If Amtrak didn’t provide a public service that would be the end of it. But most people here want to see Amtrak provide a service to as many people as reasonably possible, myself included. If rates stay extremely high it’s time to take a serious look at increasing supply.
No, it's intercity rail. They should be running to Orlando in about 18 months.
It's privately funded and operated. They got some tax relief on the bonds, but I'm pretty sure there is no taxpayer money involved.
Someone else needs to go read 49 CFR 700.2. Key words "for profit".
Isn't that the point of the number-crunching with old fare tables and inflation calculators earlier in this thread? That you're right the coach-sleeper fare difference is bigger now, but it's because the sleeper fares then and now are roughly equivalent but the coach fares are cheaper now.
On many highways there is a premium charge. They're called toll roads and the tolls continue long after public bonds have been paid off.
That would be a very efficient way of killing off what is left of the dining cars.
Yep. People seem to think if sleeping car fares were "affordable" (whatever that means), they would actually be available for booking when people actually want to book. I for one am glad sleeping cars are (relatively) expensive and use yield management and have different buckets. That way there are rooms available for me when I am ready to book them, rather then all being hoovered up at cheap fares the moment they appear in the reservation systems 11 months in advance of departure.
You might be surprised at how expensive rail fares were “back in the day.” Use an inflation calculator, and you’ll find Amtrak fares are usually lower.
I believe the railroads always required the minimum rail fares for an accommodation. That wasn’t something new in the ‘70s. It’s a relic from the Pullman days when the railroad got the rail fare and Pullman the space charge. Railroads had skin in the game in seeing that single travelers weren’t taking up a drawing room.
Southern didn’t have Slumbercoaches.
I'm not disputing that Brightline's business plan revolves around RE development, but I don't have a problem with that.
Very glad I booked a roomette at $505 from Chi to Sea last March for early next month. When the railpass was $299 I booked my trip around that. I m on my pass now. My original itinerary included the CONO and the Crescent today and Tuesday. Ida stopped that portion.
I still think people should pay separately for sleeping car service and dining car meals. If the only way to fund diners is to force people to pay for meals they don't want, then maybe the diners really should be killed off, but I don't think that is what would happen. If fewer sleeping car passengers ate in the diners, that would presumably create room for coach passengers to use the diners again, and that would be a good thing. It would be nice to see some full accounting of dining car and sleeping car finances, but I suspect that when you transfer sleeping car revenues to the dining car account to pay for "complimentary" meals, both diners and sleepers end up losing money. That doesn't look good politically, because it makes both services like taxpayer-funded subsidies for the wealthy (especially when coach passengers are excluded from the diner). My guess is that if you end the cash transfer, the sleeper accounts would show a clear profit, and that's important if we want sleeping car service to continue. Diners would continue to show a loss, I assume, but that would be easier to justify politically, especially if the dining cars were for coach passengers too, because people have to eat.
