Mine too!
You are correct. Operationally that will not happen. The additional cost of doing that will never be recovered even in a small part. It is better to design a car that can run through effectively. Given that Americans won’t do Sections and are probably even less likely to do Coffins, frankly there is absolutely nothing wrong with the Amtrak Roomette design and I am sure Siemens or whoever is quite capable of building cars with whatever furnishing Amtrak specifies.
Out of curiosity - I have zero expertise on this subject whatsoever - would would the additional costs look like in my made-up scenario? Obviously track storage, labor to change the cars, possible additional rolling stock. What else am I missing?
You will need additional staff at Buffalo to detach and attach cars. At present there is none such. That will be significant additional labor. In addition there will be one time cost of constructing a siding with shore power facilities for storing the cars. Also, there will be ongoing additional cost of servicing the cars stored there. That is just a SWAG. I am sure if Thirdrail7 was around he would add a few more items that I have not thought about.
That all makes sense.
In my view the Amtrak Roomette is not big really enough for two people but also wastes more space than one person needs to facilitate a second passenger. To me that's the core flaw. I could probably acclimate to using Sectionals but I'm too old to find Couchettes appealing.
Keep in mind that we're talking about a group that numbers in the hundreds-of-millions and invented privacy-eschewing concepts like couch surfing. Some Americans expect lots of privacy but other Americans are willing to share close quarters with complete strangers. The bigger issue is how to deal with the potential liabilities.
Nobody couch surfs in people's houses they don't know. I say this rhetorically (I understand exceptions), but in general nobody does that. There is much more evidence to suggest the vast majority of Americans prefer not to sleep with strangers.
Many Americans do sleep in shared environments even if we are disinclined to believe so. The aforementioned couch surfing, hostels, and dorms are but three such examples. Americans also sleep in the homes and bedrooms of strangers via American-based services like abnb & vrbo with a high potential for privacy invasion and very little oversight. On Amtrak today singles traveling in coach are expected to sleep with strangers in reclining loveseats with no dividers. That confers even less separation than a couchette. A train full of mixed couchettes would probably fail miserably but shared sleeping quarters grouped by gender might work. It's hard to say for certain until someone actually tries it.
Not to be argumentative, but (granted, I don't have figures) aren't most airbnb's and vrbo's no longer couch-surfing or a room in somebody's home, but stand alone apartment or cabin rentals these days?
It's been said before, but I'll repeat. It's one thing to be sleeping next to a stranger in an open space with 50 other strangers. It's something else to be sleeping in a small room behind a closed door with 1-3 strangers.
I believe you are correct. My main point is only that shared sleeping does seem tolerable to some Americans despite issues of privacy and safety. I do not think it would be easy to implement couchettes for liability reasons but I do think some people would consider them at the right price.
When you put it that way it sounds like the door is part of the issue and that can be removed from the floor plan. To be clear I doubt most Boomers and Gen X would try couchettes but Amtrak also carries Gen Y, Gen Z, and foreign customers who might book couchettes at the right price.
