Devil's Advocate
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Considering that Amtrak has promised to eliminate food and beverage losses over a period of five years (with three years remaining) there's a decent chance we've only begun to scratch the surface of how much worse it can get.
Silver Star has new Café menu and no diner
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copperdeer
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I think removing the dining car from where it's sufficiently needed, such as on the Crescent, is a drastic move that isn't likely. The Silver Star dining car didn't seem that popular while it still had it last year since the overwhelming majority of passengers are not going more than 10-12 hrs. I appreciate Amtrak trying to increase efficiency. I'll probably try out a roomette with a friend on the ride to NY now, where I wouldn't have considered it worth the higher price before.
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I suspect the idea that things can't get any worse is sorely lacking in imagination...
Of course, Amtrak also once agreed to eliminate all operating losses over a period of several years or else "go out of business". Most of us probably know how the "glidepath to self-sufficiency" turned out.
Point is, it was (and remains) impossible and quite unsurprisingly didn't happen; Congress continued to grant operating subsidies. The food & beverage mandate is likely to follow a similar path. The real danger is just how much damage can be done to Amtrak food service in the quest to meet an unachievable goal, with the Silver Star diner merely one of the first victims. I don't expect the current lounge-car only food service to remain long-term, but how long until Amtrak realizes something more is required?
jis
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I expect the F&B mandate to exit stage right with Mr. Boardman, and no one will be talking about it come October, just like all talk of "glidepath to self sufficiency" glided out the building with Mr. Warrington. The incoming new CEO will simply disown the whole thing and everyone will go back to drawing board to conjure up some other bureaucratic ****.
As usual I think jis nailed it!
greatcats
Engineer
We know jis is one smart fellow. I hope, along with expert Mr Dylan, that jis is correct!
Devil's Advocate
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Except that unlike achieving broad profitability the food and beverage mandate may in fact be possible to achieve if Amtrak is willing to continue reducing and removing dining services until the F&B budget breaks even. Conventional wisdom presumes that such changes will result in a net negative to Amtrak's bottom line, but it's hard to know that for a fact until it happens, and even if such a penalty does occur it doesn't necessarily invalidate the arbitrary F&B mandate such as it is.
Although I have no doubt Amtrak is well aware of AU they have thus far given us no indication that we're the sort of customers they're interested in keeping, let alone impressing. Maybe they think we'll stick with Amtrak regardless of the experience or maybe they simply don't care what we think. I don't take Amtrak's indifference personally but I do think it's important to realize that our views probably don't represent anything the Amtrak brass considers to be important.
I realize that nothing ever really changes, at least according to Amtrak lore, and I can understand how folks might come to this conclusion after experiencing over forty years of seemingly uninterruptable life support. Unfortunately many former proponents and protectors of Amtrak from years past have retired or been squeezed out by radicalized ideology. Meanwhile anti-Amtrak politicians continue to grow in number and prominence. Or at least that's how it looks to me.
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Manny T
OBS Chief
As I understand it, the F&B mandate is embodied in a statute--it's legislation and can't just be jettisoned; it would have to be repealed by Congress. I suspect Cong. Mica and others will continue to talk about Amtrak's noncompliance with that mandate long after Mr. Boardman has departed.
As far as things getting worse is concerned, this writer believes that the entire Silver Star (and 2 other trains) may be following the dining car into utter oblivion: http://cs.trains.com/trn/b/fred-frailey/archive/2016/02/02/3-amtrak-trains-in-jeopardy.aspx
As far as things getting worse is concerned, this writer believes that the entire Silver Star (and 2 other trains) may be following the dining car into utter oblivion: http://cs.trains.com/trn/b/fred-frailey/archive/2016/02/02/3-amtrak-trains-in-jeopardy.aspx
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jis
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The glide path to self sufficiency was also in legislation for six years and then it was blithely ignored. Read some history!
As for Fred, yeah he writes stuff, some that makes sense and some that doesn't. Just because he says so doesn't mean a hill of beans.
As for Fred, yeah he writes stuff, some that makes sense and some that doesn't. Just because he says so doesn't mean a hill of beans.
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Amtrak's saving millions of dollars a year this way. From July 1st through December 31st, on a fully allocated basis, the Silver Star lost $5.3 million less than it did the previous year. Let's put that projected $10.6M change towards the black into example form:
It's equivalent to completely wiping the fully allocated loss of the Palmetto.
It's greater than the entire fully allocated cost of running the Vermonter.
It's equal to >150,000 train-miles on a fully allocated cost basis.
It's equal to >235,000 train-miles for a sleeper train on a marginal cost basis.
It's equal to >353,000 train-miles for a corridor train on a marginal cost basis.
So let me ask you: What would you cut to add that diner back again?
Devil's Advocate
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Why stop there when you can simply retire every coach, every sleeper, every lounge, every baggage car, every locomotive, every station, every maintenance facility, and every route mile? Then you could sell everything for scrap and hand the proceeds over to Congress so they could throw it at our next military misadventure. Maximum benefit for minimum cost. A few Americans would hate me but most would have no clue what was going on or why. Meanwhile the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the House of Representatives, and most of the GOTP would love me and save me a place at a well funded think tank so I could resume my work thinking up new ways to dismantle and privatize more of America's crumbling infrastructure.
amtrakpass
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So let me ask you: What would you cut to add that diner back?"
It's an old cliche but of course the quickest way to cut costs is to cut the train then their is no cost at all. Just like having kids costs money but is a good thing, Passenger trains cost money but are a good thing which we all should agree on. Also human beings need to eat in a timely manner especially the young and old. So in my mind food service is part of the deal. Does that mean we should spend whatever it takes to provide great food? No, i disagree with the private car or Via rail canadian idea of catering to wealthly people. But we should all agree on trying to provide good food comparable to thousands of american restaurants in the diner tradition across the country. And why is the cafe stuck in a 7-11 type of offering when chains like Pret a Manger or Le Pan quotidien have shown that fast food can be good. Or more recently i discovered the Snap Kitchen chain which has healthly good tasting microwavable meals. Just saying, can we agree that all things should be done well and efficiently if you are to do them at all! To cost cut your way into providing bad service in the name of saving a few bucks is a way to put yourself out of business completely in the long run in my opinion.
It's an old cliche but of course the quickest way to cut costs is to cut the train then their is no cost at all. Just like having kids costs money but is a good thing, Passenger trains cost money but are a good thing which we all should agree on. Also human beings need to eat in a timely manner especially the young and old. So in my mind food service is part of the deal. Does that mean we should spend whatever it takes to provide great food? No, i disagree with the private car or Via rail canadian idea of catering to wealthly people. But we should all agree on trying to provide good food comparable to thousands of american restaurants in the diner tradition across the country. And why is the cafe stuck in a 7-11 type of offering when chains like Pret a Manger or Le Pan quotidien have shown that fast food can be good. Or more recently i discovered the Snap Kitchen chain which has healthly good tasting microwavable meals. Just saying, can we agree that all things should be done well and efficiently if you are to do them at all! To cost cut your way into providing bad service in the name of saving a few bucks is a way to put yourself out of business completely in the long run in my opinion.
jis
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Actually just cutting a train also cuts the revenue that was partly paying for the fixed costs that do not go away by cutting the train and just reallocates them to other trains making them look worse. In the net, unless the trains had almost no riders and farebox recovery it turns out to be a net loss. No one has ever cut trains to prosperity in the annals of passenger railroad history. they have cut trains to eventually go out of business.
Basically, as far as accounting goes it is just as foolish to account for F&B separately as it is to account for toilet cleaning separately (and propose removing toilets to save money), yet the brainless dolt from Florida insists on one because it serves whatever political grand plan he has.
Basically, as far as accounting goes it is just as foolish to account for F&B separately as it is to account for toilet cleaning separately (and propose removing toilets to save money), yet the brainless dolt from Florida insists on one because it serves whatever political grand plan he has.
Cho Cho Charlie
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neroden
Engineer
The statute is almost as old as Amtrak itself. "Allocating" ticket revenue to the dining service, based on the (correct) idea that people are buying tickets which they wouldn't buy without the dining car, has been used to "comply" with the statute for *its entire history*.
Bluntly, dining service exists because otherwise trains have to make meal stops, and meal stops *suck*. The added revenue and reduced costs from not making a meal stop can be assigned to the dining cars and I think they'll look perfectly profitable. Makes more sense than most of Amtrak's accounting.
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neroden
Engineer
Agreed. In 2008, it started to become really hard to get the marginal costs information out of Amtrak, due to Congressional assaults on sanity (demanding meaningless "fully allocated numbers"). However, from the data we have, as far as we can tell:
-- most of the "state-supported" trains do not make enough onboard + ticket revenue to cover marginal costs of operation, hence the need for state subsidies
-- the NEC, the Lynchburger, the Norfolk & Newport News trains, Auto Train, Star, Meteor, Palmetto, and LSL do make enough to cover marginal costs of operation
-- Empire Builder, Coast Starlight, and Crescent are always pretty close to covering marginal costs and are probably doing so in some years (numbers have too much margin of error to tell for any given year)
-- the Cardinal would certainly cover marginal costs if it were daily
-- the Capitol Limited would probably cover marginal costs if the Cap/Pennsy through cars were operating
If you're trying to examine trains which are consistently not covering marginal costs, and where the reason isn't something totally bloody obvious which should have been fixed five years ago, really the only trains you can look at are:
-- California Zephyr (I continue to suspect that Chicago-Denver performs much better financially than Glenwood Springs-Reno)
-- Southwest Chief
-- City of New Orleans (the only "long-distance division" train whose financial performance seems to have definitely gotten worse from 2012 to 2015)
-- Texas Eagle
-- Sunset Limited
With the exception of the CONO, these have all had very substantially improved financial performance over the last three years. It is not outside the realm of possibility that the SWC could cover its marginal costs in 2016, i
If the financial improvements continued at the same rate (which they probably won't),
-- the SWC could cover its marginal costs in 2016
-- the CZ could cover its marginal costs by 2018
-- the SL and TE could cover their marginal costs by 2019
Railroads really aren't a marginal-cost business. Like telecoms they're a high-capital-cost, high-fixed-cost, low-marginal-cost business. That's why they thrive on high population density.
Yes, but not many people ride end-to-end. Even Southern sometimes dropped the diner on the south end of the run.
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There are pax who travel end to end. Just because there is not a huge amount of them is no reason to make them go 29+ hours without a diner. These folks matter, too, don't they?
jis
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Managing costs is one thing. Demanding that it become a self standing profit center is a different thing. That is what is being demanded and that is unreasonable.
JoeBas
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And those of us who DO (or close enough, NOL-PHI regularly) will not, not, NOT do so without real food. So you might as well break the nat'l network and truncate the train in ATL.
Philly Amtrak Fan
Engineer
Sure you will. What other choice do you have? Is there some other train you're going to take? Oh wait, there is none.
I'm not saying removing the diner isn't wrong but the threat of a boycott isn't really going to work if there isn't any other similar choice available.
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greatcats
Engineer
I of course am in the camp of being displeased with this dining car situation. However, under certain circumstances, I might be agreeable to taking Megabus or Greyhound say from Chicago to New York. No dining cars of course; either bring your own food or make do with McD's or convenience stores during that trip. That might be OK, but it is a different format of transportation. About 5 years ago I took Megabus Chicago to Cincinnatti, which was a daylight run, and I enjoyed the trip
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