Judging by the heavy bookings Amtrak is probably going to make a ton of money on the AT next year. I've never seen it so busy but if TSA keeps up the ugly degrading imoral intrusion called security at airports,I predict train travel will explode next year.
I would expect the recent rise in gas prices to above $3/gallon will do more to increase ridership on Amtrak than even the TSA scanners and, ahem, hands-on inspections. People are sensitive to price points, so an increase above the $3 level is going to have an effect. For the AutoTrain, which competes directly with the long drive on I-95 to Florida, higher gas prices are going to be even more significant in increasing ridership than for most of the other trains.
When gas hit $4 in 2008, ridership surged big time at Amtrak and for that matter on all trains & buses. People are definitely driven by price more than any other factor. In fact, that surge coupled with the recession in 2009 is what made it look like for the first time in years ridership on trains had gone down. However, if one compares 2007 to 2009, one can actually see that ridership on trains is still trending up, even if it did so more slowly in 2009 & 2010 because of the recession. It was the abnormal growth in 2008 because of the gas prices that allowed critics to say that ridership went down.
Hope Amtrak can complete getting all 60 sidelined Amfleets and 21 Superliner wreck repairs funded by the stimulus money back into service in the near future because they will need the extra capacity. No chance of getting new equipment purchases into service anytime soon, but at least getting the stored and wrecked cars back into service will help.
As of December 1st, things were moving along rather decently. The worst category was the 20 Amfleet I's that are being converted from food service cars into coaches. Obviously that takes more work than just bringing a car out of mothballs. So far only 5 have been completed. Turning to the rest of the Amfleet I's that were either mothballed or wrecked, 27 out 35 cars have been released.
For the Amfleet II cars, the long distance cars, 4 out of 4 coach wrecks have been returned to service, as has 1 out of 1 food service cars. The later also was converted from its original cafe configuration to the Diner-Lite configuration.
Regarding the Superliners, out of 20 cars wrecked 11 have now been returned to service.
Does the AT vary the number of sleeper and coach cars between the peak and slow seasons? If Amtrak has the extra Autorack cars available, do they add an extra sleeper or coach car for the peak travel periods? If gas stays above $3 gallon, it may be hard to book a trip on the AT, even at higher prices, in the near future.
Amtrak has always varied the AT's consist from peak to off peak, changing the number of coaches, diners, and sleepers to reflect the demand. However the peak consist that they currently run is the maximum that they can run. Even if they had more cars to add to the consist, they cannot add them because they cannot supply enough head end power (HEP) also called hotel power to the cars.
While the engines could supply more power in theory, the cables and electrical circuits cannot handle any more power. They'd melt, or worse, if Amtrak tried to push any more power through the cables.
