Analysis of the Gardner/Harris May '23 train rides, intentions, speculations

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I think most people would agree that they all should have Sightseers - but assuming for a moment that the car shortage is legitimate, the Capitol Limited and Texas Eagle were the appropriate to drop. I'd probably say Texas Eagle should be a bigger priority over the Capitol but definitely neither over any of the trains currently operating with them. Having said all that I certainly support bringing them back to both if the cars are there once they get back in service. Another problem remains the Chicago - Carbondale service. Until a solution is found to get that off Superliners and transition it to the Venture cars you're going to continue to have to put revenue Superliners or non revenue superliners like diners and sightseers behind its Superliner coaches for axle count - resolving that given the current status of Superliners in the fleet would be immensely helpful.
A source of mine with a direct line to people in AMTK management claims that around 200 Superliners are parked on rip track at Beech Grove, being stripped of parts to feed the active trainsets. That's 40% of the fleet gone with no intention of returning them to service. I'd say it's a legitimate car shortage.

There's every possibility that the Teagle could be converted to single level equipment at some point. It's literally illegal now to cut or curtail long distance services without explicit congressional approval thanks to IIJA, so they'll have to do something when they start running out of spare parts before new cars arrive sometime in the next 500 years.

As for the Illini/Saluki Superliners... they brought an F59 up to Michigan to test an electronic shunt for activating CN signals, hopefully eliminating the axle count requirement in the near future. Those cars are our only hope for any additional Superliner capacity on current bilevel trains.

However... I'm wondering what Caltrans' plans are for the California cars once their Ventures replace them on the San Joaquins and Capital Corridor. Perhaps they can run on the Surfliners and relieve the Superliners in use there, freeing up a few more. With some modifications, perhaps they can run as coaches themselves.
 
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None of my "hometown services" have sightseer lounges. (My home station is Baltimore, where both the Baltimore tunnels and the NY Penn Station tunnels prevent the use of Superliners or dome cars.)
The point is that nobody is volunteering to give away any of your services or amenities, so why are you volunteering to give away ours?

I think most people would agree that they all should have Sightseers - but assuming for a moment that the car shortage is legitimate, the Capitol Limited and Texas Eagle were the appropriate to drop.
The problem is that I don't trust this board to be honest or upfront about what's actually possible or necessary.
 
“A source of mine with a direct line to people in AMTK management claims that around 200 Superliners are parked on rip track at Beech Grove, being stripped of parts to feed the active trainsets. That's 40% of the fleet gone with no intention of returning them to service. I'd say it's a legitimate car shortage.”

“Or sabatage to make sure they are not ever returned to service?”

The truth is we don’t know.
 
The problem is that I don't trust this board to be honest or upfront about what's actually possible or necessary.
👍
You're far from alone in that.

The point is that nobody is volunteering to give away any of your services or amenities, so why are you volunteering to give away ours?
As a resident and taxpayer of a state that funds corridor services on its own dime, I'll volunteer the Northeast Corridor be subject to the same 100% local funding requirement for services under 750 miles the rest of us are, including capital expenses.

Hey, it's "profitable" right? So should be no problem...
 
It isn’t 100% local funding. Money from the national network grant also goes to state supported routes. States have a formula that determines what they have to pay but additional overages are covered by Amtrak’s grants.
State supported services are controlled by PRIIA, which dictates all costs on routes of 750 miles or less must be covered by local authorities.

If that has been amended to lift that statutory requirement I'm not aware of it. If Amtrak indemnifies states against cost overruns on their contracts, and uses network funds to do it, I'll accept that as possible.

If its not 100% it's darn close to it. The vast majority of costs must be borne by states after any initial grants to the states, not Amtrak run out.

One of the big complaints Washington DOT has on its state supported services has with Amtrak is its opaque accounting on determining the actual costs of operations. They suspect they're paying more than they should . I think if they could get another operator with guaranteed, low cost track access, they would. They're pretty fed up with Amtrak on that issue as well as others. I'm just pointing out that Minnesota will likely be in the same boat once they get their grant-supported "taste".
 
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State supported services are controlled by PRIIA, which dictates all costs on routes of 750 miles or less must be covered by local authorities.

If that has been amended to lift that statutory requirement I'm not aware of it. If Amtrak indemnifies states against cost overruns on their contracts, and uses network funds to do it, I'll accept that as possible.

If its not 100% it's darn close to it. The vast majority of costs must be borne by states after any initial grants to the states, not Amtrak run out.

One of the big complaints Washington DOT on its state supported services has with Amtrak is its opaque accounting. They suspect they're paying more than they should . I'm just pointing out that Minnesota will likely be in the same boat once they get their grant-supported "taste".

I believe there’s a formula that determines the state costs and it is indeed based on Amtrak accounting which of course has gotten questioned as you said - it’s a substantial amount and probably the vast bulk of costs in most cases but Amtrak uses its federal NN funds to cover further operational losses on state supported routes beyond what they get from state payments. Many of the routes routes actually are in the red even after state payments. The federal funding covers the balance.

To demonstrate:

https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/...rak-Monthly-Performance-Report-March-2023.pdf
If you go to route level results revenue includes the state payments. The 122.1 million loss on the state supported routes is covered by the NN grant. If you pull up the FRA’s new quarterly reporting you can see that the deficit on some of these routes is much higher if you take out state payments.
 
I believe there’s a formula that determines the state costs and it is indeed based on Amtrak accounting which of course has gotten questioned as you said - it’s a substantial amount and probably the vast bulk of costs in most cases but Amtrak uses its federal NN funds to cover further operational losses on state supported routes beyond what they get from state payments. Many of the routes routes actually are in the red even after state payments. The federal funding covers the balance.
I can't see how using national network funds to support services under 750 miles is legal under black letter PRIIA law, unless it's been amended or there's a obscure loophole in it somewhere. Because local sources bearing the full costs of services less than 750 miles is what PRIIA prima facie demands.

In any case we agree that states are responsible for the vast majority of costs on services under 750 miles other than the NEC.

If some state supported operations run in the red in Amtrak’s well baked books, well, those books are highly suspect as to accuracy and transparency. The recent RPA analysis of Amtrak's accounting is quite damning. And it's widely suspected by many state DOTs that Amtrak is using them as a cash cow.

At the end of the day, though, I'd be more than happy if the NEC got the same subsidy deal the rest of the country does, 100% local, 98% local, 95% local, however it winds up in the end. The rest of the country getting NEC's deal for corridor services works for me, too.
 
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This shows you:

https://railroads.dot.gov/elibrary/fy23-q1-financial-metrics
In this report you can see the percentage covered by passenger revenue and when adjusted with state operating payments. The overage that remains after this if any is covered by federal dollars. PRIIA stipulates that the states must make a payment and sets up the framework that determines the formula that is used to calculate what the state’s obligation is. I don’t think PRIIA was about totally divorcing these services from federal grants but more to ensure states had skin in the game and put them ultimately in charge. Don’t get me wrong - at the end of the day these services essentially belong to the states and they call the shots and pay a lot of money. But Amtrak can and does use federal money to cover the losses on the state supported business line after all state revenue is accounted for. If you took out state payments some of the services would have a lower fare box recovery than the long hauls. A termination of the federal grant for the network wouldn’t just kill the LDs - it would seriously damage the state supported business as well and probably kill a lot of those as well.
 
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This shows you:

https://railroads.dot.gov/elibrary/fy23-q1-financial-metrics
In this report you can see the percentage covered by passenger revenue and when adjusted with state operating payments. The overage that remains after this if any is covered by federal dollars. PRIIA stipulates that the states must make a payment and sets up the framework that determines the formula that is used to calculate what the state’s obligation is. I don’t think PRIIA was about totally divorcing these services from federal grants but more to ensure states had skin in the game and put them ultimately in charge. Don’t get me wrong - at the end of the day these services essentially belong to the states and they call the shots and pay a lot of money. But Amtrak can and does use federal money to cover the losses on the state supported business line after all state revenue is accounted for. If you took out state payments some of the services would have a lower fare box recovery than the long hauls. A termination of the federal grant for the network wouldn’t just kill the LDs - it would seriously damage the state supported business as well and probably kill a lot of those as well.
I never proposed terminating the NN grant, nor that states shouldn't support corridor services.

At the end of the day, I just want all states to have similar obligations in order to receive corridor services. To have the same amount of "skin in the game" as you say.

What I do hope for is that, if the 750 mile rule is ever amended, it will be done in such a way that it would significantly level the playing field between the NEC and the rest of the country in Federal support of corridor services.

But, of course, Nothing Else Counts.
 
I never proposed terminating the NN grant, nor that states shouldn't support corridor services.

Didn’t mean to imply that you did. More just wanted to clarify how it works. I’d like to see it amended so that Amtrak can self fund longer day routes which could assist with some network expansion. There isn’t a heck of a lot of difference between a route like the Carolinian and the Palmetto except an arbitrary number that was selected because one train was state funded before PRIIA and the other wasn’t and they at the time didn’t want to change the status quo. PRIIA should really be about the multi frequency corridors.
 
In looking at the reports, two things jump out. State payments are not broken out on a per train basis. There is a general system wide bucket for all state payments. State payments for individual services appear to be lumped in as operating revenue, presumably bundled together with ticket revenue. That represents unnecessary opacity. The second is "system/fixed costs" (on Amtrak's report) and "Fully adjusted operating costs" on the FRA's. Those figures include globally allocated costs, which Amtrak is notorious for shifting things around in and allocating costs to, prominently featured in RPA's analysis. To put a long story short, Amtrak is widely suspected of throwing costs they don't want showing up elsewhere into globally allocated costs. The RPA report is rife with examples.

In the case of the Cascades, the 5.5 M system/fixed costs are enough to erase a 2.6 M surplus.

Ideally, I'd like to see direct "above the rail" direct costs (fuel, crew, etc)broken out and become the prime metric measured against. I'd like to see local fixed costs, like station costs, broken out separately and allocated to the trains they support, not nationally. Maintenence bases should be allocated to the trains based in them, with the big ones perhaps globally or perhaps Bear to the NEC and Beech Grove to the rest. I know that trying to break things out too finely could introduce issues at places like Hialeah that support all Viewliner maintenance.
Global costs should really only consist of true corporate overhead, like headquarters costs, the reservations systems and maybe the big maintenance centers. Basically every effort should be made to make every cost that can be attributed to a specific line to that line, not just thrown into overhead.

That may make some things look worse and some things look better, but at least there'd be more transparency.

While they're at it, I'd like to see sleeper revenue and costs broken out separately from coach. I suspect, and I think others do as well, that broken out granularity would show sleepers make an above-the-rail profit, or at least break even, even allowing for revenue transfer to F&B for meals.
 
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MODERATOR'S NOTE: This thread as originally conceived has run its course, so it is time to lock it up and move along. Thank you for the lively meandering discussion. We will see if we can create a relevant new thread out of some of the material in this thread.
 
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