So where are these city pairs that are approximately a 12 hour train trip (to allow for post and pre work departure and arrivals), that are sufficiently busy enough to make a sleeper worthwhile, yet do not have a decent flight connection?
Will Americans ever take sleepers again?
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PaulM
Engineer
I believe the OP said "overnight travel between cities of a certain distance", nothing about 2 or 3 days.
Sure it's questionable whether the "average traveler" would go the sleeper route even under the OP's scenario of an "extensive rail system with many more options, higher speeds, modern equipment, on time service, etc."
If not, in my opinion it would be due to a lack of imagination and a fear of being different.
I never claimed to be average; but even when I worked for a certain large aircraft company, I would take the SWC and Mo Mule from Southern Cal back to St. Louis. Meetings always ended on Thursday to enable you to catch a 7:00AM flight the next morning, only to arrive back about quitting time. Instead I would spend the day hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains or biking along the beach and then catch the SWC in Pasadena. I always looked forward to the steak dinner cruising along the center of the foothills parkway overlooking the LA basin at dusk. My colleagues all thought that was interesting, but no one ever tried it. As I said, a lack of imagination and a fear of being different.
domefoamer
Train Attendant
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Hats off to those who have done the work to specify the particulars of specific routes here. In more general terms, I just want to speak out in favor of the hidden merits of sleepers. By traveling through the sleeping hours, they perform a miracle that seems as near to time travel as anything I've experienced. If you sleep late on the westbound CZ, you fall asleep in Utah and wake up at the California border. Hey, what happened to Nevada? The perceived duration of your trip between DEN and EMY is reduced by about one-third, easily beating the travel fatigue you'd get driving two days with a motel in between.
That's why I was dismayed that Obama's rail stimulus package was so devoted to high-speed trains. I don't look forward to being sped to my destination and dumped into a strange city at midnight to find my hotel. It's good that we get a few dozens sleepers in the deal, but think how many more could have been added for the price of some of the HSR plans studied and drawn up? Medium-speed travel is all I demand, with a good meal and a bit of social and personal space on the train. 'Slow and steady wins the race," if I can reach the finish line at a convenient hour, rested and refreshed.
That's why I was dismayed that Obama's rail stimulus package was so devoted to high-speed trains. I don't look forward to being sped to my destination and dumped into a strange city at midnight to find my hotel. It's good that we get a few dozens sleepers in the deal, but think how many more could have been added for the price of some of the HSR plans studied and drawn up? Medium-speed travel is all I demand, with a good meal and a bit of social and personal space on the train. 'Slow and steady wins the race," if I can reach the finish line at a convenient hour, rested and refreshed.
Or you could save money taking a plane and get there in less than a tenth of the time, ensuring a good night's rest and avoiding all the travel fatigue.
So don't take the last train of the day perhaps? Also, an awful lot of that stimulus money went to conventional rail, not high speed rail. High speed rail only got as much as it did because a few states rejected the money and canceled plans for improved conventional rail.
And in the world of transportation, "faster and cheaper" wins the customer. Congratulations, you're an outlier. Most people go with the faster and cheaper option (you can actually fill a 737 between Denver and San Francisco for every passenger that takes the Zephyr between Denver and Emeryville).
Paulus:
The "tenth of the time" point requires a direct flight. Throw in a connection and you easily start losing lots and lots of time to being able to make a reliable connection in some markets. Arriving in a given city at 9 AM on the train versus getting there at 11 or 12 the night before having spent the entire day en route is probably not a great improvement.
As to not taking the last train of the day, a good example here would be Boston-Washington: The only trains of the day to leave Boston after 1700 get into Washington at 2350 (Acela), 0125 (Regional), and 0658 (Regional). This isn't the only such market: Chicago-St. Louis has two trains that leave at 1715 (arr. STL 2245) and 1900 (arr STL 0030); in the other direction, you have 1730 (arr CHI 2310). There are plenty of markets where the only train options that leave after the close of business result in awkward-hour arrivals.
There are certainly markets that rail can't really make a massive dent in, but DEN-EMY on the train is pretty much a night and two days with a once-daily train. CHI-DEN sits at the other end of the spectrum: Still a once-daily train, often hobbled by dubious OTP, and still busy enough that Amtrak was looking to add dedicated cars between the two (and able to regularly generate 30-40k passengers on an annual basis with all of these caveats). Bay Area-Los Angeles is another market in this vein.
"Faster and cheaper" may win out assuming convenience (i.e. flights leaving at cooperative times), but in plenty of cases the airline industry does not offer an option that is fast, cheap, and convenient, particularly at the last minute.
WoodyinNYC
Conductor
To be fair to Obama and Amtrak Joe Biden, if they had talked about
"improving Amtrak" they would have been laughed at. So they hyped
the program as "high speed rail". The core of the program was the
Midwest Regional plan for a Chicago hub and 110 mph spokes to
Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis-Cincinnati, St Louis, and the Twin Cities.
The Detroit spoke is coming along nicely; needs just another $1.5 to
$2 Billion for the South of the Lake project to get riders Chicago-Detroit
in less than 4 hours. The St Louis spoke is also coming along nicely, and
will only need another Billion or so to bring the trip time below 4 hours.
The Cleveland spoke never got started, because Ohio's Democratic
Gov opted for the 3Cs plan -- Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati --
instead. But South of the Lake would pay almost a third of the costs
of a Cleveland-Chicago corridor. As for Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-
St Paul, you know.
Of course, a few Billion did make it to the HSR project in California.
The rest went to Washington State, North Carolina, New York State,
Connecticut, and other states which are "improving Amtrak" with
projects well under 110 mph.
When these projects come on line in 2016 and 2017, you'll see more
of the "medium speed" trains you want. We hope other states will
develop passenger train envy when they see them working out so well.
[edited to remove repeated text due to technical difficulties]
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Ryan
Court Jester
And if you're going from Denver to the Bay Area, as was his posting, it's filled with direct flights.
And none of those are high speed rail lines (a handful of miles for Acela really doesn't count), much less brand new ones like he was complaining about getting the stimulus funds. Yeah, when you average only 45-65 miles per hour, on a lengthy trip, it's entirely possible to get dumped in at midnight while leaving at a decent hour. Same trip at 120mph average speed and that's really not so much of a thing.
Honestly, for reasonable urban markets, where does the airline industry not offer an option that is faster, cheaper, and more convenient than an overnight train? Yeah, Amtrak can, by losing massive amounts of money, get a small niche market. But that's a recipe for failure. Adding another 40-50K passengers on Chicago-Denver? Big whoop, Amtrak can add millions to Acela and the Regionals and laugh all the way to the bank doing so. For goodness sake, per passenger-mile, Amtrak makes twice as much money on the Acela, after all allocated expenses, than the TGV even charges.
Paulus:
I'll take that as a challenge. Hampton Roads-Boston does not have any direct flights. New York-Montreal has flights, but there's the "border penalty" that jacks the price up to the point that I remember pulling a cheaper trip on the Acela-Adirondack than I would have gotten flying ($400 r/t is pretty standard, and that's before a hotel gets into the picture...$150-200/night at either end is pretty normal on that front).
Moreover, things get hairy in a lot of these markets if you don't have a Saturday stay. Pittsburgh-Philly runs around $400 with a direct flight departing 2/12 and returning 5/12. New York-Montreal runs nearly $600, Atlanta-New Orleans $400, New York-Pittsburgh $550-650, New York-Buffalo generally $200-250, New York-Cleveland nearly $500 with the exception of a stray Frontier flight, New York-Detroit $730 with the exception of Spirit, New York-Richmond $530+, and I can keep going if asked.
Now, yes there are direct flights available...but at prices that run the gamut from reasonable to insane. I'm going to argue that a direct flight costing over $500 fails on affordability by a long, long shot.
I'll take that as a challenge. Hampton Roads-Boston does not have any direct flights. New York-Montreal has flights, but there's the "border penalty" that jacks the price up to the point that I remember pulling a cheaper trip on the Acela-Adirondack than I would have gotten flying ($400 r/t is pretty standard, and that's before a hotel gets into the picture...$150-200/night at either end is pretty normal on that front).
Moreover, things get hairy in a lot of these markets if you don't have a Saturday stay. Pittsburgh-Philly runs around $400 with a direct flight departing 2/12 and returning 5/12. New York-Montreal runs nearly $600, Atlanta-New Orleans $400, New York-Pittsburgh $550-650, New York-Buffalo generally $200-250, New York-Cleveland nearly $500 with the exception of a stray Frontier flight, New York-Detroit $730 with the exception of Spirit, New York-Richmond $530+, and I can keep going if asked.
Now, yes there are direct flights available...but at prices that run the gamut from reasonable to insane. I'm going to argue that a direct flight costing over $500 fails on affordability by a long, long shot.
Thank you; it's honestly a bit annoying to have it constantly suggested without it suggested as to where that would be the case (especially when it's getting suggested with city pairs where it clearly isn't the case).
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I understand. Part of why this jumps out to me is that there are some air markets that I'm familiar with (such as the trip up to Montreal) where an overnight train would at least be competitive with a comparable flight and where I would love to be able to work an overnight train ride so as not to lose a day en route.
All of those routes come to mind because there is either extant Amtrak service or there was some in the history of Amtrak (albeit not always overnight service). PGH-PHL/PGH-NYP has a train, and had two until a decade ago. NYP-BUF has corridor service and is timed out decently for an overnight train (and indeed had one that was weekends-only back in the 90s). NYP-Detroit had the Niagara Rainbow as well as a train to connect with the LSL at various times, though the latter had issues with the tracks between Detroit and Toledo.
One thing to keep in mind is that there have been a number of air markets where direct service has deteriorated in the last decade or so as airlines have worked to stretch load factors as far as they can. Pittsburgh, for example, saw a massive collapse in service, and we all saw what happened on the NEC when Southwest (I think) pulled out of a stack of city pairs.
All of those routes come to mind because there is either extant Amtrak service or there was some in the history of Amtrak (albeit not always overnight service). PGH-PHL/PGH-NYP has a train, and had two until a decade ago. NYP-BUF has corridor service and is timed out decently for an overnight train (and indeed had one that was weekends-only back in the 90s). NYP-Detroit had the Niagara Rainbow as well as a train to connect with the LSL at various times, though the latter had issues with the tracks between Detroit and Toledo.
One thing to keep in mind is that there have been a number of air markets where direct service has deteriorated in the last decade or so as airlines have worked to stretch load factors as far as they can. Pittsburgh, for example, saw a massive collapse in service, and we all saw what happened on the NEC when Southwest (I think) pulled out of a stack of city pairs.
I figure I should at least mention another aspect: An overnight train from New York to Buffalo would pick up a decent number of intermediate markets (Syracuse and Rochester being the biggest ones). The times might be awkward and you might have more coach ridership in these places, but there is likely a market from most of these cities for a train that gets you into New York in the morning (the first regular train into New York from west of Albany arrives at 1250, and it's effectively the only one to get you into New York before the close of business) and/or one that allows a full day in New York (the last regular train out being the Lake Shore Limited, departing at 1540). As a worthwhile case in point, it is impossible to connect from anywhere west of Albany to/from the Silver Star.
In this context, very few trains should be looked at for a single market, even if they are oriented to a given set of city pairs. The "incidental" business from these markets is often not incidental.
Let me use another handy example: Chicago-Denver. Let us take, for a moment, a train that is routed over IAIS. Such a train would serve Chicago-Denver, yes. It would also serve Omaha-Chicago and Omaha-Denver, Lincoln-Chicago and Lincoln-Denver, Des Moines-Chicago and Des Moines-Denver, and Quad Cities-Chicago and Quad Cities-Denver. In all cases except Quad Cities-Chicago, a respectable overnight-ish timing can be arranged, and indeed a single train could cover multiple sets of markets overnight with reasonable departure times (going with OSC-CHI as a baseline, DSM-CHI would run around 6 hours, OMA-CHI around 8 hours, and LNC-CHI about 10 hours...with only a modest slowdown you can easily slide that around to 7-9-11 or 8-10-12 to allow excellent times for all three destinations heading into CHI (say, 0730 arrival into CHI offering departures at 2330, 2130, and 1930) and the reverse not being bad (a 2200 departure from CHI resulting in arrivals at 0600, 0800, and 1000). The Quad Cities get an awkward time both ways, but the timing still wouldn't be the end of the world since you'd have a train that offered an early arrival (good for connecting through and/or making an early meeting) and, more importantly, a genuinely late departure allowing one to catch dinner in Chicago and then head out. Whether that train continued onwards to Denver or not (I can see a case going both ways for it...the late departure would allow overnight service into SLC if you wanted to go that far, but you also get a lot of daylight service in the middle of nowhere) the market at least as far as Lincoln seems feasible to work with.
I can gin up other examples by the boatload (Cleveland, Toledo, and Cincinnati all have lousy fares, particularly direct ones, to Washington and New York; Indianapolis has alright ones to Washington, but New York runs close to $650 [flying into Newark, which is going to throw a decent bit more on top getting into NYC proper] before baggage fees...while a number of the other "cheap" flights involve such joys as a change of airport between Dulles and National, resulting in the one-way trip running almost all day).
In this context, very few trains should be looked at for a single market, even if they are oriented to a given set of city pairs. The "incidental" business from these markets is often not incidental.
Let me use another handy example: Chicago-Denver. Let us take, for a moment, a train that is routed over IAIS. Such a train would serve Chicago-Denver, yes. It would also serve Omaha-Chicago and Omaha-Denver, Lincoln-Chicago and Lincoln-Denver, Des Moines-Chicago and Des Moines-Denver, and Quad Cities-Chicago and Quad Cities-Denver. In all cases except Quad Cities-Chicago, a respectable overnight-ish timing can be arranged, and indeed a single train could cover multiple sets of markets overnight with reasonable departure times (going with OSC-CHI as a baseline, DSM-CHI would run around 6 hours, OMA-CHI around 8 hours, and LNC-CHI about 10 hours...with only a modest slowdown you can easily slide that around to 7-9-11 or 8-10-12 to allow excellent times for all three destinations heading into CHI (say, 0730 arrival into CHI offering departures at 2330, 2130, and 1930) and the reverse not being bad (a 2200 departure from CHI resulting in arrivals at 0600, 0800, and 1000). The Quad Cities get an awkward time both ways, but the timing still wouldn't be the end of the world since you'd have a train that offered an early arrival (good for connecting through and/or making an early meeting) and, more importantly, a genuinely late departure allowing one to catch dinner in Chicago and then head out. Whether that train continued onwards to Denver or not (I can see a case going both ways for it...the late departure would allow overnight service into SLC if you wanted to go that far, but you also get a lot of daylight service in the middle of nowhere) the market at least as far as Lincoln seems feasible to work with.
I can gin up other examples by the boatload (Cleveland, Toledo, and Cincinnati all have lousy fares, particularly direct ones, to Washington and New York; Indianapolis has alright ones to Washington, but New York runs close to $650 [flying into Newark, which is going to throw a decent bit more on top getting into NYC proper] before baggage fees...while a number of the other "cheap" flights involve such joys as a change of airport between Dulles and National, resulting in the one-way trip running almost all day).
neroden
Engineer
I've answered this question before. Repeatedly. I think I've even answered it to you, but I might have confused you with another Paul.
They're practically all (if not all) between east-of-Mississippi medium-sized cities (on the one hand), and New York or Chicago or possibly DC (on the other hand). These are the only ones where I have actual reports of businessmen doing this by preference; I have two separate such anecdotes for Buffalo-Chicago (where last I checked most of the flights available go through Detroit or another non-Chicago hub).
This situation is made possible by
(1) gross inconvenience of the New York and Chicago airports, which can add *hours* to a trip to downtown;
(2) gross deterioration of air service to medium-sized east-of-Mississippi cities; it comes and goes but it mostly goes. I remember when Pittsburgh was de-hubbed.
The region where this is possible is specific. It basically ends at Chicago; west of there, the underserved markets start being too small. West of Chicago, there simply aren't the same sort of "medium-sized cities": there are huge cities and hinterland, or there are medium-sized cities which are clustered near to the huge cities.
It's not clear to me how far into the Southeast the sleeper niche extends; I'm most familiar with the Northeast and "Heartland" areas, and there are a lot of city pairs in the "sweet spot" for sleepers out here.
...I see Anderson has come up with lots of examples, and I see they're pretty nearly all in the same region.
I'd take it from Syracuse. It would have allowed me to get to that funeral in Florida, for one thing, but I'd take it just to go to NY or Philly, too.
I'd also point out that if you extend a NY-Buffalo overnight train west to Chicago, you have the elusive and valuable Chicago-Cleveland day train, as well as an overnight Cleveland-New York train which calls at Cleveland during the day.
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Nathanael,
I'm not shocked that we came up with similar examples. I really think that if you hubbed a bunch of these trains out of NYP (and especially if you could "pop" them into pre/post-rush hour times for the most part) you'd be able to do something pretty impressive. The main issue in roughly the northeast quarter of the US (informally draw lines north and east from the SW corner of Missouri) is that you have a ton of cities that are midsized but not a bunch of super-cities, BOS-WAS and CHI notwithstanding. Elsewhere you have such monsters as LA, the Bay Area, Houston, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Las Vegas with massive open areas between them. In the Southeast, things are starting to get dense. But in the Northeast you have lots of midsized cities at modest distances instead of big cities at large distances. That makes for a bunch of "corridor-able" destinations...and for corridors that can be plugged together to run longer-distance trains.
Edit: A NY-Buffalo train so extended becomes the counterpart to the LSL that I've made a lot of noise about for a while.
Also, the one issue in the East is the Appalachian Mountains...they are just enough of an obstruction to mess with a lot of east-west routing in PA and WV but not so much to actually preclude a decent amount of settlement (as in the Rockies).
I'm not shocked that we came up with similar examples. I really think that if you hubbed a bunch of these trains out of NYP (and especially if you could "pop" them into pre/post-rush hour times for the most part) you'd be able to do something pretty impressive. The main issue in roughly the northeast quarter of the US (informally draw lines north and east from the SW corner of Missouri) is that you have a ton of cities that are midsized but not a bunch of super-cities, BOS-WAS and CHI notwithstanding. Elsewhere you have such monsters as LA, the Bay Area, Houston, Denver, Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Las Vegas with massive open areas between them. In the Southeast, things are starting to get dense. But in the Northeast you have lots of midsized cities at modest distances instead of big cities at large distances. That makes for a bunch of "corridor-able" destinations...and for corridors that can be plugged together to run longer-distance trains.
Edit: A NY-Buffalo train so extended becomes the counterpart to the LSL that I've made a lot of noise about for a while.
Also, the one issue in the East is the Appalachian Mountains...they are just enough of an obstruction to mess with a lot of east-west routing in PA and WV but not so much to actually preclude a decent amount of settlement (as in the Rockies).
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- Joined
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- 8,507
Two specific comments, and then a general comment: There are twelve non-stops a day from Buffalo to Chicago - Nine to O'hare (AA and UA) and three to Midway (WN). Trip time - gate to gate - is about two hours. It's about 80 minutes in the air. With Southwest in the mix, the fares are probably not too bad.
I'm not sure how it would take "hours" (as in two or more hours) to get from either Chicago airport to downtown. Both airports have rapid transit service that makes the trip no more than an hour (including wait time), and from MDW, considerably less. Two of the three New York airports have transit service, and even from LGA, Manhattan is about a 35 minute cab ride.
My general comment is that this is not 1952. The taste and needs of business travelers in 2014 simply does not match rail sleeper travel except where the person is also a rail enthusiast. A sleeper room is not a hotel room. Rail arrival times are not 100% reliable. There is no way I would count on Amtrak to reliably get me somewhere overnight to make a morning commitment, even if on-time rates were 80%. My plan would always be to fly out the evening prior, stay in a hotel with a real bed and real bathroom, have breakfast the next morning, and walk or cab to my morning appointment rested and relaxed.
In all my years of business travel, I was only able to use a sleeper once, and that was kind of forced and only one way. Coming home, I just want to get home. For me, Amtrak sleeper is for personal travel and for the experience. Once a year or so is enough for me. Otherwise, I just want to get where I'm going.
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jis
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I generally agree with PRR60. I think the so called gross inconvenience of New York and Chicago airports are overstated to make the case for overnight train rides look better, and the gross inconveniences of overnight trains including sleeping in a rocking closet, are grossly understated. At the end of the day it boils down to what one likes to do to quite an extent I suppose.
That is not to say that there do not exist any specific city pairs where trains work better than planes. I am sure there are many. But the question is, are there enough such riders to make it worthwhile? For example, I am almost certain that such will work well on the NEC and Virginia/NC.GA/FL market, for a number of city pairs. Similarly, if California were to do an overnight LAX - SFO service it might work out well. But I am a bit more dubious about other LD trains beyond say the LSL corridor and the old Broadway Ltd corridor, over and above Florida - Northeast service.
That is not to say that there do not exist any specific city pairs where trains work better than planes. I am sure there are many. But the question is, are there enough such riders to make it worthwhile? For example, I am almost certain that such will work well on the NEC and Virginia/NC.GA/FL market, for a number of city pairs. Similarly, if California were to do an overnight LAX - SFO service it might work out well. But I am a bit more dubious about other LD trains beyond say the LSL corridor and the old Broadway Ltd corridor, over and above Florida - Northeast service.
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I'm generally inclined to agree. Basically, the formula for success that I've noticed is one of two things:
(1) A string of midsized destinations along a route; or
(2) A market that is so massive that the can't/won't fly share of the market is large enough to more or less support things.
The former is your NY-Chicago routes; the latter is your NEC-Florida or SF-LA (and the Central Valley happens to be a bit of both).
cirdan
Engineer
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A lot of people are arguing along the lines of, for many people, airlines are simply more attractive, or more people fly than take trains.
Now you could also say, more people read USA Today every day than read Shakespeare. But does that make Shakespeare irrelevant? Why do publishing houses still bother to publish Shakespeare?
So to be succesful, Amtrak does not need to grab the majority of the market, and does not need to be worried that there are plent of naysayers out there who would never set foot in a train no matter what.
The pertinent question is, would there be sufficient people using the train to make it pay or to be able to operate at an acceptable deficit?
Experience shows time and time again that if you run a decent service, people will ride it. So whether or not the majority or even certain special groups would use the train doesn't really matter.
Now you could also say, more people read USA Today every day than read Shakespeare. But does that make Shakespeare irrelevant? Why do publishing houses still bother to publish Shakespeare?
So to be succesful, Amtrak does not need to grab the majority of the market, and does not need to be worried that there are plent of naysayers out there who would never set foot in a train no matter what.
The pertinent question is, would there be sufficient people using the train to make it pay or to be able to operate at an acceptable deficit?
Experience shows time and time again that if you run a decent service, people will ride it. So whether or not the majority or even certain special groups would use the train doesn't really matter.
haolerider
Conductor
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A lot of the attractiveness of an Amtrak overnight trip is the ability to leave your origin market at a reasonable hour and arrive at your destination at a reasonable hour....for whatever purpose. Some of the examples discussed above don't make much sense, primarily because of poor OTP, but a DC to ATL trip works perfectly. When I was based in DC, I would,leave the office at 5:45 and catch the Crescent......generally bringing a salad/sandwich from Union Station, read or work and get a good night's sleep, arriving in ATL early morning. The return was timely as well....departing at 8-8:15 pm, arriving in DC around 9:00 am, in time for work. An early shower and breakfast in the diner world very well. The east coast Silvers work for many people, but going west from the east coast is a gamble at best!
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D.P. Roberts
Conductor
Sometimes, taking Amtrak is all a matter of perspective. It used to be said that "getting there is half the fun", but most people don't seem to think so any more - travel is just about getting there as quickly and cheaply as possible, no matter what you face along the way.
For example, going to Orlando from the midwest is a very popular vacation idea. Many people fly - usually a quick 2 hour direct flight from most airports. Most people drive, which is a 15-20 hour trip over 2 days.
We've always done one of those routes. Amtrak's 36 hour trip seems ridiculously long compared to the other options. But then I started looking into the details.
First of all, msot of the trip is at night. You get on the train (in our case, either the CL) late at night, and spend your first night on the train. No big deal, obviously we needed to sleep somewhere. Then, after spending the morning on the train, we'd get into DC around 1:00 pm. We'd then have all afternoon and evening to explore DC before getting on the Silver Meteor at 7:30. Another night on the train, and we're in Orlando by 1:00 pm. So, despite the 36 hour trip, we're really only awake and on the "traveling" train for about 12 hours. And we arrive in downtown Orlando, only a quick 10-15 minute cab ride to the theme parks, and no annoying jet lag to make us exhausted on our first day.
The return trip is even better, as we have the option of the CL or the LSL. For variety's sake, we'll take the LSL, and have a chance to see New York City for several hours during the layover.
So, what once looked like an interminably long trip now looks like a few short mornings on the train, with fun side trips to downtown Washington, DC and New York. I'm beginning to like this idea.
But then we come to the real problem - the price. Two of us can fly round trip for $500. If we drove, gas would be about $200, plus a night in the hotel, and food, plus wear and tear on the car, so they probably come out about the same.
On the other hand, taking a roomette would cost us $1700. Compared to the other options, that's a deal breaker. That's more than we'd pay for the whole rest of the vacation in the theme parks!
We're railfans, and I'd like to check some new routes off my list. And for a vacation, I don't mind the extra time - as I explained above, it really doesn't take much time off the trip, especially when compared to driving. But I'll never pay that much - very few people would. No matter what small cuts Amtrak makes, unless they can drastically slash roomette prices on routes like these (which we know they can't), they just can't compete.
For example, going to Orlando from the midwest is a very popular vacation idea. Many people fly - usually a quick 2 hour direct flight from most airports. Most people drive, which is a 15-20 hour trip over 2 days.
We've always done one of those routes. Amtrak's 36 hour trip seems ridiculously long compared to the other options. But then I started looking into the details.
First of all, msot of the trip is at night. You get on the train (in our case, either the CL) late at night, and spend your first night on the train. No big deal, obviously we needed to sleep somewhere. Then, after spending the morning on the train, we'd get into DC around 1:00 pm. We'd then have all afternoon and evening to explore DC before getting on the Silver Meteor at 7:30. Another night on the train, and we're in Orlando by 1:00 pm. So, despite the 36 hour trip, we're really only awake and on the "traveling" train for about 12 hours. And we arrive in downtown Orlando, only a quick 10-15 minute cab ride to the theme parks, and no annoying jet lag to make us exhausted on our first day.
The return trip is even better, as we have the option of the CL or the LSL. For variety's sake, we'll take the LSL, and have a chance to see New York City for several hours during the layover.
So, what once looked like an interminably long trip now looks like a few short mornings on the train, with fun side trips to downtown Washington, DC and New York. I'm beginning to like this idea.
But then we come to the real problem - the price. Two of us can fly round trip for $500. If we drove, gas would be about $200, plus a night in the hotel, and food, plus wear and tear on the car, so they probably come out about the same.
On the other hand, taking a roomette would cost us $1700. Compared to the other options, that's a deal breaker. That's more than we'd pay for the whole rest of the vacation in the theme parks!
We're railfans, and I'd like to check some new routes off my list. And for a vacation, I don't mind the extra time - as I explained above, it really doesn't take much time off the trip, especially when compared to driving. But I'll never pay that much - very few people would. No matter what small cuts Amtrak makes, unless they can drastically slash roomette prices on routes like these (which we know they can't), they just can't compete.
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jis
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Frankly, if I was going to spend $1700 on travel ticket, I'd go to Tahiti or Seychelles, not Orlando 
I doubt that Amtrak will ever maintain a large fleet of sleeping cars to cover those periods during the calendar year that demand dramatically exceeds to the scheduled sleeping space. Sure, there are times of the year that ALL of the trains sell out their sleeping car space, but there are also many months of the year when these same trains are running half-empty or less. How to financially manage such large variabilities in demand for the product will be critical, in my opinion -- the cars simply cost too much to manufacture to be allow to sit idle for half the year or more.
jis
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Well, if you already have an army of cars and do not have the budget to operate them year round, then you let them sit around exccept for the few weeks in a year when you might need all or most of them. And you get kudos for doing this wonderfully poor asset management. look at VIA for a living example. OK now I shall duck :help:
I must say, I wonder how Via does it these days. I rode the CN Supercontinental in the early 1970s when the train ran daily, with at least 15 cars each in the summer months. I expect CP's Canadian had a similar length and frequency. Last February, I rode the Canadian in February, with 8 cars and only a twice per week schedule. So there must be dozens and dozens of cars sitting idle somewhere. I suppose it is because these cars are nearly-completely amortized that the government beancounters allow for such an inefficient use of the asset.
All the more reason to cross this train off your bucket list (as I did) before it is gone for good.
All the more reason to cross this train off your bucket list (as I did) before it is gone for good.
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