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.