Has E-Ticketing had a direct influence on Ridership?

[AmtrakBlue]

Our first "cellphone" was a car phone my husband got when he was trying his hand at real estate sales. This was in '91 or '92. When he had to go back to car sales (I had lost my job due to downsizing) in late '93, he put the car phone in my car. It came in handy years later when my car was getting old and breaking down. I bought my husband a cellphone probably in '94 or '95.

 

[BCL]

Our first "cellphone" was a car phone my husband got when he was trying his hand at real estate sales. This was in '91 or '92. When he had to go back to car sales (I had lost my job due to downsizing) in late '93, he put the car phone in my car. It came in handy years later when my car was getting old and breaking down. I bought my husband a cellphone probably in '94 or '95.

I thought the modern cell phone was invented by "The Most Interesting Man in the World".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLu18kpJjN4

Now I do remember going on a school tour in the late 80s where our guide carried around a Panasonic cell phone. It was bigger than a Motorola DynaTac (the "Brick Phone") and was carried via a shoulder strap like an old VCR. It had a separate handset with a cable connecting it to the main phone electronics.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Don't forget that the early cellphones were back in the days when we were still using 5-1/4" floppies which only held ?720 kb? of data. Things have gotten considerably smaller since then (except my belly :giggle: ).

 

[Ryan]

720kb were the high density floppies.

My first computer only had a low density drive (the disks held 360k) - I went out and bought the origininal Sim City when it came out and was hopelessly dissapointed when I put the first floppy in and all I could get was:

Not ready reading drive A
Abort, Rety, Fail?

 

[BCL]

720kb were the high density floppies.

My first computer only had a low density drive (the disks held 360k) - I went out and bought the origininal Sim City when it came out and was hopelessly dissapointed when I put the first floppy in and all I could get was:

Not ready reading drive A
Abort, Rety, Fail?

The Apple II used a single sided, single density 5-1/4" floppy with a 140 KB capacity. It didn't have dual heads, and one trick was to buy "double sided" floppies that came from the factory with two cutouts in the jacket (taping them was the write protect) and where the user would manually flip to access the other side. However, it was possible to take a double-sided floppy meant for dual-head drives and cut out a notch yourself. I'd done that many times. I also remember seeing notch punchers that were designed to cut a perfect notch every time. Although the standard was a rectangular notch, I'd heard of some people successfully using a hole puncher and maybe punching the disk a few times to make a wider notch.

 

[Nathanael]

In Amtrak's FY2013 budget (http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/345/484/AmtrakFY13-Budget-Comprehensive-Business-Plan-w-appx-052413.pdf), they used the services of a consulting firm with sophisticated models (read: monkey with a dart board) to break down the projected revenue increase in 2013 and identify which source is responsible for which portion of the increase. Their conclusion is that "Impact of eTicketing" adds $900,000 additional revenue during the 2013 fiscal year. That's less of an impact than "Improved Acela WiFI" (2.2 million), or "Impact of WiFi on short distance routes" (1.5 million), but still greater than $0.
Of course, the budget also says an additional $2.8 million is required in FY2013 to finish rolling out eTicketing to all ticketing and passenger scenarios. There's nothing that points to a reduction in operating expenses due to the impact of eTicketing. You would think there might be one, but might be currently offset by additional training costs or something. Even if there was a net reduction, I don't know if their consultant would know how to develop a formula to guess at that.

The expected reduction of operating expenses is related to reducing the number of staff doing back-end processing of paper tickets, which is done at a facility somewhere in the Southwest (was it San Antonio?). That reduction in expenses will not come until at least a full year after the majority of the implementation of e-ticketing, as they are still processing old paper tickets for that long.

 

[BCL]

In Amtrak's FY2013 budget (http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/345/484/AmtrakFY13-Budget-Comprehensive-Business-Plan-w-appx-052413.pdf), they used the services of a consulting firm with sophisticated models (read: monkey with a dart board) to break down the projected revenue increase in 2013 and identify which source is responsible for which portion of the increase. Their conclusion is that "Impact of eTicketing" adds $900,000 additional revenue during the 2013 fiscal year. That's less of an impact than "Improved Acela WiFI" (2.2 million), or "Impact of WiFi on short distance routes" (1.5 million), but still greater than $0.
Of course, the budget also says an additional $2.8 million is required in FY2013 to finish rolling out eTicketing to all ticketing and passenger scenarios. There's nothing that points to a reduction in operating expenses due to the impact of eTicketing. You would think there might be one, but might be currently offset by additional training costs or something. Even if there was a net reduction, I don't know if their consultant would know how to develop a formula to guess at that.

The expected reduction of operating expenses is related to reducing the number of staff doing back-end processing of paper tickets, which is done at a facility somewhere in the Southwest (was it San Antonio?). That reduction in expenses will not come until at least a full year after the majority of the implementation of e-ticketing, as they are still processing old paper tickets for that long.

10-rides still need to be processed when they're used up. I'm not sure about monthlies. I'm guessing the passenger gets to keep them.

 

[amtkstn]

Paper tickets were processed in EL Paso Texas.