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It would be hard to get a reliable comparison because of COVID and the COVID service disruptions.

As long as Amtrak is taxpayer-supported, efficiency and affordability have to be the priority. Once these criteria are satisfied, however, there is nothing to prevent Amtrak to offer higher-end service (i.e. sleeping cars) on these same trains, as long as the high-end service produces produces...

I remember when Amtrak put the railroad names on the timetables. Over the past couple of years, Amtrak has tried a different approach to publicly shame the railroads, issuing quarterly "report cards" on each host railroad's performance. Norfolk Southern routinely got an F. This public shaming is...

My recollection is that they said 90 days during the RPA webinar, but I could be wrong. At any rate, I think it's premature to say neither side is interested in changing it back. I got the impression that they were still trying to see if they could make the new schedule work.

If, as you suggest, Norfolk Southern is deliberately flouting the schedule, then it could also flout the schedule between Atlanta and New York.

My understanding is that STB ordered Amtrak to negotiate schedules with all of its host railroads as a prelude to new metrics designed to enforce on-time requirements. But in response to my question at a recent RPA video forum, an Amtrak official said the old schedules can be put back in place...

Yes, if you went back to the traditional schedule, the train would still probably be late, but it would be late at a more manageable time in Atlanta. For instance, a three-hour-late Crescent would come into Atlanta at 11 pm instead of 2 am. Not ideal, of course, but if you start cutting...

I would suggest putting the Crescent back on its traditional schedule between New York and New Orleans but extending the Crescent with an overnight segment between New Orleans and Houston, and turning the Sunset into a Houston-Los Angeles train. This would allow a same-day connection between the...

it's not always that easy to improve load factors. If you have a train running between A,B,C,D and E and one rider is occupying a seat between A and C, you can't resell that seat to a passenger riding from B to E. You could resell that seat if there's a passenger who wants to ride from C to E or...

Can anybody point us to any published figures that would support this?

Good goal where that can be done. Of course, sometimes that timing can't be maintain, and sometimes, when you're talking about a route that operates through several large markets, good timing for one pair of cities results in bad timing for another pair of large cities long the same route.

None of us like the fact that passenger trains lose money, but simply closing our eyes and declaring that the losses are "fake" won't get us anywhere. What we need to do is build the case that trains are needed even though they require subsidies, and that service increases can actually reduce...

Marginal profits aren't the same thing as actual profits. While "avoidable costs" accounting can be used to argue that expanding service can in some cases reduce losses, fixed costs have to be deducted from revenues at some point in the accounting process.

I think "avoidable cost" accounting can be used as a guide to reducing some of the losses attributed to long-distance trains, but I'm not sure whether it can be used to argue that long-distance trains are actually profitable. The fixed costs of the overall system have to be deducted from...

There are two major problems that would take legislation to correct: 1) freight railroads have no obligation to work with non-Amtrak operators, and 2) there is no mechanism to provide a federal government subsidy to non-Amtrak operators.

The Crescent parks there all day when it doesn't go on to New Orleans; for instance, when there's a hurricane warning or doing those multiple days each winter when Norfolk Southern is doing track work south of Atlanta.

There is a siding on the south side of the tracks at the Atlanta station that is used whenever weather conditions or trackwork force Amtrak to truncate the Crescent between Atlanta and New Orleans. Until the end of the Slumbercoach era, Amtrak used a Norfolk Southern switcher to add or subtract...

The problem is that NS has not been able to stick to the revised schedule, either, meaning that instead of a two-hour late Crescent leaving Atlanta at 10 p.m. rather the scheduled 8 p.m., a two-hour late Crescent now leaves Atlanta at 1:30 a.m. rather than the scheduled 11:30 p.m. This means...

As an Atlanta-area resident, I have to agree with virtually all of the comments above. Because of frequent delays, the northbound Crescent effectively calls at it's biggest market outside the Northeast during unmarketable hours.

I suspect the marketability Crescent has been badly hurt by the new northbound schedule, which puts it into Atlanta (it's biggest market outside the NEC) at 11:30 p.m. when it's on time (and it's frequently late).