Amtrak Posts 18th Consecutive Month of Ridership Gains

[afigg]

any hint on when the May numbers will be out?

Amtrak released the May numbers today: http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServer?blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobkey=id&blobwhere=1249227805921&blobheader=application%2Fpdf&blobheadername1=Content-disposition&blobheadervalue1=attachment;filename=Amtrak_ATK-11-085_19_Months_Ridership.pdf.

Quotes from the release:

"May marked 19 consecutive months of year-over-year ridership growth for Amtrak, was the best May ever with more than 2.6 million passengers and keeps America’s Railroadsm on track to set another annual ridership record.

The long-distance trains have experienced year-over-year passenger increases in 18 of those 19 months, making a significant contribution to the extended streak of national ridership growth. In addition, advance reservations for summer travel indicate increased ridership on long-distance trains in June, July and August."

...

"Comparing the first eight months of FY 2011 (October – May) to the same time period in FY 2010, national Amtrak ridership is up 6.7 percent so far this fiscal year and all three major business lines are showing gains: the Northeast Corridor up 5.3 percent, state-supported and other short distance corridors up 8.2 percent, and long-distance trains up 5.5 percent."

The LD train passenger numbers for May were hurt by the numerous cancellations and interruptions for the Empire Builder (off only -1.3%??) and City of New Orleans, off -34.3% for May. Hence the 18 out of 19 months for the LD trains, I suspect.

Among the winners for May 2011 compared to May 2010 were:

Acela: +5.1% (303,827 passengers total)

NE Regionals: +10.1% with 693,268 passengers total, the "best month on record" (which begs the question how far back and how they regard the numbers for the NE Regionals compared to 20-30 years ago NEC services).

Albany-Niagara Falls-Toronto: +10.1%

Downeaster: + 11.8%

Keystone: +7.5%

Illini/Saluki +23.0%

Illinois Zephyr/Carl Sandburg: +13.7%

Capital Corridor: +9.7%

San Joaquin: +12.8%

Adirondack: +21.2%

Blue Water: +22.0%

Washington-Lynchburg: +43.3% (+31.3% for the year. Continues to get impressive growth numbers).

Washington-Newport News: +32.9%

Hoosier State: +28.3%

Missouri River Runner: +28.8%

Pennsylvanian: +9.8%

Piedmont Service: +76.4%

The only corridor train that was off was the Lincoln Service -11.3%, but the service was shut down for some days for track work.

Some of these increases for one train a day corridor services strongly suggest that if the equipment could be located and if the track capacity was there, Amtrak and the state should move to add second daily trains.

 

[PaulM]

On state services, I've been thinking...VA and NC really need to start coordinating on operations more: A lot of the improvements to both states' services invariably end up throwing one end of a route across the border sooner or later, and both seem to want to expand service.

The Hoosier situation, together with your comment, points out the problem with the state supported train theory. Namely people want to cross state lines. After all Chicago isn't in Indiana. Nor is St. Louis in Illinois. Nor is Raleigh or Charlotte in VA.

 

[Anderson]

Well, and Washington Union Station isn't in Virginia, either...and Bristol straddles VA/TN. For perhaps the best example of this, though, we can turn to the situation surrounding IL:

1) In order to run the Wolverines at a reasonable speed, Indiana had to tender a request for funding over the segment of the line that slides through IN. Never mind that it is more or less Michigan's project, Indiana had to run the request (though they made it very clear, as I understand it, that it had to come from the 100% Federal funding pot). This is a great case where letting some money slide over the state line might be in order; regulations aside, if IL and MI got together, you really ought to be able to just run the line through IN whether IN wants to get on board or not.

2) Wisconsin can basically screw over any Minneapolis-Chicago trains. I've mentioned the possibility of running such a route as an express through WI (both to "drop a hint" and to ensure that service gets improved without having to deal with Walker), but I know that's not very likely because of the routing involved.

And of course, any CLT-ATL service is going to have to wrestle with South Carolina (not exactly fertile rail territory) because of improvements you'd probably need on that part of the line.

One of the other hiccups is how to determine who pays for what and who gets what money back: In the case of CLT-ATL, you might not have much traffic to/from SC, but a lot of the tracks are in that state. Is SC going to have to pay the track rent for its segment (what NC and GA would want), or will NC and GA have to put up part of that via a ridership-based formula (which SC would want in this case)? Getting states to beat something out when one state either doesn't care or is outright hostile is...well, let's just say that I tend not to be an optimist. And the sad part is that there are some cases where if Amtrak could "jump the border", the incremental gains on a route might offset the added cost of running the trains across the line (an example would be running a train into Davenport or Dubuque proper rather than stopping it on the east side of the river; another possibility might be extending the MORR to Topeka via Lawrence, assuming that you didn't need another trainset to make such a turn, and there's always the situation surrounding Reno. I'm sure I can list some others given a map and some possibilities).

---------------------------------------------------------

As to the numbers: I think the WAS-NPN line is about a year off of turning the corner into the black, at least at this rate. I'm glad to see that it finally broke out of the doldrums (and how...the YTD pace is about 560k for FY11 vs. 468k for FY10). Overall, I think it's a good bet that Amtrak will break 30.5 million (even if they go to 0% gains for the rest of the year, they're looking at reaching 30 million for FY2011).

One thing that's telling is that the system overall is approaching a 50% load factor for the year. Considering that this involves some low-traffic ends to certain routes (or parts of some routes with awkward timings...Moonlighter [NE Regional 190], I'm looking at you), I'm wondering about places that Amtrak is flat out of capacity (or getting close to it) other than packed parts of the NE Regional schedule.

 

[Oldsmoboi]

Suggestion to the Mods: Perhaps we should just do a single pinned thread for the ridership releases each month?

 

[Oldsmoboi]

The Pennsylvanian is going to need another car soon or it's going to hit it's capacity cap.

 

[jis]

Among the LD trains, it looks like the Lake Shore Limited and the Silver Star are becoming star performers in terms of ridership!

 

[afigg]

Suggestion to the Mods: Perhaps we should just do a single pinned thread for the ridership releases each month?

Not a bad idea. Change the title to something along the line of Amtrak ridership gain discussions. If gas stays above $3 to $3.50 a gallon, Amtrak is likely to see continued growth for the next few years. Well, as long as we don't hit another economic collapse.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

How much longer can ridership keep growing at this rate? Seems as though they'd start hitting hard limits due to lack of hardware within the next several months. I know there are some new orders on the horizon, but with taxes and budgets being slashed left and right and Amtrak under near constant scrutiny from adversarial politicians and media wonks I'm wondering how many of those cars will ever show up.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."

 

[afigg]

How much longer can ridership keep growing at this rate? Seems as though they'd start hitting hard limits due to lack of hardware within the next several months. I know there are some new orders on the horizon, but with taxes and budgets being slashed left and right and Amtrak under near constant scrutiny from adversarial politicians and media wonks I'm wondering how many of those cars will ever show up.

Why would Amtrak be hitting hard limits in the next several months? The load factor is still around the 52% range and there are still some Amfleet Is to be returned to service using the stimulus funding. There should also be additional capacity to be had from improved management and scheduling of equipment resources if needed. The problem going to be the compound effect of 6% to 7% growth if it keeps up over a 3-4 year period for the busiest corridors.

The equipment orders that have been placed or funded with the $10.1 billion of HSIPR money should be pretty safe. That would include the 130 Viewliner 2s, the 70 ACS-64s, the 4 talgos, and the planned 120 bi-level passenger cars. Amtrak should able to fund the order of 40 Acela passenger cars from the profit margin from the Acela operations. At the national level, I think we are done with tax cuts because we can't afford any more of them. The federal budget is going to get tightened and trimmed, but nowhere near the amount the Tea Partiers are demanding.

In the longer run (10-15 years), in my opinion, intercity passenger rail is going to continue it's comeback in the US because increasing oil prices and eventual oil shortages (on a global scale) are going to severely hurt the airlines and clobber the economics of operating out of the smaller airports and shorter distance flights. The airlines will consolidate to mostly flying only between the major airports and large cities with the larger airplanes which are more efficient to operate. High fuel costs drive up train travel costs as well, of course, but a train that stops at 20-30 stations is going to be more economical than a plane that serves only 2 cities. The smaller and more distant cities that have Amtrak service will come to see it as a lifeline in the next 10-15 years. But that is getting beyond the scope of this thread.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Why would Amtrak be hitting hard limits in the next several months?

On the routes I travel (Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited) the recent trains have been seeing sold-out status surprisingly regularly, even with their slow speeds and and sloppy scheduling. To me that sounds like they're beginning to run out of capacity. I guess it's still a few years away for some routes yet.

In the longer run (10-15 years), in my opinion, intercity passenger rail is going to continue it's comeback in the US because increasing oil prices and eventual oil shortages (on a global scale) are going to severely hurt the airlines and clobber the economics of operating out of the smaller airports and shorter distance flights.

Are you considering the costs associated with fifteen more years of endless war in that assumption?

 

[Oldsmoboi]

Suggestion to the Mods: Perhaps we should just do a single pinned thread for the ridership releases each month?

Not a bad idea. Change the title to something along the line of Amtrak ridership gain discussions. If gas stays above $3 to $3.50 a gallon, Amtrak is likely to see continued growth for the next few years. Well, as long as we don't hit another economic collapse.

I would title it "Amtrak - Monthly Ridership Report" make it generic... it might not always be up.

 

[Oldsmoboi]

How much longer can ridership keep growing at this rate? Seems as though they'd start hitting hard limits due to lack of hardware within the next several months. I know there are some new orders on the horizon, but with taxes and budgets being slashed left and right and Amtrak under near constant scrutiny from adversarial politicians and media wonks I'm wondering how many of those cars will ever show up.

Why would Amtrak be hitting hard limits in the next several months? The load factor is still around the 52% range and there are still some Amfleet Is to be returned to service using the stimulus funding.

The West bound Capitol Ltd has 6 trains in the next 30 days that are sold out in coach including 4 trains in June are completely sold out. There are two trains with bedrooms available, tonight and tomorrow. There are only 7 days in June that have Roomettes available. All coach seats are high bucket. Similar story eastbound.

 

[chrsjrcj]

When I rode the Star back in May from WPB to Tampa, they had trouble finding room for people to sit since a good half of the entire train was going to Tampa. Its a shame that the elected officials in Tallahassee won't give passenger rail a second thought since a 2006 FDOT study showed that statewide corridor service would generate a positive operating ratio.

Wonder what caused the Meteor to receive a .5% decline. Oh well, less people for me to deal with when I ride it next month.

 

[Train2104]

The load factor is still around the 52% range and there are still some Amfleet Is to be returned to service using the stimulus funding. There should also be additional capacity to be had from improved management and scheduling of equipment resources if needed. The problem going to be the compound effect of 6% to 7% growth if it keeps up over a 3-4 year period for the busiest corridors.

If the load factor is 52%, why are so many trains selling out? Some train or accomodation has to be carrying significantly below capacity.

 

[Ryan]

Remember that load factor considers the entire run of a train. A train like the Crescent is jam packed from WAS to ATL, but lightly traveled from ATL-NOL.

 

[afigg]

[The West bound Capitol Ltd has 6 trains in the next 30 days that are sold out in coach including 4 trains in June are completely sold out. There are two trains with bedrooms available, tonight and tomorrow. There are only 7 days in June that have Roomettes available. All coach seats are high bucket. Similar story eastbound.

So the hard bottlenecks that are starting to appear are in some of the LD trains? Back in FY2008, Amtrak hit a record of 28.4 million riders and just barely passed the FY08 record in FY10. But, since FY08, the stimulus funding is putting 60 Amfleets and 21 Superliners back into service. Most of the cars have been returned to service with the rest to be done by the end of the FY. This is, in effect, is adding 80 cars to the fleet that were not available several years ago.

Since any new Superliner equipment is years away, it comes down to what can Amtrak do to better utilize the available equipment. It may be not be much fun for the passengers, but some sold-out trains with the increased revenue is a better problem to have than too few riders.

 

[Anderson]

<br>

<br>[The West bound Capitol Ltd has 6 trains in the next 30 days that are sold out in coach including 4 trains in June are completely sold out. There are two trains with bedrooms available, tonight and tomorrow. There are only 7 days in June that have Roomettes available. All coach seats are high bucket. Similar story eastbound.<br>

<br>So the hard bottlenecks that are starting to appear are in some of the LD trains? Back in FY2008, Amtrak hit a record of 28.4 million riders and just barely passed the FY08 record in FY10. But, since FY08, the stimulus funding is putting 60 Amfleets and 21 Superliners back into service. Most of the cars have been returned to service with the rest to be done by the end of the FY. This is, in effect, is adding 80 cars to the fleet that were not available several years ago. <br><br>Since any new Superliner equipment is years away, it comes down to what can Amtrak do to better utilize the available equipment. It may be not be much fun for the passengers, but some sold-out trains with the increased revenue is a better problem to have than too few riders.<br>

<br><br>Yes, but remember that in FY10, you had substantial net growth over FY08 in the LD section (by about 304,000).  LD ridership was actually <i>up</i> in FY09 (by a bit under 30,000) while the system as a whole was off, and you've seen continual year over year gains in the LD trains since FY 2006...or, in other words, since you dropped the Sunset East and the Three Rivers from circulation.  You have 80 cars back in the fleet, yes, but you're on course to have an extra half-million LD riders to the mix as well.<br><br>Another point of interest: Thus far in FY11 (that is, as of the March Performance Report, as April isn't out yet), the LD trains closed their losses by a couple of million dollars.  It's not much (and it would be <i>far</i> higher but for the OEPBs), but they <i>are</i> eating into that loss figure slowly.  Revenues are up $24m YTD...the main reason that the numbers don't look a bit better seems to be lousy cost controls on some fronts.  Revenue per passenger on the LD trains is up 6.7% (from $94.30 to $100.60)...I think we're starting to squeeze things out.<br><br>Finally, I purchased a ticket RVR-WAS-CHI-OSC and back today for Christmas.  It was a bit under $800 that way...and well over $1000 via NYP instead of via WAS.  This is six months out.<br><br>Edit: The Meteor lost some ridership in May, but the Star was up substantially.  Taking the Florida service as a single unit (that is, assuming that most of the Star/Meteor traffic is more or less interchangeable), it's possible that the Meteor lost some folks because of the rescheduled DC arrival time.  With that said, my experience has been that the diner on that train has been <i>very</i> empty over the last few weeks compared to what I saw in the winter.  Basically, treat those two as a unit (just as I would more or less handle a Broadway/Lake Shore listing).<br>

 

[jis]

Anderson. Could you please refrain from posting HTML here? Just makes it harder to read what you post with all those HTML angle brackets and  'sall over the place. Thanks.

 

[Ryan]

[The West bound Capitol Ltd has 6 trains in the next 30 days that are sold out in coach including 4 trains in June are completely sold out. There are two trains with bedrooms available, tonight and tomorrow. There are only 7 days in June that have Roomettes available. All coach seats are high bucket. Similar story eastbound.

So the hard bottlenecks that are starting to appear are in some of the LD trains? Back in FY2008, Amtrak hit a record of 28.4 million riders and just barely passed the FY08 record in FY10. But, since FY08, the stimulus funding is putting 60 Amfleets and 21 Superliners back into service. Most of the cars have been returned to service with the rest to be done by the end of the FY. This is, in effect, is adding 80 cars to the fleet that were not available several years ago.

Since any new Superliner equipment is years away, it comes down to what can Amtrak do to better utilize the available equipment. It may be not be much fun for the passengers, but some sold-out trains with the increased revenue is a better problem to have than too few riders.

Yes, but remember that in FY10, you had substantial net growth over FY08 in the LD section (by about 304,000). LD ridership was actually up in FY09 (by a bit under 30,000) while the system as a whole was off, and you've seen continual year over year gains in the LD trains since FY 2006...or, in other words, since you dropped the Sunset East and the Three Rivers from circulation. You have 80 cars back in the fleet, yes, but you're on course to have an extra half-million LD riders to the mix as well.

Another point of interest: Thus far in FY11 (that is, as of the March Performance Report, as April isn't out yet), the LD trains closed their losses by a couple of million dollars. It's not much (and it would be far higher but for the OEPBs), but they are eating into that loss figure slowly. Revenues are up $24m YTD...the main reason that the numbers don't look a bit better seems to be lousy cost controls on some fronts. Revenue per passenger on the LD trains is up 6.7% (from $94.30 to $100.60)...I think we're starting to squeeze things out.

Finally, I purchased a ticket RVR-WAS-CHI-OSC and back today for Christmas. It was a bit under $800 that way...and well over $1000 via NYP instead of via WAS. This is six months out.

Edit: The Meteor lost some ridership in May, but the Star was up substantially. Taking the Florida service as a single unit (that is, assuming that most of the Star/Meteor traffic is more or less interchangeable), it's possible that the Meteor lost some folks because of the rescheduled DC arrival time. With that said, my experience has been that the diner on that train has been very empty over the last few weeks compared to what I saw in the winter. Basically, treat those two as a unit (just as I would more or less handle a Broadway/Lake Shore listing).

Anderson. Could you please refrain from posting HTML here? Just makes it harder to read what you post with all those HTML angle brackets and  'sall over the place. Thanks.

It looks like a forum or browser glitch, because it got added into the quotes that he included. I stripped it out of the quote above.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

It looks like a forum or browser glitch, because it got added into the quotes that he included. I stripped it out of the quote above.

That's also the sort of thing you might get when using a script blocker that needs a little fine tuning of the white list.

 

[Oldsmoboi]

[The West bound Capitol Ltd has 6 trains in the next 30 days that are sold out in coach including 4 trains in June are completely sold out. There are two trains with bedrooms available, tonight and tomorrow. There are only 7 days in June that have Roomettes available. All coach seats are high bucket. Similar story eastbound.

So the hard bottlenecks that are starting to appear are in some of the LD trains? Back in FY2008, Amtrak hit a record of 28.4 million riders and just barely passed the FY08 record in FY10. But, since FY08, the stimulus funding is putting 60 Amfleets and 21 Superliners back into service. Most of the cars have been returned to service with the rest to be done by the end of the FY. This is, in effect, is adding 80 cars to the fleet that were not available several years ago.

Since any new Superliner equipment is years away, it comes down to what can Amtrak do to better utilize the available equipment. It may be not be much fun for the passengers, but some sold-out trains with the increased revenue is a better problem to have than too few riders.

Has the Capitol gained any coaches lately? It seems to have stayed fairly consistent over the last few years. Sure there may be more Superliners available, but that doesn't help much until you lash them up to the train.

 

[Anderson]

It looks like a forum or browser glitch, because it got added into the quotes that he included. I stripped it out of the quote above.

That's also the sort of thing you might get when using a script blocker that needs a little fine tuning of the white list.

It's interesting because that's never happened to me before here. Of course, I've had some nasty computer issues this week...

Meaningful comment: There's not a single train that you couldn't arrange for a single-level component on for a few years and reallocate the Superliners from. Granted, you'd need one very long consist to do so with it, but you could at least theoretically bring single-level cars onto the Empire Builder.

If the bottleneck is sleepers, assuming that you had the cars, you could allocate a slab of single-level sleepers with a transdorm, and then have the rest of the train be bilevel (the coaches, lounge, and diner).

 

[afigg]

In light of the equipment shortages, in the Amtrak Fleet Strategy plan V2, it discusses possible funding options for acquiring new equipment. One of the options is to get loans from the federal Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing (RRIF) program which is authorized to provide up to $35 billion in total loans to railroads. Loan periods can be up to 35 years and the principal payments can even be deferred for up to 6 years. It is a program that have been on the books for over 10 years, but has not been widely used until recently.

So I googled the RRIF loan program and found this document from a DC consultant law firm from April 2011 (sales pitch for their services) that lists Amtrak having submitted an application for a $562.9 million RRIF loan. This may be how Amtrak is planning to fund the bulk of the Viewliner 2 and ACS-64 electric locomotive order. Or is this an application to arrange funding for an additional equipment order for diesel locomotives, Amfleet 2 or Superliner 1 replacements / fleet expansion? Or it could be mostly to use the funds to close out expensive lease financings in favor of less expensive RRIF loans to reduce debt service payments. Would be interesting to find out.

The document is at http://www.cdfa.net/cdfa/cdfaweb.nsf/fbaad5956b2928b086256efa005c5f78/17ff5d27c150cec888257895004da31a/$FILE/RRIFprogram.pdf

 

[Anderson]

...wait, you mean there's a $35 billion pool of revolving credit available to railroads at below-market rates that is more or less just...not being used? There is $35 billion appropriated for this in a loan pool and it's just sitting there?

 

[jis]

So I googled the RRIF loan program and found this document from a DC consultant law firm from April 2011 (sales pitch for their services) that lists Amtrak having submitted an application for a $562.9 million RRIF loan. This may be how Amtrak is planning to fund the bulk of the Viewliner 2 and ACS-64 electric locomotive order. Or is this an application to arrange funding for an additional equipment order for diesel locomotives, Amfleet 2 or Superliner 1 replacements / fleet expansion? Or it could be mostly to use the funds to close out expensive lease financings in favor of less expensive RRIF loans to reduce debt service payments. Would be interesting to find out.

It is most definitely not for any additional equipment. Boardman in his Senate testimony said that Amtrak is not going to order any further LD equipment until Congress figures out a policy for what it wants Amtrak to do about LD trains.

My understanding is that the loans that Amtrak has already applied for so far are for covering most, if not all of Viewliners and ACS 64. They are yet to apply for the Acela Cars, which they plan to fund through a loan secured by expected revenues as collateral. Boardman said as much in his Senate testimony the other week. Apparently these loans have to be secured loans against verifiable assets or future earnings. One cannot just get one by saying we will figure out later how to pay it back. But this understanding is subject to verification.