Way back in the first of this thread, there were many here saying the "amenities" cuts were no big deal. They would save jobs and/or routes.......fast forward to today where the AT has been decimated and the LD menus are being trimmed and the rumor has it that soon sleeper pax will have to pay for meals in the diner........I wonder if it is still no big deal?
Amtrak explicitly stated the other month in their five year plan that they were looking at having sleeper passengers pay for meals in the diner, as they ought to. Currently their ticket prices are set without consideration of meal expenses.
Then why do they dedicate a portion of sleeper fares to dining car revenues???
It's not actually dedicated, it's just an accounting thing (Acela actually has a dedicated set out which I think cooks the books somewhat). So you're Joe Schmoe sleeper passenger and you go to the diner. The list price of whatever you chose to eat is, eventually, transferred over to F&B as part of internal accounting. But there isn't a dedicated portion of your ticket set aside for it, your ticket price isn't set with the transfer in mind (and could, theoretically, result in negative sleeper revenue) and if you don't eat anything at all, nothing gets credited to F&B.
My understanding is that back in the 1980s, dining cars were on the verge of being gotten rid of due to lack of patronage, so Amtrak decided to give free food to sleeper passengers in order to boost patronage numbers. If anything it increased losses, but the dining cars remained.
One should note, incidentally, that ridership on the San Joaquin hardly seems to have been hurt by the loss of the dining car back in 2002.