal information states the loss at $500 million." *

* Citation Needed.

 

[tonys96]

Goals like “operational self-sufficiency,” “profit” or “minimize federal operating support” are neither reasonable nor sound public policy objectives. Their effect is to block improvements needed to modernize the nation’s intercity passenger train system and rejuvenate our increasingly expensive and dysfunctional transportation system. The driving purpose should be to harvest the public benefits that trains produce for the communities they serve and for the nation as a whole.

 

[henryj]

Ok, GML I will try this one more time just for you. I gave you my two cents worth a few pages back and I got no reaction nor response from you then. You want specifics and ‘citations’. Good luck with that. Amtrak doesn’t publish operating costs nor avoidable costs. To get those you have to extract specific costs from various Amtrak reports and extrapolate them to the different trains. To get that ‘ball park’ close you have to know what equipment is being used on each train and how many OBS and T&E personnel are on board. I try to get as close as I can for each train. That is how I get the operating loss of $120 million. Amtrak says these trains cost $634 million a year to run. If you read Trains magazine or Railway Age or other railroad related periodicals or web sites, then you have surely noticed that everyone doubts Amtrak’s allocation of overhead and everyone believes it is overstated for the LD trains for whatever reason. Then you have Amtrak’s accounting system, which by all evaluations is junk science. Amtrak allocates 80% of it’s costs. The industry standard is more like 20%. What this means is Amtrak does not really know what it costs to run these 15 trains. To do the PIP’s I am sure they had to do special studies and analysis to get the numbers in those. It also means that for a troubled train like the EB those extra costs will never be reflected on that train specifically. They will just be spread across all Amtrak’s operations. Revenue, if affected, might be shown on the reports, but expenses will not. What my analysis shows is to have any effect on costs for these 15 trains you have to do something dramatic. Adding or subtracting a car here and there does nothing. Same for personnel. Food service, for instance, is small potatoes. So what is the answer?

In my opinion, and it is just that, you have to separate the operation of these trains from the whole of Amtrak. Why? Because Amtrak is pre-occupied with running the NEC and always will be. It’s a busy railroad and takes most of their time and effort and incurs most of their overhead expenses. Amtrak is three very different animals. The NEC, the State operated corridor services and the long distance trains. Once the LD trains are under different management that is dedicated to only those trains, you will get better reports, evaluations, service and results. And this may be where Boardman is trying to take Amtrak, who knows. In conjunction with this re-organization you would have to remove the Superliners from the CONO and the Capitol and replace them with single level equipment and make the other changes I have recommended. That frees up enough superliner equipment to serve the remaining western trains and make the Sunset daily without having to order any new equipment for the immediate future. Since most of these train operate out of Chicago, I would move the main maintenance base to some western suburb there or perhaps to a non-union, right to work state. The Eastern trains would have their own maintenance base somewhere else, maybe where it is now. If the demographics are deteriorating as you state, then you will have to start advertising to attract younger people. I never see an Amtrak add in this area. Congress will have to fund these changes for some time, so getting them on board is important. However, with dedicated management these trains can be successful and if they are the route structure could even be expanded. As for the trains themselves, surely you can see that each train is different. They have to be designed to cater to the market they serve and the markets can be very different. This discussion could go on forever. But the first step is to separate operation of these 15 trains from the rest of Amtrak. To trash these trains you are talking about throwing away almost $570 million in revenue and laying off thousands of employees. I believe that is unacceptable to even a tea party congress.

 

[haolerider]

hanryj: in all your discussions you have indicated you calculate costs based on assumptions you have made regarding staffing on individual long distance trains; however I have never seen your figures for these individual trains, nor do I think you have accurate numbers. I have also never seen any figures for the operational support staff for these long distance trains, such as train foreman, station staff, operational management, maintenance staff, etc. do you have this information specifically for each long distance train? What about your assumptions regarding headquarters staff dedicated to long distance trains? Do you have these figures? how do you make your assumptions for your allocation of marketing and advertising for these trains or for customer service/reservations staff? Assumptions are sometimes OK if you have some real figures to back them up, but if you claim long a several million dollar difference in losses, that is a pretty big gap that seems to be made up of lots of assumptions. Please for once, give us real figures for individual trains and then maybe we can begin to fill in the gaps and have an intelligent discussion

 

[neroden]

haloerider: This is a good point. You can't estimate staffing per train, you have to count. I managed to dig out train staffing information from various people's comments: the "blue book" gives sleeping car attendants, coach attendants, cafe attendants; others have given the union rules for allocation of assistant conductors and the exact number of dining car staff in use at any given time on a particular train.

The station support staff is much harder to figure -- I think you'd have to stop at each station and assess its staffing.

The maintenance staff *isn't actually assigned to specific trains*, meaning it's impossible to *really* figure out how much is appropriately allocated to a particular train. The same staff in Chicago does running maintenance on the Hoosier State and the Cardinal and the Empire Builder and the Hiawatha and the Southwest Chief and the Wolverine.

Amtrak seems to use a particularly half-assed method to wildly guess how much of their time is spent on the long-distance trains, but there's no *good* method, without knowing a great deal of the internals of the staffing procedures. But given what's come out about operations at Chicago, with workers slacking off and lying to their bosses, it doesn't make sense to penalize ANY of the trains for the high cost of running maintenance at Chicago; this is a problem of Chicago yard operations, period!

Which is why I have said in other places that the overhead -- including things like Chicago yard operations -- needs to be simply broken out separately, NOT allocated to trains. It doesn't go away if you cancel the trains, unless you shut down ALL the trains (LD and corridor alike), which won't happen.

Overhead allocation is a *pricing* tool used by companies which have third-party contracts in order to attempt to make enough profits to cover overhead, and as such it can be a useful tool. It has nothing to do with the real cost of running an operation, and should NEVER be used as a tool for deciding what services to start or cancel; that way lies madness. Unfortunately, for decades Amtrak has been using this madness in all of its reports.

If you're trying to determine "how much route X costs to run", allocation of capital expenses to specific routes (which so far has not really been done) is a substantially more legitimate accounting maneuver than allocation of overhead.

Thankfully, Amtrak has given us actual direct costs for trains, two or three times. See below.

---

GML:

Page 69 of Amtrak's recent mega-report gives (revenue - costs) for the LD trains as a group, on a "direct costs" basis, in the middle of the page -- before loading them up with largely arbitrary allocations of overhead on the bottom half of the page.

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/458/748/FY14-Budget-Business-Plan-FY15-Budget-Justification-FY14-18-Five-Year-Financial-Plan.pdf

The cost of the entire LD system is estimated at $142.8 million for FY2014. The joke numbers of 600 million or more are all from overhead allocation.

Boardman broke down the direct costs picture more carefully in a presentation a year back:

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/778/373/Amtrak-Covers-88-Percent-of-Operating-Costs-ATK-13-022.pdf

(Look at page 9.) These numbers are consistent with the numbers on page 69 of the megareport.

The California Zephyr *is* actually soaking up a lot of money on operations (~31 million), *before* overhead allocation. The Palmetto is operations-profitable before overhead allocation (~5 million), while the Auto Train is breaking even.

I believe (though I cannot of course prove it) that an even more careful analysis would reveal that the Chicago-Denver operations of the California Zephyr cost relatively little to operate, while the Denver-California operations are eating the bulk of that ~$31 million / year. (Chicago-Denver would use 1/3 of the equipment, with no mountains to eat fuel or slow the train down, and has over half of the passengers.)

The PIPs gave direct costs numbers in some cases as well.

---

The recent mega-report had a lot of meaningless corporate-speak in it. But here are two things they said about the "long distance business unit" which I actually hope they do, though I seriously doubt that they will (given that they've ignored the PIPs):

We will identify opportunities to serve new groups of customers and existing customers better, through a review and refurbishment of existing Long-Distance services, potentially including new routes, more frequent routes, or additional on-board services.

Long-Distance will develop services for city pairs less than 750 miles aboard Long-

Distance trains to serve markets not currently served by a State-Supported Corridor.

Consider that Buffalo (NY) - Chicago, Rochester (NY) - Chicago, and Syracuse (NY) - Chicago are all under 750 miles, and you may see why I think that the distinction between "long distance" and "corridor" trains is artificial and misleading. If Amtrak figures this out themselves, it would be nice. Yes, I'd take a second frequency from Syracuse to Chicago -- a day train.

 

[jis]

The 750 mile number was dreamed up between FRA (the Executive Branch of the government) and the Legislature, when putting together PRIIA 2008. I am not sure Amtrak was given an opportunity to actually challenge and fix that in any reasonable way, without having something worse foisted on them in exchange in some other area like LD trains. Remember PRIIA Section 209 was part of a deal to maintain funding for LD trains AFAIR. But I could be wrong of course.

Similarly, many of the odd accounting and cost allocation rules actually emanate from the FRA which was tasked to come up with such by Congress. So no amount of bad mouthing Amtrak will fix any of that.

 

[neroden]

So, GML, now that we know and agree that the LD trains cost $142.8 million to run as a group, here's my thoughts.

I believe that asking for Amtrak to be profitable is ridiculous, since we don't ask for the roads to be profitable. Or the airports (my local one is sucking up more and more tax money every year, money straight down the drain).

However, the tendency of the American public to elect idiots to Congress will continue for several more years at least, and so aiming for smaller losses seems useful simply to reduce the dependency on the whims of idiots in Congress.

THOUGHT ONE.

The LD trains are not the biggest problem at Amtrak. The biggest financial problem is, in fact.... the overhead!

Or, to be more accurate, the problem is that the fixed overhead is spread over *too few services*. In short, Amtrak needs to expand.

Specifically, Amtrak needs to expand those services which (after expansion) make a profit before overhead. At the moment, Amtrak doesn't even know which services make a profit before overhead, because Amtrak has no system of assigning capital costs or real depreciation on a route level. (!!!!) However, Amtrak is working on developing such a system, and it should be useful.

How to expand? Well, given our assumption that Congress is going to be unhelpful for the next few years, I see four ways to expand:

(1) State and local funding

(2) Borrowing money

(3) Competitive executive-branch grants (TIGER, etc.)

(4) Reassign equipment from cancelled segments of routes (I don't like this option)

Due to the many, many economies of scale in railroading, it is actually quite likely that one train a day will lose money before overhead, but two trains a day will make money before overhead. (Going from 1 train to 2 trains usually more-than-doubles ridership *and* increases ticket yields.)

THOUGHT TWO.

The so-called long-distance services provide connectivity -- if you sever the New York-Chicago link, you lose ticket sales on the "corridor trains" on both the New York and the Chicago ends. Accordingly, the "direct costs" profitability *understates* the degree to which these trains benefit Amtrak's bottom line: there is revenue which is not from tickets on the Lake Shore Limited, but if the Lake Shore Limited was cancelled, that revenue would go away.

THOUGHT THREE.

I have previously described the reroutes and service additions which I think would make for a better network. There are a number of characteristics of the current network which are historical artifacts and don't make sense.

- There are not nearly enough services in the NEC-Chicago region. Detroit-NYC is a glaring gap, as is Chicago-Philadelphia, and of course the lack of service to Columbus OH, and the three-a-week (should be daily) service to Cincy...

- Minneapolis - Chicago needs more frequencies and should stop in Madison (damn Scott Walker)...

- the SW Chief is on the wrong route and should be going via Wichita and Amarillo... and the Heartland Flyer should connect to Wichita... I do think that LA-Chicago is worth keeping for connectivity, but let's have some more connectivity there!

- The Sunset Limited needs to go daily or be cancelled, and it needs to stop in Phoenix, and arguably it should run directly from El Paso to Odessa/Abilene/Ft. Worth rather than via empty towns to San Antonio...

- there are a lot of routes which ought to exist in Texas...

- the ski service on the CZ ought to be separate from the service to Salt Lake City (which is much faster via Wyoming) and the Denver-Chicago service probably should be separate from both (to avoid delays), and the Denver-Chicago service runs on the wrong route through Iowa (which might be fixed if the Iowa legislature ever stops being run by anti-train lunatics)... and I doubt that service from Salt Lake to Reno makes sense at *all*. It's the biggest operational funds bleed in the system and it doesn't seem to be possible to drum up ridership.

- There are even more glaringly absent services in the Southeast and the Appalachians, but I don't think I'll go into that in detail now...

 

[Paulus]

So, GML, now that we know and agree that the LD trains cost $142.8 million to run as a group, here's my thoughts.

Important distinction: As a group they collectively lose $142.8 million. As a group, they cost $720 million in direct costs to run, plus assorted shared costs. The Acela and Northeast Regional don't cost a negative amount to run after all.

 

[The Journalist]

A few thoughts...

The diners take a ridiculous amount of time between seatings. The "Auto Train Cuts" thread said they were reducing it to 90 minutes. Wow. The idea of using tray service seems like a good plan. Less time, less waste, less labor costs, more paying customers.

It can't be coincidental that the routes that seem to do best cost recovery-wise are the ones with lots of shared stations. Double up on routes where there's more demand, leave the whole Western LD's for connections. Even the whole Zephyr; everyone on that across Nevada is going to Chicago or further and breaking it loses a lot of connections.

And the simplest yet probably biggest in terms of actual improvement it would represent: Need WiFi. On all the routes. Most of the airlines, Greyhound, Megabus and even some transit agencies have WiFi now. I know it won't work everywhere. As mentioned by GML on the last page, the demographics of train ridership is aging. The future of Amtrak is attracting so-called "millenials" (side note: I hate this term), and for them not having WiFi can be an automatic deal killer.

 

[neroden]

Aging ridership on the long distance trains is a statistical reality, especially in the sleepers.

No, it isn't. You're pulling this claim out of your ass.
Unless you actually have statistical data by age for each individual train -- which you don't -- you can't claim that it's a "statistical reality". You don't have those statistics. Amtrak has never published them.

Probably it is aging on *some* trains. I'd *expect* it on the Silver Service with its Florida clientele, and aging ridership does match what I saw on the Coast Starlight and from Salt Lake City to California.

But it's certainly not true on the LSL, which seems to retain a thriving younger clientele, and it isn't what I saw from Chicago to Denver either, which also seemed to have a thriving younger clientele, including many families with young children.

(I wasn't paying attention from Chicago to Minneapolis. From LA to Chicago on the SW Chief... well, in midwinter, the ridership was a bit thin period, so I don't feel comfortable making an age assessment. I tend to ride the same routes over and over so I can't speak for the other routes.)

Again, I strongly believe that gobbledegook about "The Long Distance Trains" obscures more than it helps.

Each of these trains is an entirely different animal running through different regions with different demographics and serving different people.

The Sunset Limited is pretty much hopeless in its current (three-a-week, skipping Phoenix) form. The Lake Shore Limited has massive, booming potential. Talking about "the long distance trains" is *confusing*.

I seriously think that the trains should be examined by region. The LSL should be seen as a cooperative effort between New York region (the Empire Corridor) and Chicago Hub region (the unnamed corridor to Cleveland).

Better food service than the current Amtrak cafe car is necessary, and I'm not doctrinaire about how to operate it. The current system is a holdover from the Pullman Company (!!!) which is a real historical oddity.

Oh, and by the way Neroden, I AM a state advocate, not a national one. I know some national people, but my focus is local and has been for years. Local New Jersey organized advocacy is aging into the grave.[/font][/size]

You're completely right about New Jersey from what I can tell.

There's quite lively advocacy in New York City, in Chicago, in San Francisco and the Bay Area, in Seattle and Portland, in Minneapolis, and *especially* in Los Angeles. There's identifiable advocacy by under-30s in Salt Lake City, in Philadelphia, in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Columbus, in several cities in Michigan, and even in parts of Texas. And there's a bunch more under-40s advocacy in the Rust Belt (which is aging, so you'd expect a somewhat older advocacy group). This is off the top of my head.

These advocates are *not* in the same organizations as the older folks, and they're always focused on local rail first. And they are often kind of disorganized. But they support and advocate for intercity Amtrak service as well.

New Jersey seems to have died as far as rail service advocacy and I'm not sure why. There hasn't been a new organization replacing the moribund NJARP. Maybe the sort of young people who advocate for rail service... have moved across the border from NJ to NY or Pennsylvania. Just a hypothesis. Or maybe they're happy with what they've got; if you live on the Newark City Subway, you're probably not agitating for a lot of extra service, unless you have family in Scranton or something.

My answer to aging ridership? Amtrak needs to recognize certain youth trends and recognize, for instance, that they don’t expect certain things that older people do, and cut those amenities in order to free up money for the amenities that younger people do want and expect.

I can't argue with this, but be sure you get your analysis of younger people's tastes *right*!

Younger people do expect free wi-fi on the trains, including long distance ones.

Absolutely true. I'd like it too.

Younger people consider the food on Amtrak absolutely fine.

Well... they'll have some complaints. Perhaps not the ones you might think of, though. The sort of young people who are riding trains are often ecologically minded and often health conscious. They're not going to be offended by lack of flowers or tablecloths, but the thought of throwing out tons of plastic at every meal won't be popular.
And a bunch of people (obviously, never everyone, but always an important minority) are going to want balanced meals -- cutting side salads is a very questionable thing to do, as it forces those who want balanced meals to get only one of the menu options.

People of all ages are also budget conscious enough that the food prices will be an issue.

And the fixed mealtimes and short serving period are really bad -- younger people are used to eating when they want to eat, on their own schedule. Our society has changed: it's really abnormal for a family to "sit down to dinner" at the same time every day, and even if they do, it'll be different for different families.

Younger people, however, do not like the lack of cleanliness of long distance equipment, and especially the lack of showers for coach passengers. They don’t remember that trains never had trains in the past, or the traditions surrounding that. All they know is they want to take a shower and they can’t.

Yeah, people have definitely requested showers on the overnight trains... particularly the multi-night ones. Going without a shower seems to be something most people will tolerate for 1 night, not 2.

Here’s the important point- Amtrak claims that the long distance trains cost them $600 million a year in losses. I have also heard from several sources I trust that the actual cost savings of removing them from service is about $500 million a year.

I don't really believe your sources and I've explained why with citations to Amtrak's documents. I suppose they could be right if they're including savings like closing Beech Grove -- which means you only get those savings if you cancel *every single* Long Distance train (and quite likely some of the corridor trains as well). Keeping even *one* train means you don't get anywhere near this much savings.
The sort of people who claim this stuff... are the sort of people who caused the extremely stupid and counterproductive "Carter cuts". Supposedly of the "least profitable" trains -- but they cut the trains, and the overhead just got allocated to someone else.

Right now, that would mean that every LD train cut would increase the price charged to the state-sponsored corridor trains, by transferring overhead there. Looks great for Amtrak, not so great for the state budgets.

This may actually be the plan among some people -- force the states to pick up all the costs. Illinois would be saddled with most of the overhead costs (since Chicago handles most of the LD trains and a lot of trains paid for by Illinois), California would get quite a lot of the overhead costs, Washington State would get some of the overhead costs (full cost of the Seattle maintenance facility) New York would get some (Albany) and the NEC would get most of the rest of the overhead costs (for stuff done in NY, Boston, DC, Sunnyside, Bear, etc). The costs incurred in Florida and New Orleans would be the only ones which would actually go away.

In anticipation of this possibility, I think it's important to lobby governments such as Illinois, New York, Colorado, and Minnesota to preserve their key routes, such as Denver-Chicago, Minneapolis-Chicago, and New York-Chicago. If Congress decides to attack the so-called "long-distance" trains and cut off funding, point out to Illinois and New York that they'll be paying for most of the overhead anyway, and they should throw in the extra $5 million/year to keep the LSL running. State support saved the LSL once already according to my research.

It's true that some of the trains are significant money pits -- most of the ones running west of the Mississippi where *there are no people*. (Denver-Chicago should work because *Denver is huge* and the runtime is competitive with driving. For the same reason, Dallas-St. Louis-Chicago should work if it wasn't so slow.) A good rule of thumb for passenger train service is that it needs to run between densely populated places. (The Empire Builder "punches above its weight" due to the lack of Interstates along its route.) Trains thrive on volume: this is true of passenger service as well as freight service.

This basic fact about train service -- it needs volume and population density -- is why I find Amtrak's position on the rerouting of the Southwest Chief so aggravating. Rerouting the train would be an improvement even if it only had two stations (Wichita and Amarillo), as those two metro areas have more population than the entire existing route east of ABQ and west of Newton. The SWC may always be a money-loser, but it could be so much better if it actually stopped at cities along the way.

 

[neroden]

It can't be coincidental that the routes that seem to do best cost recovery-wise are the ones with lots of shared stations.

It isn't coincidental!

 

[Paulus]

Aging ridership on the long distance trains is a statistical reality, especially in the sleepers.

No, it isn't. You're pulling this claim out of your ass.
Unless you actually have statistical data by age for each individual train -- which you don't -- you can't claim that it's a "statistical reality". You don't have those statistics. Amtrak has never published them.

From the PIPs:

Crescent:

Age of Adult Passengers (children not included)

18-34 8%

35-54 23%

55+ 69%

Average Age 58

Employment

Employed 49%

Retired 41%

Lake Shore Limited

Age of Adult Passengers

(children not included)

18-34 11%

35-54 34%

55+ 55%

Average Age 54

Employment

Employed 53%

Retired 32%

Silver Star:

Age of Adult Passengers(children not included)

18-34 6%

35-54 26%

55+ 68%

Average Age 57

Employment

Employed 47%

Retired 41%

Silver Meteor:

Age of Adult Passengers(children not included)

18-34 6%

35-54 25%

55+ 69%

Average Age 58

Employment

Employed 43%

Retired 43%

Palmetto

Age of Adult Passengers (children not included)

18-34 9%

35-54 29%

55+ 62%

Average Age 56

Employment

Employed 50%

Retired 38%

Haven't seen any for the other long distance trains, but the corridor trains are available here, though you'll need to scroll aways down. It's immediately obvious that the long distance trains are significantly grayer than the corridors. Heck, look at the Empire Service, Route A. You claim the Lake Shore Limited "seems to retain a thriving younger clientele," with 11% of passengers being 18-35, while the corridor it runs over is 28% and the US census has 35% of the population in that range. 55% is 55 or older when only a third of the populace is and only 39% of the Empire Service.

Now, Chicago-Carbondale? 51% of that train is 18-34. That's a thriving younger clientele.

 

[tonys96]

Anyone can figure out that a station with more than one route will cost less per train..........