Amtrak Rider Surveys

[Cho Cho Charlie]

Three seats per aisle, instead of four, would be a way to get around having to crawl over an unknown seatmate. Perhaps half of the seats in the car could be four across, half three across, with the single seats sold at a higher price.

Three seats per aisle? Couldn't that be one of the existing BC café cars? Those La-Z-Boy like recliners they current have, could possibly be tweaked to recline all the way flat?

 

[seat38a]

They can fit 4 across if they stagger it. They do this in BC for airlines. Here is the cabin and my seat from my trip last year. I liked this much better than the climb over your neighbor layout.

P1010013 by Brian H, on Flickr

P1010031 by Brian H, on Flickr

The big console is where the person behind you reclines into and for the person in front, it is used as a console for drinks and stuff.

 

[me_little_me]

This would be in *addition* to the roomettes.

You'd still have peace and quiet, and those of us who can't afford peace and quiet would at least have a flat surface to sleep on. It's a win-win.

Yeah, right! My guess is that they would use it as an excuse to dump the sleepers a few years after the "new enhanced coarch" seating came out. Then they would have meal included (at your seat) so the diners would go. At the same time, they would run cars down the aisle with snacks and sandwiches so the cafe cars (lounge cars) could be dumped. Think of all the jobs they could eliminate. Well, train travel will be nice while it lasts.

 

[StriderGDM]

One of my complaints about the current seats is they're just not quite comfortable enough. If they were less comfortable reclined I'd just give up hope of being comfortable and deal with it. But they're so close to being just right for me.. but not quite. It's frustrating.

I will admit the climb-over a person in the middle of the night part does suck.

 

[Kat314159]

I wonder if they could go the route that VIA did with "berths" I have to get up to Canada to try them first hand. Seems like it could solve the lay flat, climb over, and privacy issue a bit while still allowing for a cheaper upgrade option?

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

With the upcoming changes to AGR I am all in for the Slumber Seats PROVIDED they are in a 2*1 config with divider on the 2 pack AND come with restrooms that do not have stinky toilets and are kept clean. A discount or some kind of a chit for the Diner/Lounge would be nice as well.

 

[jebr]

I think I would much prefer a berth offering over a "lie-flat seat" option. Using a Superliner as an example, "opening up" a roomette and making a train car all-roomette (assuming you could replace the five bedrooms with 8 roomettes, and the lower level could house four more roomettes) would allow for a seating/sleeping capacity of 52 people (26 rooms * 2 people.) A current Superliner has 74 seats, so you lose about 30% of the seating. A 50% upcharge (above standard coach fare) would seem to be a "break-even" point (since there would be cost to refurbishment of the cars. I'm not sure if you could get 52 "lie-flat" seats in a comfortable configuration in a coach car.

 

[keelhauled]

Personally my dream would be single seats in a herringbone configuration. For a single traveler it would give me the ability to lie flat like a roomete and defined personal space, without paying the full fare for a room I use half of, which is 90% of the value of the room to me. Unfortunately I'm not sure they could fit enough seats in a single car to avoid pricing them closer to sleeper fares instead of splitting the difference between coach and sleeper.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

Personally my dream would be single seats in a herringbone configuration. For a single traveler it would give me the ability to lie flat like a roomete and defined personal space, without paying the full fare for a room I use half of, which is 90% of the value of the room to me. Unfortunately I'm not sure they could fit enough seats in a single car to avoid pricing them closer to sleeper fares instead of splitting the difference between coach and sleeper.

Sounds like the traditional Parlor Car config, only in this case with barrier walls between the seats.

 

[seat38a]

When you think about it, the current BC on airplanes that are staggered horizontally is similar to the slumber coach which staggered vertically? The difference being that there was a wall and door.

 

[neroden]

I wonder what this layout would be.

1x1 lie-flat is essentially roomettes and can't achieve much more density and would likely be too expensive.

2x2 lie-flat requires some form of divider and crawling over someone else...that sounds very uncomfortable.

2x2 one atop the other on both sides of the train sounds reasonable.

2x2 lie-flat would actually take as much space as the roomettes, because they wouldn't be stacked vertically.

2x2 one atop the other on both sides of the train *is* the roomette layout.

Every scenario I can see, Amtrak loses money by doing this. If you can fit the same number of seats in as an "all-roomette car", but you charge less, there's no financial benefit whatsoever.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Modern lie flat seats designed with an efficient size, shape, and placement pattern could potentially generate significantly more revenue than current roomettes even if they were priced substantially less. Amtrak's current coach seats seem to be designed to promote sleeplessness, back problems, unintended cuddling, and wasted space.

 

[keelhauled]

I wonder what this layout would be.

1x1 lie-flat is essentially roomettes and can't achieve much more density and would likely be too expensive.

2x2 lie-flat requires some form of divider and crawling over someone else...that sounds very uncomfortable.

2x2 one atop the other on both sides of the train sounds reasonable.

2x2 lie-flat would actually take as much space as the roomettes, because they wouldn't be stacked vertically.2x2 one atop the other on both sides of the train *is* the roomette layout.

Every scenario I can see, Amtrak loses money by doing this. If you can fit the same number of seats in as an "all-roomette car", but you charge less, there's no financial benefit whatsoever.

Yeah but that argument only works if we assume that every roomette is occupied by two people, which is not the case. Whereas even if the number of seats is equal to the number of beds, since the seats are sold individually as opposed to in pairs, assuming the demand for the seats is high enough, the percentage of occupied seats should be higher than the percentage of occupied beds.

 

[neroden]

But the way Amtrak charges for the roomettes means that Amtrak gets nearly as much money from a single-occupancy roomette as from a double-occupancy roomette -- a.k.a a lot more than Amtrak could get for two lie-flat seats. The seats might look good on ridership, but I see no way they would work for the bottom line.

If Amtrak were saturating the roomette market, with lots of roomettes going empty, unable to raise rates, it might make sense to try the lie-flat seats... but that is the opposite of what's happening.

 

[Anderson]

Personally, I could work with open sections (I did one with a friend on the Canadian earlier in the year and it worked just fine)...but let's not forget that with the exception of Seaboard (which had a ton of US military traffic well into the 60s) everyone was moving away from them well before A-Day.

 

[neroden]

Heck, even the Europeans and the Chinese and the Russians, who still have plenty of sleeper compartments and will sell berths individually in them, have nearly gotten rid of open sections.