Fare buckets & capacity in the age of tri-weekly service

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Joined
Oct 2, 2018
Messages
105
Yield management (e.g. fare buckets) makes sense as a way to maximize revenue when you are dealing with limited capacity. However it makes little sense if you have unused capacity. In Amtrak’s case, once you have deployed every car that you have available, the fare bucket system allow you to (theoretically) sell the final seats or rooms at the highest possible price. However, it makes little sense to use higher prices to limit demand if you leave capacity sitting in the yards in the form of idle cars. In normal times, Amtrak doesn’t have many idle cars and thus the yield management system works (mostly).

However, in the era of tri-weekly service Amtrak has lots of idled equipment. Yet, in my tracking of the SW Chief since the beginning of tri-weekly service, the consists remain the same and many trains are leaving with sleeping accommodations sold out and the few remaining rooms sold at crazy high-bucket fares. Many trains are also leaving at 45% of total coach capacity, which is actually 90% of available seats due to the 50% capacity cap that Amtrak puts on coach seats. So, why isn’t Amtrak adding cars to these trains so that more rooms/seats are available at low(er) bucket fares?

It seems that high bucket fares shouldn't kick in until you have added every car available to a consist...
 
Because someone at Amtrak management doesn't want to make money. They're refusing to add cars to sold-out trains. There is no possible excuse for this.
 
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