July 2013 MPR Analysis
NEC
Acela: Ridership was up 4.2%, or about 11,000 for the month. Revenue was up extremely sharply (+12.5%), likely owing to a nice confluence of increased ridership, a fare hike, and capacity pressure triggering higher buckets. There was also an apparent relative increase in FC ridership, but the impact there seems to have been negligible at best. In particular, this is one of the few months that the Acela has beaten its budgeted projections. YTD, the Acela is still having issues...between Sandy and a number of laggging months, there's a lot of ground that will need to be made up on the ridership and revenue fronts to make the budget. PPR for the month was $159.11 (vs. $147.43 last year) and $159.65 YTD (vs. $150.22 last year).
NE Regional: Ridership and revenue were up noticeably (+2.0% and +7.3%, respectively), albeit not nearly as strongly as the Acela. However, at least some of this limitation likely owes to capacity issues and the fact that high-bucket fares are already in the stratosphere for a lot of markets. Also weighing here, as noted in the report, is a partial unwind of the spike in PHL-BOS ridership (although ridership in this market is still up from where it was before the spike). PPR was $71.06 for the month (vs. $67.56 last year) and $70.30 YTD (vs. $66.76 last year).
Short Corridors
Results in this category are generally solid across the board, with increases in the 2%-6% range on a lot of trains. As usual, there are a raft of exceptions both ways. On the low side:
-The Ethan Allen (cause unknown)
-The Maple Leaf (somewhat stagnant over the last year or two; I think track work may be to credit/blame for this)
-The Illini/Saluki and IL Zephyr/Carl Sandburg (the latter has a trackwork problem; not sure about the former)
-The Heartland Flyer (recent service disruptions from a tornado, IIRC)
-WAS-NPN (strictly an accounting result; will discuss elsewhere)
-The Pere Marquette
On the high side, we have:
-The Lincoln Service. Ridership was up 73% and revenue up 110%...mainly due to service disruptions ending. Note that it didn't meet budget for the month...but historically, post-disruption recoveries tend to fall a bit short and year-over-year rebounds take a year or two. It should be noted that this rebound is responsible for close to 1/3 of the increase for the month.
-The Empire Service (NYP-ALB): The Empire seems to have "broken out" over the last few years. The YTD numbers are weaker than the last month or two, but that's down to Sandy more than anything.
-Though within the middle range of ridership, the Hiawathas seem to be recovering from the "bus hit". It's listed as being a train still dealing with an impact...at +5% above both last year /and/ budget, I'd say it's dealing with it pretty well for a change. I only note this because of the incongruity here.
-The Surfliner also gets a note for its revenue/PPR increase. I'll also note, per above, that the Surfliner had an amazing August and that PPR was up about 5% in both cases, so it looks like another fare increase hit it.
-The San Joaquins are burning up the ridership tables; barring a downward surprise in September, it seems likely to be up by about 7.5-8.0% for the year, and around 85,000 overall (through July, it's up 64k, and August adds another 12k or so to that). It's worth noting that this doesn't translate into revenue...PPR is down, as revenue is "only" up 7% for the month (and 2% for the year), yielding a decline of about 5%. There's no telling if this is revenue management or a behavioral shift.
-The Blue Water had a solid month in spite of trailing YTD.
-The Pennsylvanian had a bumper month. The ridership seems to be partly down to "We have a train?!?" ridership from the discontinuation fights on the one hand, and a fare hike on the other.
--Though ridership is within that "middle range", the Keystones showed strong revenue growth as well. The fact that PPR was up about 7% in both cases points to a fare increase and/or modest yield/load pressure.
Finally, the Virginia trains:
-The Lynchburger had a /very/ good month (I'd have to check my records, but I'm pretty sure that 18,252 is either a record or close to it; it's also 294.4 passengers per train). The revenue increase roughly matched the spike in ridership.
--Of note is just over 10% of those passengers both board and disembark in VA. Put another way, about 260 passengers (close to four cars full) were on the train crossing the Long Bridge on an average day.
-The WAS-NPN/NFK services continue to do well combined. For July, the combined services had 69,688 riders (+17.9% over last July), and revenue was up 14.0% vs. last July. YTD, combined ridership is 588,039 (+14.5%) and revenue is +15.3%.
--Assuming a year-end increase of 15%, that would put combined ridership at somewhere around 717,000...behind the Cascades and Hiawathas (albeit giving them a run for their money) but ahead of the Lincoln Service, Wolverines, and Downeaster. Combined revenue is on par with the San Joaquins and just behind the Empire Service.
--On the ridership front, it seems that the Hampton Roads lines will be stuck "in position" for another few years given the distance between them and the next two routes above them. On the revenue front, it seems highly likely that they will overtake the San Joaquins either this year or next (expect a photo finish for FY13...the Hampton Roads trains are less than $300k behind YTD, and they didn't have Norfolk from 10/1-12/12) and the Empire Service sometime around the expansion of service to Norfolk.
A P.S. to this section: Under "Special Trains", note the three riders and $95,000 from last year. This is why I generally ignore that line: $95k is negligible in the scheme of things, and that (rather amusing) PPR is just odd. That said, I can't help but wonder who decided to fork over $32k/head for an excursion last year.
Long Distance
The overview here is that we're going for a nail-biter as to how ridership ends up. For reference, the LD trains have collectively been on an astounding winning streak: They haven't posted a ridership drop since FY04/05/06, and that drop was by and large attributable to the Three Rivers getting axed and the Sunset getting cut back. Even so, the winning streak has been six years running (including, most impressively, 08/09). YTD, ridership is down 3,523...but I can find that drop about five times over on the Silvers. What happened in August is anyone's guess, but I'm hopeful the LD trains will pull this one out. Zooming in a bit:
-13 of the 15 showed ridership increases. The exceptions were the Starlight and the Chief on the low side.
--The Starlight had a smashing July last year, so I think you can argue that it got 2-3 years' gains all at once. The Starlight's ridership was up 11.4% last year...when something like that happens and it's not related to a service change (added cars, altered schedule, resolved disruptions, etc.), the growth is often hard-pressed to sustain itself. That said, based on the CA report above, it seems like the Starlight just "took the month off".
-The revenue situation was more mixed (9 of 15 showed increases), and PPR was only up on the Cardinal, Zephyr, Eagle, Starlight, and Auto Train. A lot of these increases were down to increases on the sleeper side of things (for example, the Zephyr saw a revenue increase of $414,543: $241,850 from sleepers and $172,693 from coach; put another way, 22.5% of the passengers accounted for 58.3% of added revenue).
-YTD, the LD situation is scattershot. Following up on the last point, LD train revenue is up $5.07m. Sleeper revenue is up $5.11m, meaning that coach revenue would seem to be off ever-so-slightly.
Overall
Amtrak seems to be doing quite a good job at closing its losses overall. Seasonable profitability has seemed likely for some time (IIRC the Maple Leaf broke 100% CR last summer). Pulling up the financial summaries of routes, one odd wrinkle shows up: Expenses on "Freight and other customers" dropped between June 2013 and July 2013, which makes no sense. It also seems possible that Amtrak is allocating more costs to the summer at the moment; another observation is that the NEC's business to run low in July vs. May and June.
Another matter of concern is the massive, seemingly unmerited drop in NTS cost revocery. I'm not sure what the issue is here, and looking at the two YTD operating results reports doesn't shed any more light on the discrepancy between this and the decrease in required operating support.