Idea: Western LD trains split up into multiple shorter trains?

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Texan Eagle

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Reading through the thread on sleeper amenities being eliminated and all the talk around need to reduce losses, an idea stuck me- what % of passengers actually travel the insanely long western LD trains end to end over 40-50 hours? Would it improve performance and ridership if the loooong western LD routes are broken up into two or three and advertised separately as such?

For example- Empire Builder has 6 trainsets, you can run 16-18 hour (20 if you want to stretch it) long daily routes using 2 trainsets, so split up Empire Builder into three trains as follows-

Train #7A/8A: Chicago-Minot "Empire Builder"

Depart Chicago 2.30pm

Arrive Minot 8.30am

Depart Minot 11.30am

arrive Chicago 5.30am.

9 hours for maintenance in Chicago

~~~~~

Train #7B/8B: Minot-Spokane "Big Sky Country"

Depart Minot 12.00pm

Arrive Spokane 4.00am

Depart Spokane 6.00am

Arrive Minot 10.00pm

Overnight layover in Minot for maintenance.

~~~~~

Train #7C/8C: Spokane-Seattle "Cascade Mountaineer"

Depart Spokane 6.00am

Arrive Seattle 1.30pm

Depart Seattle 3.00pm

Arrive Spokane 10.30pm

Corridor style day train, coaches and cafe/lounge only. Overnight layover in Spokane for maintenance.

~~~~~

Train #27/28: Spokane-Portland "Columbia River Runner"

Depart Spokane 5.00am

arrive Portland 1.00pm

Depart Portland 2.00pm

Arrive Spokane 10.00pm

Corridor style day train, coaches and cafe/lounge only. Overnight layover in Spokane for maintenance.

Advantages-

~ Disturbances in one part of the route will not impact performance of other parts

~ Frees up some equipment since 2 trains are now day trains. They can have 1 sleeper each for passengers who feel the desire to splurge on sleeper for day run.

Disadvantage-

~ End to end CHI-SEA ride becomes longer and involves two change of trains, but I have timed them such that those few passengers determined to ride the whole way can still do it without requiring overnight hotel stay
 
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So, what do you do if one segment gets screwed up royally? Put people up in Minot/Spokane overnight?
 
Daytime trains to supplement existing LD routes good idea, using them to replace LDs not a good idea. Good way to eliminate tour business and to force out people who actually want to get from Chicago to Seattle. Sounds like something railroads would use prior to Amtrak to kill trains.
 
Daytime trains to supplement existing LD routes good idea, using them to replace LDs not a good idea. Good way to eliminate tour business and to force out people who actually want to get from Chicago to Seattle. Sounds like something railroads would use prior to Amtrak to kill trains.
It is similar to what Southern did in the 60s, aka the "Brosnan Trap". To drive away business to justify disontinuations.
 
I have been from Riverside/Los Angeles to Chicago and back twice. Am going to New Orleans and back this summer. I don't think I'd be interested in a 3 day ride vs the 40+ hr rides that I take now. It's just too much hassle to get on and off a train 2-3X to get anywhere.
 
Reading through the thread on sleeper amenities being eliminated and all the talk around need to reduce losses, an idea stuck me- what % of passengers actually travel the insanely long western LD trains end to end over 40-50 hours? Would it improve performance and ridership if the loooong western LD routes are broken up into two or three and advertised separately as such?
I have no numbers, but just from my 7 week trip to the USA in 2012 I would say 70 - 80% of sleeping car passengers go the full distance on the EB & CZ. So your proposal would be most unattractive to most travellers as the ONLY trains. As an extra daily train, good idea!
 
So...what do people do for three hours in Minot? Get annoyed that they're sitting for three hours in Minot?

The 45 minutes at WAS feels like an eternity and there's an actual reason for it in the first place.
 
This is crazy, just the increased # of engines and equipment would make it a money looser.
It would need less, not increased number of equipment.

Currently the six trainsets of Empire Builder need 12 engines between CHI-SPK plus additional 6 between SPK-PDX, so total 18 engines are involved in running EB. In the idea I proposed, CHI-Minot will need 4 engines, Minot-Spokane will need 4 engines, Spokane-Seattle will need 4 engines and Spokane-Portland will need 2 engines (since it already runs fine with single engine), so total 16 engines instead of current 18.

Similarly, there are 6 Dining Cars and 6 SSLs in use on the EB currently, with this new setup you can do with 4 Dining Cars and 8 SSLs (SPK-SEA and SPK-PDX both being daytime corridor trains of 7-8 hour length can do with SSL with an improved Cafe menu, similar to how 7-8 hour length runs on East Coast have Cafe Car, not full fledged Dining Car).
 
So...what do people do for three hours in Minot? Get annoyed that they're sitting for three hours in Minot?
So.. what do people do for 3-4 hours in San Antonio currently when Texas Eagle waits for Sunset Limited. Or, what do people do in Chicago for several hours when connecting from western LDs to eastern LDs? Get annoyed? Well, sorry but you can't have every town in the country connected directly to every other town in the country. If your route involves layovers, you wait. And this is not limited to Amtrak.. what do you do on flights that route you through hubs with a layover? What about on Greyhound that involves changing buses? It's the same concept everywhere.
 
Assume a long distance train serves only 4 cities: ABCD its markets are AB AC AD BC BD CD = 6. break it up into three trains and it only serves AB BC and CD = 3.
 
The only way LD trains have to make up for their slow running speeds is to operate 24/7, overnight. Let's not throw away that critical passenger rail advantage!

Also, I'd hate to be a passenger bound between one stop east and west of Spokane!
 
They should be split up into multiple shorter day trains (except perhaps the Coast Starlight), but they should also be dropping large segments of their routes so that they can run multiple frequencies on that route with the current equipment (or move the equipment elsewhere).

For the record:

10.5% of passengers, nearly half of whom are coach, ride the Empire Builder in excess of 2000 miles. 28.5% ride less than 300 miles/

12.2%, with a similar breakdown, do so for the California Zephyr. 36.4% ride less than 300 miles.

14.2%, a slight majority of whom are coach, do so on the Southwest Chief. 20.2% ride less than 300 miles.

11.2% ride CONO from Chicago to NOLA. 31.3% ride less than 300 miles.

2.6% ride the Texas Eagle in excess of 2,000 miles (3.7% between 1300-1399 miles). 52.4% ride less than 300 miles.

8.7% ride the Sunset Limited LA-NOLA. 17% ride less than 300 miles.

5.4% ride the Starlight 1300-1399 miles. 38.3% ride less than 300 miles.

Also for consideration:

With full occupancy, at average fare yields, per mile a coach car earns more gross revenue than a sleeper car on the following trains: Silver Star, Silver Meteor, City of New Orleans, and Crescent. Even the Capitol Limited, the best performing for sleepers relative to coaches, earns only 137.61% of the revenue of a coach car. Occupancy ratios are probably fairly different however; sleeper passengers do not exceed 20% of any train's total ridership (Capitol Limited and Coast Starlight).

Source for all numbers is NARP ridership statistics
 
Another insane proposal.
I like this proposal a lot. It makes great sense to me. Of course, I never travel past Minot without stopping to see my aged mother, so the idea of changing trains in Minot isn't a problem. Others might not have that sentimental reason, and I can't imagine that many would like to wait hours for a train in Minot, with its pretty but quite small depot, in January, when it's 30 below and the only thing stopping the wind between you and the north pole is a few barbed wire fences. There is a bar a few blocks away that has Two Hearted Ale (the best beer brewed in America) on tap, but it isn't open at 8:30 am.
 
So, what do you do if one segment gets screwed up royally? Put people up in Minot/Spokane overnight?
And there's one big problem. I believe that you could split a train like this at Denver (hotel physically located in train station) or Chicago (you *could* locate a hotel in the train station if you wanted to, and there's a hotel a block away.) But I don't think you can justify the building of a large hotel in Minot or Spokane for displaced passengers.

It gets worse! You need a (small) maintenance base at the end of any long line. But there's no justification for a maintenance base in Minot or Spokane unless there are several more trains running from & to those places.

[name=Gemuser" post="508217" timestamp="1393377120]

I have no numbers, but just from my 7 week trip to the USA in 2012 I would say 70 - 80% of sleeping car passengers go the full distance on the EB & CZ. So your proposal would be most unattractive to most travellers as the ONLY trains. As an extra daily train, good idea!

It's actually a lower percentage than that (on the CZ, a huge number of sleeping car passengers are going to Denver). But the sleeping car passengers are taking *specific* long trips, and the Minot/Spokane split proposal would require too many of them to change trains. On the Empire Builder, for example, there's a lot of Chicago to Montana and St. Paul to Montana sleeper ridership, and you'd force *all* of them to change trains. In Minot ?!?

You can't just split a train service willy-nilly at any random point without ruining ridership. If you're going to force a transfer you need to do so at a natural or logical point for the passengers, which means a huge city, and for sleeper service it also means during the day. And you need a maintenance base there. (And of course the transfer should be as quick as possible when everything is on schedule.)

(This is actually the same principle as the design of forced transfers in low-frequency city bus systems. A timed transfer at the bustling downtown transfer center at midday, people will do it. A transfer at a random dark street corner in the middle of the night, no good.)

So Amtrak's main split of almost all services -- at the huge city of Chicago -- usually works, as long as the maintenance base is doing its job. The failure of trains to "run through" New York City, requiring changes of train, is OK. The changes of trains at LA from the Pacific Surfliner are tolerable. The train change from the Capitol Limited to whatever at DC is tolerable. The train change from the Coast Starlight to the Cascades at Seattle for Vancouver BC is tolerable. But you simply can't have a change of trains at Minot.

I do believe that a split of the California Zephyr at Denver could be viable, and would use the same amount of equipment (it's the least equipment-efficient of the daily LD trains), but then I also think it's worth starting additional services from Denver which would justify the necessary maintenance base.

But the only conceivable place you could reasonably split the Empire Builder is Minneapolis/St. Paul, and that would be iffy, would require a new maintenance base at St. Paul -- and would probably use *more* equipment. If you have the extra equipment, you can do better by providing a second frequency from St. Paul to Chicago and continuing to run the Empire Builder through.

Likewise, the Southwest Chief could concievably be split at Albuquerque or Kansas City, but nowhere else, and either of those splits would *definitely* require more equipment (the SW Chief is very equipment-efficient). And again, need a new maintenance base. So it doesn't get you anything unless you're expanding service already.

Splitting the Crescent at a grand downtown station in Atlanta would probably work out OK, and avoid the propagation of problematic delays on the southern end to the rest of the line -- but it's actually impossible: there is no grand downtown station in Atlanta, and the current Atlanta station doesn't even allow for cutoff cars, let alone storing and maintaining an entire train! And of course a maintenance base would only be justified for multiple trains radiating out from Atlanta, which there should be but there aren't.

You get the picture, I'm sure. The problem is precisely one of running across an area with few other passenger trains; even if required change of train seems desirable to avoid propagation of delays, it leaves you with nowhere suitable to place the required change of train. The existing "train change" points are at huge world-class cities with lots of passenger train service (well, except New Orleans) for good reasons.

Even Albany, NY, which does have a maintenance base, proved to be too small for an acceptable forced transfer point, as the customers of the Lake Shore Limited to Boston told Amtrak. (Though the fact that the station is actually outside Albany with nothing at all within walking distance probably has something to do with the undesirability of the transfer in that case.)
 
Bleah. Screwed up my quoting again. Most of that text is mine. Anyway...

Also for consideration:

With full occupancy, at average fare yields, per mile a coach car earns more gross revenue than a sleeper car on the following trains: Silver Star, Silver Meteor, City of New Orleans, and Crescent.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics. Occupancy rates are different, of course (and, specifically, they're usually lower in coach). Also, you can't multiply the "average fare yield" by the occupancy rate to get the gross revenue.

Worse for the spreader of these bad statistics, demand is different for different trips: in general, the sleeper trips are trips which would not be taken in coach; replacing the sleeper with a coach would just lose the income. The coach occupancy rate would then be lower and so would the average fare yield in coach, but hey, you would have replaced the "less profitable sleepers" with "more profitable coaches", right? Wrong.

Paulus, you obviously didn't read my essays in the other thread: I can't really blame you, since they were so long.

The key point: the problem is not amenities, the problem is route segments.

The Crescent suffers from very low demand south of Atlanta, which is undoubtedly distorting the numbers. It's inadvisable to be running so many sleeping cars south of Atlanta, because they're running empty or selling cheap. Then again, it seems to be inadvisable to be running so many coaches south of Atlanta, too, since they're also running empty or selling cheap.

This is completely screwing up the accounting there. With a proper Atlanta station, one could run the full Crescent to Atlanta and a continuing train (with very few cars) onward to New Orleans, and that would actually make sense. And the numbers for the train *north of Atlanta* would show that the sleepers get higher revenue per car than coaches. Or with much faster tracks south of Atlanta, people might actually ride the train south of Atlanta.

The Silver Star suffers from a similar problem to the Crescent, in that nobody's going to buy a roomette from Miami to Tampa. It really needs to terminate in Tampa and connect to a day train to Miami -- the problem there is the lack of a maintenance base in Tampa. There's a similar, smaller problem selling roomettes from Orlando to Miami on the Silver Meteor.

Further, the Silver Star and Silver Meteor have both been badly hurt by trackwork in Florida and by weather disruptions which prevented the trains from running their entire route -- this *particularly* hurts ridership (and the ability to charge high prices) on the longer trips, which are the ones taken by sleeper.

It does not surprise me that those three trains *currently* have sleepers underperforming relative to coaches, but I believe this is entirely a matter of special conditions due to bad trip segments.

I will say that the CONO does seem to be underperforming on sleeper revenue, without obvious problem segments or disruption, and it would be nice to figure out why. I think I know, however. The big markets along the line are:

- Chicago to Carbondale and points north: mostly take Illini/Saluki corridor trains

- New Orleans to Memphis and points south: it's a day train here, nobody will buy sleepers

- Chicago to Memphis, Jackson, and New Orleans: this is it for the sleeper demand, basically three city-pairs. And none of the connections make any sense at New Orleans, so anyone doing this is actually travelling to or from one of those three cities.

The CONO as a whole is a particularly short train and has relatively poor ridership, showing low demand overall. The speeds on the route are slower than driving but not outrageously slower. I must attribute the problems primarily to low population along the route. Secondary problems may include poor connecting transit, low awareness of trains in the region, and a lack of social/cultural links between Mississippi/Louisiana and Chicago.

The LSL has a similar overlap with a "corridor" at its east end, but the sleeper demand includes Chicago to Buffalo/Rochester/Syracuse/Albany/Boston/NY, which is a lot more demand. Especially given that there are closer cultural links between Chicago and the Northeast than between Chicago and Louisiana/Mississippi, and there is actual same-day connecting service in multiple directions at Chicago, New York, Boston, and even Schenectady and Buffalo.

Hooray for network effects. Understand them. Use them.

I don't want to remove any of the remaining transcontinental connections purely for network effect reasons; severing the network is always bad.

They are quite impractical until there is more underlying network for them to connect to, however. The three-a-week services barely even provide a network effect because their scheduling is so impractical.

The trouble with the idea of chopping up the transcontinentals to provide more shorter-distance service is that the tradeoff doesn't actually exist; you wouldn't get more shorter-distance service, which requires negotiations with Class I railroads, state support, track purchases, etc. (That said, if there was a good shorter-distance service all ready to go which *just* needed a bunch of sleepers and observation cars, I'd reconsider. Tell me when that happens or pigs fly; the sticking point is always, always, track improvements and slots.)

The trouble with the idea of converting them to a bunch of connected trains (whether day trains or not) is that it would actually be far worse for the bottom line -- not least due to the new maintenance bases required.

And of course the trouble with the idea of just running them as day trains is that they run too long.

The only reason to chop the routes up would be to get better On Time Performance. Given the nightmare which has been Amtrak OTP, if it did give significantly better OTP on either half, I'd probably say, chop the route in half now. But where would this be the case? This might be true for splitting the Zephyr at Denver (remove the UP / BNSF handoff) or terminating the Coast Starlight at Portland (remove the UP / BNSF handoff) but I don't see why it would help anywhere else -- and both of those would require new maintenance bases.
 
This is one of those threads to break out the popcorn or chips, sit back, and watch the action. :p

Semi-seriously though, the proposal would lose even more money than just running the LD trains. Several questions. 1) What happens to those shorter-medium distance passengers who are traveling between cities on either side of the break in service? 2) If a train gets seriously delayed, are the trains down the "chain" supposed to wait or will people end up sometimes spending an extra day in wherever on their way to or from Chicago?
 
Ways to kill ridership:

*Make people connect overnight in a city they otherwise wouldn't have any reason to want to visit (i.e. Spokane, Minot; sorry Ispolkom)

*Make people get off a train at 4 am to get on another train at 6 am.

*Have a train arrive in a large city like Chicago at 5:30 am.

Ways to increase costs for no benefit:

*Add new maintenance bases/staff in cities that would otherwise not really need them (including maintenance shops, parts, spare equipment, etc.)

*Pay host railroad to store train overnight on their railroad.

*Have OBS crew base in Minot and/or Spokane.

*Run a train solely between Minot and Spokane
 
Texan Eagle, I appreciate your creativity on this subject.

There are seemingly more passengers traveling on shorter segments on a LD train than beginning to the end of the line. However, the major barriers that make your concept difficult to follow include the fact that there are requirements to change trains enroute. There would be delays between trains at any given interchange point and a major inconvenience to passengers and crew.

I can't help but look at your concept the same way that I view the Megabus system east and south of Chicago. Short sectors between certain cities with a lot of inconvenience for people travelling 700 to 1500 miles. The off-loading, waiting and re-boarding new departures even for young adults is difficult at best. It is a major hassle for many people. For many reasons, Amtrak LD services running parallel to Megabus routes beat the living daylights out of the bus in comfort, dependability and value. Cooped up In a seat for 6 hours per sector with one stanky blue-room and no room to roam? No thank you.

I could be wrong but I view the LD passenger that travels between CHI and SEA as the target client. They pay more for the total onboard service and seemingly help drive the yield upward on any given trip. Of course, multiple passengers using a seat on short sectors on a CHI - SEA run also create good yield and in some cases might earn more.

If I were running Amtrak I would focus on comfort and safety. I'd want to get all passengers onboard, settled in, fed well and entertained for 40 hours (or whatever time that they would be on the trip) with a minimum of hassle for passengers and crew. I am a firm believer that quality service is job one and risk mitigation is a big factor. That would mean I wouldn't want passengers changing horses at 4am and walking around on a snowy, windswept platform with luggage and a blanket wrapped around themselves. (Or stopping at some unsupervised curbside bus stop with no facilities at 4am).

I respect your brainstorming and your willingness to look at the "what if" factor; and I certainly don't have all the answers. But for me, bouncing off and on trains to four different sections of the SWC from Chicago to LA would drive me crazy off the train and over to Midway to ride Southwest.

I'd like to see Amtrak focus on selling comfort, safety and value (which they appear to be doing) because as they master that challenge, the revenue should increase.
 
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TexasEagle: Like 7deuceman, I give you credit for considering the idea. There are good reasons not to do it, but it's worthwhile to analyze exactly what those reasons are.
 
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