Amtrak delivers best operating performance in company history

[jis]

But they can use LD infrastructure. New Orleans being a good example.

Indeed, in an ideal world they would also use freight infrastructure. Just because there is no station in Baton Rouge does not mean passenger rail equipment cannot be used for evacuation.

The usual problem is positioning enough relevant equipment at the correct place at the right time, when the total amount of equipment available is sparsely distributed across the country.

The other problem is that usually most of the evacuation is short distance dispersal to shelters that are geographically widely dispersed, for which rail is not very well suited. Rail is much better for higher volume longer distance moves.

 

[me_little_me]

Ridership increase would say otherwise, and if Amtrak's PR is to be believed, on time performance, prompt delay information and clean trains and bathroom is more important to the vast majority of riders.

On time? Not the LD trains at intermediate stops I've been on.
Clean trains? I see no change but it has never been a noticeable issue to me.
Clean bathrooms? Not on LD trains I've been on (except in sleeper room - but that hasn't changed)

Trains getting better or planes (and car traffic) just getting worse? Just asking.

"if Amtrak's PR is to be believed" says it all.

 

[jis]

Statistically, in any reasonable sample survey done with representation proportional to ridership, the situation on LD trains would almost get drowned out by the other two sectors, which have indeed improved significantly. The ratio of representation for LD would be about 4:25. So the results really reflect mostly corridor service by the very nature of how the ridership and incidentally also ridership increase, is skewed.

The only way to get a clearer picture would be to break out the information by BU. But per se, there is no reason to believe that the information is inherently incorrect for what it conveys. The usual hazards of rolling up things into aggregate numbers.

 

[Anderson]

Indeed, most evacuations whether it be for fire or hurricane are short distance ones, which would normally be considered within the realm of corridor service and not LD.

There have only been two sets of exceptions I've seen to this in recent history. The first was Katrina (where Amtrak sent a couple of cars down to run as an evacuation train to...somewhere...I think). The other set has been "Hurricane threatens South Florida", Irma being the biggest example. In the latter case, Brightline did step in, and I think once they're extended to Orlando/Tampa they'll provide a lot of utility on that front.

 

[jis]

Irma was totally weird. People actually managed to evacuate straight into the final path of it. Still most of the evacuation was relatively local. Average distance of evacuation was something like 35 miles. Of course there were few extreme exceptions. Of course evacuating from Miami to Tampa or Orlando turned out to be not all that useful.

Irma was also weird because I got more messages from people in the northeast who have never experienced anything stronger than Sandy or Gloria urging me to evacuate while local emergency folks were planning to use our houses as fall back evacuation places!

 

[Anderson]

Statistically, in any reasonable sample survey done with representation proportional to ridership, the situation on LD trains would almost get drowned out by the other two sectors, which have indeed improved significantly. The ratio of representation for LD would be about 4:25. So the results really reflect mostly corridor service by the very nature of how the ridership and incidentally also ridership increase, is skewed.

The only way to get a clearer picture would be to break out the information by BU. But per se, there is no reason to believe that the information is inherently incorrect for what it conveys. The usual hazards of rolling up things into aggregate numbers.

I mean, on the LD front I know dirty bathrooms are a perennial issue towards the back end of a trip, and OTP meltdowns have killed various LD trains' numbers over the decades. A year of disastrous OTP can take multiple years to recover from in the worst cases (though to be fair that tends to be "BNSF oil boom meltdown" territory, not a stray derailment or a bad winter for weather). IIRC the Builder has lost about 100k riders/year in two separate instances over the last 30-40 years (one was FY13-15; I think the other, in the early 1990s, times out with both the ATSF/BN merger and the less-than-daily service fiasco).

The Starlight took a similar hit in the mid-2000s and another one in the early 1990s. The Starlight never truly recovered from the hit in the early 1990s (which was a sustained battering from 1990/91 through 1996), though whether some of this loss is obfuscated by the simultaneous extension of the Surfliners to Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo alongside the expansion of service on the Cascades route and the addition of the Talgos is, of course, an open question (as that would have knocked some seat turnover).

But back to the main question: OTP matters, and bad OTP can run off anywhere from 20-30% of your ridership on an LD train while the solid OTP of a period in the last decade when the hosts had to "play nice" correlates with a sustained rise in LD ridership.

 

[Anderson]

Irma was totally weird. People actually managed to evacuate straight into the final path of it. Still most of the evacuation was relatively local. Average distance of evacuation was something like 35 miles. Of course there were few extreme exceptions. Of course evacuating from Miami to Tampa or Orlando turned out to be not all that useful.

Irma was also weird because I got more messages from people in the northeast who have never experienced anything stronger than Sandy or Gloria urging me to evacuate while local emergency folks were planning to use our houses as fall back evacuation places!

Agreed that Irma was a very strange storm. I had one friend evacuate from Stuart to Disney World (not kidding; his family hunkered down at Shades of Green...Disney is apparently one of the best places to be in a major storm) and I remember...well, let's just say that there was a 747 flying into MCO and I wasn't going to miss that.

 

[MARC Rider]

Amtrak does have a publicly stated Mission and Goal. It used to talk about providing a national rail transport system (whatever that might mean). And they are supposed to do so being run as a for profit business. And well.... here we are! However, this was significantly modified by PRIIA 2008.

Here is what Amtrak has communicated as its Goal and Mission:



So there you have it.... straight from the horse's mouth, as communicated by Jason Abrams. Amtrak Corporate Communications.

I just noticed that "national" in the original 1970 act has now been replaced cleverly by "intercity" by PRIIA . Presumably they are now busy executing on said financial plan.

So see what wonders you can get out of cleverly written Mission and Goal? Some of those Goals are indeed quite lofty yet mundane - 60mph system wide average speed, service to all stops within 15 mins of advertised, etc.

If the goals have changed because of PRIIA, you really can't blame Amtrak's management, as these are mandated by Congress. However, researching PRIIA, the plain text states that long-distance routes are an integral part of the "intercity" service to be provided by Amtrak. In other words, trying to parse the difference between a "national" network and an "intercity" network is a fool's errand.

 

[jis]

I believe Amtrak management has also clearly stated that they intend to keep a national network, though I suspect that left to themselves they will shuffle things around, possibly quite a bit even. But I do not think they can get away with simply shutting it down, specially with the aware customers keeping a hawk eye on them.

 

[Anderson]

I believe Amtrak management has also clearly stated that they intend to keep a national network, though I suspect that left to themselves they will shuffle things around, possibly quite a bit even. But I do not think they can get away with simply shutting it down, specially with the aware customers keeping a hawk eye on them.

The problem is defining "national network". I mean, I could see them trying some "split the trains up" stuff again. But I also agree that they're going to have to keep a realistic semblance of a national network intact.

 

[jis]

Actually, parsing the different statements from Anderson and his cohorts one can logically come to the conclusion that left to themselves they would maintain somewhere between 5 to 10 LD trains as is and break up the rest (i.e. the 4 remaining overnight trains. One of the 15 LD trains is a day time train Palmetto).

Various utterances would suggest that the Empire Builder, the California Zephyr and the Coast Starlight have been named as examples of trains that would be kept as is. Other utterances suggest that many but not all of East of Mississippi LD trains would remain as is or close to as is, but with some consolidation.

Which would leave a rather "Moth eaten" National network (to use a phrase used by Jinnah to describe what he got for Pakistan). But assuming that their current statements are a starting bid in the negotiations with the Congress and the nation, if we are diligent we should be able to save several more LD trains, if not all, if we can get Congress to explicitly fund individual trains by something akin to earmarks, like they have almost done for the Southwest Chief. At present it would be exceedingly foolhardy form Amtrak management to try to modify the Southwest Chief.

 

[neroden]

Amtrak has a tailwind of demand for train service, which demand has been getting stronger ever since the 1990s, and stronger with each generation starting with late Gen X. The current management is doing their best to destroy that demand, deliberately alienating Millenials, but is failing to destroy demand as fast as they want to despite their worst efforts.