May, 2015 Monthly Performance Report - not good

[afigg]

The May, 2015 Monthly Performance Report has been posted (64 page PDF). It is not a good monthly report for ridership, revenue, operating losses, etc due to the derailment of Regional #188 which shut down the southern NEC for days. Weather, track work, and service interruptions in other corridors added to the misery. I may post a longer summary sometime this weekend, but I figured I should start a thread on the May report for those interested.

Some quickie numbers: Adjusted operating loss for May was $63.1 million due to a drop in revenue. For the month of May, Acela ridership was down -19.2%, NE Regionals down -10.3%, Downeaster down -41.3% (major service cancellations for track work), Pennsylvanian down -11.2%, state supported corridors as a group down -5.0%.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

The Keystone was also down, with a -6.6% drop in passengers from May of last year, and down -13.7% in revenues. Compared to the budget forecast it's even worse.

The Keystone is a biggie, the third busiest corridor, one of four over 100,000 riders a month, and the only one outside of California. But I'm optimistic that it will quickly rebound from the effects of the crash.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Long distance took a hit, especially for the Eastern trains running on the NEC. So way down from last year: the Silver Star, the Silver Meteor, the Palmetto, the Crescent, the Cardinal (and the Carolinian). The % loss in passengers on these trains was twice or more than the -3.5% average for the LD trains.

The crash didn't account for all the LD losses -- the Empire Builder ridership was down -4.5%, the Lake Shore also down by -4.5%, and the Starlight by -5.1%.

But the Zephyr was up nicely at +6.0%, the SW Chief up +5.5%, even the 3/7th of a train Sunset Ltd. was up +2.6%. Spring can be beautiful in the deserts and mountains. But it was beautiful last year, so I like this growth.

The Eagle was down -2.3%, perhaps due to on-going track work on the St Louis-Chicago corridor, where ridership on the Lincoln trains was down -7.7%. Waiting for improvements to kick in from the Billion being spent on this stretch is like waiting for sleepers to come from the CAF order. LOL.

The CONO was down -0.6 and the Capitol down -0.4%, figures that look like noisy fluctuations, no more.

 

[neroden]

The May, 2015 Monthly Performance Report has been posted (64 page PDF). It is not a good monthly report for ridership, revenue, operating losses, etc due to the derailment of Regional #188 which shut down the southern NEC for days. Weather, track work, and service interruptions in other corridors added to the misery.

Mostly expected. As usual, I'll look at this geographically. And I tend to consider changes less than 3% to be fluctuation, unless there's a trend.

Big ridership & revenue losses on everything traversing or connecting to the NEC. On top of this, major trackwork hit the LSL & Empire Service. And different major trackwork hit the Downeaster. That's pretty much everything in the east, except the Auto Train (which did just fine). I am expecting reputational damage from 188 to hurt Amtrak ridership overall for the rest of the year at least.

Worth noting that the Star is hemmoraghing more riders than the Meteor -- maybe people who read the announcement about lack of dining car service.

The Vermonter is showing very definite ridership gains since the reroute, so that's good news! (And one of the new stations hasn't even opened yet!)

The Capitol Limited, LSL, and Michigan services are, I believe, still suffering ridership & revenue losses from the reputational aftereffects of Norfolk Southern's total system failure over the winter. NS really should pay damages for that, though they won't. I expect to see the rebound from this next year (2016) sometime, assuming there isn't another system failure. When the upstate New York track & station work finishes *and* people's short memories have forgotten last winter's delays, I expect a dramatic and relatively sudden rebound of LSL & Empire Service ridership. That might be next year or it might be in 2017... Well, unless CSX or NS manages to sabotage things again.

The whole Chicago hub is down on ridership and revenue. I can blame the Michigan situation on the aftereffects of the NS system failure. And Amtrak mentions trackwork for the Wolverines. And there is constant trackwork and bustitutions on the St. Louis-Chicago line (which probably also hurts St. Louis-Kansas City). I don't see an end to that in the forseeable future. There were lots of delays on the Texas Eagle both in Illinois and in Texas... but fewer than last year, so I guess its increase in ridership makes sense?

However, the year-over-year drop on the Carbondale and Quincy lines doesn't have an obvious explanation.

Perhaps lower gas prices are having a significant ridership effect in the Midwest? (They don't seem to have much of an effect in the Northeast.)

Severe flooding hit the Heartland Flyer.... hopefully that's a one-time event. The effects were dramatic, ridership down 50%.

The Empire Builder hasn't recovered ridership lost during the massive delays of the last couple of years, and has had some pretty big recent delays on top of that, so I'm not surprised to see ridership down again. I'm not sure when it will recover, but 2016 or 2017 is my guess.

The Zephyr is doing surprisingly well. Considering that there have been some well-publicized *massive* delays, I expect this to get worse for June and July.

The Southwest Chief is doing fine (and why wouldn't it? nothing went wrong there), and even the Sunset Limited is up a bit.

The Coast Starlight seems to be losing riders continually. This is actually a trend now, it's been consistent for several years. Perhaps due to increased prices? Revenue is staying flat. The shorter California services are all doing reasonably well. Cascades was hurt by trackwork.

----

The chief engineer's report is interesting. Bear is behind due to not getting cars. Beech Grove is behind but not by that much. Chicago is waaaay behind, and it's not entirely clear to me why.

 

[Anderson]

Ok, I got beaten to the punch on this one. I covered a lot of this in April, but I'll at least give some thoughts:

To begin with, ione thing to remember is that a lot of trains not on the NEC lost ridership from the crash. For example, if someone was traveling NYP-WAS-CHI-MSP their trip would have gotten axed. The LSL likely lost a lot of ridership due to this, for example, and I doubt that the Empire Corridor was immune either. Ditto Springfield. As a direct example of this sort of thing, I was seriously considering popping up to Montreal and back over the week of the derailment; suffice it to say that said trip did not happen, costing Amtrak four trips as a result (1 Acela, 2 Adirondack, 1 Regional). There was also a bit of ridership lost due to shock effects (these accidents are rare enough that they stick out, after all). The other side to this is that a lot of round trips were likely lost (e.g. someone would have traveled north of PHL on a disrupted day and returned 2-3 days later; both legs would have been lost as a result of the crash).

Ironically, the Vermonter may have been helped by the crash. I know this sounds odd, but Amtrak seems to have to fight to keep space open on the train NYP-NHV. With all ridership originating south of NYP wiped out by the crash for a week, space on the train would have opened up for NYP-Vermont traffic.

Shifting around to Virginia's Regionals, there seems to have been an effective hit of 10-15% on the trains for the lost week and side-effects. For most cities in VA, WAS is the #1 destination; NYP is #2, and there's a non-trivial amount of other traffic heading north of PHL that would have been dropped. Likewise, the lost ridership on the Meteor, Star, etc. seems to be about in line with the shares of ridership originating north of WAS (where I believe the trains terminated for a few days). In general, I'm thinking the crash smacked all of the directly affected LD trains by about 10%, the Cap and LSL (not on the NEC but interfacing with it) by a bit less than this, and others by about 1-2%.

 

[wolfspirit]

The Keystone was also down, with a -6.6% drop in passengers from May of last year, and down -13.7% in revenues. Compared to the budget forecast it's even worse.

The Keystone is a biggie, the third busiest corridor, one of four over 100,000 riders a month, and the only one outside of California. But I'm optimistic that it will quickly rebound from the effects of the crash.

The Keystone will have a huge month in Sept, from the Pope apocalypse. All trains are reserved seating only for that week (9/21-9/27), with some trains on all of those days running above baseline fares (unreserved fares) on the PA side. The $800,000 shortage from budget for May is only 5,000 people a day extra riding from LNC->PHL->LNC from hotel rooms. That's not unrealistic (not to mention the riders from even further out, as the only hotel rooms available are past LNC).

It means that they'll probably only beat forecast by a small amount, as opposed to crushing it, as they would have otherwise (remember, the pope visit was announced after this years budget was already made).

http://www.septa.org/media/short/2015/pictures/2015-06-16-wmof-city-press-release.pdf

Officials encourage passengers to book tickets as far in advance as possible, and based on those bookings Amtrak will add coaches – and possibly even operate extra trains – as necessary.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

… The Keystone is a biggie … I'm optimistic that it will quickly rebound ...

The Keystone will have a huge month in Sept, from the Pope apocalypse.

http://www.septa.org/media/short/2015/pictures/2015-06-16-wmof-city-press-release.pdf

Officials encourage passengers to book tickets as far in advance as possible, and based on those bookings Amtrak will add coaches – and possibly even operate extra trains – as necessary.

OMG. SEPTA will be more or less out of service unless you're going to try to see His Holiness. Non-Catholics will arrange their lives to stay home, or leave town before the Holy Weekend, and then return, oh, dayum, better take off the whole next week!

Fall foliage should be looking good in upper New England. Myrtle Beach could still be tolerably warm, and offering off-season rates. LOL.

Good luck to you, Wolfspirit, and to all of Philly.

 

[neroden]

Philadelphia and SEPTA's plan to SHUT DOWN THE CITY ENTIRELY for the Papal Visit is frankly insane. Sure, 28% of Pennsylvanians are Catholic, but, um, the rest aren't.

I expect the general reaction will be to get out of town entirely for the weekend. Some of the Catholics may do so too. Those who have to go to work and therefore can't get out of town will be really mad about the city shutdown.

Amtrak will probably benefit by SEPTA shutting down completely; anyone who needs to get in or out of Philadelphia is likely to take Amtrak. If they can even get to a *station*, that is, given the way the city roads are going to be shut down.

 

[wolfspirit]

Philadelphia and SEPTA's plan to SHUT DOWN THE CITY ENTIRELY for the Papal Visit is frankly insane. Sure, 28% of Pennsylvanians are Catholic, but, um, the rest aren't.

I expect the general reaction will be to get out of town entirely for the weekend. Some of the Catholics may do so too. Those who have to go to work and therefore can't get out of town will be really mad about the city shutdown.

Amtrak will probably benefit by SEPTA shutting down completely; anyone who needs to get in or out of Philadelphia is likely to take Amtrak. If they can even get to a *station*, that is, given the way the city roads are going to be shut down.

From what I understand, most of the shutdowns are based on planning from DHS.

But seriously, I'm thinking of taking a few days of vacation (and I live near PAO, a good 40 minutes from the city itself). Most buisnesses that I know have been running crisis planning meetings for several months. The message we have been getting from the city has been consistent for months "If you don't need to operate or be in the city for the conference, DO NOT COME." Hotel rooms that usually go for $60-80 a night here, went for $450-500, and are now sold out. There are only 40,000 hotel rooms in the greater Philly metro area, so I would expect to see people day tripping from NYC/WAS/even further out.

The big problem is that there is no way for a RR designed to handle ~150,000 people a day, to instead handle 2-3x that number. Many trains (including some keystones) are already SRO on the way to PHL (on the Harrisburg side, at least). We aren't going to talk about what happens to the city streets with the estimated 7,000 additional tour buses expected each day of the weekend.

(I may take my first LD train that week, go camping on one of the trails off the CL, depending on the weather)

EDIT: Woody: the Pope mass is at the end of the conference, not the start.