# Will Americans ever take sleepers again?



## northnorthwest (Nov 16, 2014)

Let's imagine a fantasy land here in the USA where Amtrak has amazing funding and there is an extensive rail system with many more options, higher speeds, modern equipment, on time service, etc.

Let's imagine in that world there is extensive, modern, affordable (you can define it) options for overnight travel between cities of a certain distance in beautiful sleepers. For example, the northeast to ATL, east coast cities to CHI, LA to SF, etc....

If such a system were in place, would people take advantage of it?

For me I see the advantages of a pleasant and relaxing train trip overnight, allowing time to work/relax/eat while en route, not having to rush to some early morning flight outside the downtown core near where I live, avoiding the airport hassles, etc. Basically returning to a more civilized way of life.

But would the general public really ever come back to overnight rail? Or will the speed or the plane always win out no matter what?


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## Guest (Nov 16, 2014)

Sleepers are way too expensive. It's really not justifiable unless you've retired and want view the country on rails.


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## Blackwolf (Nov 16, 2014)

I'm American. I'm young. I'm far from retirement. I'm not rich. But I exclusively take sleepers when traveling long distance on Amtrak.

They are plenty justifiable. There IS a _sizable_ market for the service. If anything, the service could and should be expanded in the form multiple frequencies on established lines all offering a mix of Coach, mid-line (so-called Business Class) and Sleeper.

I see those whining about the costs of sleeper service in a similar light to those looking to get the Ritz at Motel 6 prices. Especially when, in the same breath, they bemoan the profitability of the service over all.


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## Paulus (Nov 16, 2014)

Why would I, and by extension the average traveler, want to take an extra couple of days off of work and pay two to three times the airfare?


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## Mark (Nov 16, 2014)

I wish Amtrak offered the couchettes that European City Night Line's offer. There are rooms with 4 or 6 beds to a room that fold into seats when not in use. They allow travelers to lay down overnight without having to pay for an entire sleeper. They're essentially hostels on wheels. I'd love an Amtrak option to lay down horizontally with no frills - share space, no dining meals included. I'd like to think that could be offered affordably.


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## MARC Rider (Nov 16, 2014)

Guest said:


> Sleepers are way too expensive. It's really not justifiable unless you've retired and want view the country on rails.


I'm not retired, and I actually use sleepers for business travel. I'd use them more if there were more routes and the OTP issues were resolved.

I use them on the Silvers, the Capitol Limited, the Cresent (I ride to Greenville,but NY/WAS to Atlanta is also practical.)

Basically, if you can leave at the end of a workday and arrive in the morning, you save a night in a hotel room, and it's a lot less stressful than a predawn flight.

As for longer trips, yes, at times six days on a train for a coast to coast round trip is impractical, but there are plenty of people who do this as a road trip, which takes even more time.

As for the expense, assuming we have the fantasy presented by the original poster, that would mean that Amtrak has been able to obtain all the additional sleeper capacity it needs. Thus, fares will be lower because the company can make more money from the increased patronage. Part of the reason why sleepers are so expensive now is because the trains are running full, and there's no more capacity. Supply and demand and all that. Although an additional fantasy could be that Amtrak is able to offer an intermediate level of overnight service between sleeper and coach, either Euro style couchettes or some kind of lie-flat coach.


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## northnorthwest (Nov 16, 2014)

Yes, before we get further along with this and complaints that are immaterial to my question, please be sure to read the fantasy scenario I presented.

My question is really about whether most Americans (or enough, at least) would be "comfortable" with doing an overnight train trip in a sleeper situation of some type.

And again, this question is about trips that can be done in one overnight trip, boarding in the evening/dinner (when the workday is over) and arriving in the morning/breakfast (before the next workday starts).


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## Paulus (Nov 16, 2014)

northnorthwest said:


> Yes, before we get further along with this and complaints that are immaterial to my question, please be sure to read the fantasy scenario I presented.
> 
> My question is really about whether most Americans (or enough, at least) would be "comfortable" with doing an overnight train trip in a sleeper situation of some type.
> 
> And again, this question is about trips that can be done in one overnight trip, boarding in the evening/dinner (when the workday is over) and arriving in the morning/breakfast (before the next workday starts).


Any trip where you can do that, you could also board a plane in the evening and relax in a much nicer hotel. Or sleep in your own bed and catch an early flight if that's your preference. I'm sure some people would be willing to do that, but enough to make it worthwhile?


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## professional critic (Nov 16, 2014)

As far as sleeper prices go they are a far cry from lodging at the Ritz Carlton or Waldorf Astoria. Amtrak sleepers are typically beat up and not maintained or often cleaned well. IMO they are way overpriced but apparently some are willing to pay the high prices!! They are more private and easier to sleep in than coach but that's about it.


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## Alexandria Nick (Nov 16, 2014)

I can never take more than a week off work at a time. I'm far from unique. It's just not feasible for me, even if it was the low low price of a dollar.


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## TVRM610 (Nov 16, 2014)

the sleepers are already selling out... doesn't that tell you there is a market for this service? It doesn't really matter who wants to buy it... if they are selling out SOMEONE is paying for it. When I ride Amtrak I see a little bit of everyone. I'm not sure why some posters have said only retired people ride in sleepers... that's far from the case. (I'm far from retirement!).

The Silver Trains, the Capitol, the Lake Shore, and the Crescent all have great markets for sleepers. They all connect busy markets. They all make good time too... I feel like these routes could sell out several more sleepers each.

The Western Trains will always be a different animal... Chicago to LAX is always going to make more sense via Air for example.


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## TinCan782 (Nov 16, 2014)

On a trip LA to Temple, TX on the Texas Eagle, we had a "young" couple in a roomette in our sleeper (the 2230 "though" sleeper). Way younger than us! He worked for BNSF in Temple.


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## neroden (Nov 17, 2014)

northnorthwest said:


> Let's imagine in that world there is extensive, modern, affordable (you can define it) options for overnight travel between cities of a certain distance in beautiful sleepers. For example, the northeast to ATL, east coast cities to CHI, LA to SF, etc....
> 
> If such a system were in place, would people take advantage of it?


People already do. The fact that sleepers are constantly sold out on the Lake Shore Limited is a sign of this.
However, to be really attractive, a sleeper has to hit exactly the right time window -- the single overnight, so that you get the advantage of sleeping while you travel. (For instance: Buffalo to Chicago or Syracuse to Chicago.) Most of them actually don't hit that window. NY to Chicago is a less attractive citypair for a sleeper on the schedule, but the cities involved are so huge it attracts a lot of people too.

Convoluted multi-day sleeper trips are never going to be commonplace again, though some people will take them. As MARC Rider explains, they compete with the "road trip", which people still do for some reason.


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## neroden (Nov 17, 2014)

Paulus said:


> northnorthwest said:
> 
> 
> > Yes, before we get further along with this and complaints that are immaterial to my question, please be sure to read the fantasy scenario I presented.
> ...


This is simply a false statement. And that's an important thing to realize, Paulus.
The rise of the hub system on airlines has meant bizarre indirect routings with slow transfers; the major airports are an hour outside of town in Denver, Chicago, and New York... there are a number of places where you can go overnight by train, but your alternative is a 5-6 hour trip by multiple planes.

So you can board a plane in the evening and trudge into your nice hotel at midnight. Or board a plane just after lunch and make it to your nice hotel in the evening. Or sleep in your own bed, catch an early flight, and arrive at lunchtime.

.... or you can take the train. Many people, given those options, will choose to take the train.

Yes, this is due to a markedly inferior airline system to the one we had in the past; and a theoretical state-subsidized airline system with lots of direct flights (and no TSA) could steal most of the business back. That isn't what seems to be happening, though.


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## neroden (Nov 17, 2014)

TVRM610 said:


> the sleepers are already selling out... doesn't that tell you there is a market for this service? It doesn't really matter who wants to buy it... if they are selling out SOMEONE is paying for it. When I ride Amtrak I see a little bit of everyone. I'm not sure why some posters have said only retired people ride in sleepers... that's far from the case. (I'm far from retirement!).
> 
> The Silver Trains, the Capitol, the Lake Shore, and the Crescent all have great markets for sleepers. They all connect busy markets. They all make good time too... I feel like these routes could sell out several more sleepers each.
> 
> The Western Trains will always be a different animal... Chicago to LAX is always going to make more sense via Air for example.


Having ridden on several trains repeatedly now, my anecdotal belief is the sleeper clientele on the SW Chief, California Zephyr west of Denver, Coast Starlight south of Sacramento, and Empire Builder from Chicago to Minneapolis skews older. The sleeper clientele on the Lake Shore Limited and California Zephyr east of Denver does *not* seem to; it is full of younger people. (I've never taken the other routes since they have never been convenient.)


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## WoodyinNYC (Nov 17, 2014)

Alexandria Nick said:


> I can never take more than a week off work at a time. ...


Some folks are so eager to say, NO! that they don't care what's the question?

The Original Poster asks about, "overnight travel between cities of 

a certain distance .... For example, the northeast to ATL, east coast 

cities to CHI, LA to SF, etc…."

There is a 6-day or 7-day difference between *overnight *and a week.

Then the OP realizes that some folks don't want to answer his question,

so he says in post #7, "And again, this question is about trips that can 

be done in one overnight trip, boarding in the evening/dinner (when 

the workday is over) and arriving in the morning/breakfast (before 

the next workday starts)."

If you insist on posting irrelevant replies about week-long trips, you are 

in the wrong thread.


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## neutralist (Nov 17, 2014)

America reading comprehension near the level of toilet


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## Alexandria Nick (Nov 17, 2014)

WoodyinNYC said:


> Alexandria Nick said:
> 
> 
> > I can never take more than a week off work at a time. ...
> ...


Then what's the point? Are you going from DC to Chicago (a single overnight that burns a day and a half, which turns into three total days lost) and _immediately turning around?_




neutralist said:


> America reading comprehension near the level of toilet


No, I comprehended quite clearly. Those two overnights are part of my week's vacation. Otherwise, like I just said a few lines above, what's the point of the trip in the first place?


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## neroden (Nov 17, 2014)

Nick, what you just wrote doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

The entire hypothesis of this thread is single-overnight trains. A single overnight takes... a single overnight, where you would have been sleeping anyway, presumably.

Your bizarre fantasy that it makes "three total days lost" doesn't make any sense whatsoever. Huh? How does time work in your world? Maybe you pop amphetamines instead of sleeping when you're on vacation? That would explain it. 

...oh wait, I see, you're saying that the Capitol Limited isn't fast enough to make DC-Chicago a proper single-overnight market. Which is true but irrelevant to the question asked.


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## WoodyinNYC (Nov 17, 2014)

Alexandria Nick said:


> WoodyinNYC said:
> 
> 
> > Alexandria Nick said:
> ...


Who is immediately turning around? If you arrive before 10 a.m. and leave after 5 p.m. can't you get in the meetings you need? If not, stay overnight in a hotel to have two days for work.

DC to Chicago is not a good example, as Neroden explains above. These are NOT overnight trips, they are overnight_ *and then some*_. But that train could give you a fairly good ride Pittsburgh to South Bend, departing midnight, arriving before 8 a.m. (under normal conditions, that is, not with the on-going NS meltdown on this route). The return would be 6:40 p.m. out of Chicago, arriving Pgh at 5 a.m., so dawdle over a nice breakfast and your laptop until the office opens. But what to do instead, get up at 4 a.m. to take a 6 a.m. flight to O'Hare, get to Pgh Intnl Airport, arrive in the Triangle, um, much much later than 5 a.m., probably well after the office is open.

Or let's leave Greeneville, SC, at 11 p.m., or Atlanta at 8:15 p.m., and arrive in D.C. by 10 a.m., having had breakfast in the diner.

Atlanta will give you a non-stop flight to National Airport, but Greenville will probably have you changing planes in ATL or Charlotte, with four or more exhausting hours in airports and airplanes.

Let's do take the sleeper from Chicago at 8 p.m., to arrive in Memphis at 6:30 a.m., then after some BBQ and Beale Street jazz, return the same day on the 10:40 p.m. out of Memphis to arrive in Chicago at 9 a.m. We'd better make our reservations in advance. That segment tends to be full.

At present that aren't enuff trains with city pairs where one-day go-and-return overnights are practical. But there are some. More where it's two day, go overnight train-then overnight hotel in end city-overnight train return.

Continued investment in corridors could add more good overnight connections. A Chicago-Cleveland corridor at 110 mph speeds could cut 3 or 4 hours out of the trip times Chicago-D.C. so that one could work in the future. Of course, it wouldn't be "that one". Passenger use would demand more frequencies, with at least morning, afternoon, and evening departures from each end city, making evening departures with good morning arrivals for more city pairs, like Chicago-Pgh and Toledo-D.C., along the route.

Remember that end-to-end riders are usually 15% of LD passengers. To see where the riders are, you have to look at the midpoint cities like Pgh, Cleveland, Toledo, or on Neroden's train, look at Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Toledo.

But looking at D.C.-Chicago or NYC-Chicago is almost like looking at NYC-L.A. You'll be missing the 85% of the riders on board going hundreds of miles for 5 hours, or 10 or 12 hours, daylight or overnight, but certainly not going thousands of miles for a week. That end-to-end trip taking days on end hardly exists in the real world, less than 15% of the LD trains' riders


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## WoodyinNYC (Nov 17, 2014)

northnorthwest said:


> Let's imagine a fantasy land here in the USA where Amtrak has amazing funding and there is an extensive rail system with many more options, higher speeds, modern equipment, on time service, etc.
> 
> Let's imagine in that world there is extensive, modern, affordable (you can define it) options for overnight travel between cities of a certain distance in beautiful sleepers. For example, the northeast to ATL, east coast cities to CHI, LA to SF, etc....
> 
> ...


Next year will begin a great experiment testing this question.

Amtrak has 50 Viewliners now in the fleet. The 25 new Viewliner II

sleepers and 10 bag dorms will increase capacity something like 60%.

If the sleepers fill up in 2016 and 2017, we'll know that we need a lot more.

It's actually not that many people now riding in sleepers. It probably

won't be hard to raise that number by 60% or more. Srsly.


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## Anderson (Nov 17, 2014)

I'm going to generally be realistic here: Assuming that you could run trains in the 15-25 car length range, the price would probably come down a bit from where we are with things still being profitable. More properly, you'd probably see a three-class system emerge (let's call it coach, sleeper, and sleeper plus) with the top tier being nicer but more expensive than what we have now and the middle tier being a slightly cheaper version of what we have now. The best way I can think of to explain this is that tier one would be Iowa Pacific, tier two Amtrak sleepers at present, and tier three being Amtrak coach.

Under such a scenario with 3-5 trains per day on most routes, I do believe you would have a major boom in Amtrak ridership. You might not be able to swamp, say, New York-Chicago flights, but Albany/Syracuse/Buffalo-Chicago would be a major winner. In tourist-heavy markets, such as the Northeast-Florida, you'd probably see a decent number of railroad/resort and railroad/cruise packages come together. In that context, you could easily have trains where the back six or eight cars don't need to be platformed south of Washington or Richmond and that only need to be platformed once south of there. I suspect you'd see something similar on a number of other routes as well (there are already a bunch of rail-cruise things out of Seattle; I suspect you'd see an increase in the number of those as well as some of those running into LA and/or SF. Honestly, separately-branded services such as this (and I think we can see Disney running some stuff in particular).

My view, in essence, is that there are a number of markets in the range of 8-14 hours that you could make a major dent in; you could probably get up into a longer range for tourist-heavy markets and/or markets where air service just plain stinks. There are more than a few places where airline connections are so clunky and indirect that you end up spending a lot of time and money flying domestic coach and sitting around terminals.

==============================

Frankly, if you could knock an hour off the Cap and set it up to arrive early in the business day (depart CHI at 1600-1700 and arrive into WAS around 1000) it would work. It wouldn't quite be a single-market train (I would still envision intermediate stops at PGH, TOL, and CLE at a bare minimum), but the single market would go a long way towards it. You'd probably throw in at least one other train to take up the "local" traffic (and probably to play "cleanup" on the route with the Western trains...which can go to hell even when the oil trains aren't in the way the weather can do plenty), likely with a schedule aimed at PGH-WAS traffic (say, 2100 out of CHI, 1500 into WAS: Still early enough to connect with, at a bare minimum, the Meteor but where you'd have a pretty straightforward daylight service to/from Pittsburgh).


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## cirdan (Nov 17, 2014)

Yes, I believe there is a market. Trains are city center to city center, not airport to airport. An overnight train fare is often less than an airfare + a hotel (+ often two taxis seeing public transit to many airports sucks). If I know I have to get up at stupid o'clock to catch an early flight, I cannot sleep at all. I much prefer to sleep in the train. I arrive more relaxed and more rested that way.

But what needs to be addressed is punctuality. I need to rely on the train being there at 8:00am if i have to be in a meeting at 9:00 am. The give or take three hours attitude to punctuality that is okay for landcruise type trains is not okay for the overnight business traveller.


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## Ziv (Nov 17, 2014)

I don't think that it would take all that much more money than what Amtrak has been getting to transform it into a noticably better service. If Amtrak is getting somewhere around $1.4B annually for the past several years and that funding was increased to a dedicated $1.7B per year for the next 5 or 6 years (God knows how they would guarantee it, though) then Amtrak could buy more sleepers/diners/bag-dorms (Viewliner II sleepers mostly but not exclusively) and push up the ridership and revenue figures in a appreciable fashion. The multi-year funding would allow Amtrak to make steady long term buys (often in conjunction with regional services) instead of the more expensive short term buys.

It would also allow Amtrak to try a couple of relatively small tests, i.e. lie flat at an angle sections of a standard coach car, or a couchettes car type, or a sleeper car that packs in more single sleepers perhaps like the Australian cars that have 16-20 roomettes. And how do they fit that many in, anyway?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roomette

Regardless, if Amtrak had dedicated funding at a slightly higher figure than they currently have, I think that they could make a much more pleasant system in relatively short time, and it would be able to run many more trains, in time, and possibly expand a route or two after a few years. I hate to say it, but the Western LD routes would probably change the least but the 400-800 miles city pairings and regional services would probably benefit the most, due to the utility of being able to sleep on the train after a good days work, wake up in the destination city rested and ready for work, get the work done, and then hop the sleeper for home, all without the hassel of getting to an airport that lies 20-40 miles outside the city and then having to battle lines and the TSA to board.

Just think about it. You have $300M a year on top of todays Amtrak funding, you don't have to spend it all in one place, and you have the assurance that funding will stay in place for at least 5 or 6 years. You can buy sleepers, diners, baggage cars at a steady pace, toss in a locomotive purchase, some double tracking every year, a few bridges, eliminate some at grade crossings with overpasses/underpasses, increase the frequency of more popular routes... It wouldn't take $2B a year to make a huge difference, in time.


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## City of Miami (Nov 17, 2014)

Why do folks keep on with the delusion that sleepers are 'always selling out', always sold out' etc? In my experience it is much closer to 'occasionally selling out.' I call 'sold out' when I see those words on the Amtrak booking site in red letters. Do you see something different? Even on the Cardinal [which has reverted to 1 sleeper now - why? probably because they do not regularly recover enough revenue to pay the expense of a second] I Rarely see those words.


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## Paulus (Nov 17, 2014)

neroden said:


> This is simply a false statement. And that's an important thing to realize, Paulus.
> 
> The rise of the hub system on airlines has meant bizarre indirect routings with slow transfers; the major airports are an hour outside of town in Denver, Chicago, and New York... there are a number of places where you can go overnight by train, but your alternative is a 5-6 hour trip by multiple planes.
> 
> ...


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?


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## PaulM (Nov 17, 2014)

Paulus said:


> Why would I, and by extension the average traveler, want to take an extra couple of days off of work and pay two to three times the airfare?


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.


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## domefoamer (Nov 17, 2014)

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.


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## Paulus (Nov 17, 2014)

domefoamer said:


> 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.


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.



> 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?


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.



> 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.


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).


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## Anderson (Nov 17, 2014)

Paulus said:


> domefoamer said:
> 
> 
> > 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.
> ...


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.


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## WoodyinNYC (Nov 17, 2014)

domefoamer said:


> Hats off to those who have done the work to specify the particulars of specific routes here. ...
> 
> That's why I was dismayed that Obama's rail stimulus package
> 
> ...


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 (Nov 17, 2014)

City of Miami said:


> Why do folks keep on with the delusion that sleepers are 'always selling out', always sold out' etc? In my experience it is much closer to 'occasionally selling out.' I call 'sold out' when I see those words on the Amtrak booking site in red letters. Do you see something different? Even on the Cardinal [which has reverted to 1 sleeper now - why? probably because they do not regularly recover enough revenue to pay the expense of a second] I Rarely see those words.


This is the world I live in:


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## Paulus (Nov 17, 2014)

Anderson said:


> 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.


And if you're going from Denver to the Bay Area, as was his posting, it's filled with direct flights.



> 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.


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.



> 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.


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.


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## Anderson (Nov 17, 2014)

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.


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## Paulus (Nov 18, 2014)

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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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2014)

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.


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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2014)

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).


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## neroden (Nov 18, 2014)

Paulus said:


> 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?


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.



Anderson said:


> 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


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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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2014)

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).


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## PRR 60 (Nov 18, 2014)

neroden said:


> ...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
> 
> ...


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 (Nov 18, 2014)

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.


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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2014)

jis said:


> 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.


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).


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## cirdan (Nov 18, 2014)

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.


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## haolerider (Nov 18, 2014)

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 (Nov 18, 2014)

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.


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## jis (Nov 18, 2014)

Frankly, if I was going to spend $1700 on travel ticket, I'd go to Tahiti or Seychelles, not Orlando


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## Bob Dylan (Nov 18, 2014)

jis said:


> Frankly, if I was going to spend $1700 on travel ticket, I'd go to Tahiti or Seychelles, not Orlando


Ditto!!!


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## chakk (Nov 18, 2014)

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.


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## jis (Nov 18, 2014)

chakk said:


> 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.


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:


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## chakk (Nov 18, 2014)

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.


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## PaulM (Nov 18, 2014)

cirdan said:


> 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?
> 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.


A good point.



Paulus said:


> Why would I, and by extension the *average traveler*, want to ...





Paulus said:


> Congratulations, you're an* outlier.*


The term "outlier" suggests some knowledge of statistics. So then why use the meaningless term "average traveler". Travelers (or anyone else) have an average height, age, income, etc. But there is no such thing as an average traveler. Now if he had said "majority" or "significant percentage" of travelers, he would be saying something that we could debate.

But I agree with Cirdan, nowhere near a majority would not be needed to significantly change the situation, at least for an odd ball, oops, I mean outlier like me.


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## neroden (Nov 18, 2014)

chakk said:


> 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.


We (was it Anderson?) analyzed this carefully elsewhere. The result, IIRC:

* The Silver Service has practically constant loads year-round

* The Crescent has near-constant loads after accounting for trackwork closures

* The CONO and Cardinal have relatively small seasonal variation

* The LSL, CL, and Empire Builder have manageable levels of seasonal variation, with reasonably high demand even in February

* The real wild seasonal fluctuations are on the other western trains. Yes, the trains which perform worst financially overall *also* have the worst seasonal fluctuations...


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## neroden (Nov 18, 2014)

PRR 60 said:


> 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),


They've completely eliminated the slow zones on the Blue Line then?  It used to routinely be more than an hour.



> and from MDW, considerably less.


Won't argue with that. Go ahead, buy the rare Midway-Buffalo direct tickets... if they aren't sold out!
I see Southwest is offering relatively cheap Midway-Buffalo tickets this year. *This has come and gone over the years*. Will it stick around? Maybe it will, maybe it won't. We'll see.



> Two of the three New York airports have transit service, and even from LGA, Manhattan is about a 35 minute cab ride.


LGA is generally the *fastest* of the three NY area airports for trips to Manhattan.



> My general comment is that this is not 1952.


Yeah, that's my comment too. You seem to be acting like the airplane situation is that of 1952. You're wrong.


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## Ryan (Nov 18, 2014)

neroden said:


> PRR 60 said:
> 
> 
> > 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),
> ...


Didn't you see the video the CTA posted in the other thread? It took like 8 minutes to run the Blue Line from end to end! h34r:


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## neroden (Nov 18, 2014)

(comment fail)


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## Anderson (Nov 18, 2014)

I will agree on the cost point (though I know that flops around quite a bit and has gotten quite a bit more expensive in the last few years); a lot of that does vary based on destination, but the point is taken.

If the airline situation was still that of the 1960s, what you're saying would hold true. However...let's face it, it doesn't. JetBlue and Southwest are the only airlines that still offer any sort of free checked baggage service...and JetBlue is dropping that as far as I can tell. Looking at Google Flights for January (round-trip 8/1 to 15/1, Chicago (all airports) to Orlando (all airports)) the general prices run $155 on Frontier to $207 on Spirit to $260 on American/United. Breaking that down, however, you're going to probably face most of the difference being made up. Assuming a week's vacation in Florida, I figure one carry-on and one checked bag plus a seat assignment:
-On Frontier, that's $45 per person per direction (so $180 total), taking $310 for two up to $490 (and another $12 on top of all that to pick a seat).
-On Spirit, that is $65 per person per direction assuming no discounts (so $260 total); there's an additional chunk that gets applied on top of that for just booking a fare (I wound up with $20/person), which brings the total to $714 before seat assignment fees and the like.
-On American/United you're looking at an extra $100 in fees (so around $620 assuming no surprises).

Now that I've gone on about this, I'd point out that Chicago-Florida is a two-night trip and really not at the core of what is being discussed here. Atlanta-DC, Atlanta-Florida, Atlanta-New Orleans...all of those would fall under this umbrella, but Chicago-Florida is a much longer hike. While I agree that with robust service you'd see Amtrak get a modest amount of ridership, two factors limit it. One is the two-night issue; the other is the fact that Midwest-Florida passengers are competing with New York-Florida passengers on the Silver Meteor. I have little doubt that a routing that ran Chicago-New Orleans-Florida (or indeed Chicago-Atlanta/Birmingham-Florida) would be less simply because of the lack of a flood of NEC traffic to compete with.


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## Paulus (Nov 19, 2014)

Chicago-Florida is rather unlikely to be any cheaper than airplane with fees for a sleeper (breaks down to about 23¢ per mile on the old Floridian timetable with $310 per passenger cost; on CONO+Sunset East it's 18.3¢: average sleeper yield is about 27.2¢). And honestly, there's a problem in that you're trying to justify heavily subsidized routes against profitable competition: How much would the sleeper fare be if they actually had to pick up the slack and make the train profitable to run? The incremental revenue of a sleeper has always, from the numbers I've seen published, been quite low, at best, and such a routing is unlikely to have significant coach ridership, which is where most incremental revenue is on a long distance train.

Edit: Actually, worse than that. Airfare is round trip, Amtrak is one-way. So you'd be looking at sleeper revenues of 9-12¢ per mile; less than current coach yields.


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## Orie (Nov 19, 2014)

Personally, I travel from NYC to Chicago/Cleveland/New Orleans/Savannah quite a bit. In the hypothetical scenario described, I would absolutely take the train to those destination when I could, but that would be dependent on my travel either being for personal reasons, or business happening on a Monday/Friday meaning I could take the train one way on the weekend and fly the other. If I had to go to Chicago on a Tuesday for work, for example, it's just not feasible to take the train either way. Unless I could get away with "working from home (ie the train)", but that's not very likely. For personal travel, if I'm taking a week or so off every year from work for a vacation, I would definitely include a train to New Orleans or Savannah or maybe even as far as Miami as part of it (NOLA- I'm doing in January), and I have a number of friends who want to take similar trips with me. We're all aged 20-30.

But NY-NOLA/Miami is the farthest I would go on a train, unless the trip itself was the sole reason for the trip, and that isn't going to drive any sort of ridership numbers. Now don't get me wrong, I do intend to take those long trips occasionally one day. But most people wouldn't. Even my friends who want to go from NY-NOLA with me think I'm crazy for wanting to take a train to the West Coast. Even then, a full trip on the SWC or the Texas Eagle or Empire Builder is likely to be something I only do once in an extremely long while. I just can't imagine taking a trip from Chicago to LA on a train if my goal was LA and not the train ride itself, the exception being when I retire in 45 years and perhaps have the time to do that.

And just for the sake of talking about the real world and not the hypothetical scenario, I rely on my Amtrak MC to get points to spend for redemption trips. If I can get a sleeper trip relatively cheap then I consider that too, but I would never pay more than $300-500 for a one way trip, and even then only if I can pair the return trip or a future one way with a free redemption trip. It's not feasible to expect everyone to have an Amtrak MC to accumulate reward points.


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## cirdan (Nov 19, 2014)

neroden said:


> chakk said:
> 
> 
> > 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.
> ...


An Interesting analysis.

This might be an argument for using single level cars on all services. This way cars could be re-shuffled between trains seasonally, or major maintenance work done between seasons.

Airlines also have seasonal highs, but somehow manage to work around that.


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## cirdan (Nov 19, 2014)

RyanS said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> > PRR 60 said:
> ...


I have heard some trains don't even stop at the airport station any more but run straight up the escalator


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## Anderson (Nov 19, 2014)

One thing that is being forgotten in all of this is that a train's endpoints do not make a train. With the exception of the Capitol Limited (and obviously the Auto Train) no train has more than about 15% of traffic going from endpoint to endpoint (and the LSL and EB, the trains with the highest endpoint traffic, have three endpoints instead of two). The Cap's high share comes from the fact that it is the only valid daily connection between the Midwest and the Florida trains, plus the lousy hours for a number of intermediate cities, while the Auto Train is sui generis.

The picture is a bit more complex when you have two "endpoint regions": The Silvers have the NEC and Florida, so something does get lost in the multitude of city pairs...NYP-ORL may be only a few percent of business, but add in NWK-ORL, TRE-ORL, PHL-ORL, WIL-ORL, BAL-ORL, and WAS-ORL and it's probably significantly bigger. By the same token, the Silvers only have about 90,000 boardings/discharges at Miami...but by the time one gets out of the Tri-Rail zone, you've tripled or quadrupled that number in an area where nobody is supposed to travel internally. The NEC-Florida is probably a much larger chunk of traffic for the Silvers...but even then, I can point to significant crowds for the Star north out of Richmond on a daily basis (a crowd of 20-25 is pretty common) while I'm rarely the only one getting off the Meteor. Likewise, the Silver Star is known to have a good deal of intrastate traffic in Florida.

So let's consider a Chicago-Florida train in two iterations:
-The CONO extended to Orlando. This was mentioned in the Sunset East restoration report, so it's worth a look. The CONO presently has about 250k passengers per year (up about 25% from when the report was done). Based on the Sunset's traffic on the eastern segment and the effects of daily operation on that, you'd probably add at least 100k for non-through traffic NOL-ORL. Through traffic (counting anyone passing through NOL for any significant distance) would probably add another 50-75k or so, bringing the train to 400k (of which only about 10-15% would be going from the Midwest to Florida, presuming capacity was made available for them).
-A hypothetical restored Floridian would be in the same boat: CHI-IND, CHI-Louisville, CHI-Nashville, CHI-Birmingham...and a bunch of other pairs...come to mind as traffic generators. Again, I'd look for about 15% of traffic to run through.

It's also worth noting that short-hop passengers pay more per mile than end-to-end passengers. For example (all tickets Value fare for the Star and Zephyr and Flexible for the Cap [Value sold out PGH-CHI], using trains 91(19), 29(19) and 5(19)):
-On the Star, a ticket NYP-RGH ($92), one RGH-SAV ($71), and one SAV-MIA ($78) runs about $241. A straight NYP-MIA ticket runs $189 (a difference of 27.5%).
-On the Capitol Limited, a ticket WAS-PGH ($98) and one PGH-CHI ($134) costs $232 versus a WAS-CHI ticket, which costs $189.
-On the California Zephyr, booking tickets CHI-DEN ($146), DEN-GJT ($51), GJT-SLC ($48), and SLC-EMY ($97) totals $342. A through ticket CHI-EMY runs $204 (or about the same as CHI-DEN+CHI-GJT and less than CHI-DEN and SLC-EMY; the difference is 67.6%).

Granted the latter exercise is somewhat academic; the former two, however, are not and represent turning those seats over at major destinations for those trains.

Finally, I'd like to point out that making a straight comparison between sleeper fares and coach airline fares is not _entirely_ fair given the inclusion of meals. Ignoring any other costs that might be attached there for consideration, meals for two CHI-ORL will get you two dinners, two breakfasts, and possibly a lunch per person.


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## cirdan (Nov 19, 2014)

jis said:


> Frankly, if I was going to spend $1700 on travel ticket, I'd go to Tahiti or Seychelles, not Orlando


I've spent more than that on an Amtrak trip before, and don't regret it one bit.

i wasn't going to Orlando, mind you.


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## jis (Nov 19, 2014)

cirdan said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > Frankly, if I was going to spend $1700 on travel ticket, I'd go to Tahiti or Seychelles, not Orlando
> ...


Whatever rocks ones boat.  I have never spent $1700 on any single train ride ever, and don't intend to start now. OTOH, airline tickets, every year there is at least one $5000+ RT in Business Class half way around the world, net RT mileage around 18,000.


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## tonys96 (Nov 19, 2014)

OP asked "Will Americans ever take sleepers again?".

We just got back from a trip from DAL to CUS on the TE, with all rooms in sleeper and Transdorm occupied from DAL to STL, and only two open on to CUS.

Then we took LSL from CUS to NYP. Since we had to walk through all sleepers to get to diner, and through sleepers and three coaches to get to lounge car, we saw all rooms full from TOL to ALbany split, and on NYP section all full yo Rochester.

So, to answer the OP question.........evidently, yes.


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## rrdude (Nov 19, 2014)

WoodyinNYC said:


> Alexandria Nick said:
> 
> 
> > WoodyinNYC said:
> ...


There is however, a HUGE problem "traveling to/from mid-point cities...." OTP. I used to take the CAP 2-3 X a year DC-CHI, primarily bc of the points the OP made. Sworn off for now, due to OTP. I have tried the Silvers for DC-RGH, with HORRIBLE luck. There is plenty of padding in schedule for end-to-end travel, but you take the chance of getting SCREWED and missed meetings if you opt for mid-point cities, on LD trains.

I did DC t Huntington twice too, same result screwed on timing. Now, on business travel, I can only rely on taking Amtrak HOME, where it matters less, if I am 2,3,4,5 hours late. I'm still PISSED OFF at being late, but my home hasn't "packed it's bags and left", yet.


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## Paulus (Nov 19, 2014)

Anderson said:


> One thing that is being forgotten in all of this is that a train's endpoints do not make a train. With the exception of the Capitol Limited (and obviously the Auto Train) no train has more than about 15% of traffic going from endpoint to endpoint (and the LSL and EB, the trains with the highest endpoint traffic, have three endpoints instead of two). The Cap's high share comes from the fact that it is the only valid daily connection between the Midwest and the Florida trains, plus the lousy hours for a number of intermediate cities, while the Auto Train is sui generis.
> 
> The picture is a bit more complex when you have two "endpoint regions": The Silvers have the NEC and Florida, so something does get lost in the multitude of city pairs...NYP-ORL may be only a few percent of business, but add in NWK-ORL, TRE-ORL, PHL-ORL, WIL-ORL, BAL-ORL, and WAS-ORL and it's probably significantly bigger. By the same token, the Silvers only have about 90,000 boardings/discharges at Miami...but by the time one gets out of the Tri-Rail zone, you've tripled or quadrupled that number in an area where nobody is supposed to travel internally. The NEC-Florida is probably a much larger chunk of traffic for the Silvers...but even then, I can point to significant crowds for the Star north out of Richmond on a daily basis (a crowd of 20-25 is pretty common) while I'm rarely the only one getting off the Meteor. Likewise, the Silver Star is known to have a good deal of intrastate traffic in Florida.
> 
> ...


This is all the more reason to keep the trains short enough for high frequencies and good OTP.



> So let's consider a Chicago-Florida train in two iterations:
> 
> -The CONO extended to Orlando. This was mentioned in the Sunset East restoration report, so it's worth a look. The CONO presently has about 250k passengers per year (up about 25% from when the report was done). Based on the Sunset's traffic on the eastern segment and the effects of daily operation on that, you'd probably add at least 100k for non-through traffic NOL-ORL. Through traffic (counting anyone passing through NOL for any significant distance) would probably add another 50-75k or so, bringing the train to 400k (of which only about 10-15% would be going from the Midwest to Florida, presuming capacity was made available for them).
> 
> -A hypothetical restored Floridian would be in the same boat: CHI-IND, CHI-Louisville, CHI-Nashville, CHI-Birmingham...and a bunch of other pairs...come to mind as traffic generators. Again, I'd look for about 15% of traffic to run through.


CONO-East would cost at least another $23 million in running costs, likely closer to $35-40 million. That's not exactly a cost that it's going to be recouping. Nova Floridian will be around $44 million in direct costs, probably around $75 million in allocated expenses. Both of these are going to have significant capital expenses as well. Chicago-Florida just isn't a profitable idea for Amtrak.



> Granted the latter exercise is somewhat academic; the former two, however, are not and represent turning those seats over at major destinations for those trains.
> 
> Finally, I'd like to point out that making a straight comparison between sleeper fares and coach airline fares is not _entirely_ fair given the inclusion of meals. Ignoring any other costs that might be attached there for consideration, meals for two CHI-ORL will get you two dinners, two breakfasts, and possibly a lunch per person.


While also taking at least another day to get there. Free meals don't exactly offset having to burn another couple days of PTO or reducing the amount of time spent at my destination.


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## Anderson (Nov 19, 2014)

Something else worth a thought: A travel market that involves 8-15 hours en route will attract a different crowd than one that involves 16-24 hours, and when you start climbing up towards 40 hours or more the market shifts again. The Midwest-Florida market is very much in the third category while the NEC-Florida markets are in the first two (WAS-JAX is about 14-16 hours and the Meteor times out _beautifully_ for this market). Only the extreme endpoints stretch over more than about 24 hours (a night and a day for the most part).

Comparing a lot of those markets mentioned earlier in the Rust Belt or along the East Coast with far longer markets involving two nights en route isn't exactly a fair match. I will concede that two-night trips are going to be limited to a relative subset of situations (trips where the train is a key component of the vacation, trips where the traveler has reasons for not flying, and/or trips where the air market is fouled up [either by weather or by issues in a specific market]). As a case in point, the damage to Amtrak in January from the freeze-up in Chicago was limited by the fact that a normally slow week in January saw a decent number of passengers diverted from cancelled airline flights to the LD trains (anecdotally, the SW Chief was packed with them). A lot of trains weren't running, true, but those that _were_ running were slam full.

Swinging back around, I can anecdotally back up both sides of this discussion with my own experience getting into taking Amtrak:
-My first overnight trip was a side-effect of trying to fly into a second-tier airport at the last minute in a peak season. Namely, I looked up PHF/ORF-DAB for right after Christmas, got a rather horrid one-way fare, and decided to check Amtrak on a lark. I would have come out ahead in the sleeper, but I didn't even_ think_ to book that. The return leg DLD-RVR (I still have the stub) was $150 right after the New Year, and the ticket was booked pretty much at the last minute. This would have been 2006/7 if I'm not mistaken.

-My second overnight trip was on 66/67. No sleeper available, though I would probably have taken one had there been one. This was the return from a messy Model UN conference at Yale (which was conveniently located a quick cab ride from NHV while William and Mary is literally about three rather short blocks from WBG); to put it plainly, by Saturday evening I had no shot at an award and everyone at the conference was miserable. The only reason to stay was for the partying (which I was known for not partaking in), so my request to leave was granted with full understanding (I also wanted to avoid the van ride home, to be fair, and the train was an efficient means to that end). This was a last-minute booking again; this would have been late 2007.

-My third overnight trip was to Iowa at Christmas in 2008. Here a couple of factors came into play, but the big one was that airline tickets to Des Moines were always notoriously expensive, security had gotten increasingly obnoxious over the previous 7 years, it was winter, and since it was Christmas I had a bit of time to kill. I routed through NYP onto the LSL outbound and onto the Cap back and, I believe, came out slightly ahead on the fare. I lost a day due to weather (Amtrak put me up at the Hyatt for the night), but would have lost at least a day had I tried to fly (there was a nasty blizzard). On the way back, things went smoothly. As a note, after Amtrak did well and the airlines went into meltdown mode I decided to take the train exclusively at Christmas because of the absurd cost of flying (when I checked the next year the r/t cost was over $800 in coach to Des Moines; this time I remember the r/t on the Cap being only about $600).

-Finally, we have my fourth trip, to Chicago for a PoliSci conference in the spring of 2009. This was induced by a string of good experiences mentioned above as well as one or two good daytime trips on top. I either broke even or came out ahead on the costs once taxis, parking, etc. came into the picture (I actually ran the numbers after being bugged by a professor as to why I wasn't flying like everyone else was) and the Cap timed into and out of Chicago nicely (I had a presentation at something like 1030 or 1100, spent a night in Chicago, then caught the train home the next evening and got home Sunday night). The only nail-biter was getting into Washington (I got a late start and basically had to run down the stairs at WAS to make the train).

What do these trips have in common?

(1) All were single-night trips. None of the total trip times ran more than about 36 hours one way. Of them, very probably only the Iowa one would have happened had it been more than one night, and even then it's a close-run thing. Florida _might_ have happened, if only because of the relative insanity of the airfare at the time, but a trip cancellation is also plausible.

(2) In two of the four cases, they were in the face of rather crazy airfares. In a third (New Haven), flying didn't even get a glance (if only due to the quirky situation).

(3) In three of the four cases the booking was last-minute. I think Iowa was done a few weeks out, but the others were all a week or so ahead of time. FWIW, when I went back to do Iowa again the next year the booking check was done about four months out.

=========================

I'm going to say that these trips all happened before I became a diehard fan of taking Amtrak. Not that I didn't already have a rather engrained loathing of what the airlines were becoming (airport security never failed to unimpress me), but previous to this I would have been inclined to drive (and indeed I did drive quite a bit...I think I drove to Florida 3-4 times between 2005 and 2010, and I did a number of other roadtrips in that timeframe as well...when I went to NH to work for McCain, I never considered flying but ruled the train out as impractical for several reasons as well) rather than take the train (I came under a lot less pressure not to drive on long trips throughout college; witness NH in 2008).


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## tonys96 (Nov 19, 2014)

Paulus said:


> > Granted the latter exercise is somewhat academic; the former two, however, are not and represent turning those seats over at major destinations for those trains.
> >
> > Finally, I'd like to point out that making a straight comparison between sleeper fares and coach airline fares is not _entirely_ fair given the inclusion of meals. Ignoring any other costs that might be attached there for consideration, meals for two CHI-ORL will get you two dinners, two breakfasts, and possibly a lunch per person.
> 
> ...


Simple solution. You do not take Amtrak.

Others might, though.

We CHOSE to take Amtrak to New York, and fly back. We consider the two days on the trains to be part of the enjoyment of the trip. We got to visit two separate "destinations" Chicago and New York. Was not PTO "burned", instead it was PTO enjoyed immensely.

BTW...I hated the flight back along with the rigamarole surrounding it. Three hours of my PTO was most certainly burned sitting around LaGuardia. and four hours stuck belted to an itty bitty metal seat with darned near zero legroom was a torture to the body and to the soul.


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## Paulus (Nov 19, 2014)

That they may, but I was pointing out that you can't claim sleeper vs airfare is an unfair comparison because of meals without also counting the effect of extra travel time for the train.


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## tonys96 (Nov 19, 2014)

Paulus said:


> That they may, but I was pointing out that you can't claim sleeper vs airfare is an unfair comparison because of meals without also counting the effect of extra travel time for the train.


True. We choose to enjoy that extra travel time, whenever possible. It is all about the attitude.

Amtrak is a perfect fit for some situations. It is contraindicated in other situations.


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## Anderson (Nov 19, 2014)

tonys96 said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> > That they may, but I was pointing out that you can't claim sleeper vs airfare is an unfair comparison because of meals without also counting the effect of extra travel time for the train.
> ...


Agreed. I can actually give an example on this front:

I got stuck, due to the OTP situation, f**ing much of the way to/from the NARP conference (I was able to make something of a vacation of the trip, but there _was_ a limit). I will admit that I enjoyed much of the experience in question, though that was down to flying Virgin First. However, the flight was an inconvenient one insofar as Virgin doesn't go to SLC, so I flew to SFO and caught the next morning's Zephyr. Yes, I spent about a day and a half in transit, minimum...but it was one direct flight and then a train with an overnight in Oakland, not a string of connecting flights. Note that I picked this in no small part because when I went to look at flying, everything heading to SLC either had a connection tactically placed to cut the flight short of meal service (the Houston connections seemed to do this) or involved flying on a third-party "express" flight with nothing but very tight coach seating (which was the case in Denver).

Again speaking personally, a lot of why Amtrak won out over flying is that I simply got used to having legroom and whatnot. Something is screwed up when an airline's "first class" product is roughly on par with Amtrak's long-haul coach. The airlines that ran passenger rail out back in the 50s and 60s had baseline seating in the mid-30s in terms of seat pitch and included a lot more amenities in many respects (as well as less hassles). In many regards I strongly suspect that, caveats about pricing notwithstanding, the airlines of today wouldn't have had nearly such an easy time beating the railroads, particularly on the not-super-long routes. NYC-LAX is one thing, but again I turn back to the shorter routes and that's where Amtrak is at least contraindicated a lot less.


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## Anderson (Nov 19, 2014)

Giving this a bit more thought:
-For business trips in that 10-14 hour range, if a sleeper option is available and the pairing allows a departure and arrival outside of business hours, I believe that Amtrak is at least not contraindicated. The indication is not overwhelming and it can be offset by a sufficiently cheap and convenient flight...or supported by a badly inconvenient flight routing with known delays, etc. Below 12 hours, something like a 1900-0700 option becomes available, increasingly negating the chances of anything but a major delay interfering. With a genuinely early arrival (again, 0700 comes to mind) the odds of missing a morning meeting start lining up with the chances of a massive tarmac delay...generally until recently, endpoint arrival within two hours of scheduled arrival was pretty high.
-Above around 14 hours, business travel is going to fall off with certain oddball exceptions (usually down to bad air service in some fashion). At this point, leisure travel is still going to be a component, particularly if a good service could be set up at the destination (i.e. baggage transfers to hotels and shuttles to attractions; yes, I'm thinking Disney's Orlando-area operations, but I'm also thinking cruise lines as well). This is probably viable up to somewhere around 20-24 hours, and is particularly strong if one is likely to need a decent amount of baggage.
-Beyond somewhere in the range of 20-24 hours, passenger rail will only prevail as a preferred option if the airline market is royally screwed up. This happens in some cases, but those are somewhat isolated.

Note that in all cases I am not presuming that rail will dominate travel selections. I'm thinking of rail holding an air-rail market share of 10-25% (a good portion of which would actually be highway diversions)...which in many cases would still generate shattering amounts of traffic. Per the DOT's Consumer Airfare Report for Q4 of 2013, Washington-Orlando was averaging 4,237 passengers per day. Philly-Orlando was generating 2,671. New York was generating 8,850. Smaller markets in the general area (Harrisburg, Richmond, Norfolk) and ones that attach (Hartford) generate a decent additional flow. So using Orlando, 10% penetration of passenger rail into the NEC-Orlando markets south of NYP alone would generate 1575 passengers per day (or 5.75 million per year). Assuming 25% sleeper penetration among that market (or 2.5% of the total travel market), you're looking at 1.4 million sleeping car passengers (probably enough to, on its own, support at least a half-dozen daily trains in each direction). Note that this doesn't assume any travel to Fort Lauderdale or Miami.* Even a lousy 2% penetration by rail would kick out 1.15m passengers to/from Orlando (and 25% sleeper penetration on this, or about 0.5% of the whole market, would generate 288k sleeper passengers on this run).

So the answer, ultimately, is that you don't need massive penetration to achieve a very successful situation with "Americans taking sleepers".

I'll run some other numbers (I'm going to try and tally up full-year numbers for a bunch of pairs) and see what spits out, but the penetration levels needed to support a massive, competent, and flexible rail system compared to what we have now are surprisingly small in a lot of cases. With this in mind, I do feel the need to make a quick note: The population of a lot of the areas in question (especially Florida) is _far_ higher today than it was in the mid-60s when the "wheels came off".

*Those two can be accessed by rail a lot faster than Amtrak currently does...IIRC, Amtrak loses about 3-5 hours over what the FEC line should be able to allow (9:07-10:50 vs. 6-ish hours). The Meteor does NYP-JAX in 18:08, and that should drop to about 17:30 with the SEHSR improvements in Virginia should those come to pass. JAX-ORL is about a 3:00 trip, while JAX-MIA should be something in the 6:00 range, so the markets would be fairly similar.


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## Anderson (Nov 19, 2014)

Ok, I promised I would run a bunch of numbers, and here they are. As a note, I used Newark as a base for checking seasonal load variation, and Q3 was the closest to the average on daily traffic to Orlando. I therefore went with Q3/2013 for my baseline report. I defined two general segments for this, which I am using as imperfect measurements of traffic:
NEC Core: EWR, JFK, LGA for New York; PHL for Philly; and BWI, DCA, and IAD for Washington
NEC Rim: RIC, MCO, PHF for Virginia; ALB, BDL, and ISP for north-of-New York, and BOS, PVD, and MHT for Boston

*Daily Air Traffic per market*
NEC Core-Jacksonville: 4,045/day
NEC Rim-Jacksonville: 744/day

NEC Core-Orlando: 11,753/day
NEC Rim-Orlando: 5,139/day

NEC Core-Tampa: 6,842/day
NEC Rim-Tampa: 3,031/day

NEC Core-Fort Lauderdale: 10,739/day
NEC Rim-Fort Lauderdale: 4,045/day

NEC Core-Palm Beach: 3,371/day
NEC Rim-Palm Beach: 1,277/day

NEC Core-Miami: 6,781/day
NEC Rim-Miami: 1,096/day

Total, NEC Core-Florida: 43,531/day (15,888k/yr)
Total, NEC Rim-Florida: 15,332/day (5,596k/yr)

Basically, we have an NEC Core market of 15.9m/yr and a surrounding market of somewhere around 5.5m/yr. That is a /ton/ of passengers, and Amtrak currently holds about 2% of the market here (largely on the Auto Train). Let's assume that with a robust system (including multiple-daily trains, slightly better times, solid timekeeping, and direct service on the FEC down to Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami) Amtrak could get to 10% of the core market and 2% of the rim market, of which 25% (2.5% of the core market, 0.5% of the rim market) would take a sleeper:
Core: 1,582,311
Rim: 111,923
Total: 1,694,235/yr
Sleeper: 423,558/yr

For the record, the Meteor and Star currently run about 750k/yr, including local traffic in Florida and elsewhere. Note that sleeper traffic on these trains is often in the 15-20% range, but there's also a lot of shorter-hop traffic that we're ignoring here (Florida intrastate, traffic to/from NC, SC, and GA, and traffic between VA and the Northeast). I've also excluded a bunch of airports (Harrisburg, Atlantic City, etc.) from consideration in the rim, though it is quite probable that you could double the rim's traffic on folks who would connect in from places like those.

1.7 million passengers per year would therefore probably support at least six daily trains; moreover, the sleeper load would itself probably end up supporting multiple trains on its own (that traffic would support two daily trains of 12 Viewliner sleepers and have leftovers for the other trains even if there was absolutely no local traffic carried between Richmond and Jacksonville). More realistically, each train running with six coaches for through traffic would be able to take about 175-200k passengers per year (I'm not going to assume 100% load factors, though the theoretical capacity of such a train is 258,420/yr...yes, I counted both directions), so you would likely need seven trains two more in-season). Each train would, in turn, need 3-5 sleepers to deal with the load...though in all honesty, you'd probably end up with 5-6 sleeper trains with 5-6 sleepers apiece, plus 2-4 mostly daytime trains that don't have them but which take up a lot of intermediate-destination business.

This penetration level is not unrealistic in my opinion, given the equipment and the slots. You would probably see almost as much traffic added again on local-ish traffic (these trains would get a respectable share of the traffic between VA and the NEC, for example, as well as make a dent in the NC-NEC traffic; if FEC allowed it, the Jacksonville-Miami trains would likely pick up a solid share of traffic as well).


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## Paulus (Nov 19, 2014)

How is that level of penetration "not unrealistic" given the average one-way airfares?

DC-Orlando: $149

Philadelphia-Orlando: $171

New York-Orlando: $175

Chicago-Orlando: $188

Albany-Orlando: $204

Boston-Orlando: $145

All numbers Q3 2013


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## neroden (Nov 20, 2014)

rrdude said:


> There is however, a HUGE problem "traveling to/from mid-point cities...." OTP.


Certainly. The bane of Amtrak. And caused almost entirely by two things: lawbreaking dispatching practices at the Class I "freight" railroads (coded as "freight interference" in Amtrak's reports), and derelict maintenance at said railroads (coded as "slow orders" in Amtrak's reports).



Paulus said:


> This is all the more reason to keep the trains short enough for high frequencies and good OTP.


There is no evidence that shorter routes will have better OTP. Look at the Hoosier State!
The evidence is that routes have better OTP if they are over tracks owned by Amtrak, state governments, commuter agencies, or shortlines with state support, and worse OTP if they are over Class I freight tracks. 

This is why I keep going on about the importance of owning the tracks. It is probably unrealistic to imagine a passenger-operated-owned corridor across the Rockies and the Prairies. However, a passenger-operator-owned corridor from New York to Chicago is entirely realistic.



Anderson said:


> I'm going to say that these trips all happened before I became a diehard fan of taking Amtrak. Not that I didn't already have a rather engrained loathing of what the airlines were becoming (airport security never failed to unimpress me), but previous to this I would have been inclined to drive (and indeed I did drive quite a bit...


Again, I believe Amtrak is primarily competing with driving, not flying. There are already a huge number of people who are strongly disinclined to fly, for myriad reasons. Most will drive. (There seem to be far fewer who are strongly disinclined to drive.)

Thinking about it, I don't think my family has ever flown from Ithaca (or Syracuse) to Chicago when we were actually going to Chicago (though we've done so to catch connecting flights). However, we drove Ithaca to Chicago a *lot*.

The sleepers on the LSL, when it's running close to on time, are quite competitive with driving, unless you enjoy the No Sleep Maniac style of driving. They are certainly at the luxury end of the market compared to the drive.



Anderson said:


> Again speaking personally, a lot of why Amtrak won out over flying is that I simply got used to having legroom and whatnot. Something is screwed up when an airline's "first class" product is roughly on par with Amtrak's long-haul coach. The airlines that ran passenger rail out back in the 50s and 60s had baseline seating in the mid-30s in terms of seat pitch and included a lot more amenities in many respects (as well as less hassles).


...and arguably at the luxury end compared to the current airplanes, too.
The luxury end of the market is a real market. Not everyone wants the cheapest, crappiest experience available.

Is any of this relevant to you, Paulus? Maybe not -- you live in California! People have made solid cases for sleeping car service in the extended NEC, and in the "Heartland" triangle from there to Chicago, and described sellout conditions running down the Mississippi River corridor on the Texas Eagle. In these areas, if the tracks are made faster, making more cities suitable for daytime corridor routes, it'll just mean that the sweet spot for sleeping car service is a slightly more distant set of city pairs. I don't think I'll see enough speed-ups in my lifetime to make everything out here close enough together to make sleeper service irrelevant -- you'd have to get NY-Chicago below 9 hours, for example, which seems highly unlikely.

.. all of which has absolutely nothing to do with California. There's simply nothing in the sleeper sweet spot in California, or at least nothing with enough population.

Someone's going to bring up Europe. In Europe, the sleeper services are having a fundamentally stupid problem: the arrival of high-speed rail means that the sweet spots for sleeper service are now nearly all international. The administrative situation makes new international routes hard to start up, and international routes (particularly crossing language barriers) always have less travel than you'd expect from the city sizes alone. By contrast, in the centralized Russian Empire and Chinese Empire, the sleeping car services are alive and well.



cirdan said:


> An Interesting analysis.
> 
> This might be an argument for using single level cars on all services. This way cars could be re-shuffled between trains seasonally, or major maintenance work done between seasons.


Unfortunately, all the routes have pretty much exactly the same strong months and weak months, so shuffling cars between trains isn't that effective.
The idea of doing maintenance work in the winter and pushing the cars into intensive service in summer is an interesting one. But Amtrak could do that right now with the Superliners (which run on all the most seasonally-variable routes).


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## Anderson (Nov 20, 2014)

Paulus said:


> How is that level of penetration "not unrealistic" given the average one-way airfares?
> 
> DC-Orlando: $149
> 
> ...


I'm going to submit a couple of reasons:

(1) If I'm not mistaken, those fares are generally exclusive of non-tax fees (i.e. baggage fees). In most of those cases, you're adding somewhere in the range of $20-30 for baggage fees per person. Only Southwest doesn't charge for bag fees at this point (though their fares seem a bit higher overall), so I'd universally add baggage fees to the calculation. Southwest also wins an award for creative connections between New York and Florida (connections available at Atlanta, Nashville, MIdway, and Houston).

(2) PPR for sleepers on the Star is $241.32. For the Meteor it is $269.88. Both figures FY13. PPR in coach is substantially lower in both cases, but I'm going to consider those numbers to be utterly useless given that those include a lot of short-hop tickets (the Star being particularly bad in this respect, what with the south-of-Orlando turnover providing a big slug of traffic for that train). For the record, the Meteor's PPR was $106.01 for FY13 overall; I would nudge that up a bit for through traffic on the basis of actual ticket prices and the aforementioned traffic situation.

(3) That level of penetration assumes sleeper penetration of somewhere under 2% for the region (2.5% on core airports, 0.5% on the surrounding areas). I'm still assuming that the majority of people travel coach on those numbers. (Edit: I also assume that at least some share of that comes from driving...and north of DC, driving to Florida is _not_ a one-day trip).

(4) An implicit assumption is quite frankly that Amtrak would be able to scale a number of things on multiple trains. Amtrak did 3 round-trips to Miami with 10 sets of equipment versus 2 trips with 8 sets now. I do figure that you'd have similar scaling in effect (probably around 20-22 sets with 6 trains, depending on scheduling) as well as at least some efficiency in crew shuffling. Some other things would scale, additional station costs would be near $0, and as has been discussed at length elsewhere the Florida trains are already at break-even on direct costs. In such a situation, I'm guessing that fares would be about what they are now or less.

(5) Finally, another implicit assumption traces back to the travel situation: The vast majority of these trips are, if I am not mistaken, leisure and not business (so an exact arrival time into Florida is not a huge deal), so taking the train does in fact save a good portion of a day. Let me run down the list using January 15th 2015 in all cases for the SB leg, using January 21 2015 for a return:

-Southwest's earliest available arrival from EWR is at 1350, from LGA at 1305. ISP has a lone direct flight

that gets in before noon...which is also already $425 almost two months out.

-United has two flights that get you there before mid-afternoon. One departs EWR at about 6 AM and gets you to MCO at 1030 (price $368 before any fees). The other is 0735 to 1034 (and is, in fact, direct). Price: $323 before fees (though I cannot even begin to guess what the fare pricing).

-Delta is in the same boat (pricing starts at $330 for the most part, though there's a stray $295 thrown in). You've got multiple morning arrivals, though a lot of those are mix-and-match connection combos involving departures from different NYC-area airports connecting to the same flight in Atlanta.

More in a moment; I'm worried my browser will die on me.

Edit:

Ok, Nathanael, I need to make a correction: In that post when I said that domestic FC was on par with Amtrak's long-distance coach, I was incorrect. Domestic FC is on par with _Regional_ coach. That's my bad.

As to California, there _is_ a city pair in the sleeper sweet spot there: Los Angeles-San Francisco. Northbound travel time is 10:01; a 100-series local takes 93 minutes from there to 4th and King while a 300-series Baby Bullet takes 59 minutes. Assuming a 10-minute stop at SJC and a Baby Bullet schedule you'd be looking at 11:10 end-to-end from LAUS to 4th and King, which would enable such options as a 2000 departure and an arrival at 0710 (probably timetabled at 0730 or so for padding purposes, with the train running discharge-only from SJC onwards). Los Angeles-Phoenix and Los Angeles-Las Vegas are both pretty close to it as well (both falling a bit short but close enough to make work with a bit of a schedule massage...and Las Vegas might well be the single most flexible city in terms of scheduling arrivals and departures in the country, if I had to guess).

Edit2: There's always something else, isn't there?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/9-airports-where-flying-lot-141839938.html

The article mentions a stack of airports facing various issues with crowding; MCO, EWR, BWI, and BOS are all on the list and relevant to my Florida discussion.


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## neroden (Nov 20, 2014)

Anderson said:


> As to California, there _is_ a city pair in the sleeper sweet spot there: Los Angeles-San Francisco.


Major problem there: the speed is not driving-competitive. By a substantial margin, not just an hour or two.
Second problem: that's just two cities. In the East we can get whole strings of cities, which gives better ridership.



> Los Angeles-Phoenix and Los Angeles-Las Vegas are both pretty close to it as well (both falling a bit short


That's exactly the thing -- they're actually too close for sleeper service, and should have faster-than-driving daytime service instead.
If you have driving-competitive runtimes, *San Francisco to Las Vegas* is about right for sleeping car service. However, once CAHSR gets built, even that will be too short for sleeper service. And there's no "next city" beyond Las Vegas.

Again, with driving-competitive runtimes, Reno to Salt Lake City should be about right for sleeping car service. (The westbound scheduling of the California Zephyr is OK, the eastbound scheduling is no good.) But it just isn't a big enough market. And 8-12 hours out of Emeryville lands you in Winnemucca.

With driving-competitive runtimes (presumably along the Wyoming route) Salt Lake to Denver would again be a bit *short* for sleeper service, though it should work.

Here in the east, whatever fast daytime service you may run, you can just push the route another few hours out, and find yourself at another decent-sized city where the timing is right for sleeping cars. On the west end of the "east", you can push this process as far as Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, OKC, Dallas, and San Antonio, probably, and possibly stretch to Denver. On the east end, you can go as far as the Atlantic Ocean. On the north, as far as Boston, and on the south, all the way to the Gulf.

This just doesn't work out west; you run into these empty deserts and mountains and grazing land. And wine country, in the case of northern California. And the Mexican border as well. It's much harder to hit the sweet spot for sleepers because there's so much empty space.

Of course, discussion of driving-competitive runtimes brings up another issue: the highways are fast out west, *particularly* in the empty areas. The state speed limit in New York is 65 mph, and that only applies to rural expressways; everything else is 55. Even in states with higher speed limits, traffic means that *speeds* aren't terribly high on I-95 parallel to the NEC, or anywhere in the Chicago metro area. Slower cars means it is easier for trains to match or beat cars on speed.

Looking at the speed limits by state...

http://www.motorists.org/speed-limits/state-chart

...I find that, off the NEC (speed limits are relatively slow in nearly all NEC states) New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, and Wisconsin look "likely" for trains to have speeds competitive with cars. (Of those, Arkansas and Kentucky were unexpected. Sadly, the direct line from Little Rock to Memphis seems to have been severed, but improvements to the Texas Eagle route through Arkansas might be highly successful. Kentucky suffers from very twisty railroad routes, though the Lexington-Cincinnati route looks OK.)



> There's always something else, isn't there?
> 
> http://finance.yahoo.com/news/9-airports-where-flying-lot-141839938.html
> 
> The article mentions a stack of airports facing various issues with crowding; MCO, EWR, BWI, and BOS are all on the list and relevant to my Florida discussion.


I note Chicago Midway being right up on the top of that list. Expect Midway flights to become more expensive as Midway hits its people capacity limit.


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## jis (Nov 20, 2014)

Let me start by saying that I like the analysis. However I have a few observations to share, so please take them as such.



Anderson said:


> (5) Finally, another implicit assumption traces back to the travel situation: The vast majority of these trips are, if I am not mistaken, leisure and not business (so an exact arrival time into Florida is not a huge deal), so taking the train does in fact save a good portion of a day. Let me run down the list using January 15th 2015 in all cases for the SB leg, using January 21 2015 for a return:
> 
> -Southwest's earliest available arrival from EWR is at 1350, from LGA at 1305. ISP has a lone direct flight
> 
> ...


The United fares are round trip, not one way. The one way fare on the 7:35am is something like $217. Actually the air fares vary so wildly that it is hard to nail anything down precisely. For example, I am going on a weekend trip to EWR from MCO first weekend in December (Friday evening out Sunday late afternoon back) and my *round trip fare* is $178 on United.
As for baggage fees I reckon somewhere between half and two thirds of the travelers land up paying any fee at all on United. The rest have $0 fee for various reasons.

The cruise ship crowd usually uses evening flights to get into Florida well in time for mid morning departure on the cruise the next morning. I have noticed that there are very few leisure travelers on early morning flights, simply because they are the most expensive flights, as are early evening flights. If arrival time truly does not matter I'd expect people to choose the cheapest flights, not the most expensive ones.

I happen to travel quite frequently on this route as many times as twice a month round trips at various times of day and week,

I have some anecdotal evidence that you may be over-estimating typical prices paid and also baggage fees, though I have no idea how one could get a good guesstimate. I have noticed large families going on vacation to Disney who land up paying basically no baggage fees on mountains of baggage, because one or more members of the group either have an appropriate affinity credit card or have status enough to make it free. And then of course there are others who pay through their nose. But it is never a sudden surprise, since while buying the ticket and checking in on line they will be happy to tell you exactly what the baggage fees will be. I don't see too many people eating much on those flights and all soft drinks are free, served at least twice in course of the slightly to well under 3 hours flight.

As for airport congestion, on the rail side one needs to take into consideration the congestion situation on the Atlantic Coast route, which is not in a very pretty shape even right now. And like everything else, things will only get worse, not better. Just like selective mitigation on the rail side, selective mitigation on the air side is starting to happen with upsizing of equipment, and rebanking to reduce the mad dash to have every flight leave at the top of the hour. Also, in general there is much more committed resources for new terminals and related infrastructure at the air side than on the rail side. So I'd take that aspect out of the equation for now since I think it is a wash between air and rail as far as that goes.

But, other than those caveats, i do like the direction your analysis is taking. Frankly irrespective of the fare differences that you and Paulus are arguing about, the percentage is in the ballpark IMHO within +/- 0.5% point


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## Anderson (Nov 21, 2014)

Well, a couple of thoughts pop into my mind:
On speed limits: Those are maximum speed limits, and are often not found anywhere close to "everywhere". In VA, for example, I-64 is only 70 MPH from Williamsburg up to about I-295, and then again west of Richmond to a bit short of Charlottesville. Most of the rest of the way it varies between 55 and 65. Moreover, in a lot of areas the speed limit is academic...you could set a speed limit to 90, but if traffic is jammed up it's not going to matter. This is often the case in many parts of Florida and Virginia (I think I can make it across Orlando about 25% of the time without getting caught in a massive slowdown). The same can increasingly be said for other areas as well (California comes to mind).

On airports: There are open question marks in a lot of cases. In the case of LaGuardia, Logan, National, and Midway the airport is exceedingly hemmed in (this is at least part of the reason that LaGuardia and National have their perimeter rules in place). If MWAA /really/ wanted to push traffic to Dulles, they'd just charge something to the effect of an extra $5/passenger at National and use that fee to cross-subsidize Dulles (there's a decent amount of traffic that is either going to come in at National or at Union Station; Dulles is sufficiently inconvenient to downtown DC to dissuade shorter-hop traffic from landing there).

Beyond those airports that are hemmed in, we've seen a mixed trend: Some airports are seeing overflow traffic, such as those mentioned in the article. Others are seeing either major drops in traffic or substantial reductions in the number of destinations being served. Basically, you're seeing a "winners and losers" situation slowly play out, especially as what seems like the last few rounds of airline consolidation play out (we're literally running out of airlines to see merge, and some of the ownership structures of international airlines are getting complicated due to various limitations on mergers). Some airports will invest in additional capacity, others won't. Moreover, some areas (such as Southern California) are running into issues with airspace capacity that is limiting the use of close-in secondary airports.

I will say that terminal congestion, airport congestion, and airspace congestion are different animals to some extent. You can de-congest a terminal with more space inside (adding seats, extending the terminal outwards some, etc.) allowing higher-capacity planes to be used. You can, in some cases, work on the airport with additional runways. Airspace congestion requires a lot of ATC work, and even it has limits.

On fares and fees: One thing I wouldn't rule out is some level of distortion. Those average fares do, in fact, include Business/First upgrades, and anyone buying a full-fare coach ticket is likely to increase the average fare paid on their flight by a dollar or two. As to baggage fees...I think the estimate of 1/3 of folks dodging those fees is fair. You've got a complicated mess of exemptions (some airlines seem to have universal exemptions for ID-carrying military for multiple checked bags, for example); though those won't be surprises, they still matter insofar as what one is "actually" paying. I'd also argue that some of the "discount" carriers are distorting average fares in the other direction by a bit given how much they seem to make off of various fees (if they knock $20 off their average fare but make it back through various fees then their average fare is going to look lower while they make the same amount).

====================================

As to those services, I guess the question is this: If a train can't cover a given distance in less than 6 hours or so, and driving is a similar story, then does it make sense to look at a sleeper service with early boarding or something similar?

For example, let's take Hampton Roads-New York City. Right now, that train trip takes around 8:00-8:30. Under the most aggressive (realistic) plans I can find, you'd be looking at maybe 7:00 for the trip (you're not going to knock much more off north of Washington; there's maybe 30 minutes to be saved RVR-WAS and another 15-20 you could save at WAS by using dual-mode...and possibly a bit more NFK/NPN-RVR, but getting the total savings over an hour is going to take a lot). Driving to New York is no bueno (I've seen parking fees at hotels in the $40-50 range) while going the other way, plenty of people simply don't own cars. Both ways, traffic tends towards being atrocious to the point that Williamsburg has complained about losing repeat visitors to jams in DC.

Yet a day train, leaving at 0500, isn't going to get to the other end of its run before noon under the most rosy plans. Leaving at 1700 it won't get to its destination before midnight. That is a very real problem that limits the train's utility due to a day lost in transit. There are other markets (Charlotte-Washington/New York comes to mind) where even if you /can/ get in under the sweet spot, it might make sense to run a train a bit slow to land in it given the amount of time lost on a day train.


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## Paulus (Nov 21, 2014)

> As to those services, I guess the question is this: If a train can't cover a given distance in less than 6 hours or so, and driving is a similar story, then does it make sense to look at a sleeper service with early boarding or something similar?


I don't think it necessarily does; trying to go overnight is trying to poorly compete with flying while those who've chosen to drive are doing so in the daylight hours (generally speaking), so there's no waste of time by running in the daylight. I think arrival time might be tripping you up rather than viewing it from the stance of most preferred departure time.


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## northnorthwest (Nov 21, 2014)

Was out of town and am glad to see this topic still going strong a few days later!

I have a feeling that if a half dozen or dozen of the posters on this board could seize control of Amtrak it would be in much better shape....

I think the core of my question was really getting at the idea of whether the population could be taught (Please forgive my propagandistic language, but that's really what it would be.) to take trains again. My sense is that with advertising people can be led to buy just about anything, so there may be hope after all. In 1950 trains were part of the culture, and it was not shocking to imagine traveling by train. But today I just get the sense from the vast majority of people I personally meet (all across the country, many income and education levels, mostly in cities), that the train is just not on the radar. Before I relocated to my current home in Georgia I frequently took the Crescent to and from PHL, and I did so for reasons of scheduling, cost, and to a certain extent comfort/enjoyment/pleasure. I sometimes had the sleeper, always with AGR points, and I would have paid for it if I could have. (Current prices are prohibitive for me.)

But for my fiancée the train was and is never an option. Regardless of costs, the idea of a 15 hour train trip (Admittedly in my original scenario that time would have been cut down with various improvements, but the point is the same.) for her was just never ever an option. She has done LD train travel with me and loved it, but she said she would never do it alone. So I do get the sense that for most people it's either fly or drive, and I expect it is just some kind of perception that the train is not an option. It's just not part of their thinking.

But as I said, if the options were there and with proper investment in effective advertising (Think a beer ad, but on the train, so some hot 20-somethings board separately in coach, hit it off in the diner, and end up UPGRADING to a sleeper en route...TALK ABOUT AN UPGRADE....), maybe sleepers would have a chance....

Or perhaps I've just watched the film from which my name is taken too many times.


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## Anderson (Nov 21, 2014)

Paulus said:


> > As to those services, I guess the question is this: If a train can't cover a given distance in less than 6 hours or so, and driving is a similar story, then does it make sense to look at a sleeper service with early boarding or something similar?
> 
> 
> I don't think it necessarily does; trying to go overnight is trying to poorly compete with flying while those who've chosen to drive are doing so in the daylight hours (generally speaking), so there's no waste of time by running in the daylight. I think arrival time might be tripping you up rather than viewing it from the stance of most preferred departure time.


Well, the issue is looking at both. For many purposes right now, and for the foreseeable future, you've got a choice of a bad departure time, a bad arrival time, or both: It's a fair question as to whether an 0400 departure is better or worse than one somewhere in the 2300-0000 range, but with the 0400 you're still losing half of your day (assuming you could get the arrival back to around noon) whereas with the late night departure you at least keep the day intact.*

Another point is that you really _don't_ need a huge passenger base to support these trains. Assuming 22.5 passengers per Viewliner (I'm working with the eastern seaboard; I could run numbers for stuff on the west coast as well), a four-sleeper train would max out at around 90/day or 65,700/yr in the sleepers. Assuming that such a service doesn't need more than a cafe (possibly slightly enhanced somehow), operating costs are going to be generally in line with a regular train (plus sleeper crew costs). Don't worry, I agree, four sleepers would be a _lot_...I'd look towards two sleepers, 4-5 coaches, and a cafe. But let's play with some numbers.

The operating costs for the longest single-frequency daytime routes I can find are $28.2m (Palmetto), $20.3m (Carolinian), $16.5m (Pennsylvanian), $13.5m (Blue Water), and $12.4m (Adirondack). Kicking out the Palmetto (it's almost too long for our purposes), $15-20m seems like a reasonable cost estimate for a train running this length...and based on various numbers I've seen that seems like a good guess for such a service if you don't have a diner (the costs for adding additional sleepers being relatively small). Can that be managed? Good question, and one that I'd need a bit more data than I have now:

-I'd need to be able to make assumptions on coach traffic and seat turnover.

-More importantly, I'd need to also be able to make assumptions on daily traffic generated on the route...and the estimates I have on that front, from various EIS work, is hit-or-miss. In the case of Hampton Roads, 9x daily trains are projected to generate somewhere around a million riders per year out of Hampton Roads. I specify because this does not take into account, for example, traffic to/from Richmond not originating in Hampton Roads that those trains would carry (and the closest thing to an estimate I've heard on the Richmond-Washington route is at _least_ another million added, possibly two million).

So...there's a lot of ridership to be had. The share of ridership you'd need to divert to an overnight service out of that to make a success is, if not negligible, at least not massive.

*The late night departure could also facilitate better equipment cycling.


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## James Patten (Nov 21, 2014)

I'm no where near retirement and pretty much need to the take the train now if I'm going anywhere long distance and I don't want to drive - I discovered this year that flying is no longer much of an option for me (vertigo) unless it's extreme need. As my wife travels with me, we use sleeper. Not cheap, and I would like it to be much cheaper!

One of my coworkers would love to be able to take the train long distance, but there are 2 kids and a wife so sleepers are out of his price range. If the price came down significantly - or the trains sped up significantly - he'd be willing/able to take a long distance trip.


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## Anderson (Nov 21, 2014)

northnorthwest said:


> Was out of town and am glad to see this topic still going strong a few days later!
> 
> I have a feeling that if a half dozen or dozen of the posters on this board could seize control of Amtrak it would be in much better shape....
> 
> ...


I don't think it's necessarily a matter of people being "taught"...simple availability and flexibility goes a _long_ way. Take my Florida scenario and combine it with the suggested 4x daily CHI-NYP LSL corridor. Ok, now you've got a whole swath of cities from Chicago to New York to Miami that can take a train with some flexibility and an assurance that if they miss one train (be it due to traffic or due to a missed connection), there's another in a few hours instead of the next day. Same if one train is sold out...you're not likely to be stuck having to move trips around by _days_ due to space availability issue (affordability is another story entirely). Throw in a Broadway/Capitol corridor of some kind and suddenly you actually start getting regional connectivity...especially if some of those trains can be extended to Boston instead of just New York. You see where this goes...

The main problem, as I see it, is that one's travel options on the train are constrained. For example, take the mess on the LSL/CL corridor...were there 2-3 trains per day out of Chicago going west, I would have grabbed one. Were an option there to take an earlier train (even one with a nominally awful arrival in CHI) I could have booked that with the expectation of it running late. But instead, I effectively had one option and was up the creek if it failed...and that's the case in most of the system.

Edit: Something that should probably be said, as to differences between 1960 and soon-to-be 2015:

(1) The US has about 140 million more people. In 1960 the population was 180 million; we're creeping up on 320 million now.

(2) Public transit ridership has bottomed out and started recovering. One of the factors that brought trains down in the past was the disintegration of mass transit at all levels, something that has stopped (and in some cases reversed in a very real way).

(3) America's love affair with the car is increasingly an open relationship. Back around 1960, having a car was the thing everyone wanted. While I think it is fair to say that most people probably still want a car, not everyone wants to live in a multiple-car household and teenagers are getting their license right off the bat less and less now.

(4) Highway congestion isn't getting any better. In many cities, not only is traffic bad, but highways are basically built out to capacity. There was infill capacity back in the 60s when many roads were built; in many places, that capacity is now gone.

(5) And air travel isn't any better. Legroom has dropped from the middle 30s to the high 20s on many airlines (28-30 inch coach seating is increasingly pervasive), security is unpleasant, and a number of airports are slamming into capacity issues. Again, contrast with the 60s when many of those airports were new, security was non-existent, and (as noted) coach then was more like a lot of business class seats are now

Basically, most of the conditions that led to a decline in rail travel have at least changed, if they haven't reversed outright.


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## Paulus (Nov 21, 2014)

Anderson said:


> (5) And air travel isn't any better. Legroom has dropped from the middle 30s to the high 20s on many airlines (28-30 inch coach seating is increasingly pervasive), security is unpleasant, and a number of airports are slamming into capacity issues. Again, contrast with the 60s when many of those airports were new, security was non-existent, and (as noted) coach then was more like a lot of business class seats are now.


On the other hand, air travel was a whole heck of a lot more expensive and dangerous back then. Coach was a lot more like business class seats are now precisely because coach cost as much as business class seats do now. So if you want 1960s treatment, you just have to pay for it.


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## TML (Nov 21, 2014)

I despise flying since past flights have made me airsick. Furthermore, I tried taking overnight Greyhound buses and found that such trips invariable leave me fatigued at the end. Thus, I will always try to book a sleeper for Amtrak if there is overnight travel involved.

Furthermore, the size of this country means that demand for sleepers will always exist. This is in contrast to smaller countries like Japan, for example, where sleepers have almost disappeared completely due to its small size and availability of high-speed rail and air travel there.


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## Anderson (Nov 22, 2014)

TML said:


> I despise flying since past flights have made me airsick. Furthermore, I tried taking overnight Greyhound buses and found that such trips invariable leave me fatigued at the end. Thus, I will always try to book a sleeper for Amtrak if there is overnight travel involved.
> 
> Furthermore, the size of this country means that demand for sleepers will always exist. This is in contrast to smaller countries like Japan, for example, where sleepers have almost disappeared completely due to its small size and availability of high-speed rail and air travel there.


Japan is an unusual case for a whole host of reasons. Of course, one thing rarely mentioned is that the original plans for the Shinkansens (which I probably misspelled) was to run overnight services as well. That largely fell by the wayside due to maintenance issues more than anything (having the tracks closed for five hours per night is useful for doing work without disrupting service).


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## jis (Nov 22, 2014)

Paulus said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > (5) And air travel isn't any better. Legroom has dropped from the middle 30s to the high 20s on many airlines (28-30 inch coach seating is increasingly pervasive), security is unpleasant, and a number of airports are slamming into capacity issues. Again, contrast with the 60s when many of those airports were new, security was non-existent, and (as noted) coach then was more like a lot of business class seats are now.
> ...


Although it should be remembered that while Coach seat pitch has gone to hell in a hand basket, ever since the dawn of the jet age, Coach seats have never been much wider than 17" - 18", specially in narrow bodies. That pretty much got set in stone with the cabin width of the 707 and DC-8. Airbus improved things only slightly in the A320 family.


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## Anderson (Nov 22, 2014)

Paulus said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > (5) And air travel isn't any better. Legroom has dropped from the middle 30s to the high 20s on many airlines (28-30 inch coach seating is increasingly pervasive), security is unpleasant, and a number of airports are slamming into capacity issues. Again, contrast with the 60s when many of those airports were new, security was non-existent, and (as noted) coach then was more like a lot of business class seats are now.
> ...


That depends. In some cases, upgrading to some sort of "plus" category is pretty straightforward and not entirely unaffordable, though this depends on the airline and the aircraft. In others, the only "real" upgrade is to "First Class".

On the other end of things, though, I feel compelled to point out the fact that at least on the coach side, Amtrak LD fares now are quite a bit less than they were before A-Day once you adjust for inflation. I poke about at the Silver Service fares every-so-often since that's the most easily documented (and since those trains were doing well all along), and the general rule is that unless you're looking into a last-minute ticket at a peak day, coach fares tend to be something like half of the pre-1971 fare.


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## jis (Nov 22, 2014)

Anderson said:


> TML said:
> 
> 
> > I despise flying since past flights have made me airsick. Furthermore, I tried taking overnight Greyhound buses and found that such trips invariable leave me fatigued at the end. Thus, I will always try to book a sleeper for Amtrak if there is overnight travel involved.
> ...


Also, most Shinkansen aficionados do not realize that there are 48 daily flights between Tokyo and Osaka (various airports), the two anchor points of the Tokaido Shinkansen (translates roughly to Tokaido New Line, the original) most of them using wide bodies (767, 777, 787) between JAL and ANA. The nature and size of that market is way beyond anything that we can conjure up apparently.

Can you imagine a flight every 20 mins from New York area airports to Washington area airports with wide bodies and in addition a Shinkansen level intensity of service on the NEC?


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## Anderson (Nov 22, 2014)

jis said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > TML said:
> ...


I can imagine it, but not with wide-bodies...though that is more a side-effect of mediocre transit from the airports that can host them into the cities (EWR and IAD are a good distance out from NYC and Washington, respectively). My understanding is that in Japan, the local transit connections are quite good by comparison (and if I'm not mistaken, there are a couple of private transit systems that are listed on the stock exchange there[!]). Of course, that brings to mind a serious question: Is airport security in Japan less of a mess than it is in the US?


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## jis (Nov 22, 2014)

Narita Airport is something like 70km (~45 miles) from central Tokyo, and Osaka Kansai (KIX) is 38km (24 miles) from Osaka downtown. Local transport connection is very good. but 70km is 70km, and unless you want to shell out the big bucks to take the relatively fast though not Shinkansen speed NeX, it does take its time to get to the airport. Haneda OTOH is very close to Tokyo, a short monorail ride (17 mins on Express) from Hamamatsucho station on the Yamanote (Circle) Line station.

For frequent travelers airport security is no more of a mess in Japan than it is in the US. Japan afterall has their own internal crazies who occasionally try to insert poison gas into the air circulation system of Tokyo subways and such. OTOH, the messiness of Security for frequent travelers in the US at present is a bit overstated in AU anyway.


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## neroden (Nov 22, 2014)

From what little I know of Japan, I'd expect a far more sensible, orderly, and above all *predictable* airport security system there. What finally caused me to say "to hell with this" to US airport security was the arbitrariness, the capriciousness, the way the so-called "rules" would change from day to day or depending on who was doing the scanning. Another way to describe this problem is "corruption".

Without knowing too much about Japanese airports, I'd expect that their security would be, at least, consistent, predictable, and documented in advance.


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## neroden (Nov 22, 2014)

Anderson said:


> Well, a couple of thoughts pop into my mind:
> 
> On speed limits: Those are maximum speed limits, and are often not found anywhere close to "everywhere".


Certainly. However, the states with *low* maximums are worth looking at; the situation in New Hampshire, for example, seems to scream out for train service.
Furthermore, the more I look at it, the more promising Kentucky looks. There are promising train routes. Cincinnati-Lexington, in particular, is *already owned by a government* (much like the North Carolina situation); if the cities of Cincinnati and Lexington wanted to get passenger service going, I'm pretty sure they could get cooperation from their *lessee*, NS. Indianapolis-Louisville would require massive rehabilitation, but is geometrically fine and owned by a shortline who would be cooperative. Louisville-Lexington is geometrically somewhat worse, but again owned by cooperative agencies, and there was a previous push for service. Kentucky's worst problem in terms of rail development is its neighbors, Ohio and Indiana. :-(



> As to those services, I guess the question is this: If a train can't cover a given distance in less than 6 hours or so, and driving is a similar story, then does it make sense to look at a sleeper service with early boarding or something similar?


Sommmmetimes.



> For example, let's take Hampton Roads-New York City.


Yeah, here it makes sense to look at it. It's worth nothing one key feature of this which makes it worth looking at.
You can extend service north of New York to provide sane Hampton Roads - Boston service. (& Hampton Roads-New Haven, Springfield, etc.) Trains don't do so well if they're point-to-point, so the ability to push further matters. Even if you don't extend the actual train, the connections are valuable.

It would be better if you could also extend or connect to further daytime service south of Hampton Roads, but you can't, unfortunately. I guess ideally, then, you'd run "daytime" from Hampton Roads to Richmond, sleep from Richmond to NYC, and run in the day from NYC onward to Boston.



> Right now, that train trip takes around 8:00-8:30.


Actually, doing a little research...

https://jawbone.com/blog/circadian-rhythm/

I had to figure out typical bedtimes and how long people sleep in particular markets.

Hmmm. The northbound should operate on a schedule something like this:

Hampton Roads 9 PM

Richmond 11 PM

NYC 7 AM

New Haven 9 AM

The southbound should operate on a schedule something like this:

New Haven 9 PM

NYC 11 PM

Richmond 7 AM

Hampton Roads 9 AM

This would likely be preferable to the current schedule of #66/67, which is designed for Boston-Washington service and doesn't really serve New York. (I'm going to bet that NY+points north to Richmond+Hampton Roads is a stronger market than Boston to Washington+points south. Maybe I'm wrong.) Of course, the commuter railroads would be unhappy about the service arriving in peak commuting hours in New York, but that's what it *should* be doing.

(Now, if I look at California, I can't come up with anything as attractive as this; the cities simply aren't spaced out right.)



Paulus said:


> I don't think it necessarily does; trying to go overnight is trying to poorly compete with flying while those who've chosen to drive are doing so in the daylight hours (generally speaking), so there's no waste of time by running in the daylight.


This is incorrect; going overnight is competing with driving. If I'm comparing driving to taking the train, if I can sleep on the train, I end up with an effective shorter trip time from "last hour of operations at home" to "first hour of operations at destination". Going overnight -- over the *entire* night -- is very much competing with driving. Or more accurately, it's competing with *driving + hotels*. It's a non-linear relationship; travelling over *half* the night fails.
To use the most western and longest-run example I feel comfortable with, consider Denver-Chicago. There's no competition with air, so consider only competition with driving. Driving is a solid 14-16 hours -- a long day, longer if you stop for meals. The *entire* day is gone, along with the nights before and after it. At the moment the train takes, annoyingly, almost 19 hours. But suppose that Iowa's 2013 "Chicago to Omaha Service Development Plan" has been implemented, with trip times of 7.48 or better from Council Bluffs to Chicago. (7.48 is for 79 mph service, 5.40 for 110 mph service.) Then you run overnight for about 9 hours (from Denver to Omaha, where there are no intermediate cities to speak of) and in the day for less than 8 hours (from Omaha to Chicago). You have an afternoon and evening in Chicago; you've saved half a day over driving.

Obviously, if you're going from Denver to Omaha, you save a lot more time; either you can drive for 8 hours, or you can go to sleep in Denver and wake up in Omaha. Unfortunately Denver-Omaha is a pretty small market, but it presents an example of the time savings of sleeping car service over driving. The current eastbound California Zephyr schedule, however, is *not* ideal; it leaves Denver too early & arrives in Omaha too early. (The westbound is about right.)

In most of the Northeast and Heartland, you don't have such a convenient layout of population with an almost-exactly-8-hour-long gap in population as you do on the route to Denver; instead, you have cities all along the way. So by running overnight, you lose most of the ridership from some intermediate cities which would be good ridership sources (Cleveland). It is therefore important that you already have day trains covering those cities before you add an overnight train. And this is where the 1960s train-offs left us with a really ass-backward situation, leaving us with the overnight "name trains" while losing the underlying day trains on the route. In general, a good sleeper service is running along a route which already has daytime service.

Here's the way to think of overnight sleeper service: it's a way of getting a "virtual" runtime advantage over driving. You can have a longer runtime, but to the customer, it is effectively shorter, because the time sleeping doesn't count.

This is also the correct way to think of food service on the trains. For people who would have *stopped at a restaurant to eat* when driving, the food eaten while moving provides a "virtual" runtime advantage.

I think if you use the "virtual runtime advantage" analysis consistently, it vastly clarifies when sleeping car and dining car service are beneficial, and exactly how they are beneficial. The subtle point here is that a real runtime advantage benefits all city pair markets along the route, whereas these "virtual" runtime advantages only benefit *some* of the city pairs -- and in the case of overnight running, hurt other city pairs. So it requires careful planning.


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## Tokkyu40 (Nov 23, 2014)

Anderson said:


> .... The airlines that ran passenger rail out back in the 50s and 60s had baseline seating in the mid-30s in terms of seat pitch and included a lot more amenities in many respects...


Some of the amenities included government provided airports, paid for at government expense and exempt from property tax and government paid and provided traffic control.

It's not easy for private tax paying companies to go head-to-head with government mandated and sponsored competition.


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## Anderson (Nov 23, 2014)

Tokkyu40 said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > .... The airlines that ran passenger rail out back in the 50s and 60s had baseline seating in the mid-30s in terms of seat pitch and included a lot more amenities in many respects...
> ...


That's not quite what I was thinking. I'm more thinking of the reductions in food service, etc. that we've seen over the years.


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## neroden (Nov 24, 2014)

Hmm. Reading another article, I stumbled across a link to this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/20/airports-with-most-delays_n_6140298.html

This may have some relevance to determining the markets where passenger trains might have unusually high attractiveness vs. airplanes. (From this, you'd think Chicago, New York, Florida, and possibly Denver.)

New York comes up over and over when you do any sort of "where does the road & air competition stink" analysis, with Chicago coming up nearly as often. It's interesting to see Florida and Denver show up, and I'm not entirely surprised.


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## domefoamer (Nov 25, 2014)

potential to reI thouht we started out talking about sleepers and their potential. But all but one response on this page ignore sleepers, delving instead into the familiar big-picture questions of rap vs air vs highway. Maybe that's what everyone wants to talk about, but there are other places for that discussion.

To put it as simply as I can, I'd love to see several dozen new sleepers added and operated at reasonable rates. Price is important, and the common prices of $600-1000 per night are out of reason and reach for most of us. Twenty years ago I slept on one of the last Slumbercoaches for $55 extra; you ought to be able to offer a bed for five or six times that price now.

All of this takes investment and subsidies that are unlikely right now, I know. But sometimes you have to spend money to make money. I believe it would be cheaper and far quicker to make trains more comfortable, at present speeds, than to rebuild the nation's overloaded rail routes to increase their speeds.


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## Anderson (Nov 25, 2014)

NEC-Florida, NEC-Chicago, and Chicago-Denver are the "obvious" markets. Some secondary ones that jump to mind would be NEC-Atlanta and LA/SD-SF.

For what it's worth...yes, when CAHSR is complete LA-SF becomes a bit short. However, even on the most optimistic build-out we're looking at around 15 years from now...and frankly, I think that schedule has about as much a chance of being kept as most megaprojects out there...and really, until the build-out and electrification is complete you can't do a full end-to-end run and a sleeper service still has a good market (in fact, an SD-LA-SF run over the Central Valley alignment should be doable in 8-9 hours LAX-SFO while the HSR option, with transfers at San Jose and Burbank, is probably not going to be capable of much better than something in the six-hour range: 30 minutes LAX-BUR (Amtrak Surfliner), 60 minutes SJC-4th and King (Caltrain Baby Bullet), and budget 20 minutes at one station for a quick transfer and 40 minutes on the other end...that's 2:30 on the ends, bare minimum for safe budgeting. Add in...I think we'd be looking at about three hours for BUR-SJC? So that's 5:30-ish, which is probably favorable. If the link were to slide back to either Merced (that connection doesn't happen until 2026) or Palmdale (as was formerly the case in old versions of the plan), those connection times get very ugly very quickly. LAX-Palmdale would run closer to 90 minutes on an express (the locals, IIRC, run about two hours over that route)...throw another hour in and suddenly the "high speed" trains aren't that much faster, in effect, than an overnight service would be...and they take a single-seat trip and turn it into a three-ride trip before you get to local transfers (i.e. BART, LA Metro).


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## Paulus (Nov 25, 2014)

1) Where are you getting all these transfers from? By the time the Authority hits San Jose, Caltrain will be electrified, so it'll be a straight shot in to downtown San Francisco, just not as many frequencies doing so until full buildout.

2) IOS is Merced to San Fernando Valley (likely LAUS actually, lots of pushing for that and it's a cheap extension) in 2022 which gets you a five hour one or two seat ride LA-SF (depends on whether transfer at Merced or diesel locomotive hauls from there).

3) 2026 is one seat three hour ride LA-SF

4) LA-SF via the CV by diesel is 11 hours, not 8. It's five hours over Tehachapi and fat chance of getting an agreement to use that.


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## Anderson (Nov 25, 2014)

Paulus said:


> 1) Where are you getting all these transfers from? By the time the Authority hits San Jose, Caltrain will be electrified, so it'll be a straight shot in to downtown San Francisco, just not as many frequencies doing so until full buildout.
> 
> 2) IOS is Merced to San Fernando Valley (likely LAUS actually, lots of pushing for that and it's a cheap extension) in 2022 which gets you a five hour one or two seat ride LA-SF (depends on whether transfer at Merced or diesel locomotive hauls from there).
> 
> ...


(1) With the transfers, I was assuming 40 minutes on the transfer _to_ the HSR train and 20 minutes on the transfer _from_ the HSR train as a matter of travel budgeting. The HSR train is, presumably, going to be reserved; I know the frequencies are supposed to get up into the once-every-ten-minutes range at peak hours...but I don't put full faith in 100% OTP (things go wrong) and last minute rebooking has a habit of getting expensive, so my figuring is a 30-minute pad there, and 20 minutes on the other end for connection timing outside of the peak direction.

(1b) One point you did get me on was Caltrain (I didn't know if electrification was anywhere substantial in process...it's been talked about for so long I'd stopped believing it was anywhere on the horizon), though even there...would there be the capacity to run CAHSR's trains up the corridor? Caltrain is planning on running 6x hourly trains, but there's no mention made of capacity for another 3-6x trains per hour in each direction.

(2) I know the IOS is Merced-San Fernando Valley (and I know there's been pushing for LA-Burbank to happen sooner rather than later, though on that I'll believe it when the funds get committed).

(3) This is another place where I don't quite believe the timetable. Also, it's 2028 that has that in the current reports, not 2026.


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## Bus Nut (Nov 25, 2014)

Anderson, could you expand on sleepers being cheaper?

I have seen cheap sleeper prices on day sections on LD trains but it seems like on most train the overnight sleeper prices get knocked into higher buckets pretty fast. Congress doesn't even allow the super cheap wowwee train filler fares and it seems like since 2000 that Amtrak has hardly needed them, with prices going up and up and consumers gladly paying them. There are periodic issues with trains that have horrible reliability (mudslides and stuff like that) and corridor trains getting price pressure from Boltbus or Acela going back and forth with the airlines. But mostly it's been ridership and revenue up, maybe ridership is going faster than revenue lately due to competition.

So could you show me some real dollar and inflation adjusted sample fares and perhaps offer some info as to why they would be cheaper now?

With less sleepers available is demand still that much weaker compared to '71? Are costs really down a lot from scaling down food and service? Killing a bunch of trains? Just curious. I don't think this gets talked about often.


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## Anderson (Nov 25, 2014)

First, a response to point 4 (which I omitted as I had to shift locations): I _am_ assuming at least some part of the HSR alignment (notably access between Bakersfield and either Palmdale or Burbank) being available. Going with a five-hour trip time, that doesn't allow one to start much after 1900 to get to one's destination by close to 0000...which means that a 2000 departure could use the northbound track with plenty of room to spare (effective temporal separation).

As to the situation in 1971, bear in mind that at the time you had a hard-and-fast fixed fare for a given city pairing. There were no buckets and few discounts (the first attempt at buckets was the Red/White/Blue fares on either CN or CP, and that was a radical change). Here's what I ran in 2011:
http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/37529-rail-fares-then-vs-now/?p=281288&fromsearch=1&do=findComment&comment=281288

To use a handy example, a Pullman Roomette ORL-NYP would run you $80.01 in 1967, somewhere around $500-550 in 2009 terms. In 2011, the equivalent accommodation would run you between $317 and $631. The Pullman Roomette would, in otherwords, have run you about 4th bucket. FWIW, I went with Seaboard's fares since that precludes any chance of the fares being a result of Amtrak botching things up.

To answer your question as best I understand it:

(1) Demand is a lot stronger as of late than it has been in a while...but demand sort of went to pot in the 80s amid a bunch of cuts as I understand it. I also seem to recall the Warrington fiascoes not helping things, either. Things are falling back into line with what they were before now.

(2) The presence of less sleepers does not necessarily translate into unlimited price increases. Demand eventually gets rather elastic as people opt not to travel, so there _is_ a ceiling.

(3) Also remember that in the 1960s and early 1970s, airfares had not been deregulated, so it's not like Amtrak was facing heavy price competition on that front.

(4) Next, consider that low bucket fares are not always available; the answer with those fares is that in 1967 there is a good chance that SCL was either running shorter trains on some weekdays or had space empty on those days, while peak seasons got either longer trains or more trains. Amtrak runs the same train almost every single day...so for example, Amtrak can't find enough space to put people on the Zephyr in summer, while they've looked at reshuffling equipment in the winter to deal with the lack of demand on that route in the middle of the winter.

(5) Finally, I _do_ need to update those figures...but between March 2011 and June 2014:
Coach fares rose by nearly 20% (high bucket and low bucket alike) ORL-WAS

Roomette LB went up by 13.5% ORL-WAS

Roomette HB went up by 12.9% ORL-WAS

I am rather comfortable in saying that the CPI did not rise by nearly that much lately.

Edit: Low bucket is still going to be well below the Pullman charges of that era, but middle bucket is closing in on it.


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## Anderson (Nov 25, 2014)

Just going in a bit deeper on this:
The issues that a number of LD trains are having is that in high(er) seasons, they do not have the capacity they need to meet demand. The Florida trains are a pretty good example of this, though the Cardinal, Crescent, and CONO are as well. The Sunset Limited is not horridly far off of it, either. This has limited the ability of Amtrak to harness increased demand to jack up revenue.

Let's run an illustrative scenario out with the Silver Meteor: Presently it runs with three sleeping cars on almost all days. Let's bounce that up to a whopping nine cars (i.e. tripling the sleeper capacity) but implement the 2 attendants per three cars reform that has been suggested. Generally speaking, you'd probably have the following adjustments:
-Double sleeper attendant costs (you'd go from three attendants to six).
-Double labor costs in the food service cars. I'm putting this in loosely, but you'd need a second diner (though two dining cars should suffice with 48-seat diners)
--Food in the FSCs is a more open question (there would be no impact on the coach side, but you'd be roughly tripling sleeper passenger food needs in the diner). The question of a second cafe is, at this point, open...I would assume that you might not need one if you could make the diner-club option work.
-You /might/ add another conductor, but in all likelihood most of the effort here would just be outsourced to the SCAs.
-No other increase in operating crews beyond an additional assistant conductor.
-There would be an increase in fuel/power costs, but that is hard to estimate. A 10-car train would become a 17/18-car train, but the increase is not going to be proportionate.
-Track access fees would not change.
-Station costs, etc. would not be impacted appreciably. There should be no impact, but I wouldn't rule out some shift-shuffling to ensure an extra Red Cap on hand (since the sleeper is probably going from an effective capacity in the 60s to somewhere just shy of 200).

In short, there's a lot of stuff that scales up to the effective limit of platforms along the route (which are, at a surprising number of stations, roughly long enough to accommodate a train of 16-18 cars). As such, if you could pull off this example, trading in a one-time hit of 5-10% to sleeper PPR would be worth it.

Obviously this is an academic example, and obviously I have not listed all costs, but there are a lot of costs that are fixed and others which aren't fixed but which provide scaling opportunities.

Moving around to the fares themselves, in the 1967 example I gave your average ORL-NYP fare would have been $80.01 (I'm going to call that $80 so I don't have to fight with loose pennies) since that was the only fare available. Let's go to a crude five-bucket system where the available fares are $60, $70, $80, $90, and $100. Obviously, anyone paying $60 or $70 is getting a better deal than the fixed fare, and the opposite is true of anyone at the $90/100 levels. However, if fares are distributed such that every $70 fare is matched by a $90 fare (and every $60 fare a $100 fare), the net impact is null on paper...

...until it comes to periods with more and less travel. Let's take a midweek day in October or February (generally a slow time, even on the Silvers). With demand being lower you load in more $60/70 fares and less $90/100 fares to try and fill space. On the other hand, at Thanksgiving or Christmas you might just not make anything lower than $80 available.

One other thing I will note here, though I did note it elsewhere: In 1967, a round-trip ticket got you a discount on the coach fare (but not the Pullman charge) of some amount that was set. Amtrak doesn't normally do such discounts now, but that would have effectively nudged your ticket price down a bit (between 6% and 10%)...the savings in a roomette would have been, in effect, about 3-6% on the round trip.


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## Anderson (Nov 25, 2014)

This is a version of what I've said before, but...

Ideally, if the Coast Daylight happens alongside CAHSR, I would be interested to see the Starlight flipped for a morning arrival/evening departure at LAX. At that point, the reasoning is a bit more complex than it would be at the moment:
(1) You'd enable a CAHSR-to-Starlight transfer without dealing with really bad hours of the night (i.e. around midnight at SAC if/when that happens)

(2) You'd avoid cannibalization (this is one of the _very _few cases where I see cannibalization as an issue, mainly because the trip times are not terribly different from one another and I'm not aware of a desperate capacity crunch).

(3) A Coast Daylight-Capitol Corridor guaranteed connection would enable service (albeit with a transfer) from LA up to Oakland and Sacramento on this route as well.

(4) See the earlier discussion on legal connections at LAX and EMY (as well as a connection to San Diego that does _not_ involve getting there at close to midnight).


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## neroden (Nov 26, 2014)

Anderson said:


> To answer your question as best I understand it:
> 
> (1) Demand is a lot stronger as of late than it has been in a while...but demand sort of went to pot in the 80s amid a bunch of cuts as I understand it. I also seem to recall the Warrington fiascoes not helping things, either. Things are falling back into line with what they were before now.


Brief History of Demand For Intercity Passenger Rail In the US

* There was a demand drop throughout the 1950s and 1960s, for reasons explained elsewhere.

* Ridership & ticket yields rose during the 1970s (probably largely due to the oil crises)

* Ridership & yields dropped from 1979 to 1982 (cheap oil, the misguided Carter or Boyd Cuts). 1981 was a low point for Amtrak.

* Ridership & yields rose slowly from 1982 to 1990 (rising oil prices, shift in public tastes)

* Ridership was roughly flat from 1990 to 1994; yields were rising

* Ridership (& probably yields) crashed from 1994 to 1997. This was most likely due to mismanagement by Thomas Downs.

* Ridership & yields rose slowly from 1997 to 2006

* Ridership & yields rose quickly from 2006 to 2008

* Ridership & yields dropped in 2009 due to the Great Crash

* Ridership & yields jumped right back and started growing quickly again from 2009-2014

Worth noting: Warrington gets a lot of blame on some discussion forums, but Amtrak ridership & revenue actually improved under Warrington. It's really Thomas Downs who trashed Amtrak service, and it shows up in the numbers very clearly.

The 1990s were a period which was good for passenger rail in general, with lots of light rail and commuter rail lines opening or expanding, and older systems setting ridership records. The decline in Amtrak ridership during the same period is aberrant, and indicates mismanagement by Downs.

Gunn (2002-2005) actually cut a lot of service (including throwing the Clockers to NJT and SEPTA and cancelling the Three Rivers) and it's possible that ridership would have been rising quickly from 2002-2005 if Gunn hadn't been cancelling trains out from under the passengers. So demand may have started rising quickly as early as 2002.

Anyway...



> To use a handy example, a Pullman Roomette ORL-NYP would run you $80.01 in 1967, somewhere around $500-550 in 2009 terms. In 2011, the equivalent accommodation would run you between $317 and $631. The Pullman Roomette would, in otherwords, have run you about 4th bucket. FWIW, I went with Seaboard's fares since that precludes any chance of the fares being a result of Amtrak botching things up.


In the next few years, Amtrak can probably get back to that fare level (as an average -- third bucket of five, or whatever) even with substantially larger numbers of sleeping cars. Cars, the main competition, are if anything much more expensive to operate than they were in 1967.
Airfare + hotels may be cheaper (in some markets), but (a) I've always said Amtrak is primarily competing with roads, not airplanes, and (b) the cost trends in the airplane industry are bad; with high fuel-dependence, costs are likely to go up faster than inflation, and the prices will probably have to follow.

In short, within a few years, the roomettes in the new sleeping cars will probably actually be charging *higher* prices than they are now, after inflation adjustments.


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## Anderson (Nov 26, 2014)

Two notes on your analysis, but I like most of it:
(1) At least as far as the Western cuts, IIRC Downs got stuck with deciding how to handle a slash to the operating budget. Giving credit where it is due, he tried to save a broad network. The effort was a disaster, but I feel compelled to credit an effort that might well have paid off in the mid-2000s: Presuming the equipment was still available to run the trains, for the last few years Amtrak has probably had enough room in their operating grant to reinstate some of the cut services.

(2) On oil, while I agree that the long-term trend is up, I get a feeling we're going to have relatively cheap oil and gas for the next few years due to an odd mix of the new oil fields up in ND, the ban on exporting oil from the US, and rising auto fuel efficiency. How long that "next few years" is depends...it could be 5, it could be 20.


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## J Smith (Nov 26, 2014)

Absolutely! Sleepers sell out quite often. There's still a demand for them. Yes, they can be expensive but, with enough rewards points you don't have to pay!


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## jis (Nov 27, 2014)

Warrington gets blamed for frittering away resources on the material handling car project which was unlikely to succeed due to conflict with host carriers and was not part of Amtrak's charter. Many had hoped that he'd order more passenger cars instead of freight cars. 

Also, no one believed in his "glide to self-sufficiency" using high value freight instead of passengers plan. I wonder if even he believed it, or it was just "clever propanda" to keep Congress at bay.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## neroden (Nov 27, 2014)

Downs managed to cause Amtrak to run out of cash with a *friendly administration* and *relatively friendly Congress*. He had a record of cost overruns and inability to keep to budget on his previous projects. :-(

Warrington gets criticized for loading Amtrak up with debt, but it was better than running out of cash before borrowing, which is what Downs managed to do (somehow). Downs also appears to have been involved in one of the thoughtless and self-destructive rounds of amenities cuts. (Boyd, of course, was involved in the first such round.)

I can't really fault Downs for cutting the Pioneer, or the Vegas-Denver service. Those were expensive, low-population routes. And I understand that he couldn't save the Phoenix branch.

Cutting the Houston-Dallas service and dropping the other Texas service down to three-a-week again -- that, I can and will fault him for. Also losing the service via St Albans to Montreal. Also losing the Toledo-Dearborn service. These were all *appallingly stupid* moves. The states have been struggling for years to recover these particular lost services, and the gain from the cuts was practically nonexistent.

Downs doesn't seem to have had a clue about how to run a railroad, frankly.

(Another continuous thorn in Amtrak's side is due to the Carter/Boyd cuts -- the Cardinal was daily before that.)



Anderson said:


> (2) On oil, while I agree that the long-term trend is up, I get a feeling we're going to have relatively cheap oil and gas for the next few years due to an odd mix of the new oil fields up in ND, the ban on exporting oil from the US, and rising auto fuel efficiency. How long that "next few years" is depends...it could be 5, it could be 20.


A note: Even with temporarily cheaper oil, the cost of driving continues to go up. Cars are more expensive to buy (as standards increase), insurance premiums are rising very fast (as drivers education vanishes), etc...


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## Paulus (Nov 27, 2014)

Didn't Downs have to deal with an absolute mess of deferred maintenance on cars thanks to Claytor?


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## Anderson (Nov 27, 2014)

Paulus said:


> Didn't Downs have to deal with an absolute mess of deferred maintenance on cars thanks to Claytor?


I've always heard it as Downs (and/or Warrington) being responsible for the deferred maintenance, not Claytor.


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## Paulus (Nov 27, 2014)

Anderson said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> > Didn't Downs have to deal with an absolute mess of deferred maintenance on cars thanks to Claytor?
> ...


INTERCITY PASSENGER RAIL: Financial and Operating Conditions Threaten Amtrak's Long-Term Viability



> To cope with funding shortages, in the late 1980s Amtrak started reducing car maintenance. By the end of 1993, costly heavy overhauls were overdue for 40 percent of its nearly 1,900 cars. Amtrak also deferred renovating and modernizing its outdated maintenance facilities, which has contribute to costly and inefficient operations.
> 
> Focusing exclusively on the shortfall in operating funds masks the critical problem of Amtrak’s capital needs. Today, the average age of Amtrak’s cars is about 22 years—similar to what it was when Amtrak first began operating. Amtrak now estimates that it needs to invest about $1.5 billion of equipment overhauls and new equipment, primarily locomotives. Over the past 10 years, Amtrak’s equipment and facilities have depreciated at the rate of $200 million per year, while investment has averaged only $140 million.
> 
> ...


The FDA thing was on Claytor's watch as well.


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## jis (Nov 27, 2014)

Part of the problem with the Montrealer was that it was an even more hopeless money loser than the Adirondack when it was canned, and no state was willing to step upto the plate and save it in its through service to Montreal overnight form. That is what I heard was the reality faced back then, no matter how much many of us wanted it saved.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## Anderson (Nov 27, 2014)

While the subject is up...what is/was the "FDA thing"?


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## Paulus (Nov 27, 2014)

Anderson said:


> While the subject is up...what is/was the "FDA thing"?


Major brouhaha, or so I'm told, about rodent infestations and other unsanitary issues with Amtrak's dining cars back in 1992.


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## neroden (Nov 27, 2014)

Paulus said:


> Didn't Downs have to deal with an absolute mess of deferred maintenance on cars thanks to Claytor?


Arguably, yes. Deferred maintenance builds up over the course of years.

Claytor did seem to duck out at exactly the right moment, when a bunch of trouble had built up, but before the trouble came to the surface.

...still, Downs's other moves seem to show a failure to understand principles of transportation network design. And frankly, anyone who comes into a mess of problems after a pile of deferred maintenance -- and doesn't realize what he's getting into -- is *the fall guy*. You know, it's possible that Claytor saw a bunch of problems which he couldn't solve, and set Downs up as the guy to take the fall for them. Downs proceeded to fill that role by not solving them, and making things worse. It is perhaps likely that nobody who knew better would have taken the job.

Warrington knew what he was getting into. He did a bunch of Hail Marys, but he walked out with a better railroad than he'd walked into.


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## jis (Nov 28, 2014)

neroden said:


> Warrington knew what he was getting into. He did a bunch of Hail Marys, but he walked out with a better railroad than he'd walked into.


Except possibly financially, since his Hail Mary's required some financial jiggery pokery.


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## Anderson (Nov 30, 2014)

jis said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> > Warrington knew what he was getting into. He did a bunch of Hail Marys, but he walked out with a better railroad than he'd walked into.
> ...


Yeah, but everyone since him has had to do some version of the same, and it's not like he mortgaged Penn Station in the process, either.


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## Lawdude (Dec 1, 2014)

Paulus said:


> Chicago-Florida is rather unlikely to be any cheaper than airplane with fees for a sleeper (breaks down to about 23¢ per mile on the old Floridian timetable with $310 per passenger cost; on CONO+Sunset East it's 18.3¢: average sleeper yield is about 27.2¢). And honestly, there's a problem in that you're trying to justify heavily subsidized routes against profitable competition: How much would the sleeper fare be if they actually had to pick up the slack and make the train profitable to run? The incremental revenue of a sleeper has always, from the numbers I've seen published, been quite low, at best, and such a routing is unlikely to have significant coach ridership, which is where most incremental revenue is on a long distance train.
> 
> Edit: Actually, worse than that. Airfare is round trip, Amtrak is one-way. So you'd be looking at sleeper revenues of 9-12¢ per mile; less than current coach yields.


This is the real answer to OP's question.

Overnight train service on particular routes is actually potentially viable. There's plenty of examples that have been given in this thread.

But not with roomettes and bedrooms with free dining car food! Sleeping car space on Amtrak is priced well below cost. And if they priced them at fixed and allocated variable costs plus a reasonable profit, they would be prohibitively expensive versus flying even if you make comparisons favorable to Amtrak (i.e., assuming that people will actually pay checked bag fees when flying rather than finding a way to avoid them, which isn't hard to do on the major carriers).

If you really wanted a competitive train service, it would probably be something along the lines of current Amtrak coach, or maybe some form of barebones sleeper service such as a sectional sleeper or a slumbercoach. And no free food from a dining car. You'd have to keep the costs way down so that Amtrak can actually make money on the service while charging a fare competitive with the airlines, which would then allow the railroad to add capacity and perhaps frequency of service.


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## Lawdude (Dec 1, 2014)

Anderson said:


> tonys96 said:
> 
> 
> > Paulus said:
> ...


I don't think the airlines, strictly speaking, "beat" the railroads. The passenger car got there first. Just about every history of American railroads says that the decline started in the 1920's-- at a time when almost nobody was flying. And it intensified in the 1950s-- at a time when still, very few Americans had ever flown a commercial flight. But the 1920's saw the construction of the US national highway system, and the 1950's saw the construction of the interstates.

The reason that airline service has declined is because it has gone from being a province of the rich (remember the term "jet set"?) to a province of the working and middle classes. It cost over $900 in today's dollars to fly across the country in the early 1980's-- now it costs $400. I wasn't around in the 1950's and 1960's, but airfares, adjusted for inflation, were even higher back then.

But that's a product of the airlines' popularity and profitability. It's not causing people not to fly at all-- airlines are making record profits. Instead, it's a result of so many people flying. A ton of air travelers are price sensitive consumers, and airlines have to make drastic service cuts to keep fares low to get these people to fly.

But all this happened long after the railroads were being crushed. It was the automobile that did that.


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## Lawdude (Dec 1, 2014)

Anderson said:


> northnorthwest said:
> 
> 
> > (5) And air travel isn't any better. Legroom has dropped from the middle 30s to the high 20s on many airlines (28-30 inch coach seating is increasingly pervasive), security is unpleasant, and a number of airports are slamming into capacity issues. Again, contrast with the 60s when many of those airports were new, security was non-existent, and (as noted) coach then was more like a lot of business class seats are now


This is somewhat overstated. No major airline has a seat pitch less than 30 inches, and most major airline seats are at 31 or 32. The three legacy carriers offer competitively priced premium economy at 34 inches or more. Spirit and Allegiant, with their tiny seat pitches, have small market shares. And 31 or 32 inch seat pitches were common in the 1970's, actually.

It's true that there has been some shrinkage-- in hell, everyone flies in Recaro slimline airline seats. But it's actually much more of a perception issue-- Americans have gotten fatter and planes are getting fuller, so they notice the cramped conditions more.

At any rate, the reason I only say it is somewhat overstated is that it is nonetheless true that Amtrak has a big competitive advantage on the issue of legroom.


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## Lawdude (Dec 1, 2014)

Anderson said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > Anderson said:
> ...


I suspect the widebody issue is a result of taxation. If you tax per passenger, as we do, and you allow airlines to control slots, it's rational for airlines to use lots of small planes-- you get greater frequency and you freeze out potential competitors.

But if you tax by LANDING, suddenly, it becomes much better to use a nice fuel efficient 747 with 500 people on it.


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## neroden (Dec 1, 2014)

Lawdude said:


> Overnight train service on particular routes is actually potentially viable. There's plenty of examples that have been given in this thread.
> 
> But not with roomettes and bedrooms with free dining car food! Sleeping car space on Amtrak is priced well below cost. And if they priced them at fixed and allocated variable costs plus a reasonable profit, they would be prohibitively expensive versus flying...





Lawdude said:


> I don't think the airlines, strictly speaking, "beat" the railroads. The passenger car got there first. Just about every history of American railroads says that the decline started in the 1920's-- at a time when almost nobody was flying. And it intensified in the 1950s-- at a time when still, very few Americans had ever flown a commercial flight. But the 1920's saw the construction of the US national highway system, and the 1950's saw the construction of the interstates....


This gets back to what I've said before: Amtrak doesn't *need* to be competitive with flying. Amtrak simply needs to be competitive with driving.

Yes, airline usage has gone way up, and the occasional airline makes a small profit after being bailed out of their most recent bankruptcy.

Nearly all US airlines either went bankrupt, sometimes multiple times -- or were recapitalized by scooping up the remains of a bankrupt airline cheaply, sometimes multiple times. They nearly all needed a bailout in 2001, and it wasn't the first; there was a round of bailouts in the early 1980s too. I think Southwest is the only exception to this sad history, and studying its business model is interesting. It has some rather sharp limits: it's not scalable in certain ways.

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/operations/2012/06/southwest_airlines_profitability_how_the_company_uses_operations_theory_to_fuel_its_success_.html

By doing strictly point-to-point flights, strictly with 737s (a particularly good aircraft design, by the way), Southwest makes sure that it doesn't compete at all in most markets, including any market pair which can't fill a 737; and it makes sure that the available departures per day are few, by not adding a departure until they can fill two. By using smaller downtown airports (which is generally a good move for customers) Southwest puts an absolute cap on the number of flights it can run to major cities per day. It's a solid business model, but it simply abandons large numbers of trips to the competition.

Airline usage is really not displacing automobile usage much at all. Autos are the big competition.


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## Larry H. (Dec 1, 2014)

Mark said:


> I wish Amtrak offered the couchettes that European City Night Line's offer. There are rooms with 4 or 6 beds to a room that fold into seats when not in use. They allow travelers to lay down overnight without having to pay for an entire sleeper. They're essentially hostels on wheels. I'd love an Amtrak option to lay down horizontally with no frills - share space, no dining meals included. I'd like to think that could be offered affordably.


I believe that canadian trains still offer Upper and Lower bunks which are somewhat like what your talking about. For some reason they disappeared on american trains in the 70s for the most part.


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## Larry H. (Dec 1, 2014)

neroden said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> > northnorthwest said:
> ...


Amtrak is a Hub System at its worst.. For those lucky to live in Chicago or New York you have a fairly reasonable amount of choices without spending endless hours, not to mention additional cost in order to go where your wishing to go. However when your in some location hours from the hubs you have to pay to get to the hub and then backtrack for hours or even days in order to arrive where you trying to get to. The biggest thing besides lousy sleeper conditions and food, not to mention excessive cost, is the sad fact that amtrak in the 70s decided to eliminate many of the routes that gave travelers a way to get to a location without going so far out of their way.


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## Larry H. (Dec 1, 2014)

Pardon me as I have not the time to read every aspect of the previous comments.

The original question seems to be that if offered decent on time service will customers purchase sleepers in greater numbers. That included service that is at least sufficient to justify the price. What has happened over time with Amtrak is actually the reverse. They started out with equipment that was still from the era when quality of experience was a selling point. Dinners were still prepared to make the traveler feel like it was a selling point to taking the train. The cost of sleepers (no matter what many seem to think here) was quite reasonable and most long distance trains carried up to 5 sleepers, some all sleepers. The cost was a given on a schedule not some chance lottery which can vary wildly.

What we have now is an ever worsening pricing and at the same time many of the reasons for paying for a sleeper have been degraded to the point that many don't see the benefit of the extra cost. Much of this is due to Congress and its total ignorance of travel that takes several days or more. I noted in the thread on the cost of service on the cardinal that coach fares were several hundred where as the sleeper was over a thousand. Now that fare is one night with a limited service diner, and limited lounge service.

To my mind a thousand dollars plus is a rather expensive charge for one nights travel.

I doubt that adding cars would reduce the cost of sleepers due to the ever badgering to make trains pay for them selves, although no doubt it would increase revenue significantly. The biggest improvement to encourage travelers to take the train would be to go back to having rail connections that go in several directions from most major cities. Now to go overnight to Colorado from southern Illinois you have to travel up to 5 or 6 hours north, plus the charge for it, and then wait to get a sleeper to Denver. Not exactly convenient. A return of the National Limited route could pick up many passengers in the mid parts of the nation going east or west. That connection should be routed at least to Denver from Washington or New York. Florida travelers from almost anywhere by Chicago or New York are simply ignored by eliminating rail service from all points like Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, ext. In other words for overnight rail by sleeper to be really a success you need to have many more convenient points from which to go to your destination in a reasonable time, with reduced extra charge for mileage.


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## neroden (Dec 1, 2014)

Of course any form of attractive service requires running on time. The core problem which Amtrak has had.


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## Engine58 (Dec 2, 2014)

Just want to add a quick comment...

To answer the original question: Yes, but what percentage of Americans will ride them?

I am in my early 30's, my wife and I prefer train travel to air, or car(heaven forbid). We prefer rail travel for several reasons, mainly relaxation and comfort. If we must fly somewhere, we try to be loyal to Virgin...why? Relaxation and comfort. The majority of american airlines are cramped, over-crowded and in my experience, the flight crew is more annoyed that you are on the plane.

Americans seem to have lost the idea of relaxation and comfort when it comes to any type of travel. As a society, we tend to accept things as they are, or have turned out to become. Remember when we complained that gasoline was $1.39/gallon, now we rejoice at $2.99/gallon? Its because we have come to accept it.

Travel is no different. The airlines pack us in, remove our dining options and charge the same amount.

I am not wealthy by any means, Virgin tends to be a little bit more pricey than Southwest but is comparable to UAL or AA, but Virgin makes you feel welcome and offers many more comforts that make the price worth it.

Same goes for my train travel, I try to opt for roomette or bedroom on every trip that i take over 8 hrs and I will continue to do this because my relaxation and comfort is worth the money over speed and being hasseled by TSA.

Maybe i'm in a small percentage...


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## CHamilton (Dec 2, 2014)

And falling gas prices will be lowest in places that aren't very supportive of trains.



> Drivers in all states can expect increasingly cheaper prices at the pump through the end of the year. And drivers in states where prices are already below average—including Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—are most likely to see prices drop below the $2 mark.


http://fortune.com/2014/12/02/gas-prices-will-soon-drop-below-2-per-gallon/

The price drop is short-term, but getting politicians to think longer term is difficult, especially when they have to pony up the bucks for infrastructure improvements.


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## Anderson (Dec 2, 2014)

Outside of Texas and Oklahoma, the net result is probably no impact (of those states, TX has the Texas Central project; OK has OKC-Tulsa; and I don't think anyone else except MO has anything major, period).

The situations in TX, OK, and MO are more complicated: MO has been supportive of the River Runner and generally looking to expand service. OK seems up for expanding service but isn't willing to go it alone (and they're a bit of a reach for MO). TX has gone from the horrid hostility of the early 90s to ambivalence as far as I can tell (at least insofar as they're willing to let Texas Central happen and haven't walked away from the _Heartland Flyer_ yet).


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## Anderson (Dec 2, 2014)

Engine58 said:


> Just want to add a quick comment...
> 
> To answer the original question: Yes, but what percentage of Americans will ride them?
> 
> ...


I remember seeing $1.31 just under six years ago (at the bottom of the crash).

And you're not the only one...right down to Virgin actually having my business where I have to fly. Granted, I flew FC in both cases*, but on Virgin it was an amazing experience while...let's just say that if it wasn't so expensive to do so I would have dumped my Delta miles to a friend.

*The flight back from SLC, on Delta, was FC to begin with, but that's because FC was about $130 more than Coach...which basically meant that after baggage fees I was paying about $75 or so for legroom, drinks, and free IFE. IFE notwithstanding, I've paid less and gotten more on a Regional many, _many_ times. Heading west, I flew Virgin IAD-SFO...mainly due to the Amtrak OTP collapse in Chicago (I was originally taking Amtrak RVR-WAS-CHI-SLC, but that became non-viable due to misconnects). I then caught the next morning's Zephyr. _That_ was FC simply because FC was _still_ cheaper than the Amtrak reservation I had scrapped.


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## neroden (Dec 2, 2014)

The drop in gasoline prices should be interesting. I think many people still realize that this is temporary, so I don't think it's going to have much impact on the purchase of electric cars, hybrids, solar panels, etc.

One interesting question is how temporary the low gas prices are: the Saudis' stated goal is to drive the frackers and the tar sands guys out of the market, force them to lay everyone off and shut down their equipment. I'm not sure how long it takes for those guys to give up and shut their operations down; probably a year, but maybe several years, since they're crazy.


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## Engine58 (Dec 2, 2014)

I do not want to side track the topic, but....

"Low" gas prices are very temporary. Do you know why $2.99/gal is "low" to our society? Because we have come to accept it as a low price. Hence part of my previous post.

I can go on about domestic output and OPEC not cutting production, but again, i want to stay on track here. :giggle:


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## Barciur (Dec 2, 2014)

OTOH, $4 a gallon is very cheap for Europeans so they think we have dirt cheap gas. That should be kept in mind when comparing European rail system and success to ours as well.


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## jis (Dec 2, 2014)

As well as the quality of Western European highways too.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


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## Bob Dylan (Dec 2, 2014)

jis said:


> As well as the quality of Western European highways too.
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum


That's because those " Socialist Countries" spend money on such "Frills" as Health Care and Infrastructure!


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## Ziv (Dec 2, 2014)

And yet the AutoBahn looks, and is, old fashioned as all get out. It is narrow and the ramps are short as heck. The only thing that makes it work as well as it does is the fact that the people that drive on it are more skilled and considerate than the drives on America's interstates.

They may spend money on the the AutoBahn but it is still 50 years out of date.

Their trains on the other hand are much more modern than American trains.



jimhudson said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > As well as the quality of Western European highways too.
> ...


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## Barciur (Dec 3, 2014)

Ziv said:


> And yet the AutoBahn looks, and is, old fashioned as all get out. It is narrow and the ramps are short as heck. The only thing that makes it work as well as it does is the fact that the people that drive on it are more skilled and considerate than the drives on America's interstates.


And that's perhaps because you actually have to pass a rigorous test to drive there and take a driver's ed course, while in America, you really don't have to know how to drive to get a license. But that's another issue altogether.


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## neroden (Dec 3, 2014)

Barciur said:


> And that's perhaps because you actually have to pass a rigorous test to drive there and take a driver's ed course, while in America, you really don't have to know how to drive to get a license. But that's another issue altogether.


Yeah, one which scares the living daylights out of me every time I get on the road. Maniacs passing on the right, cutting me off without signalling... happened on a rural road recently.


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## Guest (Dec 3, 2014)

_>>And yet the AutoBahn looks, and is, old fashioned as all get out. It is narrow and the ramps are short as heck.<<_

Being an American who has lived two decades in Germany off and on over the years, I never, in any other context, heard someone describe the Autobahn as old fashioned and narrow with poor ramps. Most acceleration ramps tend to be the opposite, quite long to allow for merging by cars with small, fuel-efficient engines that don't accelerate swiftly but have high cruising speeds. Possibly the reference concerns some of the eastern German highways around Berlin and Leipzig before they were upgraded over the past couple of decades. Bear in mind that the majority of European towns and cities include many narrow streets. The cars themselves tend to be narrower as a result ... check out for example 5 and 7 series BMWs, which are long but narrow. Same with Volvo.


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## Ziv (Dec 4, 2014)

I drove from Eindhoven to Koln, Siegen, Koblenz and then to Trier and the roads were better in the Netherlands than they were in most of western Germany, or rather, they were wider with longer ramps. I only spent the 9 or 10 days there, so I don't claim to be an expert but I was surprised by how much better the interstate system is here in the states than the Autobahn.



Guest said:


> _>>And yet the AutoBahn looks, and is, old fashioned as all get out. It is narrow and the ramps are short as heck.<<_
> 
> Being an American who has lived two decades in Germany off and on over the years, I never, in any other context, heard someone describe the Autobahn as old fashioned and narrow with poor ramps. Most acceleration ramps tend to be the opposite, quite long to allow for merging by cars with small, fuel-efficient engines that don't accelerate swiftly but have high cruising speeds. Possibly the reference concerns some of the eastern German highways around Berlin and Leipzig before they were upgraded over the past couple of decades. Bear in mind that the majority of European towns and cities include many narrow streets. The cars themselves tend to be narrower as a result ... check out for example 5 and 7 series BMWs, which are long but narrow. Same with Volvo.


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## Amunet (Dec 9, 2014)

Paulus said:


> Why would I, and by extension the average traveler, want to take an extra couple of days off of work and pay two to three times the airfare?



I'd just like to say that some average travelers have issues with flying (for whatever reason), these people still travel, but find other means to do it, such as train travel.

I travel extensively, well, I used to until I developed a pretty severe anxiety. I'm finally going out and traveling again but I cannot bring myself to go to an airport just yet, SO I've chosen a sleeper on a train. For a person that flies on international flights that average 11 hours in one way, I can say that I am willing to pay more for the sleeper, since I cannot sleep in upright seats (well, I can't sleep much in general but not going into that  )


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## cirdan (Dec 10, 2014)

Guest said:


> _>>And yet the AutoBahn looks, and is, old fashioned as all get out. It is narrow and the ramps are short as heck.<<_
> 
> Being an American who has lived two decades in Germany off and on over the years, I never, in any other context, heard someone describe the Autobahn as old fashioned and narrow with poor ramps. Most acceleration ramps tend to be the opposite, quite long to allow for merging by cars with small, fuel-efficient engines that don't accelerate swiftly but have high cruising speeds. Possibly the reference concerns some of the eastern German highways around Berlin and Leipzig before they were upgraded over the past couple of decades. Bear in mind that the majority of European towns and cities include many narrow streets. The cars themselves tend to be narrower as a result ... check out for example 5 and 7 series BMWs, which are long but narrow. Same with Volvo.


I lived in the far south west of Germany for several years. The A3 autobahn section there is one of the oldest in existence in Germany and hence also in the world. It's construction was initiated by the ****s at a time that cars were fewer and slower than they are today. Furthermore, the work was driven by propganada considerations, with usefulness taking second place. This is why this section of autobahn has plenty of speed restrictions, but they are generally not well enforced or respected. They have upgrdaed the autobahn over the years and the major junctions have been eased if not totally rebuilt but if you leave or join the autobahn at one of the minor junctions you are indeed faced with extremely tight curves on the ramps followed by very short merging sections, requiring you to go from very slow to very fast very quickly, and that under very busy traffic conditions (the autobahn has only two lanes per direction, and they never managed to widen it depite the intense usage)


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## west point (Dec 11, 2014)

Could it be that since Europe has gotten so much HSR its sleepers are no longer needed for many of the shorter routes. If that theory applies then until the USA can get faster service on routes that are presently sleeper served will persons still take sleepers?. As pointed out until the new Viewliner-2s are in service it cannot be determined if there is additional demand for sleeper berths? Maybe even more V-2s?

As well if Slumber coaches can work?


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## neroden (Dec 11, 2014)

west point said:


> Could it be that since Europe has gotten so much HSR its sleepers are no longer needed for many of the shorter routes.


Yeah. The two sleeper services in the UK are really almost too short in duration to run sleepers. High speed lines are causing the same situation with a bunch of Continental routes; the trips are just too fast for sleepers to make sense.
But also, the longer routes in Europe, which still should have sleepers, mostly cross national borders, sometimes several times. There is substantial bureaucracy involved in doing that. This has caused many of the rail operators to not want to deal with cross-border sleeping cars. (Russian Railways is the exception, and is still running sleepers all the way from Moscow to Paris.)


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## Anderson (Dec 11, 2014)

west point said:


> Could it be that since Europe has gotten so much HSR its sleepers are no longer needed for many of the shorter routes. If that theory applies then until the USA can get faster service on routes that are presently sleeper served will persons still take sleepers?. As pointed out until the new Viewliner-2s are in service it cannot be determined if there is additional demand for sleeper berths? Maybe even more V-2s?
> 
> As well if Slumber coaches can work?


The main difference is that in Europe, those "shorter" routes are nothing compared to runs like NYP-CHI or WAS-ORL. Even if you dropped a full-blown bullet train averaging 150 MPH on some routes, you'd still be well-served by overnight service: New York-Miami is 1389 miles, and at 150 MPH it would still be a 9:15 trip. A lot of the routes in Europe are hovering around 500 miles (even Paris-Berlin is less than 700 miles, while NYP-CHI is 960; WAS-CHI is 780, but still about 100 miles more than Paris-Berlin).

The other point on the table is that even getting the average speeds in the US up to a consistent 60 MPH would be an improvement in a lot of cases.


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## jis (Dec 11, 2014)

At 150 mph average speed, New york - Chicago would be 6 hours and change. Unless the overnight trains could use the HS line to do it in like 9pm to 7am kind of time, overnight trains would start losing out. Look at what is happening to overnight trains in Japan, even on a long run like Tokyo to Hakata.

OTOH, New York to Miami will really become a very viable overnight service market with high speed sleeper service!


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## Anderson (Dec 11, 2014)

jis said:


> At 150 mph average speed, New york - Chicago would be 6 hours and change. Unless the overnight trains could use the HS line to do it in like 9pm to 7am kind of time, overnight trains would start losing out. Look at what is happening to overnight trains in Japan, even on a long run like Tokyo to Hakata.
> 
> OTOH, New York to Miami will really become a very viable overnight service market with high speed sleeper service!


Point taken. IIRC, a lot of the issue with the overnight services in Japan is that they were running at like half the speed of the HSR trains.

Edit: Yep, half the speed. Tokyo-Hakodate is a 5:22 trip with one transfer using JR-East's Hayabusa express. Using the overnight train you're looking at 13 hours for the same run (about 17:30 to Sapporo vs. 9:20 on the Hayabusa with two transfers; there's little time difference once you're on Hokkaido, but a massive one down on Honshu). I'd be willing to bet that if they could somehow run one of the last bullet trains through to Hokkaido overnight it would help (through cars or something like that), but that's just not compatible with the bullet train technology (not to mention, IIRC, the different loading gauges). The average speed is therefore somewhere just over 40 MPH (Tokyo-Sapporo is about 725 miles).

Over on the Osaka side of things, you're looking at a 24-hour trip...which is edging into "trouble" territory to begin with. Driving is actually faster on that one; the distance traveled is comparable to the LSL (at least, on the map; I'd need a more detailed railway table to work with an actual distance, but it seems to be somewhere in the 900-1000 mile range) but the trip takes about seven hours longer than the LSL...so not only is it not terribly competitive, but in that case you're getting down into "bad train" territory (the average speed is somewhere in the range of 40 MPH and might be below it, depending on the routing; for comparison, the California Zephyr averages just under 50 MPH and the SW Chief just over 50 MPH).

The Tokyo service does seem to have the more solid timetable of the two, but even there you have a connecting sleeper train out of Aomori to Sapporo that fills the slot better.

Finally, there's the fact that the shinkansen services are being extended through the tunnel to Hakodate, which is set to knock _another_ few hours off the trip...which seems to be what's ultimately doing in some of those trains. For some reason, a 16-hour train ride averaging 40 MPH seems to have trouble competing with a 7-hour train ride. I rather suspect that an overnight run would actually have some success in that market, perhaps at 8-9 hours instead of 7 hours, but that would run afoul of the overnight maintenance work allowed by the current system.


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## Phil S (Dec 12, 2014)

Barciur said:


> Ziv said:
> 
> 
> > And yet the AutoBahn looks, and is, old fashioned as all get out. It is narrow and the ramps are short as heck. The only thing that makes it work as well as it does is the fact that the people that drive on it are more skilled and considerate than the drives on America's interstates.
> ...


None the less the clue-less American driver can get easily rent a car and get a temporary permit for driving on German autobahns. The resulting chaos is well worth the price of admission. Driving Beyreuth to Munchen with a German friend, I almost cracked up when he said "I much prefer driving in America. There you don;t have to think." Oh so true!


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## cirdan (Dec 12, 2014)

neroden said:


> west point said:
> 
> 
> > Could it be that since Europe has gotten so much HSR its sleepers are no longer needed for many of the shorter routes.
> ...


Another problem in Europe lies in the transition from locomotives + cars to fixed consists. Because of this there are fewer and fewer locomotives, fewer and fewer switching locomotives and switching crews and station track layouts are slowly being rationalized to reflect this. Thus many railroads are asking, can they justify keeping the extra facilities for a once a day night train when the rest of the infrastructure is attuned to an hourly or more fixed-consist service. Many night trains split or join en route and this calls for middle of the night switching. Many sections also start their first leg attached to some day train, and if that day train goes from locmotive and cars to a fixed consist, you lose that option and either face the higher costs of that leg becoming a standalone train, or more likely, you dump it completely.

About 20 years ago, the European Union launched a blueprint for a trans-European high-speed network, with glossy brochures talking of Madrid to Moscow being the rail market of the future. Some of the ongoing investments such as Stuttgart 21 still claim to be serving this goal. But what has happened in reality has been the opposite. We have seen the emergence of lots of standalone high speed services, often with incompatible trains and lots of city pairs that previously had direct connections now require mutiple changes, sometimes even overnight stays in hotels, and despite the high speed, now take longer than they did 20 years ago. The beneficiaries of this are the low cost airlines.

20 years ago, most LD car were internationally normed and with the exception of the UK, Ireland, Spain and Poprtugal, which for various reasons were incompatible, these cars could go anywhere and could be mixed in the same consists. Even in the case of Spain there were some international trains using UIC cars. These had their trucks switched at the border. The same for trains from Germand and Poland to Ukraine and Russia. So with this high degree of standardization, international trains were not a big issue. Of course the locomotives were not as compatible and with a few exceptions (such as the French-Benelux multi-system locomotives, and also some German ones) these were changed at borders. But the passenger rarely noticed much of this as many border stations had slick and efficient techniques and the overall delay was not too bad. Today the opposite is true. Fixed consists are normally only suitable for the specific service for which they were designed. When a train is introduced that can run in different countries, this is trumpeted as a huge achievement while the PR folks hope we'll forget that 20 years ago that was the minimum you could expect.

It would be as if the Silvers were cut back at Washington DC and the Keystones to Philadelphia because the NEC was setup to accept only fixed consist Acela trains


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## Anderson (Dec 12, 2014)

Cirdan:
What you described is my main fear at this point, actually: We get CAHSR, AAF, JR Central's project in Texas, NEC Future, and possibly something in the Midwest...and not a whole lot in between. Texas Central and AAF are going to have dubious connections with the broader system (and if that **** maglev project starts happening, add another built-in misconnect in the system if it doesn't manage to land within a few blocks of Union Station). It is entirely possible to envision a situation in the US where some major localized improvements start breaking apart the rest of the system.

To put this another way, if we start getting 220MPH+ trains running BOS-WAS, that could actually undermine SEHSR in a significant way due to folks suddenly wanting/needing to transfer at WAS to the faster service...but breaking the through operation of that service would have a chance of losing even _more_ ridership.


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## neroden (Dec 13, 2014)

Well, thankfully the Illinois hub projects and the Northeastern regional projects are pretty much running to the same standards, with the unfortunate exceptions of boarding height & overhead clearance, where there's an "eastern" standard and a "western" standard. Even there, Chicago is seriously proposing to restore a high platform at Union Station, supposely for "HSR" trains, which would completely match Northeastern standards, and would probably serve the LSL on day one.

CAHSR is going to run directly into LA Union Station, where nearly everyone has to change trains already anyway, and LAUS is actually being improved with run-through tracks for those who aren't changing trains.

The Texas Central project is unlikely to happen. Lone Star Rail would be on the same route as the Texas Eagle. Amtrak is still supposed to move over to the TRE route between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Florida... eh, Florida's gonna sink under the waves and the problem will be figuring out where to resettle the refugees. I'm not going to worry about a standards mismatch in Florida.

In general, we have the advantage over Europe that we are *not* a bunch of separate squabbling countries who refuse to cooperate.


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## Barciur (Dec 14, 2014)

I wonder about Russia, as that seems to be the country with the most successful overnight sleeping service currently? Is it because the towns it serves have no alternative transportation, or is it still cheaper to travel by rail than to travel by air between those points?

Worth remembering that there is no coach seating on the eastern European LD's - Ukraine, Belarus, Russia - all of these have sleeping cars only.


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## afigg (Dec 15, 2014)

neroden said:


> CAHSR is going to run directly into LA Union Station, where nearly everyone has to change trains already anyway, and LAUS is actually being improved with run-through tracks for those who aren't changing trains.
> 
> The Texas Central project is unlikely to happen. Lone Star Rail would be on the same route as the Texas Eagle. Amtrak is still supposed to move over to the TRE route between Dallas and Fort Worth.
> 
> ...


I disagree on the Texas Central project. The actions in Dallas and Houston of the past several months have convinced me that it is a real project. It is by no means a sure thing, but I give it good odds of actually getting built in the next 10 years.

As for LA Union Station, it could rival Chicago or DC Union Station in daily total passenger numbers in 20 years between

CA HSR, Surfliner, other corridor services, heavy and light rail transit lines, Metrolink.

Instead of separate squabbling countries, we have 50 separate sometimes squabbling states, a dysfunctional Congress, and a deeply divided political system. Not clear that is much of an advantage at the present.


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## JayMadison (Dec 17, 2014)

I can only speak for me, I've flown for nearly all of my 35 years, and only really experienced trains the last 2. At this point I'll always take a sleeper over a plane. I think the average traveler may just want to get there, but I do think getting there on a train in half the fun. The reason I keep riding the train is basically the level of service and all the interesting people I meet. I don't know what will happen, but I certainly hope long distance trains are here to stay.


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## Anderson (Dec 17, 2014)

I'm with afigg on Texas Central for a few reasons, but the big one probably centers around the death of the Wright Amendment. A large part of what killed the Texas TGV was Southwest fighting like hell against it. This, in turn, was because Texas TGV under the Wright Amendment would have killed Dallas Love Field for Southwest (since flights out of Love Field couldn't go further than LA, AR, OK, or NM and to book beyond you had to actually get a separate ticket...the base of Texas TGV would have knocked out several of those destinations, and there would be a non-trivial chance that further expansion of the line could start running down hard on the remainder).

20 years later, the Wright Amendment is dead, but it took out 12 gates at DAL. The airlines as a whole seem happy enough to dump short-haul business to conserve slots for longer-haul flights...I suspect that Southwest wouldn't mind cutting a bunch of Dallas-Houston flights and swapping them for Dallas-Los Angeles, Dallas-Chicago, or Dallas-New York flights. They're not likely to fight too terribly hard. At the other end of the spectrum, you have Virgin America expressing interest in operating trains (although in California, the point still stands that they're up for operating them).

My understanding is that this is also the case in the instance of Los Angeles-San Francisco: You have a truly massive airline market, but it's a market that doesn't make much (if any money) but that can't be backed out of for fear of losing connecting business and the like. Again, every round-trip flight LAX-SFO is two round-trip flights that could be reallocated to another route (one at each end). I believe the same principle applies to LA-Las Vegas as well, and that's the second most massive airline market in the country if I'm not mistaken.

In several cases, the alternative is building a train route or massively expanding airport capacity...and the latter is _not cheap_: There's only so big you can make a narrow-body plane (and only so short of a route a widebody makes sense to run on) and only so much room you can squeeze out of an existing airport before you start having to fight over land again (see also: London Heathrow's third runway fight). There are exceptions where either a huge surplus of land was acquired or an airport is likely to remain in a semi-rural area for a while, but those tend to be the exceptions and I can't see SFO or LAX getting expanded without a hellacious fight.


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## Daylight (Dec 17, 2014)

I have to travel quite a bit between Los Angeles and the east coast, mostly for business, and that usually means taking the bus with wings. I have also taken long distance trains, which from Los Angeles means a trip longer than 24 hours. However, if I have the time, I prefer to take the train. Flying today is so physically uncomfortable to me that it now takes me an extra day just to work out the kinks. I find that when I fly, I can't wait to get to my destination, but when I take the train I'm sad when the trip ends. When I board the train and it starts to rock-and-roll, a wave of relaxation comes over me (probably the infant inside of me).

I've done overnights in coach and in sleepers, and I agree the sleeper prices have been rather steep of late, but I've rarely seen an empty room throught a LD trip. Also, on the train I get to see more than the freeway (when driving), and the people are generally in a good mood, unlike when flying.

I usually tell people that ask me about taking the train that if you have to be at your destination by a particular time, then fly. If you include the train ride as part of your trip, then you'll either love it or hate it; some people can't sit still for more than a few hours.


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## neroden (Dec 17, 2014)

I wish Texas Central good luck, but they haven't even started dealing with land acquisition. Of which they will require a great deal.

I just don't think there's the political will for it in Texas at this point.

California had the political will for it.

AAF already owned most of the right-of-way, and most of the the rest was owned by friendly airport and road authorities... and they still had tremendous trouble getting the *few remaining parcels* needed for the the curve.

In Texas, the route acquisition will require lots and lots of eminent domain; I think it's going to be tied up for years, and since it's being done by a private operator, I'm not even sure the state government will cooperate. Isn't Texas one of the states which passed an anti-Kelo law to make it hard to use eminent domain for private projects?


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## timetableflagman (Dec 26, 2014)

The traveling public would have to return to the rails, en masse, if the airlines and highways WERE'NT subsidized (which they are). But, given that the Big Oil interests depend on the public's mass waste of Big Oil's product, fuel, wasted by driving and flying (and, little doubt, Big Oil owners have massive stock in those modes for that reason), then, no, we won't see the public being able to, much less having any incentive to return to overnight rail passenger service--no matter how much more sense it makes.

Arguably, that's the real reason we don't see AMTRAK immediately re-scheduling every one of their trains to originate around 6p and terminate at around 6a, with that general schedule recurring along the lines at major cities every 500 miles or so. That one act of re-scheduling of all of AMTRAK's trains to serve every major city on all of their lines would offer that overnight sleeping car service between major cities within 300-500 miles apart and, rush-hour coach service, at least within about 50 miles of those same cities--on the same daily trains!

How would overnight and rush-hour service be utilized by, and the huge increase of fares of which not help AMTRAK's financial situation: between Chicago and Cleveland, St. Paul/Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Memphis, and (with daily service) Cincinnati; between Greensboro and Atlanta; between Fayetteville and Jacksonville; between Los Angeles and San Francisco, (with restored DESERT WIND service) Salt Lake City, Phoenix and Tucson; between Seattle, Eugene, Spokane and, (with restored PIONEER service) Boise; between Little Rock and Dallas; between New Orleans and Houston; between El Paso, Del Rio, and (with new service between El Paso and Shelby, MT) Albuquerque; between Albuquerque and Dodge City; between Shelby and Minot; and, between Denver, Salt Lake City, and (with new El Paso-Shelby service) Casper? Combining trains at junctions to make for seamless, no re-boarding transfers between trains whose consists would continue on as the next, connecting train would better utilize equipment.

The sane, accomplishable schedules involved in meeting these times at these points by current trains would better accommodate host railroad freight service. Paying the host railroads ("profit-sharing") the reasonable rate for running passenger trains on their tracks, from the influx of more reliable, though reasonable and uniform fares ($7 coach seat, $14 sleeping berth, $28 roomette, $56 bedroom for every station departed (left or passed) along a line, with no gouging for "peak" times) from the resulting high volume of reliant, daily coach commuter and overnight business and travel sleeping car passengers, should result in on-time performance and no problems with host railroads accommodating AMTRAK trains (IF privately-owned host railroads care about profits!).


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## Paulus (Dec 26, 2014)

> The traveling public would have to return to the rails, en masse, if the airlines and highways WERE'NT subsidized (which they are). But, given that the Big Oil interests depend on the public's mass waste of Big Oil's product, fuel, wasted by driving and flying (and, little doubt, Big Oil owners have massive stock in those modes for that reason), then, no, we won't see the public being able to, much less having any incentive to return to overnight rail passenger service--no matter how much more sense it makes.


No, you'd see a combination of higher prices, higher taxes, and an overall reduction in trips. Flying and fast driving significantly increased the number of trips that Americans were willing to make, if they can't afford them an overnight train simply isn't an option for most trips. Deregulation of the airlines, and the resulting crash in airfares, created far more trips than they could have ever conceivably stolen in marketshare from Amtrak.



> Arguably, that's the real reason we don't see AMTRAK immediately re-scheduling every one of their trains to originate around 6p and terminate at around 6a, with that general schedule recurring along the lines at major cities every 500 miles or so. That one act of re-scheduling of all of AMTRAK's trains to serve every major city on all of their lines would offer that overnight sleeping car service between major cities within 300-500 miles apart and, rush-hour coach service, at least within about 50 miles of those same cities--on the same daily trains!


No, that has somewhat more to do with other scheduling reasons and the fact that the commuter railroads aren't exactly going to be thrilled with LD trains messing up their lines at peak hours.



> How would overnight and rush-hour service be utilized by, and the huge increase of fares of which not help AMTRAK's financial situation:


Adjusted for inflation, fares have significantly dropped over the years.



> The sane, accomplishable schedules involved in meeting these times at these points by current trains would better accommodate host railroad freight service. Paying the host railroads ("profit-sharing") the reasonable rate for running passenger trains on their tracks


The reasonable market rate for a track slot is something like $150 per mile; more really if you account for the fact that on a primarily freight railroad a single passenger slot displaces multiple freight slots.



> from the influx of more reliable, though reasonable and uniform fares ($7 coach seat, $14 sleeping berth, $28 roomette, $56 bedroom for every station departed (left or passed) along a line, with no gouging for "peak" times)


So you want to significantly cut coach revenue while massively increasing sleeper fares?



> from the resulting high volume of reliant, daily coach commuter and overnight business and travel sleeping car passengers, should result in on-time performance and no problems with host railroads accommodating AMTRAK trains (IF privately-owned host railroads care about profits!).


You know what gets high volumes of reliant commuters? Frequency. Guess what doesn't and won't have the requisite number of frequencies? Slow speed overnight trains traveling on freight tracks.


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## Lawdude (Dec 26, 2014)

I think Paulus nails most of it.

One of the big things that I think a lot of people don't realize (not just railfans, but also people who talk about air and bus travel as well) is what might be called the "democratization of travel". A lot of trips simply didn't happen in the past. Most middle and working class families, if they took vacations at all, took them very close to home. A vacation might have meant a trip to an amusement park, or the beach (if they lived in a coastal or river city), or camping in the local wilderness.

I was talking to a college student recently who was complaining about not being able to afford airfares to fly home at Christmastime. And I was thinking about the fact that I didn't go to school THAT long ago (in relative terms) yet large numbers of my classmates simply did not fly home at Christmastime. That wasn't seen as a universal right. Lots of people couldn't afford it. People think about the $390 fare they paid to take a train OR a plane across the country in 1983, and they don't think about the fact that the average middle class income was something like a third of what it is now and that $390 took a much bigger bite. Most people just didn't pay it. Especially students and middle and working class people.

So what has happened is that a lot more people travel now than who used to travel. But most of those people are middle and working class people who have very short vacation schedules. If you get 5 vacation days a year, an Amtrak long distance train is a very difficult option. The people who took the Super Chief, or even the El Capitan, way back when were not simply people traveling in an era when driving and flying were less attractive and less available (though that is true); they were also, generally, people who had more time to travel. They didn't need to be back at work and on the clock in a few days. If they had been, they could have never taken the train anywhere. And they were also, generally, people who had more money to travel, either because they were generally upper class or because they saved money up over a long period of time to take a trip. Nowadays, people can pay airfare for a trip out of their disposable income.

And I don't see how long distance trains with sleepers captures more than a small sliver of that market. As I said, people are very time-sensitive. They are also money-sensitive-- and if sleepers are priced closer to cost (like they are in Canada) and without free dining service and with a more limited Guest Rewards program (as they would need to be if Amtrak wanted to make a marginal profit on sleeper service and expand it), it's very hard to see how they could compete with a plane ticket in most instances.

Now, there are some routes where you could conceive of a point-to-point sleeper service that leaves at 9 pm and gets in at 7 the next morning or something, and such a thing is theoretically convenient compared to all the headaches of air travel. But then you run into the problem that the tracks are shared with freight and commuter railroads, and there's no guarantee they will be cooperative in allowing Amtrak to run such a schedule.

I really think in the end, all (rail)roads lead towards the sort of frequent, corridor service between cities a few hundred miles apart that doesn't excite some railfans (because it doesn't involve the sleeping and dining and lounge cars) but which provides something that is of real use to a lot of Americans, along with some long distance trains run along the lines of the Essential Air Service program (i.e., focused on providing transportation options for people who live in small towns along the route, rather than on people who want to take 2 day land cruises with free meals). But the air travel market has evolved the way it has because it provides something of real use to working and middle class Americans with limited budgets of time and money, and I don't see how trains can take more than a small bite out of that.


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## chakk (Dec 26, 2014)

Lots of people traveling in the sleepers on the CL this time of year. For the past week, this train has had 3 sleepers plus the transition dorm sleeper, plus 3 (sometimes 4) coaches.


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## DC Traveler (Dec 26, 2014)

Consider me a disinterested party, but whenever I see the justification for supporting long-term sleepers, the reasons seem to boil down to:

1- Looking out the windows

2- Talking with people

3- Eating food

Basically, these are things you do on a vacation like on a cruise line. Maybe I'm biased with my east coast routes, but based on these discussions and also the trip reports, it seems that many of the supporters of long-distance trains play the "comfort and luxury" angle, rather than the "utility and efficiency" angle. Which is fine, but I don't know if that's the best use of scarce resources, such as capital and political influence.

The truth is that the western US (excluding the coast) isn't very dense, and the cities themselves aren't very dense. This isn't an ideal situation for rail service at all. I appreciate that many of these small towns don't have airports, but at those levels of densities, I have to assume that it would be cheaper for the state-level DOT agencies to simply contract/subsidize Greyhound for intercity/city-to-airport service.

Even in Europe, sleepers are somewhat on the wane. The healthy sleeper trains are the one-overnight, PM departure/AM arrival which works for businessmen and tourists. Even with that, cheap airfares are certainly an important part of the market share. However, if you want the "luxury train trip" experience, you can do that, but it's not done under the auspices of national rail companies, but private operators.

People will take sleepers, but only when they're cost and time competitive with other modes. I can fly from DC to LAX in 5 hours, and even after you add in marginal time at both end, it doesn't come close to transcon sleepers, completely overlooking delays. And nevermind the fact that you also have to get early to the RR station for your trip.

TLDR: The numbers seem to imply that corridor services are the best bang for your buck. Tie it in with hubs at airports, and you'll get a good regional transportation network. LDs don't seem to cut it for utility or price.


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## Anderson (Dec 26, 2014)

*sighs*
Again I feel compelled to differentiate between a one-night trip (ranging somewhere in the 7-16 hour range at the outsides...six hours and change being about the best you can manage after work and still get in by midnight or so, and sixteen being the most you can theoretically do outside of working hours) or things a hair longer and multi-night trips. The former have a viable, scalable non-tourist market; the latter generally do not (with some exceptions, generally centering on a lack of other alternatives...you've got various rural air markets that are basically stuck with pre-deregulation fares for coach and thin service that qualify here).

Honestly, beyond valuing being able to sleep with a bit of privacy (and having access to decent meals...a microwaved burger does not qualify here, thank you very much) I don't mind being a bit light on the frills. Something akin to the old Slumbercoaches would probably do me fine, even if I had to check a bag instead of having all my stuff in the room with me. I don't think I'm the only one in that boat.

Bear in mind that such efforts are not incompatible with corridor development; if anything, they mix nicely with it. IMHO the biggest issue would be encouraging the sorts of equipment shuffling that was done back in the 50s and 60s. You'd need to do a lot of "plug and play" at NYP, but if you could do that there are a number of destinations in the 4-10 hour range (or potentially within it) from NYP that could be served: BOS, MTR, TWO, BUF, PGH, WAS, ROA/LYH/CVS, and RVR/NFK/NPN all jump to mind depending on what you're willing/able to do as far as pairing them off with one another (i.e. MTR-LYH may not be doable, but BOS-LYH would be). If you were willing to set up 2-3 "pulses" at NYP (one hitting around 2200-2400 and the other at 0200-0400) you could shuffle quite a lot effectively, and in a lot of cases most of the needed trains already exist (66/67 and its counterparts are a key part here) or have been mooted (the evening train out of ROA/LYH comes to mind here).

You'd fundamentally only have 2-3 trains each way on the trunk of the NEC (i.e. PHL-NYP), with more branching from there...but a lot of those "back ends" have their own markets to serve (such as LYH-WAS or NPN-WAS). You're just running a sleeper and/or coach through to aid in connecting the far ends of the line and generally using an already-scheduled train to do it. Moreover, in some cases you're already looking at cases where second/third frequencies are verging into odd hours for one end or another...you'd arguably be adding value if there was a through connection of some kind available.

(For the record, I'd have to drag a bunch of timetables out in front of me, but I know most of this at least works on paper...the question of a bunch of switching in NYP is going to make someone in operations kvetch up a storm, but as long as you're managing it during the deep off-hours from about 2100-0500 you should be fine)


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## neroden (Dec 27, 2014)

Lawdude said:


> Now, there are some routes where you could conceive of a point-to-point sleeper service that leaves at 9 pm and gets in at 7 the next morning or something, and such a thing is theoretically convenient compared to all the headaches of air travel. But then you run into the problem that the tracks are shared with freight and commuter railroads, and there's no guarantee they will be cooperative in allowing Amtrak to run such a schedule.


The so-called "commuter" railroads are pretty cooperative. The so-called "freight" railroads have mostly been openly hostile to passenger service of any sort for 50 years, for reasons which became irrelevant decades ago -- though their attitudes have slowly been changing.
Don't consider train service to be competing with air travel on time or price; it doesn't *need* to. Train service competes with air service on quality, because air travel is utterly miserable for a lot of people, for various reasons. On time and price, the key is to compete with driving.



Anderson said:


> *sighs*
> 
> Again I feel compelled to differentiate between a one-night trip (ranging somewhere in the 7-16 hour range at the outsides...six hours and change being about the best you can manage after work and still get in by midnight or so, and sixteen being the most you can theoretically do outside of working hours) or things a hair longer and multi-night trips. The former have a viable, scalable non-tourist market; the latter generally do not (with some exceptions, generally centering on a lack of other alternatives...you've got various rural air markets that are basically stuck with pre-deregulation fares for coach and thin service that qualify here).


What Anderson said.

The future of sleeper trains is to be running on "corridor" routes, but a bit further. This is as it should be. The sleepers originally developed on top of a dense network of corridor routes. Where corridor routes cannot be supported, it is pretty hard to support sleeper trains.

Corridor trains should, of course, exist in Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, etc. They have been sabotaged in many of these states by political actions taken by people who are openly in the pay of the fossil fuel industry. If-and-when these corridors are built and operated, it will become obvious that the east-of-Mississipi sleeper services are effective and popular.

The empty deserts are a a different problem. I actually suspect that if you can't support two trains a day each way, you can't really support one train a day each way.

The majority of the sleeping car services on Amtrak run mostly on routes which would be good corridor routes, and some of which already are corridor routes. (This is the LSL, CL, Cardinal, Crescent, Star, Meteor, Auto Train, CONO, Texas Eagle, 9 routes -- I could add the missing Broadway Limited.) About 5 of these already contribute to Amtrak's bottom line (make money before overhead is allocated). The Cardinal would if it were daily.

All of them need to be faster (the Texas Eagle particularly), but then so do the corridors which they overlay. And, important point, they appear to require *less subsidy* than day trains on the same routes.

The other 5 routes are the "problem routes". Most of them also run on routes which would be good corridor routes, but spend substantially more of their time in the no-mans-land in between (Sunset Limited, California Zephyr, Empire Builder, Coast Starlight, 4 routes). The Southwest Chief has the least "corridor" running (basically nothing west of Kansas City).

Anyone who talks about "LDs" without distinguishing between the eastern and western trains is not paying attention.


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## Anderson (Dec 27, 2014)

Honestly, the way I see it you can pack a number of trains full with a few bad geographic exceptions. Reno-Salt Lake City is one such gap (WP had dumped this line while UP was down to tri-weekly here by A-Day). The SWC and Sunset have similar problems.

The Empire Builder and Coast Starlight have a more complicated situation on the ground...both have, historically, had massive ridership (into the early 90s, combined ridership was over a million per year once the routes were both daily Superliner trains) but a crash-off in connectivity (loss of the Desert Wind and Pioneer) plus several infamous bouts of OTP problems and mudslides did a number on that...it took the Builder until the late 2000s to rise to where it was in the early 1990s, while the Starlight got hit by something in the early 1990s and never bounced back.*

Honestly, as I see it you've basically got a massive system that can mostly take care of itself...but cutting out a couple of random money-losing segments (SLC-RNO, for example) would make a hash of the rest of the system. So you keep a few "losers" in place for a bunch of reasons (connectivity being a big one...IIRC, something like 2/3 of passengers from the LDs into Chicago connect to another train), but anchor them with higher-frequency corridors (VAC-SEA-PDX and California for the Starlight, MSP-CHI and, to a lesser extent, SPK-SEA for the Builder).

With this in mind, it is worth noting that on the basis of demand the Zephyr could run a heck of a lot bigger CHI-DEN, DEN-GSC/GJC, and RNO-EMY. You get a lot of deboards at GSC and GJC out of Denver, Denver-Chicago is a massive market by Amtrak LD standards (hovering at close to 1% of the LD system[!]), and so on. Amtrak has looked into tinkering with equipment utilization as a result (witness some booking antics one can pull in the face of a "sold out" train on these segments).

Of course, once you get out of no-man's-land the picture changes drastically, and most of the rest of the network has room to scale up substantially within reason.

It is worth noting that you don't compete directly with air service for the most part (exceptions do exist)...but in some cases, like New York City, competing with airplane-plus-hotel is entirely doable alongside the competition with driving. Let's face it, a hotel in Manhattan will easily run you $200/night after taxes (I felt like I got a good deal when I was able to combine a friend's government discount with a last-minute rate drop and only shell out $150). Montreal can be a bit better or a bit worse, depending on exchange rates.

Still, the point stands that the situation in the East, generally speaking, is different from the situation in the West. CA/WA/OR falls somewhere in the middle, as does a good part of the western Midwest and some parts of the South.


*Worth looking into is a shakeup on the Starlight in the early 80s in conjunction with the Spirit of California (and comparing notes with overall ridership trends on Amtrak in this time...IIRC Amtrak took a bit of a lump overall then).
Builder/Starlight rideship data: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/F67D73E5-2F2D-40F2-9795-736131D98106/0/StateRailPlanFinal201403.pdf


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## Paulus (Dec 27, 2014)

Wasn't the 1990s issue for the Starlight the introduction/expansion of cheap California<->PNW air travel?


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## twa904 (Dec 27, 2014)

If Amtrak is like the airline industry, you have a lot of cost in starting and stopping the train every 25, 50 or 100 miles. If the train could run 400 miles nonstop it will cost less on a cost per seat mile basis than to operate it on 50 mile segments.

I remember back when Ron Allen was CEO of Delta he said there was no way Delta could make money flying a DC-9 between Atlanta and Augusta, GA even if he could tie people to the wings.

In another article I saw, shortly after Piedmont Airline started flying from Charlotte to London, it

cost them less on a per seat mile basis to fly the plane to London than it did to fly a B737 from

Charlotte to Birmingham.


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## jis (Dec 27, 2014)

Amtrak is not like airlines, and should not strive to be like airlines. It should take advantage of its unique capability to effectively serve many communities on the way without adding unreasonable cost to operations.


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## jis (Dec 27, 2014)

neroden said:


> Well, thankfully the Illinois hub projects and the Northeastern regional projects are pretty much running to the same standards, with the unfortunate exceptions of boarding height & overhead clearance, where there's an "eastern" standard and a "western" standard. Even there, Chicago is seriously proposing to restore a high platform at Union Station, supposely for "HSR" trains, which would completely match Northeastern standards, and would probably serve the LSL on day one.
> 
> CAHSR is going to run directly into LA Union Station, where nearly everyone has to change trains already anyway, and LAUS is actually being improved with run-through tracks for those who aren't changing trains.
> 
> The Texas Central project is unlikely to happen. Lone Star Rail would be on the same route as the Texas Eagle. Amtrak is still supposed to move over to the TRE route between Dallas and Fort Worth.


My bet is, if Texas Central happens it will be high level platform.



> Florida... eh, Florida's gonna sink under the waves and the problem will be figuring out where to resettle the refugees. I'm not going to worry about a standards mismatch in Florida.


Meanwhile before it sinks 80 or 100 years from now  HSR in Florida will be high level as well as of course LD service on the Atlantic Corridor. All commuter rail will likely be low platform. Any restoration of service through the panhandle will most likely be low platform.

In a well capitalized system this is typically not a problem. Denver and indeed all other cities with a ,mix of rail transit modes potentially have some semblance of mixed platform heights between light and heavy rail, specially with the advent of tram-trains where light rail vehicles operate intermingled with heavy rail vehicles on the same infrastructure. They just use different platforms.



> In general, we have the advantage over Europe that we are *not* a bunch of separate squabbling countries who refuse to cooperate.


Do we really? If you lived in New York City you would not know, given the endless disagreements, squabbling and non cooperation among The Port Authority, MTA, NJ Transit, and between LIRR and MNRR within MTA. It is probably the largest city in the world currently without a single integrated coordinated fare system for its transit.


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## neutralist (Dec 27, 2014)

twa904 said:


> In another article I saw, shortly after Piedmont Airline started flying from Charlotte to London, it
> 
> cost them less on a per seat mile basis to fly the plane to London than it did to fly a B737 from
> 
> Charlotte to Birmingham.


well because Birmingham is 125 miles northwest of London so it is actually further away from Charlotte.
killing off LD trains could be construed as a form of discrimination. there are people who can't fly because of health reasons, or end up in illegitimate no-fly list because of their ethnicity.


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## neroden (Dec 27, 2014)

I was gonna write a lot, but instead, uh, "What Anderson Said". 



> in some cases, like New York City, competing with airplane-plus-hotel is entirely doable alongside the competition with driving. Let's face it, a hotel in Manhattan will easily run you $200/night after taxes (I felt like I got a good deal when I was able to combine a friend's government discount with a last-minute rate drop and only shell out $150).


Yeah. Amtrak has unfortunately not managed to arrange its New York City connections to avoid overnight stays (a particular irritation for those of us from upstate NY). It would be well worth tweaking the schedule to reliably allow same-day connections from the upstate NY, Toronto, Montreal, and Vermont trains, to, well, everything whatsoever heading south. Right now there's a lot of misconnects. This would be made a lot easier by upgrades on the Empire Corridor.

The future of long-distance trains lies in upgrades on the same tracks for "corridor service". This should be possible on most of every existing route except the 5 westernmost routes, and also should be possible on several Eastern routes which used to exist and don't any more (Broadway Limited, Silver Palm, eastern Sunset Limited); it is merely a question of electing state governments supportive of passenger train service.

As for the 5 "problem routes", the Empire Builder and Coast Starlight consistently outperform the other 3, and will continue to do OK even with the "empty gaps". For the Empire Builder, there's no parallel superhighway and plane flights are very expensive. For the Coast Starlight, I'm not sure why it remains so popular -- Redding to Eugene is simply *way too slow* (9.5 hours vs. 5 hours driving). There may be some cultural effect, there being more of a "train habit" in California, Washington and Oregon.

The California Zephyr has massive potential from Chicago to Denver (build that Iowa corridor route now!), and from Denver to the ski areas (revive Ski Train now!), and from Reno to the Bay (extend the Capitol Corridor now!); with the revival of train service in Salt Lake City, there may be potential for improved Salt Lake-Denver ridership, but not on the mountain route (which takes too long), only on the Wyoming route. For some reason nobody goes from Salt Lake to the mountains to ski by train, only from Denver. Salt Lake - Reno is always going to be a hole in ridership which will cost a lot to run.

The Southwest Chief, sadly, looks like it's going to stay on the unpopulated Raton Pass route rather than scooping up the population center of Amarillo and people driving in from Lubbock. Y'all know what I think should be done.

The Sunset Limited is a curious case. There is a giant empty section in west Texas. But west of there, the cities along the route have exploded in population since the 1960s. Daily service would probably be well patronized. The route is relatively speed-competitive with driving from LA to El Paso, given appropriate scheduling (which it has). I really suspect that daily service would make this route look a lot better, despite the expensive-to-run vacant section from El Paso to San Antonio. Even better would be to avoid the Mexican border and reroute via Odessa & Abilene directly to Ft. Worth, but just try to get UP to agree to that (sigh).


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## Paulus (Dec 27, 2014)

> As for the 5 "problem routes", the Empire Builder and Coast Starlight consistently outperform the other 3, and will continue to do OK even with the "empty gaps". For the Empire Builder, there's no parallel superhighway and plane flights are very expensive. For the Coast Starlight, I'm not sure why it remains so popular -- Redding to Eugene is simply *way too slow* (9.5 hours vs. 5 hours driving). There may be some cultural effect, there being more of a "train habit" in California, Washington and Oregon.


Starlight runs over three different rail corridors (Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, and Cascades) which will make it look better (since it can function as an extra frequency and/or final train) and probably has a plurality of travel within California (56.5% of its boardings/alightings are within CA). There's also a fourth pseudo corridor given the Thruway bus frequencies between Sacramento and Redding.


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## twa904 (Dec 27, 2014)

neutralist said:


> twa904 said:
> 
> 
> > In another article I saw, shortly after Piedmont Airline started flying from Charlotte to London, it
> ...


I had meant Birmingham Alabama not England


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## Anderson (Dec 28, 2014)

I'm going to take the idea of 10x daily trains that was cited from the FRA in a now-hidden post, give or take, and run with it for a moment. This works on a number of medium-distance city pairs (say, WAS-NYP on the NEC, MIA-ORL on FEC, or LAX-SAN in California). In a lot of cases you can stitch corridors like that together pretty nicely (so in the case of the NEC, you get BOS-NYP, NYP-WAS, and WAS-RVR strung together).

Here's the thing: When you get over six hours, some of those frequencies start having to do very odd things. Let's take Hampton Roads as a handy example: Norfolk is presently about five hours from Washington, DC (it's a bit less, but for the moment that's close enough to illustrate). In order to get a train into Washington by 0900, you basically have to leave Norfolk at 0400 (which, backing things up, means waking up at or before 0300). Norfolk is one market where this sort of thing may sell, but that's because you have a military-heavy travel constituency in the mix. The market is still good for a host of reasons, but the travel options here start bordering on the obscene to make those arrivals work. On the other end of things, the 1900 departure from WAS arrives a bit shy of midnight. IMHO midnight is passable whereas 0400 gets to be a problem.

Swinging around to the western part of Virginia, you start getting similarly bad times if you try to consolidate your crew/equipment base out to Roanoke (which is a reasonable candidate for substantial daily service in the long run...the market just isn't big enough for any of the airlines to really bother with and it is part of a string of workable markets in Lynchburg, Charlottesville, and so on)...a commuter-timed train into Washington would have to have a pretty bad time, and it is worth noting that train scheduling issues mean that you would probably end up with someone's train getting pushed aside by at least half an hour...leading to some truly nasty possibilities like departures from Roanoke in the middle of the night. And all of this sets aside service aimed further up the NEC...where a string of markets (NYP, PHL, BAL, etc.) are quite significant (if not on the scale of WAS) for Virginia.

Now it is true that in some of these cases the train is making what I will call a "revenue equipment move" (i.e. the move is being made more for operational reasons than revenue reasons and the extreme ends of the trip are being run fairly empty to allow consolidated crew bases), but at some point sleeper ops become feasible on routes like this for the "oddball" departures (i.e. allowing occupancy of a sleeper at 2300 for a train leaving at 0200). I feel compelled to point out that you don't need a mass of riders to sell out a sleeping car...a pair of Viewliner II cars operating in tandem with no turnover would sell out at 20,440 riders/year assuming all spaces take double occupancy and 16,425/year assuming double occupancy of the bedrooms and 1.5x occupancy of roomettes. This is, frankly, not a huge number and that may be one problem (a pair of similarly-constrained LD Amfleets adds 43,070 riders/year while a pair of NEC Coach Amfleets adds 52,560; if I'm fretting about my topline figures, 52.5k sounds a lot better than 16.4k).

There are other examples scattered through the system (KCY-STL-CHI is a good case in point...the first train out of STL extends back to KCY with a decent evening departure while the last one out of CHI would hit KCY in the morning), almost all involving through operations between 2+ corridors. Honestly, a major shuffle in Chicago akin to what I've mentioned for New York might make sense (DET-CHI hovers at 5:30, STL-CHI at about the same, CLE-CHI at about 7:00, and so on). Additionally, a morning "wave" of these trains coming in around 0600-0700 (i.e. before the commuter trains swamp the station) would allow transfers to other reasonably local markets without killing a FULL day in transit.

I'm going to run a reboot while I have good Wifi, and then I'm going to try and stick together a hypothetical system for the NEC to illustrate what sort of thing should be able to work.


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## neroden (Dec 28, 2014)

Paulus said:


> > As for the 5 "problem routes", the Empire Builder and Coast Starlight consistently outperform the other 3, and will continue to do OK even with the "empty gaps". For the Empire Builder, there's no parallel superhighway and plane flights are very expensive. For the Coast Starlight, I'm not sure why it remains so popular -- Redding to Eugene is simply *way too slow* (9.5 hours vs. 5 hours driving). There may be some cultural effect, there being more of a "train habit" in California, Washington and Oregon.
> 
> 
> Starlight runs over three different rail corridors (Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, and Cascades) which will make it look better (since it can function as an extra frequency and/or final train) and probably has a plurality of travel within California (56.5% of its boardings/alightings are within CA). There's also a fourth pseudo corridor given the Thruway bus frequencies between Sacramento and Redding.


Ah... so Redding to Eugene *is* bad, but the other parts have stronger ridership.

----

In response to twa904's comment, it's very expensive for planes to take off and land. It's really quite cheap for trains to stop and start, by comparison.

----



Anderson said:


> I feel compelled to point out that you don't need a mass of riders to sell out a sleeping car...a pair of Viewliner II cars operating in tandem with no turnover would sell out at 20,440 riders/year assuming all spaces take double occupancy and 16,425/year assuming double occupancy of the bedrooms and 1.5x occupancy of roomettes. This is, frankly, not a huge number and that may be one problem (a pair of similarly-constrained LD Amfleets adds 43,070 riders/year while a pair of NEC Coach Amfleets adds 52,560; if I'm fretting about my topline figures, 52.5k sounds a lot better than 16.4k).


On the other hand, if you're looking at topline *financials*, the overnight coaches really don't sell terribly well. Over an entire run, it seems that revenue per coach is more or less equivalent to revenue per sleeping car (varying by service), but this disguises the fairly obvious fact that the sleeping cars sell better at night and the coaches sell better during the day.


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## Anderson (Dec 28, 2014)

True, though in the case of private rooms I think some of this is down to bad marketing. If Amtrak were inclined to advertise things differently they could probably increase daytime sales of roomettes on various segments. For example, rephrase "sleeper roomette" on a daytime train into a "private room with a fold-out desk and complementary meals and a power outlet" and it sounds like a better proposition for daytime sales. Of course, if Amtrak could make wifi happen on some of those segments...*sighs*


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## jis (Dec 28, 2014)

They could also help by pricing pure daytime sales a little more attractively, and perhaps sell them only if they are not needed for longer journeys or to fill in after they have already been used for overnight.


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## Paulus (Dec 28, 2014)

Anderson said:


> I'm going to take the idea of 10x daily trains that was cited from the FRA in a now-hidden post, give or take, and run with it for a moment. This works on a number of medium-distance city pairs (say, WAS-NYP on the NEC, MIA-ORL on FEC, or LAX-SAN in California). In a lot of cases you can stitch corridors like that together pretty nicely (so in the case of the NEC, you get BOS-NYP, NYP-WAS, and WAS-RVR strung together).
> 
> Here's the thing: When you get over six hours, some of those frequencies start having to do very odd things. Let's take Hampton Roads as a handy example: Norfolk is presently about five hours from Washington, DC (it's a bit less, but for the moment that's close enough to illustrate). In order to get a train into Washington by 0900, you basically have to leave Norfolk at 0400 (which, backing things up, means waking up at or before 0300). Norfolk is one market where this sort of thing may sell, but that's because you have a military-heavy travel constituency in the mix. The market is still good for a host of reasons, but the travel options here start bordering on the obscene to make those arrivals work. On the other end of things, the 1900 departure from WAS arrives a bit shy of midnight. IMHO midnight is passable whereas 0400 gets to be a problem.


Keep in mind that 2.5-3 hours is basically the sweet spot that you want to aim for with intercity rail travel; if you're aiming for a 0900 arrival in DC, that needs to be because there's a Richmond-DC travel market for it and you're expecting a sufficient travel demand to be at Richmond before 0630. Honestly, for leisure or business travel, a departure from Norfolk between 0800-0900 is probably better off.



> Swinging around to the western part of Virginia, you start getting similarly bad times if you try to consolidate your crew/equipment base out to Roanoke (which is a reasonable candidate for substantial daily service in the long run...the market just isn't big enough for any of the airlines to really bother with and it is part of a string of workable markets in Lynchburg, Charlottesville, and so on)...a commuter-timed train into Washington would have to have a pretty bad time, and it is worth noting that train scheduling issues mean that you would probably end up with someone's train getting pushed aside by at least half an hour...leading to some truly nasty possibilities like departures from Roanoke in the middle of the night. And all of this sets aside service aimed further up the NEC...where a string of markets (NYP, PHL, BAL, etc.) are quite significant (if not on the scale of WAS) for Virginia.


Commuter trains require commuter distances; half an hour to an hour max. There's just not going to be much in the way of patronage otherwise.



> Now it is true that in some of these cases the train is making what I will call a "revenue equipment move" (i.e. the move is being made more for operational reasons than revenue reasons and the extreme ends of the trip are being run fairly empty to allow consolidated crew bases), but at some point sleeper ops become feasible on routes like this for the "oddball" departures (i.e. allowing occupancy of a sleeper at 2300 for a train leaving at 0200). I feel compelled to point out that you don't need a mass of riders to sell out a sleeping car...a pair of Viewliner II cars operating in tandem with no turnover would sell out at 20,440 riders/year assuming all spaces take double occupancy and 16,425/year assuming double occupancy of the bedrooms and 1.5x occupancy of roomettes. This is, frankly, not a huge number and that may be one problem (a pair of similarly-constrained LD Amfleets adds 43,070 riders/year while a pair of NEC Coach Amfleets adds 52,560; if I'm fretting about my topline figures, 52.5k sounds a lot better than 16.4k).


Your assumptions aren't quite right. Going back to the spreadsheet in the Viewliner thread, after accounting for crew use, there's only about one sleeper passenger for every two sleeper seats (basically every roomette at single occupancy). Coach ranges from 0.8-1.1 passengers per seat (ignoring the Cardinal).



neroden said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > I feel compelled to point out that you don't need a mass of riders to sell out a sleeping car...a pair of Viewliner II cars operating in tandem with no turnover would sell out at 20,440 riders/year assuming all spaces take double occupancy and 16,425/year assuming double occupancy of the bedrooms and 1.5x occupancy of roomettes. This is, frankly, not a huge number and that may be one problem (a pair of similarly-constrained LD Amfleets adds 43,070 riders/year while a pair of NEC Coach Amfleets adds 52,560; if I'm fretting about my topline figures, 52.5k sounds a lot better than 16.4k).
> ...


With revenue, keep in mind that the coach prices are ridiculously low on the long distance trains, especially compared to the NEC. Assuming the same coach seat turnover on the NEC as on the LDs (likely underestimating things by a third), and the same 50% occupancy as the Viewliners currently receive (thus selling 14 "seats" per day), you'd need to have fares averaging $307 to match coach revenue. More, of course, if you're adding in diner service and whatnot.


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## neroden (Dec 28, 2014)

Paulus said:


> Commuter trains require commuter distances; half an hour to an hour max. There's just not going to be much in the way of patronage otherwise.


Tell that to the LIRR, Metro-North, and NJT. Yeah, I know, New York City is weird...



> With revenue, keep in mind that the coach prices are ridiculously low on the long distance trains, especially compared to the NEC


Which is partly 'cause it's hard to sell a coach seat at night. How full is #66/67 and how much does it charge? It might be the most appropriate comparison to the long-distance routes where they run at night. Actually, it's interesting that Amtrak doesn't break it out as a separate line item; arguably it should be broken out separately.


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## Paulus (Dec 28, 2014)

neroden said:


> Paulus said:
> 
> 
> > Commuter trains require commuter distances; half an hour to an hour max. There's just not going to be much in the way of patronage otherwise.
> ...


New York's large enough that there can be a significant population base even for outliers, but even then I suspect it's mostly within that 30-60 minute range, even for lines that are longer for maximum distance. By way of analogy, there's not too many people going from Oceanside to Los Angeles on Metrolink, but there's an awful lot going Oceanside to Irvine and Irvine to Los Angeles.



> > With revenue, keep in mind that the coach prices are ridiculously low on the long distance trains, especially compared to the NEC
> 
> 
> Which is partly 'cause it's hard to sell a coach seat at night. How full is #66/67 and how much does it charge? It might be the most appropriate comparison to the long-distance routes where they run at night. Actually, it's interesting that Amtrak doesn't break it out as a separate line item; arguably it should be broken out separately.


Break it out separately and allocation is going to look all funky (though I do wish Amtrak would report boardings/revenue per individual train system-wide). Still, even a low bucket #66/67 is about 17¢ per mile (BOS-WAS). Palmetto (including business class) and Crescent do slightly better in terms of per-mile yields, but it's not astoundingly so.


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## jis (Dec 28, 2014)

My guess is that Amtrak tries to avoid giving too much per train info, as much as it can manage to get away with, because such information is like red meat to a lion for the Congressional micro managers and they are not going to go away any time soon. Heck, I'd be the first one to like to see those numbers, but I can sort of understand their reticence.


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## Anderson (Dec 28, 2014)

Paulus,
I actually have to call BS on the "commuter distance" point. You have a significant number of commuters going from Charlottesville into DC (which is about two hours on Amtrak), though many drive for want of properly-timed rail service, and Fredericksburg into DC (which is 90 minutes on VRE), while Carmel Church (about halfway between Fredericksburg and Richmond) has also been suggested as a commuter town location for Washington. Another example is Martinsburg/Harpers Ferry, which are a slight bit beyond that arbitrary hour mark.

Jis,
They already do that. Witness my stupid roomette tricks. The rub is that those are something that only a handful of people really know about that as far as I can tell. The option simply isn't promoted, period.

As to information, the issue there isn't just Congresscritters gone wild...there was some information posted in Virginia a few years back that triggered the establishment of a competing bus line.


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## Paulus (Dec 28, 2014)

Anderson said:


> Paulus,
> 
> I actually have to call BS on the "commuter distance" point. You have a significant number of commuters going from Charlottesville into DC (which is about two hours on Amtrak), though many drive for want of properly-timed rail service, and Fredericksburg into DC (which is 90 minutes on VRE), while Carmel Church (about halfway between Fredericksburg and Richmond) has also been suggested as a commuter town location for Washington. Another example is Martinsburg/Harpers Ferry, which are a slight bit beyond that arbitrary hour mark.


It's not arbitrary, it's acknowledging that the average commute, in pretty much every locale, is half an hour, and that the bast majority of commutes will be within no more than double that. Per OnTheMap, Charlottesville, VA has 71 commuters into DC (about on par with Pittsburgh's 66 or Chicago's 68), Fredericksburg has 324, and Martinsburg is 116. Looking instead at Metro/micropolitan areas, Charlottesville is 328. Now, the Census could very well be off somewhat, but I don't think its wildly so. Is it perhaps worthwhile to extend NERegional 148 or 184 to CVS? Maybe, if a significant portion of those commuters are available to be captured and ride daily or near daily enough, but I wouldn't be surprised if other times emerged as having better ridership and revenue potentials.


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## Bradenmeridian (Dec 28, 2014)

I'm sure someone has made this point, but when making a multi-city trip, business or otherwise, an overnight train can make very good sense because you save on a hotel and even your meals are included, so the costs are comparable. Also for someone who lives in a suburb, to get up before dawn to get to an airport to try and make it to an early business meeting, it's a viable option to get to the train the evening before provided the train arrives early and is DEPENDABLE enough. About four years ago I had to go NYP to CLE in a snowstorm for work. This makes the Lake Shore the ideal train because any hours lost gets you into Cleveland at a human hour, instead of, what, 3:30, and then the kitchen has opened and you get breakfast before you arrive. That night, the entire east was closed down due to the storm: roads, airports. Another sleeper passenger was headed home to Chi from meetings, and said he'd never taken the train and realized it was the only choice that had a chance. That train arrived in a timely manor, only an hour delay at Rennsalaer (sp).


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## Lawdude (Dec 28, 2014)

neroden said:


> Lawdude said:
> 
> 
> > Now, there are some routes where you could conceive of a point-to-point sleeper service that leaves at 9 pm and gets in at 7 the next morning or something, and such a thing is theoretically convenient compared to all the headaches of air travel. But then you run into the problem that the tracks are shared with freight and commuter railroads, and there's no guarantee they will be cooperative in allowing Amtrak to run such a schedule.
> ...


That's not quite right. Train service competes directly with planes on corridor routes. Sometimes quite well (such as in the case of the Northeast Corridor), sometimes less well (LA-San Francisco).

It's possible to conceive of a sleeper train that could compete with plane service as well. I alluded to that-- if you leave one city center at 9 pm and get in at 7 the next morning in another city center, that's a service that people might very well choose to take instead of flying. But that train would be on a commuter railroad's inbound tracks, in many instances, during morning rush hour, and would also need the usual freight railroad cooperation as well.

But it's problematic to talk either about the relative comfort of train travel or competition with driving. With respect to comfort, there's very little evidence that the average traveler cares about it. Rail enthusiasts care about it a lot, of course. But ordinary people seem to repeatedly reject even paying minimal costs to avoid the worst aspects of air travel. They want to get to their destinations fast, and only a tiny percentage of the traveling public wants to give that up to be more comfortable. Heck, they don't even want to pay $100 more to the airline to be more comfortable.

As for competition with driving, in my experience, people tend to drive long distances for two big reasons: (1) it's cheap, and (2) they have their car at their destination. I don't see any scenario where Amtrak can compete with that. With respect to cost, Amtrak's fares are already subsidized by the government. Whatever the future of those subsidies, I don't think anyone sees a scenario in the near future where they get bigger. And they'd need to get much bigger to compete with driving. In a car that gets 30 mpg on the highway, it takes about 16 gallons of gas to drive roundtrip between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. With one passenger in the car and $3 a gallon gas, that's about $24 per passenger. Whatever you could possibly hypothesize a LA-Las Vegas train charging, it's not going to be anything comparable to that.

And with respect to having the car at the destination, outside of the very specific and specialized example that is the Auto Train, I doubt that's very doable (and it's going to be expensive even if it is).

So outside of corridor services, which do compete with airlines, and the possibility of 1 night sleeper services on routes that fall in the sweet spot in terms of distance, which would also compete with airlines, what IS Amtrak competing with? What sorts of customers are its long distance trains trying to attract?

Well, one big possibility is people who ride the Greyhound Bus. These people are price-sensitive, may want to travel between points where there is no nearby airport (or only a small operation with high fares), have a fair amount of time, and may not own a car. That's a viable market, though it's not a particularly large one. It's also one that I would argue it is in the public interest to serve. If there's train tracks between two places and the freight railroad allows the traffic, why not run a long distance train that functions as a sort of cheaper version of Essential Air Service for small communities like Deming,New Mexico and Chemult, Oregon?

Another possibility is people who want a land cruise. There's no particular public interest in serving these people (so there's no reason to subsidize them), but if they paid the full cost of the dining cars, sleeping cars, and lounge cars they enjoy, there's nothing wrong with serving that market. The thing is, I suspect that group contains a fair number of price sensitive folks (such as older Americans on fixed incomes) who might get sticker shock if Amtrak charged them the full cost of pulling sleepers and diners across the West.

And then there are a handful of people who are afraid to fly, have lots of time, want to experience a train trip, etc. But that does not a market make.


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## neroden (Dec 28, 2014)

Paulus said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> > Paulus said:
> ...


A lot of people really do have routine 2-hour commutes on the LIRR or Metro-North, and most of them work in Manhattan. I'm not sure how they can stand the long commutes, but I guess the benefits of the Manhattan jobs make it worth the commute, and it is a pretty comfortable ride. Longer than 2 hours seems very unusual, though.

You're quite right that if you're looking for commuter (daily trip to work) traffic, you don't want to look at long trips.



> even for lines that are longer for maximum distance. By way of analogy, there's not too many people going from Oceanside to Los Angeles on Metrolink, but there's an awful lot going Oceanside to Irvine and Irvine to Los Angeles.


Yeah, the pattern is different around NYC. It's extraordinarily centralized; the densest places after Manhattan are the part of Brooklyn next to Manhattan and the part of the New Jersey shoreline next to Manhattan. Commuting which doesn't enter that core is still quite weak. California's much more spread out. The rest of the country is probably more like California, though.



> > Which is partly 'cause it's hard to sell a coach seat at night. How full is #66/67 and how much does it charge? It might be the most appropriate comparison to the long-distance routes where they run at night. Actually, it's interesting that Amtrak doesn't break it out as a separate line item; arguably it should be broken out separately.
> 
> 
> Break it out separately and allocation is going to look all funky (though I do wish Amtrak would report boardings/revenue per individual train system-wide). Still, even a low bucket #66/67 is about 17¢ per mile (BOS-WAS). Palmetto (including business class) and Crescent do slightly better in terms of per-mile yields, but it's not astoundingly so.


Boy do I hate allocation.
Anyway, I think Amtrak has made a conscious decision to raise prices on the NEC due to inability to run more trains or longer trains. Coach demand on most other routes (with the current relatively low frequencies) is still low enough that they aren't running into equipment shortages except on peak days; the Empire Corridor trains are typically six coaches + cafe/business class, and at the moment they're still usually running half-full.

I'm pretty sure most of the state corridors have even lower ticket prices than the 'long-distance' trains, but you may have the numbers to check that. There's definitely some policy choices by Amtrak which do not necessarily reflect demand levels. I know that LSL coach and Empire Service coach prices are synchronized as far west as Buffalo; which is interesting because the LSL is routinely a lot more crowded than the other Empire Service trains.


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## Anderson (Dec 28, 2014)

Well, the LSL has two things going on. One is that it presumably has a bit less coach space than the Empire trains (if nothing else, 59 seats vs. 72 seats assuming six coaches each), and a 2-1 BC with 18 seats isn't going to make up the difference. The other is that it has through traffic to deal with, while the two Empire trains terminate around Buffalo/Niagara and the Maple Leaf heads off to Toronto.

It's worth noting that there's a bottleneck around ALB-SDY on the Empire Corridor right now...for example, if the Adirondack sells out, it is very often for a short stretch right there (since south of ALB there are a bunch more trains while north/west of there I think you tend to get net passenger discharges heading outbound). I can't actually tell what the capacity numbers are on those routes, but based on six coaches and a half BC car, I'd be inclined to peg the capacity at about 2/3 of something like the Lynchburger west of ALB, with turnover at ALB being an open question.


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## neroden (Dec 28, 2014)

Lawdude said:


> ]And then there are a handful of people who are afraid to fly,


This is actually a minimum of 6.5% of the US population last I checked and is a very large market. Estimates of people who are *uncomfortable* with flying, and so will preferentially choose driving if they can get away with it are up to 20%.
Add in the people who should not fly for medical reasons (which seems to be another 5% of the population, roughly), and you have an extremely large market.

It's a MUCH larger market than you think it is.

Most of them -- even the ones going to New York City -- are currently driving. Many will pay slightly more than the driving cost to have a more comfortable trip on a train.



> With respect to cost, Amtrak's fares are already subsidized by the government.


Common misconception. Actually, on the majority of routes, Amtrak's fares cover the variable costs of operation, same as your private car, or Greyhound, or the airlines. The fixed costs are subsidized, just as the airlines get subsidized airports, while cars and buses get subsidized roads.
Where the roads are less subsidized, Amtrak is more popular. This is true in North Dakota along the route without an Interstate, and it's true in the New York-Chicago nexus where the expressways are toll roads and parking is pricey.



> Whatever the future of those subsidies, I don't think anyone sees a scenario in the near future where they get bigger. And they'd need to get much bigger to compete with driving.


No, they wouldn't need to -- not where it matters.
Between New York and Chicago, Amtrak in coach is already routinely cheaper than driving, and Amtrak could raise prices and still be cheaper than driving. Three points:

(1) Very high parking costs in NY. Also in Chicago. (And Philadelphia. Etc.)

(2) Tolls.

(3) People *from* New York City -- including those in fairly high social classes -- often don't have cars at all and would have to rent them.

I found an estimate of the direct cost of driving from NYC to Chicago a few years ago: gas & tolls. Estimate was $167. Coach on the LSL is cheaper than that. If you don't want to drive 12+ hours straight, add in a $50 hotel room (if you can stand to sleep in Pittsburgh) to get $217.

Sleeper on the LSL from NY to Chicago is currently significantly more expensive than this, but people have proven that they're willing to pay for it. I think this is because if your alternative involves staying overnight in a hotel room, *it's actually faster* than driving.

----

I mentioned that in NYC a lot of people will tolerate longer commutes than you would expect -- the "commuter belt" is larger than it would be in other cities.

Similarly, certain types of cities "punch above their weight" in terms of how much intercity passenger train usage they will generate. In these cities, the "corridor belt", the time range where people will seriously consider taking a train rather than driving or flying, extends out more hours, and starts to extend to overnight trips, and indeed overnight + a day trips. (Theoretically it could extend even farther, but there are no examples in the US.)

These "punch above their weight" cities are cities with:

- large percentages of people with no cars

- lots of colleges (college students are less likely to have cars with them)

- expensive parking

- substantial road tolls

- few expressways

- substantial road congestion

These are the "versus driving" factors. The reason why there are no good routes which are double-overnight is that by the time you've gone that far away from New York, you're west of Chicago and there are no tolls, no road congestion, free parking, etc.

These "punch above their weight" cities are also cities with:

- airports way outside of town (New York, Chicago O'Hare, DC Dulles, Denver, San Francisco), train station in town

- really congested airports (New York)

- really slow airports (Denver, which can take a full hour to walk from the ticket counter to the gate)

These are the "versus flying" factors.

And these "punch above their weight" cities are cities with:

- substantial urban/local rail systems

This is the final factor and I'd call it the "train habit", but it also might reflect how easy it is to get around without a car when you arrive.

The extreme case for pretty much all of these factors is New York City, and I think it's completely unsurprising that sleeping car services out of New York City, as a whole, do better financially than sleeping car services not out of New York City.

For some reason, whenever anyone talks about sleepers or "long-distance" trains, everyone immediately thinks of those 5 "problem trains" in the West. The train which touches neither New York nor Chicago nor DC -- the Sunset Limited -- seems to have the lowest price per mile for sleeping cars.

When people talk about sleepers or "long-distance" trains, I want people to think New York City routes. I believe there is a real growth market for sleeper service, but I believe it's in the east, on routes out of New York City, and to a lesser extent out of Chicago/Boston/Philadelphia/DC.


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## neroden (Dec 28, 2014)

Anderson said:


> It's worth noting that there's a bottleneck around ALB-SDY on the Empire Corridor right now...


The overbooking on the LSL on my last trip was actually SDY-UCA. (Believe it or not there were a fair number of people transferring from the southbound Adirondack and Ethan Allen to the westbound LSL.)
The Adirondack and Ethan Allen relieve the SDY-ALB traffic flow a bit, and the addition of the Boston section helps as well, but west of Schenectady there's just the four trains per day, 1 to Erie/Cleveland/Chicago, 1 to Toronto, and 2 to Niagara Falls.

I think the main effect going on is, simply, that the LSL is the only train running to Erie and points west, so it gets all of that traffic. But it's also in a prime timeslot for the NY-Buffalo traffic.

The point I was actually making, however, is that with the pattern of demand, Amtrak could probably jack up the bucket prices on the LSL from Buffalo-NY above the prices on the other Empire Service trains. But Amtrak has not done so.


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## Anderson (Dec 28, 2014)

neroden said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > It's worth noting that there's a bottleneck around ALB-SDY on the Empire Corridor right now...
> ...


I don't think they can. They've done it on the Acela on the NEC, but beyond that from what I can tell, coach is coach is coach. There may be exceptions where coach gets locked to a high bucket on the LD train (I've seen this RVR-WAS, for example), and it might be possible for a state to jam a lower bucket in per PRIIA 209...but if Amtrak were to try and bump the buckets up by 20% ALB-BUF and then get NY to offset with an even deeper "sale" price per PRIIA 209, I suspect there would be hell to pay.

Of course, in VA the answer is that the trains are already running on NEC pricing (it is, for example, often cheaper to buy a ticket NYP-MIA than NYP-RVR) while south of Richmond the non-LD frequencies are thin to say the least.

Back up in NY...there may well be a case for extending at least one more train out of ALB and to the west at least partway, but the economics of doing so are complicated...

Segment TR Tick. Cost
NYP-ALB 51.7 47.5 56.3
ALB-TWO 29.5 24.7 29.0
ALB-MTR 12.6 7.5 12.4
ALB-RUD 5.1 2.9 5.5
Total 98.9 82.6 103.2
I threw the Ethan Allen, Adirondack, and the two Empire lines (NYP-ALB and ALB-TWO) up...it seems that tickets cover 85% of ALB-TWO, 84% of NYP-ALB, 60% of ALB-MTR, and 53% of ALB-RUD...but there is, of course, the question of cost and revenue allocation on all of those routes (I speculated that the "other" revenue, rolled into TR above, probably includes all of the cafe stuff being allocated _away_ from NYP-ALB and onto the other three lines).


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## Guest (Dec 28, 2014)

To amend my previous post, the following "corridors" can exist for AMTRAK's current intercity Limiteds, scheduled to depart after hours at around 6pm and to arrive before business or work at around 6am at these points, while still being available for longer-distance through travelers on the same trains. These schedules are also based on host railroads' Through freight and, or, commuter Local train speeds. On these schedules, an AMTRAK Limited would only take one train "slot" (time) on the host railroad. The resulting on-time performance of running in harmony with the host railroads' other services, and, the usability and resulting reliability of daily revenue from loyal passengers willing to pay for such desirable service (instead of being forced, by taxation, to pay for largely undesirable and unusable service as is) by straightforward, uniform, flat-rate, un-gouging fares of $7 per coach seat, $14 per sleeping car berth, $28 per roomette, or $56 per bedroom, between adjacent stations traveled, can, by AMTRAK's own estimates of their current ridership and the costs incurred by AMTRAK for running the service as is (provided no management positions be gratuitously created for unnecessary hiring to fill those positions and soak up AMTRAK's profit by those hires), allow AMTRAK to pay the fair cost of using the host railroads' tracks for AMTRAK's trains:

Boston and Richmond (proposed one-way fares of $112 coach/$224 berth/$448 roomette/$896 bedroom), and Buffalo ($77/$154/$308/$616)

New York and Charlottesville ($70/$140/$280/$560), Pittsburgh ($112/$224/$448/$896), and Montreal ($133/$266/$532/$$1,064)

Jacksonville and Florence ($42/$84/$168/$336), Columbia ($28/$56/$/$112), and Miami ($105/$210/$420/$840 by train 97 or 98; $119/$238/$476/$952 by train 91 or 92)

Greenville and Birmingham ($105/$210/$420/$840)

Chicago and Buffalo ($70/$140/$280/$560), Pittsburgh ($63/$126/$252/$504), Memphis ($91/$182/$364/$728), St. Louis ($63/$126/$252/$504), Kansas City ($49/$98/$196/$392), Omaha ($63/$126/$252/$504), St. Paul/Minneapolis ($70/$140/$280/$560), Port Huron ($70/$140/$280/$560), and Pontiac ($98/$196/$392/$784)

Minot and Shelby (which could be a great booster of the economies between those points) ($49/$98/$196/$392)

Denver and Salt Lake City ($56/$112/$224/$448)

La Junta and Albuquerque ($35/$70/$140/$280)

Little Rock and Ft. Worth ($63/$126/$252/$504)

Spokane and Seattle ($42/$84/$168/$336), and Portland ($35/$70/$140)

Seattle and Eugene ($63/$126/$252/$504)

Reno and San Francisco Bay ($56/$112/$224/$448)

Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay ($77/$154/$308/$616), and Flagstaff ($63/$126/$252/$504)


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## Paulus (Dec 29, 2014)

So you want me to pay more than I would for airfare for a coach seat (or I could pay more than even the average airfare for a tiny room with an uncomfortably small bed) so that I can leave at an incredibly inconvenient hour and arrive at an ungodly one? You know, I don't think your scheme's going to be quite as popular as you might think.


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## Anderson (Dec 29, 2014)

Ok, one second here...

Guest_Guest, are you a regular poster here? I'm just asking because I know I've been stuck posting while logged out as well...but I'm trying to sort out who all is debating here.


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## Paulus (Dec 29, 2014)

Anderson said:


> Ok, one second here...
> 
> Guest_Guest, are you a regular poster here? I'm just asking because I know I've been stuck posting while logged out as well...but I'm trying to sort out who all is debating here.


He was posting as the timetableflagman guest earlier.


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## neroden (Dec 29, 2014)

Anderson said:


> neroden said:
> 
> 
> > The point I was actually making, however, is that with the pattern of demand, Amtrak could probably jack up the bucket prices on the LSL from Buffalo-NY above the prices on the other Empire Service trains. But Amtrak has not done so.
> ...


But it's a different train number.... are you saying that ARROW can't handle it?
The LSL is explicitly not funded by NY, so it isn't subject to the PRIIA 209 rules; there should be no *legal* issue.... You couldn't do this with the Maple Leaf, which is NY-funded, not without agreement from NY.

Maybe the accounting for the "long-distance" trains which overlap corridors is even weirder than I thought?



> There may be exceptions where coach gets locked to a high bucket on the LD train (I've seen this RVR-WAS, for example), and it might be possible for a state to jam a lower bucket in per PRIIA 209...but if Amtrak were to try and bump the buckets up by 20% ALB-BUF and then get NY to offset with an even deeper "sale" price per PRIIA 209, I suspect there would be hell to pay.


Why?

The issue going on is that the LSL is overcrowded while the other trains west of Albany aren't. The standard short-term way of fixing this is to raise the prices on the LSL to encourage price-sensitive customers to switch to the other trains. Since the LSL isn't state-sponsored and the other trains are state-sponsored, if customers switch from the LSL to buying tickets on the state-sponsored trains, it reduces the subsidies paid by New York, right?


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## Paulus (Dec 29, 2014)

Starlight has prices both higher and lower than the Surfliner on the same segment. LSL weirdness shouldn't have anything to do with Arrow limitations. It's possible that New York contracted to keep LSL prices low as part of the Empire Service contract, but that doesn't make any sense to me.


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## jis (Dec 29, 2014)

I think the excessive overcrowding of the LSL is caused partly by the fact that it is the last train of the day west of ALB. Perhaps the fix is to add another frequency after the LSL, maybe even a short turn at Rochester for the first run east after Rochester is rebuilt. Then make the first eastbound out of NFL at 5:45am instead of the current ridiculous 3:45am.

Of course there will be CSX to deal with. But I think this is the sort of solution NY State and Amtrak should be striving for.


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## neroden (Dec 29, 2014)

jis said:


> I think the excessive overcrowding of the LSL is caused partly by the fact that it is the last train of the day west of ALB. Perhaps the fix is to add another frequency after the LSL, maybe even a short turn at Rochester for the first run east after Rochester is rebuilt. Then make the first eastbound out of NFL at 5:45am instead of the current ridiculous 3:45am.
> 
> Of course there will be CSX to deal with. But I think this is the sort of solution NY State and Amtrak should be striving for.


Absolutely. This would be excellent. Question how much ransom CSX will ask, of course.


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## Lawdude (Dec 30, 2014)

neroden said:


> Lawdude said:
> 
> 
> > ]And then there are a handful of people who are afraid to fly,
> ...


1. With respect to people who don't like to fly, people who are afraid to do it but do it anyway don't count. The only "afraid to fly" market that counts is the market of people who are so insane about the (minimal) dangers of flying that they will never hold their nose and board an airplane (or at least will never do so domestically), even if it means taking a far less convenient mode of transportation. And THAT market is tiny. Taking a poll and saying x percent are afraid to fly is meaningless-- many of those people fly, whatever they might say. (And that's before we get to where they are located and whether they will pay enough money to make a profit for Amtrak.)

2. You have nothing other than assertion to back up that anyone driving will pay a "slightly" higher cost to take trains. But even if you were right, that's irrelevant, because unless you want Amtrak to operate at a huge loss, the price of a train is not "slightly" higher than driving. It's far higher. Go back to my numbers-- it costs $24 per person for two people to drive roundtrip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. What will a reasonable train fare be? $150 or so per person? $200 per person? That's not slightly higher. There's no way you can make Amtrak fares anywhere near slightly higher than driving. Driving is always going to be far, far cheaper.

3. There's a miasma of data that railfans point to when talking about subsidies, but Amtrak's service is subsidized over all but a couple of routes. And fixed costs are still costs. And it doesn't matter whether other forms of transportation are subsidized, when the issue being discussed is "are Amtrak fares subsidized". They are. I know that there are direct and indirect subsidies to other forms of transportation. It is still dishonest to say that Amtrak fares are not subsidized.

And the big subsidies are for sleeper and diner services, which are priced far, far below costs. Which is why the 2 day Western long distance trains have by far the biggest per passenger subsidies.

Now, as it happens I think it's fine to subsidize lower class travelers up the wazoo, as well as means of transportation that carry huge numbers of people, so I see no problem with subsidizing either coach tickets on the long distance routes or just about anyone on the corridors. But the subsidies right now aren't getting any bigger in the short term, which was my point. So you can't posit things that will cost huge amounts in additional subsidies to do. Anything Amtrak does right now in the form of additional service has to make money, period. That means fares have to be high enough to cover costs.

4. New York to Chicago, eh? At 30 to the gallon, we are talking about approximately 27 gallons of gas. At $3 (it's actually more like $2.50 right now), with 1 driver and 1 passenger, we are talking about $81. Add $50 in tolls and you get $131, and divide it by the two passengers and we are talking $65.50 per person. Add a room halfway if you want (although it's easy enough for many people to make the trip in one driving day) and maybe we are up to $100 per person. And the food's much cheaper than it is on the LSL.

But it's worse than that. Because you are figuring parking charges and such which skews the comparison. One of the CONVENIENCES of driving is having your car at your destination. If you are going to count parking charges, you have to count BOTH parking charges AND rental car charges if you are taking the train.

You aren't competing with driving. People drive because it's cheap and because they want a car. If they don't want a car at their destination and they can afford not to drive, then they might take the train. But they might take the bus or plane too. THOSE are Amtrak's competitors.

5. People are willing to pay for the sleeper on the LSL AT CURRENT FARES. However, that sleeper is seriously underpriced. It includes free meals in the diner, which lose Amtrak all sorts of money. And sleepers cost a ton more in terms of labor (including all those sleeping car attendants), maintenance (amortized over fewer passengers, but also the car is more complicated to maintain), etc. Now, if you stopped giving free food to sleeping car passengers (which Amtrak should have done 30 years ago) and charge what it actually costs to run the sleeper, there's no way it's going to be anything close to competitive with driving. It already isn't right now, even though it's getting a huge subsidy.

At any rate, even if you don't accept that sleepers are underpriced, they are still, even in their current pricing, seriously uncompetitive with driving or intercity bus service. They do stand a slight chance when compared to business travel airfares, but that requires that the sleeper be completely reliable and get in on time, every day, and it also requires a trip that takes a few hours less than the LSL does so a business traveler can leave at night and get in the next morning.

6. It's complete fantasyland to think that just because people ride subways in New York and don't have cars, large numbers would be willing to spend 18 or 24 or 36 or 48 hours on a train as opposed to flying somewhere. I don't know why anyone would believe such a thing, but suffice to say that the New York Central and Pennsylvania RR's overnight passenger services went just as belly-up as the Santa Fe's and Southern Pacific's did when this theory was tested out.

I don't think it's a fantasyland that mass-transit dependent cities are better for Amtrak, but that's basically exclusively due to the corridors. It definitely makes Acela a lot more valuable, for instance, that it goes right into the city center in Boston, New York, and Washington and connects directly to subways and buses and taxis. However, if you are in the tiny minority that wants to spend 2 days on a train, it really doesn't matter that much that once you get off that train (several hours late), you can make a quick connection to the CTA at Chicago Union STation.

7. In terms of sleeper service in New York city, sure, if you can get a train to leave at 9 pm at night and get into another city at 7 the next morning, you could do sleeper service. Amtrak used to run slumbercoaches from Washington to Boston, and that sort of thing makes perfect sense. You have a reliable train, and a time window that makes it a viable service for business travelers. And then it connects to mass transit in the center of town.

But there just aren't very many routes where you can make that work. First, you need the service to be reliable. Second, you need the commuter and freight railroads to cooperate. And third, you really need the right time window. There's no way business travelers are going to spend 20 hours on a train from New York to Chicago, for instance, or 31 hours on a train from New York to Florida.


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## Lawdude (Dec 30, 2014)

By the way, if I can point to something that could be a possible situation where a sleeper might work, it's something Amtrak tried once and which got killed prematurely because of state politics: The Spirit of California. This was an overnight train using the old SP Lark route to San Jose and then up the Capitol Corridor through to Sacramento. That routing is a fairly slow way to get from LA to the Bay Area (which is why the Coast Starlight, which makes the run in the day, doesn't really offer serious competition to the airlines, Greyhound, and I-5), but it works perfectly, schedule-wise, as an overnight train. The train, as I said, was killed because a new gubernatorial administration came in and killed it in 1983.

Now there's still problems-- you have to get Union Pacific to cooperate with a train running up the coast route in the middle of the night. And the better routing would be to go up the CalTrain tracks to San Francisco (as the original Lark did) rather than to Sacramento. But if someone wanted to test the "make a sleeping car service that would be attractive the general non-railfan public", that would be an interesting place to try it.


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## Anderson (Dec 30, 2014)

The Spirit of California had two other issues that tangled up with one another. One was that the ridership estimates were extremely high and weren't met. The other is that the train apparently had a habit of running with packed sleepers and mostly empty coach seats. Basically, equipment allocation did not line up with demand for much of the route, and it sounds like a lack of sleepers being allocated to the train limited the train's ability to meet demand (this latter point having been a chronic problem pretty much since A-Day, or at least from sometime in the 1970s...for example, IIRC several of the trains axed during the Carter cuts were axed because of low ridership...but they were regularly packed and the ridership shortcomings had quite a bit to do with not having the equipment to even hope to make those targets).

Moving back to driving, if you want to play that particular game I'd point out that the effective cost of a trip that's running 1600-2000 miles r/t is going to be a bit higher than just the gas. I wouldn't go as far as the IRS-offered expense schedules, but there's definitely an added maintenance cost to such a trip in many cases. Gas is the most visible cost, yes, but I'd throw in at least some incidental other costs as well (oil, any sort of pre-trip checkup, that sort of thing).


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## neroden (Dec 30, 2014)

Lawdude said:


> 1. With respect to people who don't like to fly, people who are afraid to do it but do it anyway don't count. The only "afraid to fly" market that counts is the market of people who are so insane about the (minimal) dangers of flying that they will never hold their nose and board an airplane (or at least will never do so domestically), even if it means taking a far less convenient mode of transportation. And THAT market is tiny.


If you think based on your doctrinaire theological beliefs that it is "tiny", then I will be unable to sway your mind.
Here in reality, the fact is that it's over 5% of the population (based on the lowest estimates), and the can't-fly population is another 5%. I dug up the numbers, you can dig them up too.

If you think 10% of the population is tiny, it's obvious that there's no point trying to communicate with you. I didn't bother to read the rest of what you wrote because there's no point in talking to someone whose beliefs are theological and doctrinaire.

Come back when you admit that 10% of the population will avoid flying like the plague, and that that's significant. Like I said, most of them drive.

----

OK, I did read the rest of what you wrote. Apart from your doctrinaire theological belief, I think you missed a couple of other key points.

First, on ridership demand. You are making the same stupid error which everyone makes, which is mixing up Eastern apples and Western oranges. Let me see if I can get this point through your head, since you missed it the first time. This time with details.

* The LSL has good-enough overnight timing for Buffalo-Chicago, Rochester-Chicago, Syracuse-Chicago, and attracts pragmatic sleeper ridership from these points.

There is a real, and substantial, market of people who will take an "on at 7 PM, off at 9 AM" train, even if that's not a proper "on at 9, off at 7". I've run into specific statements from two Buffalo businessmen taking sleepers to Chicago, and I've met a lot of people on family visits (not cruises, time-constrained) between Syracuse or Rochester and Chicago. Some in coach (alternatives: Greyhound, driving, flying but Amtrak is more comfortable so they'll pay a small premium). Some in sleeper (same alternatives, well-to-do, care about comfort more).

* The LSL runs a bit too long for NY-Chicago business trips, but it still attracts a bunch of people.

There's another real, substantial, market who will take an overnight 18 hour trip (hey, it's better than a 10 hour drive), but not a 24 hour trip. This is smaller than the first market, but it's still substantial. This includes plenty of people who might fly but prefer not to. I've met a bunch. (The "wealthy folks who can set their own schedules and like comfort" market from NY-Chicago is huge.)

* There is another smaller market will take an overnight 24 hour trip but not a double-overnight 48 hour trip. This includes people who *strongly* prefer not to fly. This seems from what I've heard to be the mainstay of the Florida train market. (The Florida trains are all profitable.)

* Longer than that, and you're into a combination of cruise trips and people who can't fly / won't fly. I've met them, too, on the transcons. The population on the transcons west of Chicago is really different from the population on the LSL. This would still be a lot of people *if* you're looking at a long string of large cities (like on the Trans-Siberian). But it's really not enough to support four separate trains across the low-population Rockies.

My point here is that, *contrary* to what you imagine, there isn't a magical "time wall" where ridership drops off catastrophically. As the trip gets longer, the number of people who will take it drops, but it drops smoothly. The same is true for pricing; as it gets more expensive, the number of people who will buy it drops, but it drops smoothly.

When you're dealing with New York and Chicago, with Albany and Buffalo as intermediate points, and with an 18-hour total trip -- then that residual number of people, while less than you'd expect for a short corridor service, is still plenty of people to support a substantial service. (The LSL routinely has 10 revenue cars, but Monday before Christmas it was hauling 11, and was overbooked. Yeah, most of the passengers were in coaches, but the sleepers were full up too, at very high prices.)

By way of contrast, if you're dealing with Flagstaff, Albuquerque, Kansas as intermediate points and a 48+-hour trip from LA to Chicago, that residual number of people isn't enough to support a substantial service.

----

Regarding the financials:

The experience of Penn Central (with a wartime ticket tax, the full cost of maintaining tracks, a declining carload freight business, commuter services, competing with brand new uncongested government-funded highways) is not relevant to the modern-day situation of Amtrak, where trackwork is funded out of a separate pot and the highways are congested.

The LSL is profitable, before arbitrary overhead allocation is applied. (I've demonstrated this elsewhere, based on Boardman's numbers.) Each sleeper car generates significantly more revenue than each coach car. (Paulus & I worked this out. This last phenomenon appears to be specific to the LSL right now; it's not true on the Florida trains, perhaps because they have a lot of profitable short-distance traffic.) The ridership on the LSL didn't even seem to drop much when the train was catastrophically late and cancelled for weeks, though I think the revenue did.

Amtrak is "undercharging" for the sleepers on the California Zephyr, Southwest Chief, etc. Amtrak is charging plenty for the sleepers on the Lake Shore Limited. It is consistently cheaper to get a roomette from Chicago to LA than it is from Chicago to Syracuse. (Think about what that means). Again, East is not like West.

(Don't talk about 'free meals'; they're a sideshow. The 'free meals' were designed to transfer revenue from the sleeping cars to the dining cars because of Congressional obsession with dining cars. But the prices of sleeping compartments have nothing to do with the free meals; the evidence is people on the LSL, will pay the same amount without the one free breakfast.)

There is unmet demand here. Lots of it. And this is with the usual bad OTP.

It's well documented that poor on time performance *does* cause *very sharp* drops in ridership (in the way that longer schedules do not necessarily). These trains have had bad OTP for decades. I really have no idea how much demand there would be on the LSL if they could simply run it on time, but obviously a lot more.

And that's "a lot more" than a train which routinely sells out and is already longer than the platforms.

----

I have to make an analogy here. Ocean liners are obsolete, right? Yeah? Well, there's still one market where an ocean liner plies the waves: London to New York. London is apparently an especially strong market of wealthy people who really prefer to travel by sea rather than air, and will spend huge premiums in time and money to do so. (New York less so, but it's the favored destination of the Londoners.) Although they sell a lot of cruises, the actual one-way travel market out of London remains large enough that Cunard still cater to it. (There are a bunch of specific decisions which indicate that this market originates in London, not New York.)

Will sleeping cars remain a niche market? Sure, but they're a much bigger niche than ocean liners. Where is that niche? Out of New York, going into New York, and to a lesser extent Chicago/Boston/Philadelphia/DC. Anything which is one night and less than a day out of New York is on fairly solid footing, as long as driving isn't too much faster.

I've made some effort to figure out where the cutoff is for viable (popular-enough) sleeper service. If you go strictly commercially, it looks at the moment as if New York-Florida and New York-Chicago routes are profitable, period. (New York is special.) If you stretch a point and consider connecting revenue, DC-Chicago might be. If you believe that the market for sleepers is improving (as I do), you may also see future decent markets in NY-Atlanta-New Orleans, Chicago-New Orleans, Chicago-Texas, Chicago-Denver, Chicago-Minneapolis, and perhaps some other places east of the Mississippi.

You won't find commercially viable markets across the Rockies or the desert. They'll have to be justified for other reasons (the Empire Builder by serving small towns more cheaply than air or highway service, for example).

----

Oh. And having a car in New York isn't an amenity, it's a nightmare. You have to be crazy to drive a car in Manhattan. (This is a known thing, it's not just me saying it.) Yes, this is a real reason why people will preferentially fly or take the train rather than driving to New York, I've heard it repeatedly from many people. (Boston has a similar "don't drive there if you can possibly avoid it" reputation, but not as extreme.)


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## Anderson (Dec 30, 2014)

To piggyback on what Nathanael just said...there's an increasing segment of the population out there that is not only can't-fly, it's also can't-drive (or at least can't-drive-long-distances). This is mostly senior citizens, yes, but that _is_ a growing segment of the population...and per their own studies, Amtrak's ridership _does_ skew a bit older because of this. It isn't just discretionary time that makes senior citizens lean towards the train...for many, it is also the fact that the other alternatives are unworkable for various reasons.


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## Portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

Since long-distance trains exist for:

1- Landcruisers who want a subsidized ride

2- Old people

3- Crippled

Then why not price the coaches competitively so that the poor, old, and crippled can ride cheaply, and make up that low price from the landcruisers, since they're not price sensitive and care more about amenities. That way, you meet the social justice + land cruise dual mandate of these things.

I'm being slightly facetious, but while I recognize the social justice argument, surely you realize that most towns in the US don't have intercity rail service, so it's not like removing these long-distance routes would cause an inequitable hardship.

For what it's worth, the night trains I've taken in Europe have been purely functional. Munich to Venice I took because the only cost-competitive flights were at like 6 AM out of Munich which would have required a nasty commute to the edge of town. It was something like 11 PM - 7 AM. There was just a cafe car (although to be fair, the only meal one would really need on this was breakfast, and they provided it). They have land cruises but they're all run by private operators.

Any further distance and a budget flight + hotel would have been the better option.


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## Ryan (Dec 30, 2014)

Portofcall said:


> I'm being slightly facetious,


No, you're being an insulting ass. LD trains exist for far more than the reasons you list.


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## Port of call (Dec 30, 2014)

The two main arguments I see on here are:

1- People who want a luxury cross-country ride (Proof of that? The amount of people who fly from City A to City B, take the LD train from City B to City C, and then fly back from City C to City D).

2- Transportation for people who are unable/unwilling to fly or drive.

If there are other arguments, I'd be willing to entertain them. But it's pretty specious to argue that the western long-distance trains are integrated much at all with greater transportation network. When I went from Munch to Venice, I then connected to a regional to get to the next town. My night train arrived I think within 15 minutes of the scheduled arrival time, and more importantly, I never had to 1) worry about making the connection 2) book an unnecessarily long transfer time.

Taxpayers have no business subsidizing the first category of passengers. After all, the justification for subsidizing transport of any mode (road, rail, etc) is mobility and industry.

I'm far more sympathetic for the second category. So let's break it out:

A- Those who can't afford a flight. Bottom line is that a lot of things are tough when you're poor. Income subsidies are better ways to transfer wealth to the poor.

B- Airports are too far away. That's a caveat emptor when you live in rural areas. Lots of things are far away, and the near things tend to be expensive. If you want to be near a high density of low cost infrastructure, move to a dense area. All utilities and infrastructure are expensive in rural areas (telecom, water, etc).

C- Old people. Old people fly all the time, so I don't see the issue with age. Health concerns are another issue.

D- Fear of flying. That's a tough one, I agree. But I'm not going to conflate it with the mere "discomfort/annoyance with flying". That is, TSA, seat crowding, fares, etc.

E- Medical conditions making one unable to fly. No way around it. But I wager that Greyhound tickets plus hotel accommodations would still be cheaper and probably more convenient, since you could have several departures per day (AM, mid-day, and night departures versus a 2 AM departure).

*Bottom line: *Many of the arguments in favor of support amount to rural subsidies, which if you want to do that, it'd be far more efficient to give the money to rural people and let them decide what to do with it (they might prefer to drive + park at airport for instance) rather than bundle the subsidy in the form of a railroad.

Obvious the landcruise subsidy holds no water with me.

Which leaves health and aviophobia as the only credible argument for me. If I'm missing some, I'd truly like to hear them. And this is coming from someone who wants to see the US passenger rail network succeed, but I believe it has to really start with urban and regional rail, since that's the best bang for your buck on RR investment.


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## tonys96 (Dec 30, 2014)

Port of call said:


> The two main arguments I see on here are:
> 
> 1- People who want a luxury cross-country ride (Proof of that? The amount of people who fly from City A to City B, take the LD train from City B to City C, and then fly back from City C to City D).
> 
> ...


so, are you favoring government subsidies for flights to small cities and rural airports? those are enormous costs for FAA, TSA, DOT infrastructure subsidies, etc............


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## tonys96 (Dec 30, 2014)

RyanS said:


> Portofcall said:
> 
> 
> > I'm being slightly facetious,
> ...


Agreed.


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## Portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

tonys96 said:


> Port of call said:
> 
> 
> > The two main arguments I see on here are:
> ...


Politically I don't support EAS either. It's merely a rural subsidy which would be better handled with a direct payment.

Constitutionally, I take the Postal Clause as the guiding principle behind this, "The Congress shall have Power...To establish Post Offices and post Roads" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_Clause). To this end, and the early debate about the National Road (US-40 presently), I believe that Congress can and should fund the infrastructure needed to establish commerce and trade within the US. That's why I'm ok with subsidies for roads, airports, and railroad infrastructure.

However, I don't think that you can make the case for federal subsidy of the operational aspect. That would be something to be devolved to the state level (and whatever their respective constitutions allow), nor do I support airline bailouts (as opposed to airport bailouts or ATC infrastructure improvements).

Do the operational companies, such as Delta, or Greyhound, get to run their revenue service on infrastructure that they don't own for free, and hence avoid having to bundle infrastructure capital costs into their prices? Sure, but that's why the FAA should auction off air traffic slots, and why Interstate Highways should be tolled in 100% of the time...let the users of the service pay for it.

Bear in mind, that in the Northeast, most major bridges and highways ARE tolled, and when I buy my Greyhound ticket (my preferred mode of travel since it's cheaper than Amtrak and I'm not time-sensitive), I'm helping pay those tolls.

I think that the Interstate Highway System was the right model: Socialized infrastructure with private operators, with no expectation (or need) for the infrastructure to "make a profit". Let landcruise companies venture into the market. After all, you've got multiple classes of motorcoach companies:

1- Intercity transportation (Greyhound, Megabus)

2- Scenic tours (leaves, bridges, etc)

3- Charters (bus trips to xxx)

4a- You could argue that 18-wheelers are the "freight" analogue to passenger motorcoaches (i.e. heavy diesel vehicles which carry a revenue payload).

What's so wrong with motorcoaches anyway? Here in the east, we've got multiple classes of motorcoaches:

1- Low end Chinatown expresses with no frills

2- Milk runs by Greyhound

3- Nicer expresses by Greyhound Express, Megabus, Peter Pan, DC2NY, and other multiple operators

4- Super luxury coaches like Vamoose Gold, and other some others

So you can get the class of coach you want, depending on your preference for time, luxury, and quality.

So why not provide rural transportation through motorcoach? State and localities can subsidize.

I understand the arguments for subsidies in support of rural intercity mobility, I really do. But I can't escape the feeling that many people favor Amtrak over motorcoaches because trains are cooler, (they are! I love riding them), have better legroom(I'm tall and airline seats suck, although East Coast buses have gotten better with legroom) , and have meal cars. But that alone can't justify the subsidy.


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## tonys96 (Dec 30, 2014)

RE:

but that's why.............. and why Interstate Highways should be tolled in 100% of the time.

So the Federal gasoline tax should go exactly to what? Since you want all interstate highways to be toll roads.........

I believe you are just trolling here.


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## jis (Dec 30, 2014)

The federal gasoline tax was originally instituted for deficit reduction. It was later dedicated to the highway fund. It could certainly go back to its original purpose. Just sayin' as they say.


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## PortofCall (Dec 30, 2014)

tonys96 said:


> RE:
> 
> but that's why.............. and why Interstate Highways should be tolled in 100% of the time.
> 
> ...


Before the modern technology, the best way to try to "charge" people for driving on highways was through the gas tax. However, nowadays there's no excuse not to toll the highways. That way, your "user fee" is only applied to people who drive on the Interstates.

Suppose you never drive on an Interstate. You still have to pay the federal gas tax when you fill up. Where's the justice in that?

Using the logic of the gas tax, there should be a federal sales tax on food, using it to pay for our agricultural subsidies.

And don't call me a troll, trolling is "I don't want to pay for your choo-choo nonsense". I just believe that you need to be able to distinguish between what routes get investment and which ones don't. My argument is that you can provide rural and disabled mobility options at a better value using other modes.


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## Ryan (Dec 30, 2014)

Federal funding goes for far more things than just the interstate highway system.

As far as the justice of paying things that you don't use, that ship has sailed. Everyone pays for things that they don't directly use - we've decided that we're better off as a society if we pay for those things.

Trying desperately to bring this back on topic, you're still wide of the mark on who takes LD trains. There are plenty of us that are neither crippled nor old that use the LD trains for effective transportation (not land cruises). My son and I just too the train from WAS-ATL - cheaper than flying, and I wasn't interested in driving because my wife and daughter had driven down a few days earlier (her grandmother was in the hospital), and we were all to drive back together. A few months before that my wife and daughter took the train to Tampa (again from WAS), it was again cheaper than flying and easier than a 2 day drive and a hotel.

WAS, ATL, and TPA aren't exactly rural America, either.


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## Paulus (Dec 30, 2014)

It's not exactly surprising that a highly subsidized train was cheaper than flying


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## PortofCall (Dec 30, 2014)

I'm not sure on the financials on eastern long distance trains, so forgive me. A one-way roomette, 1x adult and 1x child fare gets as cheap as $305 if you book the right time, and giving the AAA discount to you and your boy) for about a 14 hour trip.

Early booking from from BWI (I presumed that on account of your MARC handle and Odenton station code) comes in at $247 for about a 2 hour nonstop one-way.

For shorter-term bookings, this Sunday's Crescent costs you and your son $560. US Air from BWI for $455.

I'm not at all disputing that you got your Amtrak ticket cheaper than a similar airfare, but my quick sample suggests that it's usually cheaper to just fly. And if there are cases where flying is more expensive than Amtrak, certainly it'd be cheaper for the government to cut you a check for the price difference and have you fly at the same price as the Amtrak train.



RyanS said:


> Federal funding goes for far more things than just the interstate highway system.
> 
> As far as the justice of paying things that you don't use, that ship has sailed. Everyone pays for things that they don't directly use - we've decided that we're better off as a society if we pay for those things.
> 
> ...


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## Guest (Dec 30, 2014)

Did the same analysis on BWI-TPA airfare versus WAS-TPA on rail, and I still can't see the savings, generally speaking. I can get you, your wife and daughter to Tampa for $280 one-way in 4 hours, as opposed to $913 one-way for roomettes (with discounts) for $800 for about 20 hrs travel, this is for a few months out.

For this coming Sunday, it's $485 BWI-TPA, about $1400 Amtrak.

If the market bears these prices, fine. But I don't see where the cost-saving argument comes in.


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## tonys96 (Dec 30, 2014)

It could be cheaper for the feds to cut air travel subsidies. If you want to fly, you pay full cost for FAA, TSA, DOT, infrastructure, etc in your fare. Cost of flying goes up a lot.

http://consumertraveler.com/today/after-years-of-airline-subsidies-how-about-a-payback-for-taxpayers/

Also, why pay for fire departments and police from general fund taxes? Make them a "fee for service" operation, right? {sarc}

Still say you are a troll. Sorry, but it is what it is.


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## portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

First of all, some municipalities do in fact charge for services from the fire department, where they won't save your house if you don't pay a fee. And an ambulance ride will cost you. In rural areas where there's no chance of the fire spreading to a neighboring house, it can work. Obviously in dense urban areas, you can't afford to let a building burn uncontrolled for the risk of spread, hence you tax everyone for the combined benefit.

I'm fine with passing on the costs of, in this case, air infrastructure to the users. Frankly, as an urban resident, I wouldn't be hit that badly since there are so many users, that you can divide the costs of infrastructure among the users. It'd be rural areas that would be hit the hardest. A small airport with just a few revenue flights per day would have it real bad.

FYI - The 9/11 security fee in theory pays for TSA operations. In 2011 it was 2.50 per "enplanement" and it covered around 20% of the TSA's budget ( So bump it up to $12.50 per enplament and the TSA is fully-funded.

Most of the FAA does bureaucratic work analogous to the FRA (standards and regulation). Both of them are paid for by general funds, I believe.



tonys96 said:


> It could be cheaper for the feds to cut air travel subsidies. If you want to fly, you pay full cost for FFA, TSA, DOT, infrastructure, etc in your fare. Cost of flying goes up a lot.
> 
> Also, why pay for fire departments and police from general fund taxes? Make them a "fee for service" operation, right? {sarc}
> 
> Still say you are a troll. Sorry, but it is what it is.


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## portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

And just because you don't like what I'm saying doesn't make me a troll. Even in Europe where:

1- The rails are state-owned,

2- Where passenger rail is favored over freight,

3- Where the people are used to taking train

4- Where there's the population density to support rail

5- Where operators get state subsidies and protection

There's *still* a movement away from long distance and sleeper trains thanks, mostly to budget airlines (http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/12/sleeper-trains). If it won't work there, I can't see how it's going to work here.

Listen, if there were unlimited resources for Amtrak and passenger rail, I'd love there to be a robust network for sleepers. But there isn't. Don't these monthly reports that get published here prove that, time and time again, the best ROI for Amtrak is on its NEC and corridor routes? People will ride, in good numbers, on 0-4 hour lines. Not surprisingly, that's the case all over the world, including China (http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/06/soaring-demand-china-low-cost-airlines-2014617123444865742.html).


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## tonys96 (Dec 30, 2014)

portofcall said:


> And just because you don't like what I'm saying doesn't make me a troll. Even in Europe where:


Whatever...........


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## guest_nj_2 (Dec 30, 2014)

agree in general -- low-cost airlines are currently eating the lunch of European rail providers

(especially in places, like Southern Europe, without robust ICE infrastructure).

everything over 2-3 hours train time, and Europeans hop on a low-cost plane.

in some cases, trains are used to supplement air travel -- for example, one may fly

to Dusseldorf and then take a 2-hour train ride to Amsterdam (if direct flights to

Amsterdam are more expensive or less convenient). Of course, this requires

excellent [short] connection from the airport to the ICE rail network.


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## Bob Dylan (Dec 30, 2014)

Port of call: based on your posts I'd say that you learned your economics and public policy theory from the same charlatans that "advised" Presidents Raegan and W! In other words the theories are vodoo nonsense, ie a financial disaster for the country! You could look it up!!

As one of our more brilliant Founding Fathers Ben Franklin said: " We can hang together or we'll seperately!" Being an urban resident does spread the costs of public services but wanting them for yourself and denying them to rural residents is elitist and poor public policy! ( "equal protection under the law" is supposed to be our quiding principle!)


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## portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

Yeah, Lufthansa's "connecting flight" from Frankfurt is often an ICE train from the airport station to whatever city you were going to.

When I was studying in Germany, a student at the host university was "going out of town" for the weekend. I asked him where he was taking the train to, and he replied that he was flying to Bulgaria to go to a particular nightclub on Saturday, and returning Sunday afternoon...



guest_nj_2 said:


> agree in general -- low-cost airlines are currently eating the lunch of European rail providers
> 
> (especially in places, like Southern Europe, without robust ICE infrastructure).
> 
> ...


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## guest_nj_2 (Dec 30, 2014)

if the goal is to provide passenger rail to rural areas, then Amtrak should have

a *BIGGER* subsidy, specifically for that purpose.

NEC riders should also see lower prices as the result (otherwise it's not fair),

getting a [albeit smaller] share of that subsidy.


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## portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

I'm not here to debate politics, but I'm pretty sure it was Jimmy Carter who deregulated most of the interstate carriers (air, rail and road).



jimhudson said:


> Port of call: based on your posts I'd say that you learned your economics and public policy theory from the same charlatans that "advised" Presidents Raegan and W! In other words the theories are vodoo nonsense, ie a financial disaster for the country! You could look it up!!
> 
> As one of our more brilliant Founding Fathers Ben Franklin said: " We can hang together or we'll seperately!" Being an urban resident does spread the costs of public services but wanting them for yourself and denying them to rural residents is elitist and poor public policy! ( "equal protection under the law" is supposed to be our quiding principle!)


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## portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

If the end goal is specifically rural passenger rail, then yes you need a bigger subsidy.

If the end goal is strictly intercity mobility, which I think is the better way to view it, then you're simply better off giving a rebate to a rural resident on a plane or bus ticket. Certainly cheaper than dealing with the fixed cost of running a railroad through that area.

Even if you assume that all modes get some form of subsidy, why the insistence on rail? Intercity coaches are more flexible in their routing and cheaper to operate. People in the east ride intercity coaches all the time; I'm not sure what's preventing those in rural areas from doing so as well.



guest_nj_2 said:


> if the goal is to provide passenger rail to rural areas, then Amtrak should have
> 
> a *BIGGER* subsidy, specifically for that purpose.
> 
> ...


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## Ryan (Dec 30, 2014)

PortofCall said:


> I'm not sure on the financials on eastern long distance trains, so forgive me. A one-way roomette, 1x adult and 1x child fare gets as cheap as $305 if you book the right time, and giving the AAA discount to you and your boy) for about a 14 hour trip.


I don't pay cash, I travel on points (which come free to me through smart credit card use). 15,000 for a roomette for two is always cheaper than airfare for two. The deal gets even better when you throw in a couple of free meals and free parking at the train station.

The deal gets explosively better when you take the Auto Train to FL and don't have to pay for a rental car.


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## Bob Dylan (Dec 30, 2014)

Not political, its historical fact!

You are correct sir,Carter is among the worst Presidents of rececent times but also an honest, decent guy who didn't cash in after he left office like so many other politicians! Clearly the best of the ex- Presidents!!


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## guest_nj_2 (Dec 30, 2014)

I don't know about other places, but in NJ even the tortoise-like

NJ Transit train handily beats the [NJ Transit or private company] bus.

Traffic lights, jams (especially around bridges and tunnels), etc -- buses

generally much slower.

So, I will definitely vote for a *BIGGER* Amtrak subsidy (which, however,

MUST trickle-down to NEC and other well-patronized routes) versus a 
"government check" that I can only apply to a bus travel.


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## portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

OK fair enough. I don't know much about the points system so I can see how it makes the rates more competitive.

On the other hand, for a casual user, perhaps you would understand why flights typically get the preference over the train, no?

I can definitely see the advantage on the Auto Train with regards to the car rental. I was going over the numbers because my gf and I like to visit my grandparents in Sarasota FL, and I think the break-even point was 7 days, that is, any more than a week's car rental and the Auto Train was the better deal. I can thus see why the Auto Train is a good money maker for Amtrak.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail

Germany has 16 compliant stations apparently. The genius is that unlike main train stations, you don't need to have the Autotrain stations in the city centers. Take this link I've attached...it's Neu Isenburg, in the southern suburbs of Munich. http://goo.gl/maps/QxVsP

All you really need, it seems like a siding and a ramp. It's not even that big of a station, just a standard suburban station.



RyanS said:


> PortofCall said:
> 
> 
> > I'm not sure on the financials on eastern long distance trains, so forgive me. A one-way roomette, 1x adult and 1x child fare gets as cheap as $305 if you book the right time, and giving the AAA discount to you and your boy) for about a 14 hour trip.
> ...


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## portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

I don't think that tunnels, bridges, and traffic jams are really that big of an issue out west. And I think the reasons you provide explain why rail travel in the northeast is such a cash cow. I've noticed a lot of Amtrak stations outside of the coasts aren't really even in the city centers...they're often within a classification yard somewhere on the outskirts of town.



guest_nj_2 said:


> I don't know about other places, but in NJ even the tortoise-like
> 
> NJ Transit train handily beats the [NJ Transit or private company] bus.
> 
> ...


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## Paulus (Dec 30, 2014)

RyanS said:


> PortofCall said:
> 
> 
> > I'm not sure on the financials on eastern long distance trains, so forgive me. A one-way roomette, 1x adult and 1x child fare gets as cheap as $305 if you book the right time, and giving the AAA discount to you and your boy) for about a 14 hour trip.
> ...


Traveling on points and then going "It's cheaper than flying on cash!" is an incredibly useless comparison metric. Compare like to like.


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## Ryan (Dec 30, 2014)

I did compare like for like. 15k gets you a roomette for two.

The cheapest you can fly on points is between 10k and 11k per person on WN.


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## Paulus (Dec 30, 2014)

RyanS said:


> I did compare like for like. 15k gets you a roomette for two.
> 
> The cheapest you can fly on points is between 10k and 11k per person on WN.


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## Ryan (Dec 30, 2014)

That'd be great if I could plan family emergencies 2 weeks in advance.


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## Lawdude (Dec 30, 2014)

neroden said:


> Lawdude said:
> 
> 
> > 1. With respect to people who don't like to fly, people who are afraid to do it but do it anyway don't count. The only "afraid to fly" market that counts is the market of people who are so insane about the (minimal) dangers of flying that they will never hold their nose and board an airplane (or at least will never do so domestically), even if it means taking a far less convenient mode of transportation. And THAT market is tiny.
> ...


1. What percentage of the market is "will not fly" AND "will travel frequently by train for trips longer than 12, or 18, or 24, or 36 hours" AND will be willing to pay fares large enough to cover Amtrak's costs in transporting them? That's the market size. Not everyone who whines about flying in a poll.

In my experience (I both take trains a lot and fly a lot) there's a ton of people on planes who hate flying. The airlines are making record profits. That's why I am cynical about statements that there's this huge trove of money being made putting the people who hate flying onto trains.

2. I am sure there's a small number of business people who are willing to take a 7pm to 9am train. But that's just 100 times less useful to the general market than a train that gets in earlier and leaves later. It's not that if you go from 9 to 7 to 7 to 9 demand shrinks to zero. Rather, every increment of time in which you leave earlier and get in later cuts the demand and cuts the market. And the problem is, the market is precarious to begin with. Airlines offer a reliable product that can get you to your destination in a couple of hours (or maybe 3 if you count the travel to the airport and the security headaches). If Amtrak wants to compete with that, it has to be (1) super-reliable, so you never miss that business meeting and (2) super-convenient, so you don't get in too late or leave too early. On the Northeast Corridor, you have that (and I think I said above, I'd put the sleepers back on the NE Corridor late night trains post-haste if I ran Amtrak). But the route has to fall right into the sweet spot (and the commuters and freight RR's have to cooperate with Amtrak to do it).

3. The problem with longer trips is that nobody with real business time pressures is going to take it. So once you get past the overnight, there's almost no business travelers on the route. That actually has a second negative implication, because business travelers are willing to pay higher fares. So now, we've lost a large market and we also have to charge lower fares. (Indeed, I think the coach fares on the LSL reflect this-- compare them to the fares paid on the Northeast Corridor, a business market.) Now, are there still some people who want to take an 18 hour or 24 hour train trip? Not that many.

You seem to think that there are a ton of people driving the interstates who want to do this. But I've already pointed out, driving is much cheaper. You still haven't responded to my LA-Las Vegas example. There's a reason-- there is no answer. Which is one reason there isn't a Desert Wind anymore. Amtrak cannot price its product to be competitive with driving on a 300 mile route. It simply can't. Driving is really cheap.

Now, your big response is to say that on certain trips, driving is a hinderance because you have to do something with the car. But guess what-- on those trips, PEOPLE AREN'T DRIVING. That's right, they are FLYING. Or taking the bus. And what did I tell you before-- Amtrak's big competitors are people who are flying or taking the bus.

Indeed, there's another issue with driving which I didn't get into, which is a lot of people drive places because they aren't going to the central city. They are going to the suburbs. An airline and a rental car competes with that somewhat well; Amtrak puts you in the center of the city where it's less convenient to rent a car, or at the suburbs where there's no car rental facility. This isn't bashing on train travel by the way-- it's just pointing out that it's a delusion to try and get people who DRIVE to take the train. You need to get people who ride the bus to do it, by being cheap, or get people who take planes to do it, by being reliable and fast and convenient. Those are the two markets. Anyone who wants to drive their car long distance is a lost cause.

4. I really hate railfans' arguments about how long distance trains are "really" profitable. If they were really profitable, there would have never been an Amtrak. Or a Via Rail for that matter. It isn't as though Penn Central went bankrupt but there was this other railroad that made all sorts of money on their passenger trains with their superior business model. The invention of the jet airliner happened; the interstates happened; and passenger trains became inferior for long distance travel for most people.

I know some people in the newspaper business who are the same way. They are convinced that if the newspapers would just adopt some different business model, they wouldn't have to lose their job. Few people in that field admit that craigslist killed the newspaper. But it did.

So we start right there-- we have a service that was so "profitable" that it destroyed or almost destroyed some of the largest corporations on the planet. THAT FACT ALONE PROVES THAT LONG DISTANCE TRAINS ARE NOT PROFITABLE. The fact that some idiots on the Internet can go through Amtrak's financials with a fine toothed comb and come up with some strange form of accounting that makes the trains profitable may be a fun parlor exercise, but believe me, if there was a way to make money selling long distance sleeper service to America, the railroads would have figured that out. They actually tried, HARD. Their products in the 1950's were ridiculously good. They still got their butts kicked.

But it's worse than that with sleepers. Because we also have a history with that. And those same private corporations, when attempting to sell their services at the lowest loss possible, ELIMINATED as many sleeper and diner cars as possible. You had coaches and cafe cars and automats. Again, these were not idiots. I assure you that the people working in the accounting department of Southern Pacific in the late 1960's knew 10 times more about the business of railroads than any railfan on the Internet who has gone through Amtrak's financials. And what did they cut? Diners and sleepers. Why? Because they carried fewer passengers, sold their product at a huge loss, and required more labor.

So we actually know that sleepers and diners are not profitable. We know that WHATEVER someone going through Amtrak's reports looking for creative interpretations of the numbers says about them. We know that because if the sleepers were the profitable parts of train service, we would have seen railroads go to all-Pullman trains and cut coaches as they tried to curb losses in the 1960's. Instead, they did the opposite.

We also know that because there's another train service in North America, and it charges sleepers at cost. Via Rail's sleeping cars are more expensive than Amtrak. It costs as much to get an open section on Via as it does a private room on Amtrak. Why is that? Because Via tries to recover the full costs of running its sleeping and dining cars.

And then, on top of all that, we have Amtrak's own numbers, which show that lines on the Northeast Corridor, without sleepers, break even or make operating profits, while no train with a sleeping and dining car comes close and the more time people spend on sleepers, the bigger the losses are.

So yeah, sleeping cars are underpriced.

5. Free meals are not a sideshow. Airlines charge a ton of money for first class. Then they give you free meals (and on international flights, lounges, amenity packs, etc.). That's a sensible business model.

Via charges a ton of money for sleepers. Again, it's a sensible business model to give free meals to those passengers.

But Amtrak charges much less than cost for people in sleeping cars. So why are they getting free meals? Or Guest Reward points, for that matter? Amtrak is rewarding passengers who cause them to lose money by losing additional money on them.

Amtrak does lose a ton of money on dining cars. That's not denied by anyone with familiarity with the business. Railfans like dining cars, but it turns out it is incredibly expensive to run the sort of supply chain necessary to do this. They really should change their policy. (And again, if dining cars were profitable, Southern Pacific wouldn't have foisted on the traveling public the "automat car" in the 1960's.)

6. I agree with you on on-time performance. And if I could wave my magic wand, I would whip every single freight railroad into line so that Amtrak could run on a dependable schedule. We have decided as a society that these trains are important, and I also think that if someone boarding an Amtrak train knew that if the schedule says he or she will arrive at 1:25 p.m. that means that he or she will arrive at 1:25 p.m., that would help a ton in getting people to try the train and to keep coming back to it.

I don't think that solves the basic problem with trips over 12 hours or so for most people, but it helps on the margins even on longer trips and it helps A TON on shorter trips.

7. Ocean liners are actually a bad analogy for you. There's one line-- the Queen Mary 2-- which runs a scheduled service; I know people who have ridden it and it is basically a cruise ship (despite the scheduled service moniker); it's extremely expensive; it actually runs a lot slower than the ocean liners did in the past because people don't use it as serious transportation; most people who take it don't take it round-trip, and Cunard offers airline travel packages with it; and one of the reasons the QM2 supplanted the QE2 is actually because the scheduled service is something of a loss leader for Cunard, and the boat makes most of its money on cruises in warm weather climates, which it does half the year during which the North Atlantic is full of ice.

That's not an argument for a national network of trains. That's an argument for some sort of heritage luxury liner train service a la the American Orient Express which charges a lot of money and offers a luxury land cruise with little regard for speedy transport.

Look, in the end, I do want to see trains. I'm not like the other poster here who is bagging on the Essential Air Service requirement. I've ridden the Sunset Limited and the Coast Starlight and the Crescent and the Southwest Chief, and all of them are full of people getting on and off in the intermediate towns, who ride coach and who I am sure are very grateful to have a train come through their town periodically that offers them a connection to the cities. There's no reason we shouldn't have that.

But if we are talking about SLEEPERS, and we are talking about the general public-- not railfans-- I just think the opportunities are very limited, because you need to get business travelers who would be willing to pay a fare high enough for Amtrak to make a profit, and the system as currently set up is tilted hard against Amtrak being able to offer the sort of reliable service they want. I wish it were not so, but I think it is.


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## Ryan (Dec 30, 2014)

Lawdude said:


> Driving is really cheap.


Because we subsidize the everloving daylight of driving. Put the full cost of driving onto those who drive, and see what it really costs (and see what it does to the cost of goods sold that are delivered by truck).


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## Paulus (Dec 30, 2014)

RyanS said:


> Lawdude said:
> 
> 
> > Driving is really cheap.
> ...


And in actual numbers it would come out to...?


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## portofcall (Dec 30, 2014)

We subsidize roads, not driving.

Think of drivers as private operators. The pay their own "rolling stock" (cars), "on-board staff" (themselves), fuel and insurance costs and by definition break even.

The roads are publically-owned and partially paid for by gas taxes. I'm fine raising the gas tax or charging tolls to make up the difference. That's increasingly the trend anyways. Here in the DC area, I can't think of any new highway that isn't being tolled. (ICC, HO/T lanes on the Beltway and 395/95, and proposed HO/T on 270 and I-66 inside the Beltway).

Amtrak can't break even "above the rails" even on the routes where it doesn't have capital costs, that is the freight lines.



RyanS said:


> Lawdude said:
> 
> 
> > Driving is really cheap.
> ...


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## pennyk (Dec 30, 2014)

It seems like this thread has gotten significantly off topic and discussions have become arguments. It will be locked for a while (subject to review by admins).


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## Anderson (Jan 1, 2015)

Ok, we've decided to reopen the thread. I'd just like to remind everyone here to try not to let debate devolve into arguments (I know the line can be thin at times) and not to snipe at one another.


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## jis (Jan 1, 2015)

And IMHO focusing on where Sleepers may prove to be attractive rather than a general philosophical discussion about funding LD trains may be in order too.


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## Palmland (Jan 1, 2015)

I believe there is a market for intermediate destination sleepers as was done extensively in the days of the Pullman Co. This is much more difficult today for a number of reasons: lack of intermediate servicing/storage locations (eg. Atlanta), the lack of available switch crews, and the excruciatingly long time Amtrak takes to perform simple switching chores using road power.

However, it can still be done, as demonstrated in Denver, Minneapolis, San Antonio, Spokane, and Albany. This seems to me to be a cost effective way to maximize the high dollar sleeper revenue and improve sleeper utilization (in some cases this might mean going from 2 to 1 sleeper on part of the route, on others might mean additional sleeper miles). What are the locations that it would make sense for Amtrak to do this?

A few possibilities include New York to Jax on the Meteor (space also used for passengers destined Charleston/Savannah); New York to Birmingham, Boston to Richmond; LA to Houston; Seattle to Whitefish (seasonal); Chicago to Fort Worth; Seattle to Emeryville. In most cases the car and attendant could turn back the same day. While I'm sure many can find reasons why this can't/shouldn't be done Amtrak does need to do more imaginative in the best use of their multi million dollar car fleet.


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## Ryan (Jan 1, 2015)

portofcall said:


> We subsidize roads, not driving.


A completely meaningless distinction.



portofcall said:


> Amtrak can't break even "above the rails" even on the routes where it doesn't have capital costs, that is the freight lines.


Untrue.


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## neroden (Jan 1, 2015)

jis said:


> And IMHO focusing on where Sleepers may prove to be attractive rather than a general philosophical discussion about funding LD trains may be in order too.


Well, the main thing I was trying to get across to Guest_Lawdude was that the East is not the West. The reason I wasn't responding to the LA-Las Vegas example is that I agree that that route is no good.

In fact, I don't believe there are any genuinely good routes for sleepers west of Denver.

I'm guessing Lawdude is from California and is generalizing from his experience there. This is an incorrect generalization. It's really, genuinely different east of the Mississippi; the market for sleepers is a lot better. The geographic distribution of population is wildly different, among other things.

----

As for the accounting, I know what I'm doing, and I'm using Amtrak's numbers. "Fully allocated" accounting means that routes are loaded with costs which are completely invariant to route operation; it's a chimera, an illusion, a fraud, not something which you should ever make business decisions based on. Not quite as bad as "Milwaukee Road" accounting, but nearly as useless. You can tell how useless it is because "special trains" frequently get allocated enough overhead to appear "unprofitable" using "fully allocated" accounting; but "special trains" are *only* run when they are profitable.

Occasionally (not nearly often enough) Amtrak comes out with a separate accounting of direct costs and allocated overhead, and I've grabbed all the data I can get from that. The direct-costs accounting shows that the Florida trains are profitable, the LSL is profitable most years, the western long-distance trains are not profitable, and yes, the NEC is extremely profitable. (As for the state-supported trains, God only knows; I've never seen enough data to tell for most of the individual routes, though Lynchburg is so profitable that it exceeds the allocated overhead.) It's harder to sort out sleeper vs. coach, but all the available evidence points to expansion of Eastern sleeping car service being a sound investment on a purely financial basis... the Western sleeping cars, probably not.

The overhead at Amtrak is frankly enormous ($1.5 billion/year), but then so's the overhead of operating the roads (the cost of every single police officer and car on highway patrol duty in the US, the cost of having road maintenance depots in every county), and the overhead of operating the airlines (ATC, airports, airport weather stations, etc.). The government pays for all of that out of general taxation, and it should pay for Amtrak's overhead as well. (In fact, the government pays less to Amtrak per year than Amtrak's overhead bill.) The fact that *any* Amtrak operation contributes to overhead is extraordinary, since road users don't even cover their variable costs, and never contribute a dime to cover overhead.


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## Anderson (Jan 2, 2015)

Three things:
(1) The overhead mess is...well, a mess. $1.5bn being assigned to overhead includes some things that should probably be broken out further and some things which are unavoidable. For example, is Sunnyside included in overhead? What about NEC maintenance? There's a probable misallocation discussed in the past (you can probably allocate some costs pretty clearly and fairly, but you can't necessarily split it all up) and it is quite plausible that LD trains are being unfairly saddled with a bunch of costs off of the NEC even though some of those trains don't come within 500 miles of it.

(2) The Virginia situation is complicated. Basically, VA's negotiators were (to my understanding) one step ahead of Amtrak when they started up the Lynchburger and the state got phenomenally lucky (IIRC the train either never even touched the startup grant or only briefly did so in the first few months before becoming massively profitable by the second year).

(3) There are isolated cases of drivers covering quite a bit of overhead, but they're admittedly localized. The Pennsylvania Turnpike comes to mind here. That said, these cases are relatively few, far between, and often focused on some chokepoint in a system (where alternatives to such a chokepoint are viable, we've seen an impressive number of project meltdowns).


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## domefoamer (Jan 2, 2015)

"In fact, I don't believe there are any genuinely good routes for sleepers west of Denver."

Well, neroden, that's a broad statement. I didn't catch what your criteria for judgement are, but I sure hope your outlook isn't widespread. Without sleepers, almost no route west of Denver would be bearable. I certainly wouldn't have convinced my family to take the CZ to Calfornia and connect with the CS northbound to Vancouver last Spring if I couldn't offer them cozy sleepers to rest the night away in peace. Western intercity routes are so long that few of them can be done within waking hours. And offering enough sleepers at a reasonable fare seems much less costly than rebuilding trains and tracks to HSR standards, doesn't it?

If I lived in the East, amid dozens of destination cities located five to ten hours away, maybe I too would be calling for speed and more of it. But out here, the lay of the land leads to a different conclusion, pardner.


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## Paulus (Jan 2, 2015)

A sizeable fraction has been taking the Chicago-West trains in coach the whole way since they were first inaugurated and that has continued up to the present day. Furthermore, sleepers appeal neither to the time-sensitive nor to the price-sensitive passenger; the East coast gets the marginal results it does from having a sufficiently large population base and consistently dense urbanization that you can find sufficient outliers. High speed rail, on the other hand, appeals to time-sensitive and can be run as a profitable enterprise appealing to the price-sensitive as well.


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## portofcall (Jan 2, 2015)

The west, particularly the interior west, will always suffer from low population density. This is an issue in any large country...take Russia...while there is the famous Trans-Siberian railway, you can bet your bottom dollar that their domestic airline industry has soaked up a ton of passengers who in years past would have taken the train.

Obviously there will always be a certain segment of the population willing to take sleeper trains. However, most of the population isn't comprised of railfans, and trying to convince them to take a sleeper which is slower than a plane, and smaller than a hotel room, (yet hardly cheaper usually) is a very tall order.

I'm sure there are city pairs where it could work. For example, take the Coast Starlight, but change the LA departure to something like 8 PM...include a pickup stop in the northern LA suburbs (Burbank?) and then run the train until it hits the Bay Area about 11 hours later. The current 10 AM depature from LA is never going to beat the airlines for many travelers. But if you structure a mid-evening departure from LA and give arrivals in the Bay Area starting the next morning (about 6 AM for San Jose, and 7-8 AM for Oakland/Emeryville). Offer breakfast on the train beginning with the people getting off at San Jose, and then move to give it to the Oakland/Emeryville passengers so that there's no wasted time when they get off the train. That's how CityNightLine in Germany ran the Munich to Venice route (limited stops on both ends, simple breakfast provided in the compartments).


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## Domefoamer (Jan 2, 2015)

So what's the current vacancy-vs.-take rate for Amtrak sleepers? Someone must know that statistic. On the two overnight trains I rode last year, I saw no obvious vacancies. If today's sleeper fleet is booked at a rate over 75%, that's the best evidence I can imagine that the taste for sleeper travel isn't dead yet. It's not even smelling funny. ; >


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## portofcall (Jan 3, 2015)

The other issue I see with "off-cast" sleepers, is the sheer lack of intermediate revenue. I really don't know what the best transportation options for your isolated off-coast cities like Denver, Boise, Phoenix, etc are.

Double that with the fact that outside of Denver, I don't think any of these cities really have much of a public transportation network. Nearly every city up the Northeast Corridor has public transit that includes service at the stations, as well as private businesses such as restaurants and cab companies which recognize the train traveler market. Taking the train to Providence and renting a car was no problem; the car rental guy who picked me up said that they're always picking up customers from PVD.

On the other hand, if you dont have a car waiting for you in these interior west cities, you're doomed.

I think it's important to differentiate the sleeper trains between the ones where scenery, service, and food are the big selling point, and the ones where time and location are the big selling points. On the "land cruise" (food, scenery and service) routes, you probably have a significant market segment who's more interested in the train ride itself, so maybe re-market the service as just that: a tourism line and such.

But to get your middle-upper class traveler into a sleeper, you have to give him or her something which is either time or cost competitive to flying+hotel+car. There really aren't many routes which seem to provide that.

Why not just run west coast sleepers and east-of-mississippi sleepers and give airline connections between the regions?


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## Paulus (Jan 3, 2015)

portofcall said:


> I'm sure there are city pairs where it could work. For example, take the Coast Starlight, but change the LA departure to something like 8 PM...include a pickup stop in the northern LA suburbs (Burbank?) and then run the train until it hits the Bay Area about 11 hours later. The current 10 AM depature from LA is never going to beat the airlines for many travelers. But if you structure a mid-evening departure from LA and give arrivals in the Bay Area starting the next morning (about 6 AM for San Jose, and 7-8 AM for Oakland/Emeryville). Offer breakfast on the train beginning with the people getting off at San Jose, and then move to give it to the Oakland/Emeryville passengers so that there's no wasted time when they get off the train. That's how CityNightLine in Germany ran the Munich to Venice route (limited stops on both ends, simple breakfast provided in the compartments).


 You won't have enough revenue to be worthwhile. Sleeper revenue is like the cherry on top; nice to have, but you're going to have a sad and pathetic time if all you have is the cherry.

It's worth noting that the Daylight, on a 9.75 hour schedule (and just why the heck is CA wanting to bring it back on a 12 hour schedule?) had higher revenue than the overnight Lark.



Domefoamer said:


> So what's the current vacancy-vs.-take rate for Amtrak sleepers? Someone must know that statistic. On the two overnight trains I rode last year, I saw no obvious vacancies. If today's sleeper fleet is booked at a rate over 75%, that's the best evidence I can imagine that the taste for sleeper travel isn't dead yet. It's not even smelling funny. ; >


I don't think anyone outside of Amtrak knows what it is on a seat-mile basis; from my own reckonings from Amtrak's data there's about one sleeper passenger for every two sleeper seat-days (for example, on average one person in a roomette).


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## portofcall (Jan 3, 2015)

@ Paulus

Thank you for the clarification. My itinerary was based on the assumption that there would be enough daily overnight passengers running from LA to the Bay Area to justify a train with no intermediate stops. From the way you describe it, the financial strength of the Coastal Starlight is with coach passengers, including a significant amount who board and alight at intermediate stations.

But it looks like airlines totally own the LA-Bay area route. Using Google Flights and Southwest's website as research tools, it looks like you can get round-trip airfare between LAX and SFO for $145, with about 1.5 hours flight time, with the earliest arrivals coming in at about 7:30 AM. Same goes with San Jose. I can't see rail competing with that.


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## William W. (Jan 3, 2015)

portofcall said:


> @ Paulus
> 
> Thank you for the clarification. My itinerary was based on the assumption that there would be enough daily overnight passengers running from LA to the Bay Area to justify a train with no intermediate stops. From the way you describe it, the financial strength of the Coastal Starlight is with coach passengers, including a significant amount who board and alight at intermediate stations.
> 
> But it looks like airlines totally own the LA-Bay area route. Using Google Flights and Southwest's website as research tools, it looks like you can get round-trip airfare between LAX and SFO for $145, with about 1.5 hours flight time, with the earliest arrivals coming in at about 7:30 AM. Same goes with San Jose. I can't see rail competing with that.


Realistically, only HSR can compete with airlines on that particular route. Even if a dedicated HSR line is built, the distance between LA-SF is 100 miles more than DC-NYC (the most notable case of a train beating out the airlines). That's a 3-3.5 hour trip, vs. 1-1.5 hours of flight time. Unless the HSR can do a consistent 150MPH+ (it would ideally need to be 200MPH+), I don't see any train being able to beat the airlines as has occurred on the NEC (and even then, only mostly between DC and NYC).

In terms of an overnight sleeper route between LA and SF, the concept of modern business travel by sleeper in the US has never been tried, and it would be difficult to convince businesses to use a train over flying in such situations. It would be an interesting experiment, but everything would have to consistently go right (OTP, operations, etc.) for such a concept to have even a remote shot at succeeding.


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## tonys96 (Jan 3, 2015)

portofcall said:


> @ Paulus
> 
> Thank you for the clarification. My itinerary was based on the assumption that there would be enough daily overnight passengers running from LA to the Bay Area to justify a train with no intermediate stops. From the way you describe it, the financial strength of the Coastal Starlight is with coach passengers, including a significant amount who board and alight at intermediate stations.
> 
> But it looks like airlines totally own the LA-Bay area route. Using Google Flights and Southwest's website as research tools, it looks like you can get round-trip airfare between LAX and SFO for $145, with about 1.5 hours flight time, with the earliest arrivals coming in at about 7:30 AM. Same goes with San Jose. I can't see rail competing with that.


Then why is it so hard to get a sleeper at short notice between LAUS & Portland? Monday there is one bedroom left, no roomettes. SOMEBODY is taking sleepers, no matter what the opinion of some guests here might be!


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## Paulus (Jan 3, 2015)

portofcall said:


> But it looks like airlines totally own the LA-Bay area route. Using Google Flights and Southwest's website as research tools, it looks like you can get round-trip airfare between LAX and SFO for $145, with about 1.5 hours flight time, with the earliest arrivals coming in at about 7:30 AM. Same goes with San Jose. I can't see rail competing with that.


About 8 million passengers per year, averaging about $145, but also another 8 million driving. Potentially a <10 hour Daylight could get a decent amount of patronage from the driving market to be worthwhile.



William W. said:


> Realistically, only HSR can compete with airlines on that particular route. Even if a dedicated HSR line is built, the distance between LA-SF is 100 miles more than DC-NYC (the most notable case of a train beating out the airlines). That's a 3-3.5 hour trip, vs. 1-1.5 hours of flight time. Unless the HSR can do a consistent 150MPH+ (it would ideally need to be 200MPH+), I don't see any train being able to beat the airlines as has occurred on the NEC (and even then, only mostly between DC and NYC).


It's being built for a travel time of 2:40 (though most trains will likely be about 3 hours) with an average speed just shy of 170mph and a top speed of 220mph. For comparison, it's actually about the same travel times as Acela NYP-WAS for air and train.



tonys96 said:


> Then why is it so hard to get a sleeper at short notice between LAUS & Portland? Monday there is one bedroom left, no roomettes. SOMEBODY is taking sleepers, no matter what the opinion of some guests here might be!


Because people taking it to or from intermediate points blocks it out for you. Let's say someone reserves a roomette from Sacramento to Eugene. It will be unavailable for anyone wanting to go from Los Angeles to Portland and unless they can find someone who wants a roomette no further north than Sacramento (or possibly earlier depending on how quickly they can turn the room), it will have to travel empty to Sacramento.


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## tonys96 (Jan 3, 2015)

Paulus said:


> portofcall said:
> 
> 
> > But it looks like airlines totally own the LA-Bay area route. Using Google Flights and Southwest's website as research tools, it looks like you can get round-trip airfare between LAX and SFO for $145, with about 1.5 hours flight time, with the earliest arrivals coming in at about 7:30 AM. Same goes with San Jose. I can't see rail competing with that.
> ...


So..........SOMEBODY is taking sleepers!

Thank you for validating my comment!


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## neroden (Jan 3, 2015)

domefoamer said:


> "In fact, I don't believe there are any genuinely good routes for sleepers west of Denver."
> 
> Well, neroden, that's a broad statement. I didn't catch what your criteria for judgement are, but I sure hope your outlook isn't widespread.


Perhaps "genuinely good" is a vague and inaccurate phrase. What I meant was *commercially* solid, or financially promising. I agree that there are other reasonable criteria which one can use to judge routes.
I believe that routes west of Denver are going to require operational subsidies for the forseeable future, and that expansion of service would require enlarged subsidies. I think that there's a fairly low ridership demand level for any given ticket prices. It is probably a good idea for governments to support them -- heck, I take them, and I'd miss them if they were gone.

By contrast, I believe that there are a number of routes *east* of Denver where improved & expanded sleeper service would pay for itself over a reasonable number of years. There seems to be a much higher ridership demand level for any given ticket price. There are simply a lot more markets; extend any "corridor" route a little bit and you start finding lots of city pairs which are single-overnight sleeper markets. The vast empty spaces in the west mean that this doesn't happen there; extend a corridor route a few more hours and you're often in the middle of nowhere.

Given the continued difficulty getting government funding, I think expansion of these promising eastern routes should be prioritized over the western routes. Does that make my view clear?

However, *historically*, Amtrak has repeatedly slashed promising eastern routes while retaining expensive-to-operate western routes. The losses of the Silver Palm, Three Rivers, Toledo-Detroit train, and daily Cardinal service come to mind immediately, and the eastern end of the Sunset Limited may qualify as well; while the elimination of upstate NY - Chicago service on A-Day is the most extreme example of this sort of dumb mentality. I'm worried that this sort of poor decision will happen again.



> Without sleepers, almost no route west of Denver would be bearable. I certainly wouldn't have convinced my family to take the CZ to Calfornia and connect with the CS northbound to Vancouver last Spring if I couldn't offer them cozy sleepers to rest the night away in peace. Western intercity routes are so long that few of them can be done within waking hours. And offering enough sleepers at a reasonable fare seems much less costly than rebuilding trains and tracks to HSR standards, doesn't it?


Well, no, that's the thing, I don't think it is "much less costly". I guess it depends what you mean by "HSR standards"; sure, 220 mph is extremely expensive (justified for SF-LA due to the nature of that route, though). Rebuilding and maintaining tracks for 90 mph or 110 mph, however, looks like it costs a lot, but there is a resulting boost in ridership, boost in revenues, and reduction in operating costs (the employees are working fewer hours per train-mile), which ends up paying for it, if you've prioritized correctly. (Examples of "not prioritizing correctly" include Illinois, which has 110 mph running in the middle of the Chicago-St. Louis line, but with tortuously slow running on either end.)



> If I lived in the East, amid dozens of destination cities located five to ten hours away, maybe I too would be calling for speed and more of it. But out here, the lay of the land leads to a different conclusion, pardner.


It is very different in the east and in the west. We agree on that!



Paulus said:


> the East coast gets the marginal results it does from having a sufficiently large population base and consistently dense urbanization that you can find sufficient outliers.


This is pretty much my point, though I think there are so many that, statistically, they can't be called outliers any more. (My mom taught statistics. Outlier is a technical term.) "A sufficiently large minority group". (Or, to use the statistical term, "a sufficiently large cluster".)
The point was also made that a few city pairs lie in the sweet spot for sleepers so that they could appeal to time-sensitive people (if the trains run on time). However, this is largely a lucky accident. In the East, there are so many sizeable cities that you bump into a few of these city pairs when designing a route. In the West, it's almost impossible to design a route to have even *one* such city pair. This is a very similar phenomenon: "a sufficiently large minority".



portofcall said:


> Obviously there will always be a certain segment of the population willing to take sleeper trains. However, most of the population isn't comprised of railfans, and trying to convince them to take a sleeper which is slower than a plane, and smaller than a hotel room, (yet hardly cheaper usually) is a very tall order.
> 
> I'm sure there are city pairs where it could work. For example, take the Coast Starlight....


My entire point which I keep banging on about repeatedly is that it's relatively easy to find these city pairs in the east, and very hard to find them in the west. So please don't take the Coast Starlight as an example; for an example, please take the Lake Shore Limited, the Crescent, the Silver Star, or even the Cardinal! 



portofcall said:


> I think it's important to differentiate the sleeper trains between the ones where scenery, service, and food are the big selling point, and the ones where time and location are the big selling points. On the "land cruise" (food, scenery and service) routes, you probably have a significant market segment who's more interested in the train ride itself, so maybe re-market the service as just that: a tourism line and such.


And on this note, you read people raving about the scenery on all four of the transcons, and the Coast Starlight, and sometimes the Cardinal. You don't hear much about the scenery on the Lake Shore Limited; sometimes about the Hudson River, but I think I'm the only one who likes the scenery in Gary, Indiana.  And you almost never hear people talking about the scenery on Silver Service, Crescent, CONO, Texas Eagle, Auto Train (which runs almost entirely at night), or the Capitol Limited (ditto).
It's probably not a coincidence that the trains with big "scenery" business are more seasonal than the ones without it. It's *certainly* not a coincidence that they do worse financially.


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## neroden (Jan 3, 2015)

Anderson said:


> Three things:
> 
> (1) The overhead mess is...well, a mess. $1.5bn being assigned to overhead includes some things that should probably be broken out further and some things which are unavoidable. For example, is Sunnyside included in overhead? What about NEC maintenance? There's a probable misallocation discussed in the past (you can probably allocate some costs pretty clearly and fairly, but you can't necessarily split it all up) and it is quite plausible that LD trains are being unfairly saddled with a bunch of costs off of the NEC even though some of those trains don't come within 500 miles of it.


The single largest item I've noted in the overhead which I think shouldn't be allocated is "IT" (information technology, aka computing) costs. This is a huge amount of money. I do not believe for one moment that Amtrak's allocation makes any sense.
Almost all of the computer stuff is essentially centralized; there is probably no really sound way to allocate it among business lines.


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## neroden (Jan 3, 2015)

Domefoamer said:


> So what's the current vacancy-vs.-take rate for Amtrak sleepers? Someone must know that statistic. On the two overnight trains I rode last year, I saw no obvious vacancies.


Only Amtrak knows for sure. Some things we *do* know:
It varies a *lot* by train and by season. In June, everything is full. In February... not.

I've taken a lot of February trips for various reasons. The Lake Shore Limited sleepers are *still* full or nearly full, pretty consistently. The CZ, EB, SWC, CS were not; they were half-empty. (This was when Amtrak ran the same number of cars all year round. Amtrak is now adjusting train length in the winter, which makes sense.)

Paulus is correct that a lot of people book roomettes for single occupancy. This seems to be a deliberate choice by the not-price-sensitive. From a financial point of view, this is great for Amtrak -- they pay the same amount as double occupancy, but eat fewer meals.


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## neroden (Jan 3, 2015)

William W. said:


> the concept of modern business travel by sleeper in the US has never been tried, and it would be difficult to convince businesses to use a train over flying in such situations.


From what I've read, it is indeed pretty hard to convince businesses to let *employees* use trains even in coach. Small business *owners* are another matter; they can choose to travel however they like, and I've met quite a few on trains, often preferentially taking sleepers. Sadly, big business is bigger than small business these days.


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## MrFSS (Jan 3, 2015)

neroden said:


> William W. said:
> 
> 
> > the concept of modern business travel by sleeper in the US has never been tried, and it would be difficult to convince businesses to use a train over flying in such situations.
> ...


In the last 20 years of my working days I would have loved to take the train. I drove and flew for several major reasons.

There weren't any trains where I went (sometimes three times a week between Columbus Cleveland and Cincinnati). Driving was the only way I could go. Add to that if there had been a train between those cities I had to be in many different small towns surrounding those cities and have to have a car anyway.

When my travels took me longer distances (the last year before I retired I traveled from Lexington KY to Texas five weeks out of six).

Had to fly - no trains. And, the sad part to all this was I was in a business and situation where I could have taken the train if it was available. In all my 40+ years of working I only ever took the train once. We were in Philadelphia and needed to go to Baltimore. Took the train and it was great.

Railroads in America, save the East Coast simply isn't set up to take the train for business.


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## Lawdude (Jan 3, 2015)

neroden said:


> jis said:
> 
> 
> > And IMHO focusing on where Sleepers may prove to be attractive rather than a general philosophical discussion about funding LD trains may be in order too.
> ...


One thing



Paulus said:


> portofcall said:
> 
> 
> > I'm sure there are city pairs where it could work. For example, take the Coast Starlight, but change the LA departure to something like 8 PM...include a pickup stop in the northern LA suburbs (Burbank?) and then run the train until it hits the Bay Area about 11 hours later. The current 10 AM depature from LA is never going to beat the airlines for many travelers. But if you structure a mid-evening departure from LA and give arrivals in the Bay Area starting the next morning (about 6 AM for San Jose, and 7-8 AM for Oakland/Emeryville). Offer breakfast on the train beginning with the people getting off at San Jose, and then move to give it to the Oakland/Emeryville passengers so that there's no wasted time when they get off the train. That's how CityNightLine in Germany ran the Munich to Venice route (limited stops on both ends, simple breakfast provided in the compartments).
> ...


Remember that when the Daylight was in its heyday, both flying and driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco were far more difficult and less popular than they are now, making a day train more attractive than it is now.

In terms of flying:

PSA and United and Western obviously existed, but the flights weren't nearly as frequent, and they took half an hour longer than they do now in piston-driven aircraft. Further, there were far more people who were afraid to fly back then (and I mean by my strict definition-- you are only AFRAID to fly for purposes of train competition if you are actually so irrationally freaked out by being up in the air that you will take a train at substantial inconvenience to avoid it-- far more people were like that 60 years ago than now). And finally, most importantly, flying was a lot more expensive. I have tickets of PSA flights my parents, who had some money, took in the 1950's. They were paying $115 roundtrip to fly to San Francisco. That's over a thousand bucks adjusted for inflation.

In terms of driving:

Interstate 5 wasn't completed until the early 1970's, and Highways 99 and 101 were not completed to expressway standards all the way between US and the Bay Area until the 1980's. Even now some parts of both roads are not constructed as freeways. So if you drove, you were going to drive through towns, with stoplights and all the related inconveniences. The last stoplight on Highway 99 (in Livingston, CA) and the last stoplights on 101 (in Santa Barbara, CA) came down after 1990.

So there was probably a pretty big market for daytime travelers in the 1940's and 1950's on the Daylight. Meanwhile, there was probably somewhat less business travel between LA and San Francisco because the market grew, and the Lark's fare was higher.

Bear in mind, despite all of that, both trains bled money in the 1960's and sent Southern Pacific reeling towards insolvency, with the Daylight being stripped down to a couple of coaches and an automat and the Lark being eliminated from service. And this is why I say people on the Internet, no matter how smart they say they are at reading financial statements, are almost certainly wrong, and Amtrak is almost certainly right, that there is no big shadowy black helicopter conspiracy to misallocate overhead costs. Southern Pacific's accountants presumably had every incentive to properly allocate their costs, and THEIR SLEEPERS AND DINERS (which are related to sleepers), lost a ton of money, much more than their coach service did.

Finally, I don't think sleeper travel is "dead". It's obviously alive. It just loses a ton of money and wouldn't exist without a big government subsidy (bigger per passenger than coach would require), because of its huge costs and a customer base with fixed incomes (read: mostly old railfans).

The question is whether there's some market besides old railfans who will take a sleeper and will actually pay the FULL cost of the service, including the grossly increased per passenger labor costs and the logisitical costs of the diner supply chain. And I think there probably is-- but only on routes where you can get the sleepers to run to the hours of business travelers, who can pay a lot more for tickets than fixed income railfans can.


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## Lawdude (Jan 3, 2015)

neroden said:


> domefoamer said:
> 
> 
> > "In fact, I don't believe there are any genuinely good routes for sleepers west of Denver."
> ...


By the way, I have no regional bias. If sleeper service makes more sense for eastern trains, I'd love to see Amtrak drop the sleepers and diners from Western trains where they are hugely subsidized (leaving the coach and cafe cars to create a sort of essential air service) and move them to any train where they lose less money. I certainly do agree that by any measurement of Amtrak's finances, the 2 day trains out west lose more than the 1 day trains back east do.

But I do suspect that the reality is that even on the east, you need the train to leave late enough at night and get in early enough in the morning for enough business travelers to come in and pay the high fares necessary to support the sleeper. And that's going to mean that while you may get people to ride the sleepers, you won't be able to charge enough to cover the costs.

And one last thing. Philosophically, I think there's nothing wrong with even massive subsidies on Amtrak for low income travelers who want basic service; Amtrak's subsidy is actually very small, and there would be nothing wrong with increasing it 5 or 10 or 20-fold. But I do have a problem with even one cent of explicit subsidy to sleeping car passengers (i.e., something that goes beyond them getting the benefit of a subsidy that goes to everyone, such as track maintenance). And that has nothing to do with the roads, or the airlines, or any of the arguments that always get brought up on Internet fora. Sleeping car passengers are receiving more than a basic, essential service. They are paying for something they find fun. And I'm all in favor of fun, but I don't think that the compelling case to provide a subsidy so people can travel out of small towns should be used to then redirect money to some person who just wants to pursue a hobby of riding 2 days in a sleeping car and getting free steak dinners. In other words, in an ideal world, every cent of operational subsidy to Amtrak would go to providing as much coach train service as possible to as many places as possible on as reliable a schedule as possible. And then if you can get people to pay for sleeping car service at full cost plus a profit, you do so; if you don't, you don't.


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## neroden (Jan 3, 2015)

Lawdude said:


> By the way, I have no regional bias. If sleeper service makes more sense for eastern trains, I'd love to see Amtrak drop the sleepers and diners from Western trains where they are hugely subsidized (leaving the coach and cafe cars to create a sort of essential air service) and move them to any train where they lose less money.


Physically, it's unfortunately impossible to move Superliner sleepers or diners onto the routes into New York, thanks to tunnel clearances.
Others have suggested reallocating Superliner sleepers from western trains to the Auto Train -- which would almost certainly be good for Amtrak's bottom line. Or to the Texas Eagle, which has had very good ridership growth and might be quite promising if it can be made slightly less sluggish. Or to the City of New Orleans or Capitol Limited, but the situation on those trains is much less promising; among the eastern trains, those are the ones where ridership and revenue increases are slowest.



> I certainly do agree that by any measurement of Amtrak's finances, the 2 day trains out west lose more than the 1 day trains back east do.


Glad we agree on that. When I dig through the finances of the 1-day trains in the east, they seem to do comparably well to the coaches, probably better in some cases.

When I dig through the 1-day trains in the east in general, they do OK. They aren't the profit-gushers which the NEC and Lynchburg trains are. But they're comparable financially and in ridership to a bunch of the state-supported services which everyone seems to agree are worthwhile. I cannot get clear numbers with overhead removed for those state-supported trains, and it's even less clear now that they are state-supported.

*With* overhead applied, for 2013 when the Empire Service was federally-funded, the LSL had a lower subsidy per passenger-mile than the NY-Albany Empire Service. And this is the reality: it's the short hauls which require the huge subsidies.

This has *always* been the reality. When the private railroads were discontinuing services at the ICC back in the 1950s, 1960s, and even 1970s (for Southern) they consistently tried to ax the short-haul trips first.



> But I do suspect that the reality is that even on the east, you need the train to leave late enough at night and get in early enough in the morning for enough business travelers to come in and pay the high fares necessary to support the sleeper. And that's going to mean that while you may get people to ride the sleepers, you won't be able to charge enough to cover the costs.


That's what you think, but do you have evidence for it?
I believe that, along with the small number of business travellers, there are enough well-to-do leisure travellers (not cruise-takers, but travelling to visit family etc.) to more-than-cover the incremental costs of sleepers in the east. And I have evidence for that. And Amtrak's decision to order new eastern sleeper cars *out of their own budget* indicates that Amtrak's management may agree with me on this.

There's something very different going on in the west. For several years, when I looked, the roomette price from LA to Chicago was typically less than the price from Chicago to *Syracuse NY*. This has corrected itself somewhat, and now LA to Chicago is about twice Chicago to Syracuse -- but still! The LA - Chicago trip is 43 hours, versus 13 hours from Syracuse to Chicago!

This means, if you do the math, that the roomette price per hour is over 1.7 times higher (70% higher) in the east than in the west! This is an *enormous* difference in revenue! Amtrak's costs are related mostly to the number of hours.



> And then if you can get people to pay for sleeping car service at full cost plus a profit, you do so; if you don't, you don't.


I assert that at least some of the eastern sleeping car services are charging full cost plus a profit, and that most of them will be able to do so in a few years. The same is not true of the western services.
I've assembled evidence to prove this, but you didn't want to look at it. So just look at one thing: the fares per hour of travel are *70% higher* in the east... this is a massive, massive difference. The employee pay rates are the same!

---

Oh, one last thing.



> Amtrak is almost certainly right, that there is no big shadowy black helicopter conspiracy to misallocate overhead costs.


You're missing my point. It's not that they're "misallocated" from one business line to another. It's that *they shouldn't be allocated at all*. Proper accounting procedure does not "allocate" the cost of Boardman's salary or the central reservations system to individual business lines: they're single, centralized, fixed overhead costs. Allocating them to one group of trains or another, in any way, is simply misleading -- they have to exist if Amtrak runs even one train of any sort.
Unfortunately, Congress has ordered Amtrak to allocate these costs to individual trains, which is stupid and crazy, but there you go, that's Congress for you.

Amtrak's management knows perfectly well that this is stupid and crazy, and that the allocation of centralized fixed costs to individual routes is misleading. That's why Boardman intermittently comes out with presentations like the bar graph which showed the *actual* performance of the so-called "long-distance" trains on a *direct-costs* basis. But Congress has issued bizarre requirements for how to report costs, and Amtrak is stuck with them.


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## portofcall (Jan 3, 2015)

It sounds like Eastern revenues subsidize Western operations, presumably at the expense of capital improvements that could take place in the east.

Why not split Amtrak into Eastern and Western divisions? If everything which is said here is true, the Eastern division could be financially strong, and if able to float bonds, would get better rates without the deadweight of western routes.

And then the Western routes could be restructured to best serve Western needs. Maybe keep the current and forthcoming corridor routes and sell the EB, CZ, SWC brands to private operators who could provide luxury service at luxury prices. From all the trip reports on here, it seems like many people use them as resort trains anyway, so why not sell the brands to companies who would be willing capture resort-like revenues?

If limited to corriodor, NEC, and one-day overnights, perhaps Amtrak's overall OTP would improve (through subtraction) and you'd get fewer "never-again" passengers. Amtrak needs to worry about its brand...my understanding is that in most of the country (outside of here in the northeast), it's a pretty spotty brand due to the price+delay issues. This country can survive with multiple intercity train operators.


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## Ryan (Jan 3, 2015)

portofcall said:


> sell the EB, CZ, SWC brands to private operators who could provide luxury service at luxury prices. From all the trip reports on here, it seems like many people use them as resort trains anyway, so why not sell the brands to companies who would be willing capture resort-like revenues?


There's nothing stopping someone from doing that now. The fact that it's been tried and failed in the past indicates that it isn't a suggestion grounded in reality.


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## neroden (Jan 3, 2015)

portofcall said:


> If limited to corriodor, NEC, and one-day overnights, perhaps Amtrak's overall OTP would improve (through subtraction) and you'd get fewer "never-again" passengers.


Unfortunately not. Many of Amtrak's most serious and damaging OTP problems have been on corridor and one-day overnight routes. That just plain needs to be fixed.

Remember the NS meltdown a couple of months ago? Trashed the OTP of two single-overnight trains and all the Michigan corridor trains? CP also seems to be unable or unwilling to dispatch the Adirondack on time.

I have been advocating government purchase of the tracks, or construction of parallel tracks, in these areas. Particularly heading east out of Chicago, where all the Michigan services, the LSL, and the CL are affected; and where passenger-exclusive tracks could also help the Hoosier State and Cardinal.

I have also advocated for trying to improve the boarding procedures on the Empire Service in order to get it to run on time.


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## StriderGDM (Jan 3, 2015)

neroden said:


> William W. said:
> 
> 
> > the concept of modern business travel by sleeper in the US has never been tried, and it would be difficult to convince businesses to use a train over flying in such situations.
> ...


There's truth to this. Fortunately I worked for businesses that were open to my... preferences.

I took the train from Albany to Toledo more than once, picked up my rental car and drove up to Ann Arbor. Our HR person thought I was nuts but as the cost was about the same as flying, he couldn't complain. And I pointed out I could get up at 4:00 AM to fly out and be in the office by 9 or so, or get on the train the night before, have a relaxing dinner, get up early (I think the first trip the scheduled time was about 4, after that about 5) and get my rental car and be in the office by 8.

A sleeper was a huge win there for me.


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## JoeBas (Jan 4, 2015)

portofcall said:


> I don't think that tunnels, bridges, and traffic jams are really that big of an issue out west.


The 3 hours I spent yesterday sitting on I-17 due to a wreck in the canyon say hi...


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## jis (Jan 4, 2015)

Yeah, I guess it is easy to say traffic is not a problem either having never been on I5 in LA , or even Seattle for that matter, or having a completely different semantics attached to the notion of "traffic jams" than one used by normal human beings.


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## Anderson (Jan 5, 2015)

Part of the issue is the equipment situation, something that has been a persistent problem for Amtrak for a long time. In the 1970s, Amtrak could, and did, put extra equipment on the Silvers and added a train (the Vacationer one year; I think it wore a few different names) as well. I rather suspect that the equipment for this came from the Western trains, which (domes notwithstanding) had equipment you could run into Penn Station. There are some options which you could use in theory (a seasonal Capitol Star, for example, combined with the Palmetto being extended, or sliding some extra equipment over to the Auto Train).

One thing to consider is that sleeper ridership on the Florida trains is largely flat throughout the year (monthly variability seems to largely center around disruptions of various sorts, though the Silver Star gets a sharp boost in November/December when it gets an additional sleeper added at the holidays). I think there is a good case to be made that demand is not being met (the $600 I paid one way this weekend for the only sleeper to open up on that train in close to three weeks says hi), so in a situation where you had generally compatible equipment what you would do is run your full system in summer and then add a share of the drawn-down equipment to the Florida service in the winter.

A lot of the cuts to the eastern trains likely trace back to the bad mix of Superliners and Heritage cars being pulled from service (as well as the general lack of equipment). The Three Rivers and Silver Palm both got dropped at the same time the Heritage sleepers were getting pulled (the Three Rivers had the last Heritage sleeper IIRC), and the reason was likely not unconnected to the lack of equipment. Remember that when the Cardinal got into a crash it had to be changed from Superliner to Viewliner because of a lack of spares, and that in turn killed the sleeper on 66/67.

The new Viewliner order should help with this to some extent, but the equipment situation in general remains quite problematic in many respects. I've had this argument with folks before, but I do believe that the Superliners represent an error on Amtrak's part because of what they've done in terms of restricting the fleet. More properly, the Superliner IIs were probably the error; notwithstanding re-equipping the Auto Train, it would likely have been better for Amtrak to get more Viewliners than Superliners at the time for flexibility reasons. There's some other tinkering that could be done, but in general there does seem to be a problem with sub-optimal fleet utilization in the winter months at present...and that's down to the split in the fleet.

By the way, I think the A-Day cut situation was a side-effect of what still existed there at the time combined with Amtrak's operating mandate at the time. New York was also blowing hot and cold on funding the route (Amtrak got them the LSL in exchange for funding...and then Rockefeller didn't manage to round up the funding so the route got cut back). Mismanagement issues aside, at A-Day Amtrak cut back to their required system (more or less) and then built back from there.

---------------

Just to address the short-haul cuts coming first, what seems to have happened is that locals would be cut...and some of their stops added to the long haul train(s) on the route. Take a look at Southern's timetable from 1973 or so and count up the stops no longer served by the Crescent today that either the Southern Crescent or the Piedmont Limited served. Likewise, cutting a local would simply tick off less people (and similarly, you'd see services rolled back over one part of a line for much the same reason).

---------------

Looking over at the Daylight situation, I think there are three reasons the slower schedule is happening:
(1) Bad track. I suspect you'd have to do a lot of fixing of tracks on the Coast Line to get close to the old Daylight schedule. There's a ton of bad track around Salinas, if I'm not mistaken.

(2) Added stops. The 9:45 Coast Daylight of the 1930s only had five intermediate stops (Glendale, SBA, SLO, Salinas, and SJC) and even by 1971 only two more had been added (Amtrak adds two more on top of this south of SJC). If I'm not mistaken, the Coast Daylight is supposed to have a more Surfliner-like stopping pattern; at least one sample timetable I found has 19 intermediate stops...this alone probably adds somewhere between :30 and 1:00 to the runtime from the 1930s.

(3) UP. Even setting (1) and (2) aside, UP poking around is likely to blame for at least some of the slowness (either directly, due to speed limits and freight meets, or indirectly in wanting lots of money for upgrades to authorize improvements).

I suspect that the problem is mostly down to (1) and (2), with (1) and (3) being occasionally hard to distinguish.


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## Anderson (Jan 5, 2015)

Let's run an exercise (and pardon any sarcasm here; I couldn't resist):

Assume that the Budd Fairy came to Amtrak and said that they'd been a good intercity railroad, and that if Amtrak left its retired Heritage cars under its pillow then the Budd Fairy would replace them with brand new sleepers!

So, Amtrak wakes up in the morning with another 75 single-level sleeping cars...what should Amtrak do with them?


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## neroden (Jan 5, 2015)

Anderson said:


> Let's run an exercise (and pardon any sarcasm here; I couldn't resist):
> 
> Assume that the Budd Fairy came to Amtrak and said that they'd been a good intercity railroad, and that if Amtrak left its retired Heritage cars under its pillow then the Budd Fairy would replace them with brand new sleepers!
> 
> So, Amtrak wakes up in the morning with another 75 single-level sleeping cars...what should Amtrak do with them?


In answer to Andersons's Budd Fairy question. In priority order.

(1) Daily Cardinal (needs more coaches too)

(2) Added sleepers on every existing single-level sleeper train

(3) Broadway Limited / 3 Rivers (needs more coaches too)

(4) BOS-WAS sleeper on 66/67 (to Newport News or perhaps Norfolk)

(5) Palmetto -> Silver Palm (needs more coaches too)

(6) Split the LSL into two trains (it's getting too long for the platforms); maybe separate Boston and NY trains, maybe not; needs more coaches too. This should wait until we see whether enough traffic is diverted to the Broadway Ltd. and Cardinal to shorten the LSL. But if not, if it instead keeps growing, then it needs to become two trains.

(7) Single-level Capitol Limited (so as to dispatch the Superliners to other trains); needs more coaches too

The above do not require station or track improvements or revival of "freight only" track for passengers. The below do.

(8) Service down the Florida East Coast on one of the Florida-NY trains

(9) Toledo-Detroit-Ann Arbor-Chicago service via one of the Chicago-east coast trains

(10) Service via Columbus, Ohio, via one of the Chicago-east coast trains

(11) Service via Fort Wayne, Indiana, via one of the Chicago-east coast trains

This is arguably a modest list. It focuses on beefing up services on a limited collection of corridors which are mostly already served. And it reserves Viewliners for services which *must* be single-level, with the exception of the Capitol Limited.


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## StriderGDM (Jan 5, 2015)

About 8 years ago I suggested a split LSL, calling the NYC-CHI the 21st Century Limited (but not nearly as posh as its previous version) and run it a bit earlier than a BOS-CHI train (still called the Lake Shore Limited).

Both would make stops at Albany, Buffalo, Toledo and other major cities, but then would alternate some of the smaller cities in between.

This would give a bit more service to existing cities along the wy, and give more options for folks going to/from Chicago.


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## WoodyinNYC (Jan 5, 2015)

StriderGDM said:


> About 8 years ago I suggested a split LSL, calling the NYC-CHI the 21st Century Limited (but not nearly as posh as its previous version) and run it a bit earlier than a BOS-CHI train (still called the Lake Shore Limited).
> 
> Both would make stops at Albany, Buffalo, Toledo and other major cities, but then would alternate some of the smaller cities in between.
> 
> This would give a bit more service to existing cities along the wy, and give more options for folks going to/from Chicago.


You'd probably like this study:

http://midwesthsr.org/lakeshore

The Midwest High Speed Rail organization has proposed

a Lakeshore Corridor, basically stretching the_ Empire _trains

west from Buffalo to Chicago. The plan would provide four

trains a day (minimum) for the length of the route. The

emphasis is NOT on end-to-end service, but rather shorter

trips between the many overlapping city pairs along this route.

Nothing is cheap, of course, but this plan seems to offer

a lot of bang for the buck. It is NOT high speed rail; like

the Midwestern Corridors, it's proposed to be high(er)

speed rail, up to 90 mph, or with luck, up to 110 mph

over some stretches.

Before you make reservations, a few things need to happen.

"South of the Lake" is a package of improvements from Chicago

to where the Michigan trains now diverge from the East Coast 

trains. For $1.5 to $2 Billion, the South of the Lake project alone

will cut 50 minutes from the schedules of the trains using this 

currently hugely congested segment. 

Then upgrades on the track the rest of the way to Toledo and 

Cleveland will allow heavy corridor service there. Wildguessing

from the costs of St Louis-Chicago, about $1 Billion will make

a good start, another $1 or $2 Billion should finish the job. And,

when the skies fill with pigs, a Cleveland-Toledo-Chicago

corridor would cut another hour or two out of the timetables

of the _Lake Shore Ltd_ and the _Capital Ltd_ (as well as any

_Broadway Ltd_ or _21st Century Ltd_ or whatever).

On the Empire Corridor, planning work suggests that for a mere

$6 or $7 Billion iirc we could see two hours cut from the NYC-

Buffalo schedule. (This project, like the Cleveland Corridor,

will go forward, or not, with no attention at all paid to Amtrak's 

interest here.)
In the meantime, using the slots of the two NYC-Buffalo-

Niagara Falls _Empire Service_ trains to extend service to 

Cleveland and Chicago could at least head off some of 

the squealing sure to come from CSX.

To keep on topic, the plan envisions using lots of sleepers,

and marketing them to business users during daytime hours.


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## neroden (Jan 5, 2015)

StriderGDM said:


> About 8 years ago I suggested a split LSL, calling the NYC-CHI the 21st Century Limited (but not nearly as posh as its previous version) and run it a bit earlier than a BOS-CHI train (still called the Lake Shore Limited).
> 
> Both would make stops at Albany, Buffalo, Toledo and other major cities, but then would alternate some of the smaller cities in between.


There's no suitable "alternation" to do, I'm afraid. The really small cities on this route don't have stations at all. And the LSL is already a "Limited" in reality -- it skips Amsterdam NY and Rome NY.

On any train on this route, you *must* stop at Albany, Schenectady, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Elkhart, South Bend, and Chicago. You really ought to stop in Utica, Erie, Sandusky, and Elkhart as well. Waterloo is the station for Fort Wayne. Elyria is the west-suburban Cleveland station.

I guess you could skip Bryan. The Capitol Limited skips Bryan. But that's it really.

Apart from Bryan, the stops tend to be a bit over an hour apart from each other on the current schedule; it's good spacing, so that anyone along the route is within 1-2 hours drive of a station. With more frequency, every one of these stations would see increased ridership; none of them should be skipped by any trains.


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## Anderson (Jan 6, 2015)

I have to wonder both ways on station stops: On the one hand, are there some stops which might be skippable on one or two trains due to absolutely atrocious hours on those trains (particularly east of Buffalo, where you'd have at least one additional train [the Maple Leaf], and probably more, to work with)...and on the other hand whether there might not be some places where you could swap stations around.

Elyria is probably skippable for whatever train happens to be hitting it at the clumsiest times, and some of the others could probably be dropped for similar reasons. On the other hand, you could probably "make up for" this sort of thing by (assuming local support on at least an experimental basis) adding a few stops in midsized towns to one or two trains (possibly, east of Buffalo, combined with some trains stopping there that are NY-only). Hitting every city with 4-6 trains along the Empire Corridor doesn't mean they all need the _same_ 4-6 trains if you have 8+ there, and I believe that New York does want additional trains along there.


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## Bus Nut (Jan 6, 2015)

Can't help bus chime in on this "fantasy" list. I do believe in fairies, I do!



neroden said:


> Anderson said:
> 
> 
> > Let's run an exercise (and pardon any sarcasm here; I couldn't resist):
> ...


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## Anderson (Jan 6, 2015)

Ok, going down the list with respect to AAF/FEC:
-There was a plan, I believe prior to the HSR money being given to FL, to add Amtrak service on FEC's tracks (shall we just call it the F-line to keep the terms steady here?).

-FEC did, I believe, say that Amtrak and AAF were not mutually exclusive.

-FEC operation did go into the PIP for the Silvers, but there was an insurance/liability issue mucking things up. I _think_ Florida was able to fix that issue. However, equipment remains at issue, not to mention the complete lack of existing passenger stations along the line. What buildings might still be present haven't been used for the purpose in close to 50 years, so I rather doubt they're going to be ADA-compliant.

I'm not sure what went haywire here. It is possible that the Orlampa bullet train thing made a total hash of the plans given what happened there, but I don't know if it was a case of Orlampa distracting the state or Scott's canning of it getting in the way or what.

With respect to possible service on the line, the biggest issue is the station issue. AAF is sticking in a bunch of stations...there are three confirmed and I know they've said they want to add more but don't want to do anything until they get through their current process since tinkering with anything could screw up/void their existing environmental reports. In their negotiations with Tri-Rail they indicated that they want to have up to six stations in the WPB-MIA area, and if they go more frequently than hourly it is quite possible that you could get some interesting local/express mixes.

North of WPB, they've also indicated a desire to add a stop or two (if only to shut up the complainers in the area)...Jupiter, Vero, Port St. Lucie, Palm Bay/Melbourne and Cocoa are all possible locations, and I think FEC owns possible station locations in most of the towns along the line. So something there might get taken care of (and taken care of quite quick) once the trains are in service.

However, north of Cocoa there's no clear start of service...and that's where you get into a hangup. There's already a subsidiary that has been set up to run trains to Jacksonville, so it seems likely that FEC will be getting its ducks in a row for service there by the end of the decade (that is to say, they'll be looking to break ground by then, not start service by then). Cocoa-Jacksonville service won't be _that_ hard to set up, but (A) it isn't as lucrative as Orlando-Miami and (B) it'll require a full kabuki dance of environmental paperwork as well...and there's still the setting-up-stations issue.

The way I see it, there are three possibilities:
(1) FEC tries to get Amtrak to pony up for some stations and/or improvements on the JAX-Cocoa line in exchange for access. It probably isn't unreasonable for FEC to hope they could get a free station or two in the deal, or at least some defrayed costs there.

(2) FEC lets Amtrak in after-the-fact, but with some restrictions (no local ticket sales on Amtrak's trains south of Cocoa or WPB, for example).

(3) FEC is willing to run trains on the line...but pushes to handle them "in house" in some fashion (i.e. they use their own operating crews instead of Amtrak's).

I'd note that, assuming schedules like exist now, the Silver Palm/Palmetto would almost assuredly be a non-competition train with FEC's (it would run more or less overnight on the line, and I don't think FEC is likely to be running anything super-late). The Meteor and Star are a more complicated story: The SB Star would probably be the second or third train out of Jacksonville in the morning (FEC would probably run a departure at sometime in the 0500-0600 range, and the Star doesn't leave JAX until 0715) while the NB Star would probably be in a similar position at the end of the day (the arrival in JAX at close to 2300 means there wouldn't be many trains after it). The Meteor would be in the middle of the day both ways.

Some of this also depends on service density, too...if FEC is only running 3-6 trains/day to Jacksonville at the start they might be able to work with Amtrak so that Amtrak's trains (and equipment) basically allow them to leverage starting frequencies by 50-100% (three Amtrak and three FEC trains as a starting point isn't a bad service; if we assume some semblance of timekeeping on Amtrak's part, even if aided by a big pad in Jacksonville SB, then FEC probably just saved themselves 4-6 equipment sets and somewhere in the range of $60-100m in startup costs). If they want to run more, the picture is a bit trickier.

===============

As to Grand Central...there's a reason that Amtrak moved all of the Empire trains to Penn Station. Lousy though NYP may be, you at least have same-station connectivity in New York...which in turn means that you can reliably connect to a train within 30-60 minutes when coming off of the NEC. If you shift a bunch of trains to NYG, you're going to be stuck adding time to allow the station-to-station connection...not to mention ridership being lost from passing-through passengers who don't want to haul their luggage across Midtown.

===============

Finally, a word on Indiana/Ohio: I believe that Ohio will get back on track in a few years. Kasich is term-limited, after all. I'll point out, however, that the idea of serving another line in Indiana doesn't have much to do with Indiana...it has a lot to do with the points on Columbus as well as the fact that, assuming competent scheduling and whatnot, the potential to add another route that Amtrak would be serving with a minimal direct cost deficit. Being able to temporarily re-route trains in those states would be a plus, too.


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## neroden (Jan 7, 2015)

Anderson said:


> Hitting every city with 4-6 trains along the Empire Corridor doesn't mean they all need the _same_ 4-6 trains if you have 8+ there,


Well, sure, but if you only have 4 trains heading west to Chicago, then all 4 of the trains *to the west* should stop at all the major upstate NY cities.
Some of the other 4+ trains only heading to New York City could skip some of the intermediate points. 

There's really a lot of traffic between upstate NY and Ohio/Indiana/Michigan/Illinois. This is a case where more departures per day would boost ridership by giving people options.



Bus Nut said:


> Can't help bus chime in on this "fantasy" list. I do believe in fairies, I do!
> 
> What do you think about the eternal Grand Central debate? Seems like a great station to take a train from, assuming it originates there and wasn't a thru-line. I know there is a clearance issue. Would single-levels allow more trains to start there?


Grand Central's closer to my favored hotel, so there's that. But frankly I don't care much either way; GCT is more convenient for terminating in NY, Penn is more convenient for making connections.
The *ideal* thing to do is to run tracks from Grand Central through Penn (known as "Alternative G" from an old study), which would solve an awful lot of problems and be like the Berlin Hauptbahnhof or London Crossrail or the RER. But this isn't Germany or even California, so we don't get grand rail projects. :sigh:


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