Privatize Amtrak

[Ryan]

Yes, there are profits to be had in each of those fields. But you need expertise in those fields to succeed. Amtrak doesn't have expertise in these new and completely different industries you're talking about. Getting that expertise would cost tons of money. Buying the land needed to develop these ideas would cost tons more. Who is going to pay?

Nobody, because those in power thinks like you.

Well in your fantasy land who is going to pay?

 

[GP35]

You could look at it this way. According to the 2010 annual report Amtrak lost 1.3 billion dollars.

Let's be very, very optimistic and say your casino operation was able to generate 1.3 billion dollars a year profit.

Well then you've done good 1.3 billion dollar loss from rail operations with 1.3 billion dollar gain from casino operation for a net profit of zero.

But wait, this is a private company and the shareholders demand a large return on investment. Zero isn't going to make them happy.

What can you do?

Close down rail operations and keep the Amtrak casino.

No trains but Amtrak makes lots of money.

If each station makes a profit operating a hotel/restaurant/casino/ etc etc. Add those profits up from each station on a route, then add the trains revenue, that 1 LD train pays for itself.

 

[GP35]

You're missing the obvious point, even though it's been pointed out to you over and over again.

Why take whatever profitable scheme you're going to come up with and saddle it with $1.3 billion in train related losses?

If there was profit to be made in running passenger trains, a business would have certainly stepped up to make that profit.

I said this applies to LD trains ONLY. Amtrak could at least pay for LD trains this way.

Amtrak could never try this because it is too radical for the powers at Amtrak and congress. It is to creative for this forum.

 

[Ryan]

Amtrak could never try this because it is too radical for the powers at Amtrak and congress. It is to creative for this forum.

That has nothing to do with it. The private corporation that makes money on the $WHATEVER and loses money on the trains is just going to try and get rid of the trains, just like happened with the freight RRs that brought about the beginning of Amtrak.

It isn't a lack of creativity or being too radical that's the problem, it's your seeming ignorance of history.

 

[Trogdor]

If each station makes a profit operating a hotel/restaurant/casino/ etc etc. Add those profits up from each station on a route, then add the trains revenue, that 1 LD train pays for itself.

No it doesn't. The long-distance train still loses money, and is propped up by subsidies that come from other lines of business which have nothing to do with railroading. What you still have not answered is why a profit-making business would want to be saddled with an operation that loses tons of money (i.e. passenger trains). If these restaurants, casinos, hotels, etc. make money for private owners, then their goal would be to maximize their financial return, and that means not plowing those profits into another operation that will make them vanish.

If they are government owned (or Amtrak-owned, which, by extension, really means government-owned), then you have the very real certainty that all of the businesses they are competing with (the other hotels, the other restaurants, the other casinos, etc.) will raise hell to their elected officials complaining that the government is competing with them, and they would be right. And, for better or for worse (and for many reasons that are completely outside of the scope of this discussion), those same companies will then start donating to the political campaigns of those who would put a stop to such government-subsidized competition.

Many will argue (regardless of whether or not they own a business themselves) that the government has no business owning a business that the private sector is willing to run without subsidy. You have plenty of hotels, restaurants, casinos, etc., that run without subsidy, so why should government get into that business?

No matter how many different layers of corporate structure and business cross-subsidization you put on it, you still haven't fixed the one fundamental problem with the whole thing: Passenger trains lose money.

It's not a matter of thinking inside or outside of any proverbial box. It's a matter of dealing with reality.

P.S. I'll admit forgetting your mentioning "10 billion" as a cost, because in the context of how you presented it, it looked like a throwaway number rather than an actually calculated cost (in fact, I'm still thinking it was more of a throwaway number, unless you have an actual breakdown of how you came up to that price tag). But, you still should say where that $10 billion will come from. It's not Amtrak's inability to think outside the box (seriously, is there another cliche that's so overused?) that is preventing this $10 billion from magically fabricating itself out of nowhere and depositing itself into Amtrak's bank account.

 

[eagle628]

If each station makes a profit operating a hotel/restaurant/casino/ etc etc. Add those profits up from each station on a route, then add the trains revenue, that 1 LD train pays for itself.

The trains don't have any revenue. They have a loss of revenue. Assuming you have a lot of nice, profitable hotels/restaurants/casinos, then why the hell would you want to make less of a profit by running trains?

 

[Eric S]

The hotel business suggestion reminds me of British Rail in its early days: Because the government nationalized the railroad network wholesale, they also got the miscellaneous assets of the "Big Four", including a small film company (used for promotional films for the RRs) and a modest network of resorts. Basically...imagine if, when Amtrak had been formed, Chessie had managed to dump the Greenbrier in with its passenger operations. That's sort of what BR got to start with, and they spent the next thirty years trying (on and off) to manage those assets. By the way, those assets didn't save British Rail from turning into a big money loser by the 60s, either, and that was with freight operations to prop up the passenger side of things.

To be fair, there are probably a few places that an integrated hotel operation would make some sense: LAX, CHI, NYP, and WAS all leap to mind as candidates if you could find the space, and PHL, PDX, and SEA might work as well (and I could make a case for ORL, ATL, and NOL). But those would be incidental operations compared to a much, much larger whole, and they'd probably end up being a subcontracted brand (i.e. Amtrak contracts with Sheraton, Hilton, or Hyatt to run the hotels under a joint branding deal). Considering the sheer amount of railroad traffic in a lot of those cities, I think such a hotel would be a success, and (for example) "doing a deal" as part of the Farley project might make sense if you could integrate it properly.

Edit: Thinking about it, CHI and LAX are probably the best-suited. There are a lot of close-by hotels to NYP (including a Holiday Inn right across the street), and there are a couple in WAS (which has the additional problem of being too close to the Capitol and in insane real estate territory...if Amtrak was looking to do something "over" the railyard, this could work, but I do not even want to contemplate the engineering nightmare that would be). 30th Street Station (PHL) could plausibly be partly redeveloped as well (it's slightly isolated from downtown and on a fairly large piece of land; you could do something above parts of the parking lot on the sides of the building). There it could easily become a mess, but it is at least plausible.

Along your lines of thought, wasn't there an announcement a few years ago about Amtrak working with a hotel operator/developer to redevelop the upper floors of Baltimore Penn Station as a hotel? Perhaps it's another casualty of the recession, but I haven't read anything about this project recently.

 

[Eric S]

I was referring to Metrolink and Veolia; believe it or not they started out as a French water company. Don't know how they got into RR'ing but don't think they'll be around the US much longer...

Strangely enough, Veolia picks up my garbage here in Minnesota. They seem to do an okay job at that, but I was very surprised that they also ran Metrolink.

I think one of their last major contracts is running the street cars in New Orleans !!! :help:

I believe Veolia also operates (or did until recently) rail transit a number of locations: Austin (Capital MetroRail), Boston (MBTA commuter rail in a consortium with Bombardier and others), Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach (Tri-Rail), and San Diego (SPRINTER).

My son is Director of Commuter Operations in Austin for HERZOG Services...Veolia got a one way ticket out of Austin in December, 2009. IIRC, they don't have much left and Chattsworth ain't going to get them any new contracts for a loooong time. BTW, just where is all the mis-information that seems to be spreading like a computer virus coming from ????

Thanks for the correction on Austin. I wasn't positive if each of those transit systems was still operated by Veolia. But, I did just now double-check Veolia's website, and it does refer to MBTA, SPRINTER, and Tri-Rail.

What misinformation are you reffering to, though?

 

[Anderson]

The hotel business suggestion reminds me of British Rail in its early days: Because the government nationalized the railroad network wholesale, they also got the miscellaneous assets of the "Big Four", including a small film company (used for promotional films for the RRs) and a modest network of resorts. Basically...imagine if, when Amtrak had been formed, Chessie had managed to dump the Greenbrier in with its passenger operations. That's sort of what BR got to start with, and they spent the next thirty years trying (on and off) to manage those assets. By the way, those assets didn't save British Rail from turning into a big money loser by the 60s, either, and that was with freight operations to prop up the passenger side of things.

To be fair, there are probably a few places that an integrated hotel operation would make some sense: LAX, CHI, NYP, and WAS all leap to mind as candidates if you could find the space, and PHL, PDX, and SEA might work as well (and I could make a case for ORL, ATL, and NOL). But those would be incidental operations compared to a much, much larger whole, and they'd probably end up being a subcontracted brand (i.e. Amtrak contracts with Sheraton, Hilton, or Hyatt to run the hotels under a joint branding deal). Considering the sheer amount of railroad traffic in a lot of those cities, I think such a hotel would be a success, and (for example) "doing a deal" as part of the Farley project might make sense if you could integrate it properly.

Edit: Thinking about it, CHI and LAX are probably the best-suited. There are a lot of close-by hotels to NYP (including a Holiday Inn right across the street), and there are a couple in WAS (which has the additional problem of being too close to the Capitol and in insane real estate territory...if Amtrak was looking to do something "over" the railyard, this could work, but I do not even want to contemplate the engineering nightmare that would be). 30th Street Station (PHL) could plausibly be partly redeveloped as well (it's slightly isolated from downtown and on a fairly large piece of land; you could do something above parts of the parking lot on the sides of the building). There it could easily become a mess, but it is at least plausible.

Along your lines of thought, wasn't there an announcement a few years ago about Amtrak working with a hotel operator/developer to redevelop the upper floors of Baltimore Penn Station as a hotel? Perhaps it's another casualty of the recession, but I haven't read anything about this project recently.

I don't recall that, but it wouldn't surprise me. A lot of things died on the drawing board when the economy tanked, and the timing would make it a ripe for that. I can't find anything in a year or two...but that also doesn't mean nothing is in the works.

A lot of this has to do with my attitude of making a genuine, aggressive pitch to the business community: A number of airports are integrating hotels these days (or have done so in the past), and integrating them into stations often makes sense...especially if you have substantial spare space to work with. An on-site (or closely adjacent) hotel actually integrates well with Amtrak's operations, and it isn't too far outside the scope of their current incidental operations. Mind you, the idea isn't to "pay for" a lot of things with the hotels...rather, it is to improve the overall package of what Amtrak can offer, and thereby put up a fight against the airlines on that front.

The casino idea listed here strikes me as a bit absurd (though there may be a few older stations in Nevada that you could do something like that in, it would be entirely incidental and frankly a potential irritant to travelers), but there are potentially profitable operations that could integrate well. Even referral agreements between Amtrak and local hotels could pay off marginally...I don't see any reason you couldn't see an agreement between Amtrak and one or two hotel chains to offer referrals and booking a la Orbitz (who can get you a nice package...if you're up for taking a damn airline). They've got decent integration with Hertz and a couple of other rental agencies (most of whom have desks either at the station or right across the proverbial street), but I don't see the same degree of matching with hotels and the like. And no, I'm not talking "Amtrak Vacations"...I'm thinking the sort of integration I'd like if I was going to CHI or NYP for a conference/meeting.

 

[TWA904]

I see a few people seem to agree with me but that most don't agree that Amtrak could be run at a profit.

I remember reading an article that was witten by either J. Bruce Richardson or Andrew Selden

about how to run the company at a profit and even had a five year plan on how to get it off

govt. subsidy. Aren't these gentleman supposed to be considered as experts on passenger trains. Unfortuntately, I've lost the article and can't find it now. I believe it was written

sometime in 2007 or 08.

I wonder how much Amtrak looks at the little things that can increase revenue or decrease cost. Back when I worked for an airline, we had a flight that left at 8:00am heading to

Greenville, SC on a 37 seat airlpane and it only carried 5 to 6 pax on cheap fares. We changed the departure time to 8:30am and within a month every morning it left full with the most expensive fares we offered.

Now I realize Amtrak is not the size of American Airlines, but just a short while back, AA

figured out that by removing just 1 olive from their salads would save them nearly a million

dollars a year.

 

[Ryan]

J. Bruce Richardson or Andrew Seldenabout how to run the company at a profit and even had a five year plan on how to get it off

govt. subsidy. Aren't these gentleman supposed to be considered as experts on passenger trains.

In their own minds, perhaps.
There's two kinds of people in this world - talkers and doers. Which one are you?

 

[Anderson]

Oh, not this again...look, there are incidentals that Amtrak has to have in order to keep what market share it has for LD runs. You do not want to go back to what Joe Haldeman told me about diner service in the 80s (and which some friends have confirmed), which consisted of a glorified cafeteria that you picked up a tray, got your order from something akin to your old public school cafeteria, and then went to your seat. If you were in the sleeper, your perk was that you got that tray brought to you. No, no, NO, you do not want to go back to that. Go to far on that, and you're going to cut back to all but the most diehard or desperate LD travelers, and I'll start looking at driving on a lot of trips I currently run through the train.

The other thing which you've got to remember is that Amtrak is largely at the mercy of freight lines who are generally, at best, apathetic towards Amtrak...and some are outright hostile (UP leaps to mind here). Want to move your schedule? You've got to work something out with the freight line(s) you're operating over, slot it in among any commuter lines, etc...and weigh what moving that 8:30 departure will do for your arrival wherever and your arrival/departure times at a dozen or twenty other stations. Airlines mostly run point-to-point operations...Amtrak does point-to-point-by-way-of-a-lot-of-other-points operations (think a lot of the airlines back in the 40s or 50s), which means that knock-on effects can be a pain. For example, if you want to move your arrival at NYP from 11 to 10:30, that means you're moving your Richmond, VA arrival back 30 minutes (to 4 AM), pushing Washington to 6:30 AM, etc. You might help NYP, but you might lose more folks from too early of an arrival in WAS. Want to slide the NYP departure of the LSL forward to 4:30? Well, good luck finding a way not to push the CHI arrival into mid-morning. And so on.

Like I said, there are operations you can integrate well and which make sense in the context of the main product Amtrak is providing (rail travel), be it putting hotels in/near stations or developing stations into more inclusive destinations (a la Washington Union Station). But there are things that, while profitable, make little or no sense in the context of being a passenger railroad and which, as others have said, could lead to unintended (and very bad for rail travel) consequences.

 

[The Journalist]

The casino idea listed here strikes me as a bit absurd (though there may be a few older stations in Nevada that you could do something like that in, it would be entirely incidental and frankly a potential irritant to travelers)

I don't think it'd work-Reno's station is already among main casinos (walk out the door and you're looking at Harrah's), and Elko and Winnemucca's stations are in the residential areas, not by the casinos; it'd doubtful one could be put in near the stations.

Wasn't Las Vegas's Desert Wind station located inside the Plaza hotel? How was that arranged? If Vegas ever gets service again-ostensibly in the works with DesertXpress-something of this nature might be arranged again.

 

[Anderson]

Well, in the case of Reno...from my experience in Nevada, you've got slots all over the place (even in many non-casino hotels), so putting in a small bank of them (a la McCarran Airport's pile of them in the terminals...I'm thinking like six of them on one wall of the station) isn't likely to be a big deal. Ditto the other ones in NV...it would be a marginal operation, but you might manage to cover a share of the station operating costs with the slots. But it's not going to be a big moneymaker in most cases...it'll be something akin to letting someone operate a lunch stand concession at any other station.

 

[The Journalist]

Hmm, essentially running a stop on a "slot route" like our grocery stores have. Might work in Reno-the station has plenty of unused space-though the casinos likely wouldn't be too happy about it. A downtown drug store was built and stocked, then never opened, because the casinos didn't want it to have slot machines and the many convenience stores didn't want it to sell alcohol and one or the other successfully prevented it from opening in some asinine way. The chain was then bought out, and the new owners promptly ended the lease on the property and cleaned it out. Disclosure (though it's not really relevant): I am employed by the company that bought the chain.

Elko and Winnemucca don't have proper station buildings, just shelters, so whoever owns those stations (I'd hazard it's either UP or the towns themselves) would have to build a new structure if they wanted to have a slot route serve them. Doesn't seem likely.

 

[Anderson]

Fair point on the Elko/Winnemucca stations. I've never been on the CZ, so I wouldn't know which stations are workable. However, what you said makes a lot of sense. In that same vein, if the Desert Wind were ever started back up, Amtrak could probably find a way to license out a few banks of slots to a local casino in exchange for a cut (say, "doing a deal" with whatever hotel the station is in/next to so as to allow slots in the Amtrak part of the property)...and I'm sure that at least one of the casinos wouldn't pass up a chance to somehow split some revenue with Amtrak. After all, it's not like they've managed to keep the slots out of the other stores and hotels in the state.

As to that store...I'm guessing it was a combination of forces rather than one or the other. That's often how these things go.

 

[had8ley]

I was referring to Metrolink and Veolia; believe it or not they started out as a French water company. Don't know how they got into RR'ing but don't think they'll be around the US much longer...

Strangely enough, Veolia picks up my garbage here in Minnesota. They seem to do an okay job at that, but I was very surprised that they also ran Metrolink.

I think one of their last major contracts is running the street cars in New Orleans !!! :help:

I believe Veolia also operates (or did until recently) rail transit a number of locations: Austin (Capital MetroRail), Boston (MBTA commuter rail in a consortium with Bombardier and others), Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach (Tri-Rail), and San Diego (SPRINTER).

My son is Director of Commuter Operations in Austin for HERZOG Services...Veolia got a one way ticket out of Austin in December, 2009. IIRC, they don't have much left and Chattsworth ain't going to get them any new contracts for a loooong time. BTW, just where is all the mis-information that seems to be spreading like a computer virus coming from ????

Thanks for the correction on Austin. I wasn't positive if each of those transit systems was still operated by Veolia. But, I did just now double-check Veolia's website, and it does refer to MBTA, SPRINTER, and Tri-Rail.

What misinformation are you reffering to, though?

My point EXACTLY !!!! I'd fill up three pages;first of all Austin being serviced by Veolia,(and you really don't know if any of the other cities still have them "because the computer says so"); secondly the Slidell Crescent accident at a "gated" crossing and everyone running to their computer for information that is either outdated or just dead wrong. I get scolded for telling what I see and experience,in person, because "It ain't on the computer." I guess I'm just one of those dinosaurs that crawls around and has too big webbed fingers to depend on a computer for all my information. Almost forgot...the "accordian" Crescent baggage car and the two totally destroyed P-42's...in your dreams. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :help:

 

[Trogdor]

I see a few people seem to agree with me but that most don't agree that Amtrak could be run at a profit.

I remember reading an article that was witten by either J. Bruce Richardson or Andrew Selden

about how to run the company at a profit and even had a five year plan on how to get it off

govt. subsidy.

That so-called "plan" was pure fantasy. Their numbers were basically made up, and they never cited any sources for any of the information they were proclaiming as fact (if I turned in a paper like that in high school, I'd probably get an "A" if it was some kind of creative writing English class, but an "F" if it was any class where I had to do actual source-based research).

Aren't these gentleman supposed to be considered as experts on passenger trains.

Not by a long shot.

Bruce Richardson (who used to use all sorts of immature, childish name-calling in his writings, thereby completely destroying any thread of credibility he may have had) is working on one of the proposals to launch a passenger train from LA to Las Vegas. They've been working on just launching this single route for the last few years, and have gotten, basically, nowhere.

Amtrak, with supposedly "priority" access to freight routes (and, contrary to popular belief, Amtrak can't just say "we're running here now," they must negotiate with the host carriers for access), can't even add four weekly frequencies to the Sunset Limited route without three quarters of a billion dollars in investments to the Union Pacific Railroad.

Last year, Amtrak ordered 130 new Viewliner cars, and the first one won't even show up until the end of next year.

So, tell me, exactly, how any "five-year plan" is supposed to turn Amtrak into a profitable enterprise. Like I said, that proposal was pure fantasy (much like the other ideas in this thread).

Unfortuntately, I've lost the article and can't find it now. I believe it was writtensometime in 2007 or 08.

http://www.unitedrail.org

I wonder how much Amtrak looks at the little things that can increase revenue or decrease cost. Back when I worked for an airline, we had a flight that left at 8:00am heading toGreenville, SC on a 37 seat airlpane and it only carried 5 to 6 pax on cheap fares. We changed the departure time to 8:30am and within a month every morning it left full with the most expensive fares we offered.

These kinds of tweaks are being looked at all the time (see the Meteor schedule adjustment, for example). The difference between AA and Amtrak is, with the exception of slot-controlled airports, American Airlines can just change their schedule at their own whim. Amtrak must receive approval from the freight railroads for every minor change that gets proposed. This process can be very time-consuming. In the mean time, issues such as equipment and crew availability often constrain schedule changes of the sort (moving a train 30 minutes earlier or later may prevent the crew from getting sufficient rest before returning to work).

Every change has to be evaluated on both a cost and revenue basis.

Now I realize Amtrak is not the size of American Airlines, but just a short while back, AAfigured out that by removing just 1 olive from their salads would save them nearly a million

dollars a year.

It wasn't that "short" of a while back, it was over 20 years ago, and the savings was $40,000, not anywhere close to a million.

 

[transit54]

Along your lines of thought, wasn't there an announcement a few years ago about Amtrak working with a hotel operator/developer to redevelop the upper floors of Baltimore Penn Station as a hotel? Perhaps it's another casualty of the recession, but I haven't read anything about this project recently.

Hmm...I think I recall something about that, too, but my memory is pretty fuzzy on that topic.

But this does bring up a point with regard to GP35's argument - it would be practical or smart for Amtrak to be in the hotel, etc business, but it is smart for Amtrak (or any other transportation provider) to leverage it's assets to the extent possible to generate income. For instance, Amtrak has had telecom companies run fiber along the NEC right of way. Leasing extra space is another good example of this. But again, they already do this...

 

[TVRM610]

Oh, not this again...look, there are incidentals that Amtrak has to have in order to keep what market share it has for LD runs. You do not want to go back to what Joe Haldeman told me about diner service in the 80s (and which some friends have confirmed), which consisted of a glorified cafeteria that you picked up a tray, got your order from something akin to your old public school cafeteria, and then went to your seat. If you were in the sleeper, your perk was that you got that tray brought to you. No, no, NO, you do not want to go back to that. Go to far on that, and you're going to cut back to all but the most diehard or desperate LD travelers, and I'll start looking at driving on a lot of trips I currently run through the train.

I disagree... The costs of the dining cars are certainly not necessary. If you cut out all full service dining cars people will still ride Amtrak. And they will stay pay extra for sleepers too.

Did the Cardinal or the City of New Orleans lose ridership when they switched to CCC / Diner Lite? I dont think so.

I like dining cars, but they are not a necessary expense in my opinion.

 

[transit54]

I think the issue with CCCs (other than their design) is capacity - they simply don't have enough capacity in the diner for many of the increasingly sold out LD trains. But if you substantially cut the quality of the food from where it is now and eliminated dining car service, I pretty much wouldn't be taking Amtrak LD again. I'd rather fly at that point. I think there's a big step between Diner Lite and what Anderson was describing.

 

[Anderson]

Oh, not this again...look, there are incidentals that Amtrak has to have in order to keep what market share it has for LD runs. You do not want to go back to what Joe Haldeman told me about diner service in the 80s (and which some friends have confirmed), which consisted of a glorified cafeteria that you picked up a tray, got your order from something akin to your old public school cafeteria, and then went to your seat. If you were in the sleeper, your perk was that you got that tray brought to you. No, no, NO, you do not want to go back to that. Go to far on that, and you're going to cut back to all but the most diehard or desperate LD travelers, and I'll start looking at driving on a lot of trips I currently run through the train.

I disagree... The costs of the dining cars are certainly not necessary. If you cut out all full service dining cars people will still ride Amtrak. And they will stay pay extra for sleepers too.

Did the Cardinal or the City of New Orleans lose ridership when they switched to CCC / Diner Lite? I dont think so.

I like dining cars, but they are not a necessary expense in my opinion.

Yes and no. The "CCC" on the TE and CONO have full dining car menus...but the CCC service also depends on very low traffic on the train compared to the big LD routes. You've got low enough passenger loads on a couple of routes to justify it...but again, you didn't change the menu substantially...all you did, really, was pull back some diner overcapacity on a pair of lesser-traveled routes which stemmed from the size of the Superliner diners (you did not need an 80-seat dining car on one of those trains...a 48-seat Viewliner diner would probably have been enough, though).

Permit me to rephrase what my objection is here: You need full meal service on an LD train, and you need sufficient capacity for both all sleeper pax and a moderate number of coach pax. Whether you do this with a "diner" or something else fulfilling that role, you need full service in some form on these routes. The CCC accomplishes this for a lower-capacity route...but you can't exactly pull that sort of a switch off on one of the Meteors or on the Zephyr in peak season.

Edit: Transit hit it on the head...that's the other problem with the CCCs: They worked well enough when demand was lower, but when one of those cars gets slapped on a packed Capitol Limited because the diner got bad-ordered, all hell can break loose (and that does happen once in a while...I suspect it has to do with the occasional bad-ordered diner, but it happens and I seem to recall it being one of the many problems on that messy Boxing Day CL I took last year). And when that happens, you get mile-long breakfast waiting lists, no dinner for coach pax, and you will lose business on that.

Of course, a real degrading in service (what I was speaking of, where you basically switch to cafe car-style menus) would just melt down your LD system. As it is, a sold-out train is often over capacity for a CCC...you don't want to push things much further.

 

[TVRM610]

Anderson...

I agree that full meal service is necessary for sleeping car passengers. However there are options that have not been explored.

Amtrak can provide first class at seat meals on the Acela. This idea could be implimented for sleeping car passengers as well. Don't get me wrong, I like the dining cars. I'm even happy with the current offerings, but to act like the dining cars are the sole reason that people still travel on LD trains is silly. IMHO of course.

 

[Anderson]

Anderson...

I agree that full meal service is necessary for sleeping car passengers. However there are options that have not been explored.

Amtrak can provide first class at seat meals on the Acela. This idea could be implimented for sleeping car passengers as well. Don't get me wrong, I like the dining cars. I'm even happy with the current offerings, but to act like the dining cars are the sole reason that people still travel on LD trains is silly. IMHO of course.

My view is more that there are a series of links, so to speak, keeping the LD service running and attractive to passengers. One of those is sleeper accommodations while another is dining service. The main problem is that even without a "dining car", you'd still have to have some limited sort of kitchen, and I think you'd need at least one or two attendants...not to mention the trouble of moving 40 meals through two Superliner cars. The Acela service can get a little frayed on a packed train...I'd hate to have to keep meals straight for a hundred sleeper pax in 50-odd rooms spread over two sleepers and a transdorm.

If you wanted to ditch the diner, you'd also need to make a real effort to upgrade the cafe car...yes, I know a lot of LD coach passengers don't eat in the diner all the time, but the number that do take advantage of it is non-negligible, particularly out west (and particularly for at least one meal over the course of the trip)...but even on the Capitol Limited, I've seen a substantial line of coach pax wanting to make a reservation. The number is going to vary, but you'd need to improve the cafe selection to make that work, because two days of reheated sandwiches can get more than a little stale, and dropping $30 on dinner can make some sense once even if you couldn't shell out the $500 for a roomette.

 

[had8ley]

Oh, not this again...look, there are incidentals that Amtrak has to have in order to keep what market share it has for LD runs. You do not want to go back to what Joe Haldeman told me about diner service in the 80s (and which some friends have confirmed), which consisted of a glorified cafeteria that you picked up a tray, got your order from something akin to your old public school cafeteria, and then went to your seat. If you were in the sleeper, your perk was that you got that tray brought to you. No, no, NO, you do not want to go back to that. Go to far on that, and you're going to cut back to all but the most diehard or desperate LD travelers, and I'll start looking at driving on a lot of trips I currently run through the train.

I disagree... The costs of the dining cars are certainly not necessary. If you cut out all full service dining cars people will still ride Amtrak. And they will stay pay extra for sleepers too.

Did the Cardinal or the City of New Orleans lose ridership when they switched to CCC / Diner Lite? I dont think so.

I like dining cars, but they are not a necessary expense in my opinion.

Apparently you weren't around when the Class 1's started cutting back on services. The Sunset actually had an automat car (diner pulled off) that that had an attendant to give you change (no dollar bill changers in the cave days) and this was in the '60's !!! The ICC had to force them to put sleepers and diners back on in return for a tri-weekly train. Talk about people scream; today would be no different.I totally disagree with your statememnt...if a pax pays mega-bucks for a bunk in the sleeper he/she is going to want somewhere decent to eat~ history has a way of repeating itself and this is a good example.I rode enough one and two car pax trains after they lost the mail contract. They weren't pretty and smelled even worse. The RR's tried, and wholeheartedly succeeded, in running off the pax business. Just look at all the posts about the Cardinal's food service; or lack thereof.