Pacific Surfliner Ridership Update

Advertise with us
shop deals on amazon
Shop deals on ebay
Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
P

Paulus

Conductor
Joined
Jul 13, 2012
Messages
1,469
This is just a glorious amount of information from LOSSAN

Total ridership, total revenue, top 5 trains by ridership, bottom 5 trains by ridership, Total Station Pair Ridership FFY 2013-14 (looks like top 10 though and is just general volume), average monthly by station, average ridership by day of week, top 5 weekend trains by ridership, and average monthly ridership by train and by class (business or coach).
 
Paulus said:
This is just a glorious amount of information from LOSSAN

Total ridership, total revenue, top 5 trains by ridership, bottom 5 trains by ridership, Total Station Pair Ridership FFY 2013-14 (looks like top 10 though and is just general volume), average monthly by station, average ridership by day of week, top 5 weekend trains by ridership, and average monthly ridership by train and by class (business or coach).
Click to expand...
Not too surprised about the highest 5 trains vs the lowest 5. Pretty much sums up my experience on those train numbers.
 
Noted something interesting after pulling out every train's ridership: 761/1761, which would be the northbound Coast Daylight if that ever kicks off, is the second worst performing Surfliner (only 595, the 9:00pm departure out of San Diego to Los Angeles, does worse, and not by much). However, 790/1790, which would be the southbound Coast Daylight, is the third best performing Surfliner (beaten by 784 and 785).
 
Paulus said:
Noted something interesting after pulling out every train's ridership: 761/1761, which would be the northbound Coast Daylight if that ever kicks off, is the second worst performing Surfliner (only 595, the 9:00pm departure out of San Diego to Los Angeles, does worse, and not by much). However, 790/1790, which would be the southbound Coast Daylight, is the third best performing Surfliner (beaten by 784 and 785).
Click to expand...
One thing to consider is that 761/1761 is the only LAX-originating NB train. 790/1790 goes all the way to SAN. From what I can tell, such a large pile of ridership is LAX-SAN that any train only operating north of LAX is going to have its numbers sandbagged.

To be fair it isn't clear if extending 761/1761 to SAN would do that much to fix the issue, since you'd be looking at a departure at close to 0430 (there's probably a military market for such a train, but that's probably about all there is)...but I'm fairly sure the impact would still be non-zero...and I suspect you'd want to have your Coast Daylight start and end at the same points NB and SB if only to avoid giving customers headaches (e.g. "Why can I get to San Diego but not get back from San Diego?!?" questions...not unlike how I often feel about the Adirondack...><).
 
Anderson said:
Paulus said:
Noted something interesting after pulling out every train's ridership: 761/1761, which would be the northbound Coast Daylight if that ever kicks off, is the second worst performing Surfliner (only 595, the 9:00pm departure out of San Diego to Los Angeles, does worse, and not by much). However, 790/1790, which would be the southbound Coast Daylight, is the third best performing Surfliner (beaten by 784 and 785).
Click to expand...
One thing to consider is that 761/1761 is the only LAX-originating NB train. 790/1790 goes all the way to SAN. From what I can tell, such a large pile of ridership is LAX-SAN that any train only operating north of LAX is going to have its numbers sandbagged.
To be fair it isn't clear if extending 761/1761 to SAN would do that much to fix the issue, since you'd be looking at a departure at close to 0430 (there's probably a military market for such a train, but that's probably about all there is)...but I'm fairly sure the impact would still be non-zero...and I suspect you'd want to have your Coast Daylight start and end at the same points NB and SB if only to avoid giving customers headaches (e.g. "Why can I get to San Diego but not get back from San Diego?!?" questions...not unlike how I often feel about the Adirondack...><).
Click to expand...
Amtrak is currently suggesting that the Coast Daylight run San Diego to San Jose (and I suspect that'll be adopted because running a diesel Daylight into San Francisco is going to screw CAHSR and Caltrain all to heck). Departure would be more like 5-5:30AM with the current Daylight scheduling thoughts, and there should be a commuter market for that.
 
Paulus said:
Anderson said:
Paulus said:
Noted something interesting after pulling out every train's ridership: 761/1761, which would be the northbound Coast Daylight if that ever kicks off, is the second worst performing Surfliner (only 595, the 9:00pm departure out of San Diego to Los Angeles, does worse, and not by much). However, 790/1790, which would be the southbound Coast Daylight, is the third best performing Surfliner (beaten by 784 and 785).
Click to expand...
One thing to consider is that 761/1761 is the only LAX-originating NB train. 790/1790 goes all the way to SAN. From what I can tell, such a large pile of ridership is LAX-SAN that any train only operating north of LAX is going to have its numbers sandbagged.
To be fair it isn't clear if extending 761/1761 to SAN would do that much to fix the issue, since you'd be looking at a departure at close to 0430 (there's probably a military market for such a train, but that's probably about all there is)...but I'm fairly sure the impact would still be non-zero...and I suspect you'd want to have your Coast Daylight start and end at the same points NB and SB if only to avoid giving customers headaches (e.g. "Why can I get to San Diego but not get back from San Diego?!?" questions...not unlike how I often feel about the Adirondack...><).
Click to expand...
Amtrak is currently suggesting that the Coast Daylight run San Diego to San Jose (and I suspect that'll be adopted because running a diesel Daylight into San Francisco is going to screw CAHSR and Caltrain all to heck). Departure would be more like 5-5:30AM with the current Daylight scheduling thoughts, and there should be a commuter market for that.
Click to expand...
With frequent Cal Train and Capitol Corridor service, I don't think this would be too big of an issue. This would actually work out better giving people in Socal more options to get to San Jose.
 
Paulus said:
Noted something interesting after pulling out every train's ridership: 761/1761, which would be the northbound Coast Daylight if that ever kicks off, is the second worst performing Surfliner (only 595, the 9:00pm departure out of San Diego to Los Angeles, does worse, and not by much). However, 790/1790, which would be the southbound Coast Daylight, is the third best performing Surfliner (beaten by 784 and 785).
Click to expand...
595 is a combo Coster/Amtrak service train. How do they handle the Coaster passengers? Do they count them as revenue passengers?
 
I'm very interested in peering through this when I get home. Going to be on 580 from Oceanside to San Diego in around 30 minutes to do just that. Be forewarned there are some errors that immediately jumped out at me that may influence the opinions/posts of other members. Just a cursory look using my phone, but noticed this: the top 5 ridership page shows three trains that travel from SAN to SLO. In fact there is exactly one (777) that makes the northbound trip end-to-end.
 
wdscott said:
I'm very interested in peering through this when I get home. Going to be on 580 from Oceanside to San Diego in around 30 minutes to do just that. Be forewarned there are some errors that immediately jumped out at me that may influence the opinions/posts of other members. Just a cursory look using my phone, but noticed this: the top 5 ridership page shows three trains that travel from SAN to SLO. In fact there is exactly one (777) that makes the northbound trip end-to-end.
Click to expand...
While 777 is the only train that goes SAN - SLO by all train, 785 is a combo train/bus SAN - SLO via bus 43 at Santa Barbara. It looks like they are counting the bus connection in their figures.
 
seat38a said:
wdscott said:
I'm very interested in peering through this when I get home. Going to be on 580 from Oceanside to San Diego in around 30 minutes to do just that. Be forewarned there are some errors that immediately jumped out at me that may influence the opinions/posts of other members. Just a cursory look using my phone, but noticed this: the top 5 ridership page shows three trains that travel from SAN to SLO. In fact there is exactly one (777) that makes the northbound trip end-to-end.
Click to expand...
While 777 is the only train that goes SAN - SLO by all train, 785 is a combo train/bus SAN - SLO via bus 43 at Santa Barbara. It looks like they are counting the bus connection in their figures.
Click to expand...
Makes perfect sense. Hadn't crossed my mind. Now I'm 'really' interested.
 
Solana Beach is *much* busier than most of the other stations, almost as busy as Oceanside! Anyone know why?
 
The answer is in the timetable. From Oceanside south, only 3x daily trains in each direction make stops at any stations but Solana Beach, Old Town, and San Diego proper (namely, a scattering of trains NB...two in the morning and the last one in the evening...and the last three SB in the evening). Those stops are the Coaster stops which Amtrak added a year or two back.

Likewise, Solana is likely acting as a transfer stop to/from Coaster.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Solana Beach is the hop on and off point for lots of the suit and tie crowd on the Surfliner. Business people get off of here. Sometimes I have seen 3/4 of business class passengers empty out of here. There are quite a bit of businesses in the area away from the ocean.
 
For whatever reason the iPad AU app opens then closes Paulus' embedded link to his Surfliner Ridership Update blogpost (an all too frequent glitch).

Solution: Always post the URL along with the embed?

Alas No! I posted the direct URL's and same thing happened.

http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/2015_07_01_archive.html

http://reasonrail.blogspot.com/

Google was my friend here since the momentary glimpses of the page told me the blog name

Chaz
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Paulus said:
seat38a said:
Paulus said:
I've put up the extrapolated data, some extra charts, and some thoughts up on my blog
Click to expand...
So all in all, is the Surfliner services breaking even?
Click to expand...
My impression is that they're covering the cost of running the trains, but not the more fixed costs of having the rail service, including ticket agents.
Click to expand...
Got it. Sounds similar to the whole NEC. Profitable above the rail but not so much when you consider the upkeep of the rails and such. OTOH, most of the rail along the corridor, not all are owned by the local agencies with most a dedicated sales tax revenue stream to cover rail upgrades and station upkeep.
 
Paulus said:
My impression is that they're covering the cost of running the trains, but not the more fixed costs of having the rail service, including ticket agents.
Click to expand...
With the constant demands that Amtrak save money and cut amenities, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned ticket agents, especially those at the smaller stations.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest posts

Back
Top