My Amtrak Success Recipe

[sldispatcher]

Background:

40's white conservative

Pro-rail as both transportation and destination option

married

professional with discretionary income

Biggest Challenges I see:

1. Lack of frequency

2. Lack of public support in most areas outside of corridors in the US mostly due to lack of exposure

3. Schizophrenic customer service

4. No appeal to high end customers who can really help pay the bills

5. Political bickering between sides; absolutely no compromise (you see it all over this forum)

6. Budget bickering

7. Lack of new equipment

8. Insistence on things being "like they were" will make sure that things will never reach what they could be

9. Amtrak's biggest obstacle seems to be, quite frankly, the structure of Amtrak itself; Amtrak needs to identify what do they do best and let some other entity handle the rest (i.e. is Amtrak best at supplying equipment and transportation crew? Do they sorely lack in onboard service?)

My Success Recipe:

1. Basic Long Distance Consist Managed by Amtrak: Baggage cars
2. Coaches
3. Slumber Coach fitted with rocker lie flat seats like 90's style J Class airline business seats with AVOD; simple meal service provided at seat and double shower; probably 2 x 1 seating; power ports curtains; amenities, etc. Managed by Amtrak
4. Perhaps one sight-seeing car with lounge below; additional café style lounge and sight seeing car
5. Offers two levels of basic transportation; one being superior to the other with better food options

1. Basic Long Distance Consist Manage by 3rd Party Vendor: **attached to above consist Sleepers with minimum queen bed and in room shower and toilet; More akin to a cruise ship room (see new PRESTIGE class on Via as a general direction)
2. Perhaps use Rocky Mountaineer setup with a lounge car with dining below and sightseeing above?
3. Ample seating for sightseeing (even reserved seat in sightseer/dome?)
4. Club car for presentations/lounge atmosphere
5. Would height equal to present Autoracks be possible if new builds?
6. Amenity filled
7. Staff NOT Amtrak employees
8. Cars may not be daily at first on any route
9. No subsidizing; Vendor must either revenue share and/or pay for the hauling of the cars at a reasonable rate such that the sleeper service always helps cover a significant cost of running the train thereby keeping prices/required subsidies for the AMTRAK portion of the train to a minimum.
10. Appeals to the age group of 40 - 60 year olds with disposable income who will drop $5k - $8k on a cruise in a heartbeat.

Implementation:

1. Coast Starlight - hands down.

Can tap into lucrative leisure market through summer season in the north and winter season in the south.

Also minimizes equipment needs because of shorter duration of route/equipment turns.

Minimizes disruption to "base" Amtrak travelers as Slumbercoach option would satisfy most needs on a one night journey.

2. I would attempt 3 day a week service on the sleeper side, while certainly maintaining daily on the regular train service.

3. Opens up possibility of utilizing the displaced 3 or 4 superliner sleepers and PPC elsewhere in AMTRAK's system.

4. Would make it much easier to transition to twice daily service along all if not most of the present route of the Coast Starlight. After all, increasing frequency would be a goal.

1. Potential Benefits:

1. Raises awareness of rail to a more affluent segment of society.

2. Don't complain about subsidizing someone's rail cruise vacation; you subsidize the trip to Disney on the roads and airports everyday. Those airports and highways are built for free. Besides, I stress that the sleepers should really pay for the lion's share of operating costs.

3. Lowers Amtrak's direct burden of cost of running the basic train set while substantially improving the public face of what the trip may be like.

4. Removing food service angst from Amtrak's budget except for airline style BOB meals in the simple café and airline style preparation and presentation (tray service) in the slumbercoach.

5. Probably the single best way to get demand from the public to actually increase service/frequency which is sorely needed.

6. Increase in frequency becomes a driver for more utilization because of convenience.

7. Much broader appeal for high speed corridors and mass transit options.

8. If you give people a taste of something they really like, they will want more.

Okay. The list is not complete, but it is off of my chest!

It worries me greatly that instead of looking to the future, we try to recreate the past. Yes, that Pullman might have been the height of luxury in the 40's, but it is 2014.

Give the people what they seem to be spending their money on elsewhere. Make it appealing and there would be a huge rail revival in this country because the politicians would coalesce behind the whims of their constituents. We just have to get those constituents on the train.

it's just my 2 cents.

 

[sldispatcher]

And I expect the flaming to being shortly. :help:

 

[lyke99]

No option for sleeping car service akin to what Amtrak does today on the long distance routes? I took The Canadian and loved it earlier this summer, but I don't want to drop that kind of coin every time I choose rail to visit a coast from Minnesota and have no desire to sleep in a chair.

 

[sldispatcher]

No, I would not provide that option.

I am reminded, as I was this last summer, that people are more than willing to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to sleep in a chair that lies flat. As you probably already know, thousands do it nightly around the world on airplanes.

It's my recipe. That may not necessarily be your recipe. Also, I wasn't saying every route or every train. Think of the old El Capitan / Super Chief situation. What if the route of the Southwest Chief was double daily? One train offered the Super Sleeper service at some frequency along with the coach/slumbercoach Amtrak section, and the other train simply had the coach/slumbercoach option? Or maybe there is a route, that simply couldn't support the Super Sleeper option?

 

[Blackwolf]

You single out Pullman as a "yesteryear" dinosaur that has no relevance to the traveling market of today, but I disagree. While the -current- Pullman may be trying to re-create that "Old-Tyme" atmosphere of mid-Century luxury rail travel, I counter that the actual business operation of the very real but contemporaneously defunct Pullman-Standard company is very VERY relevant now. That is, never-mind the train or the line the product is being hauled upon (a Named railroad in yesteryear, Amtrak today,) Pullman has their cars (could be a separate paint livery or even in the standard RR livery but will small nomenclature on the exterior stating PULLMAN) and their staff providing On-Board Service.

In the case of Amtrak's current sleeper roster, just sell them at market value one by one to said company and have them overhaul to the specifications desired. Or even easier, forget the overhaul... Just DEEP-CLEAN the things and fix the deferred maintenance items to get them back on the road with company OBS filling the void of Customer Service. Brand-new cars with more modern and functional layouts can come later.

Sure, there -IS- a market (and a sizable one) for a mid-class lie-flat sleeper/coach chair car in 2-1 seating format on the LD routes. I am rather disgruntled that the Coast Starlight STILL does not have a Business Class, even though it was supposed to be something we've had for over a year now according to the reports and paperwork. I mean, they HAVE the cars and HAVE the seats already! Just bolt the damn things in, spruce up the car and sell the tickets. NOT rocket science and literally could have been implemented in a matter of weeks route-wide for a tiny, piss-ant cost overall. Instead the cars go rolling down the rails now with the Business Class space as an open carpeted void, with coach passengers huddled up together like a Homeless Shelter for some horizontal sleeping opportunities.

No need for the Rocky-Mountaineer "Cruise on Rails" nonsense that it is. Amtrak provides a realistic (IMHO) travel option and not just a means for the vacationing wealthy. I have, and do, travel the rails for personal business cross-country for more than one night at a time; having the choice between an airline seat and a sleeper for that duration mean the difference of two month's take-home pay is just NOT something I'm going to allow. Have maybe ONE car in the consist be the Ritz-on-Wheels, but don't take away the option of all sleepers just to make some point. Gentrification of passenger rail is a horrible idea.

I agree that sleepers, as a business, might do better as a contract business much like Pullman of old had. But, while not cheap, Pullman's were still affordable and obtainable for the general traveling public.

 

[sldispatcher]

Did I single out Pullman?

Did I describe what I was talking about as Ritz on wheels?

Where did I say they weren't affordable?

Actually, if you compare Amtrak prices for Bedrooms to airline prices between same city pairs...the comparison ..from a pure transportation point of view.....is often far above the "first class" fare on the plane..roundtrip.

I would argue that Amtrak, even in its present form, offers a better "first class" spend. But what is the perceived value to the customer?

From where I stand, you agreed with all of my points.

 

[William W.]

I've always liked the Slumbercoach concept. A modernized version with airline-style lie-flat seats would be great for single overnight trips (CL, LSL, etc).

Right now, Amtrak's LD service is two extremes. Coach has no amenities and is not an option for end-to-end travel, IMO. The sleepers provide a first class experience, but are out of reach of many people, price wise. There needs to be some sort of middle ground. An option that allows an average person to travel comfortably via train, without paying a fortune for a sleeper. Let's be honest: how many people around here have actually paid for, using cash, a CHI-LAX trip via PDX that costs $2500? I'd say very few. Most of the hardcore Amtrak users around here use points to pay for major LD travel.

 

[rickycourtney]

I am a huge proponent of lie flat seats, but that's not what Amtrak proposed doing with the Coast Starlight Business Class and IMHO it's a big mistake.

Last I heard the plan was to equip the lower-level of one coach with the same 2-2 Business Class seats that are used on the Acela. While these seats are supposedly more comfortable than the standard coach seats, they aren't lie-flat and unless they have been modified they don't have leg rests.

The idea was to give business travelers a way to make day trips LA and the Bay Area or from Southern Oregon to Seattle. They really didn't think about making this a "value" sleeper area.

Also the Coast Starlight's schedule, while perfect for sightseeing, is totally useless for business travel between LA - San Francisco. Most companies wouldn't want employees spending every daylight hour sitting on a train.

But I think that there is a huge untapped market for an overnight train between the two cities. Right now if you have a morning meeting in San Francisco you either have to be at the airport by 5am (to catch the 6am flight) or fly in the night before and get a hotel room.

On a train a passengers can depart one city at 8pm (right after dinner), have a nightcap in the lounge car, get 7 hours of sleep onboard the train (avoiding the expense of a hotel room), have a continental breakfast and arrive in the other city at 8am, right in time for a full day of meetings.

But assuming California can ever get the Coast Daylight back up in running, to properly pull my plan off you'd need to either have 2-1 lie flat seating or bring back open sections of berths (which would be a more efficient use of space).

 

[rickycourtney]

Oh and to the OP, first and foremost, kudos for being bold and thinking outside of the box. Even though I don't agree with everything you said... I applaud you for saying it.

I think it's a interesting idea to have Amtrak get out of the sleeping car business and have the company instead shift that work to privately owned and operated cars. I think that an outside operator can do a much better job providing a luxury service to passengers, at a lower cost and without scrutiny from taxpayers.

That would put Amtrak in the business of both being a common carrier of private railcars (more so than they are today) and being a provider of "essential transportation" (in the form of coach cars) to the small, rural communities along the routes.

But there's one unavoidable fact here: sleeping car passengers account for just 15 percent of long distance riders, but they contribute 36 percent of the total revenue. The loss of that revenue will need to be recovered in the carriage feed charged to the railcar operators.

As to the frequency issue, if it was up to Amtrak there are many routes where the trains would already be running much more frequently. But all of the Class 1 railroads are unwilling to allow Amtrak to add frequencies without major taxpayer investment in their infrastructure. The major (flawed) mental hurdle for most taxpayers is "why should I pay to improve something owned by a privately owned railroad."

 

[railiner]

Before Amtrak, or any other provider of rail passenger service, can be truly viable, it must first be reliable. Whatever the ills that have recently plagued on-time performance must be addressed, and corrected. Without that, nothing else will really matter....

I agree the O.P. has some interesting ideas that merit consideration. For myself, and many other's on this board, it is probably hard to accept such a radical change from the status quo, with full traditional sleeping and dining car service, but if new ways can mean growth of the business, than I am for it....

As for rickeycourtney's observation "That would put Amtrak in the business of both being a common carrier of private railcars (more so than they are today) and being a provider of 'essential transportation' (in the form of coach cars) to the small, rural communities along the routes"; I would cite as a very good example, the Alaska Railroad.....that is precisely what their daily Anchorage - Fairbanks train has become during the cruise ship season. They run a few "public cars" to serve the local market, including coach, domelounge, and dining cars, as well as carrying the plusher full double deck dome-lounge cars of Holland-America, Princess, and 'Royal Celebrity' cruise lines.

 

[NW cannonball]

Oh and to the OP, first and foremost, kudos for being bold and thinking outside of the box. Even though I don't agree with everything you said... I applaud you for saying it.

I think it's a interesting idea to have Amtrak get out of the sleeping car business and have the company instead shift that work to privately owned and operated cars. I think that an outside operator can do a much better job providing a luxury service to passengers, at a lower cost and without scrutiny from taxpayers.

That would put Amtrak in the business of both being a common carrier of private railcars (more so than they are today) and being a provider of "essential transportation" (in the form of coach cars) to the small, rural communities along the routes.

But there's one unavoidable fact here: sleeping car passengers account for just 15 percent of long distance riders, but they contribute 36 percent of the total revenue. The loss of that revenue will need to be recovered in the carriage feed charged to the railcar operators.

As to the frequency issue, if it was up to Amtrak there are many routes where the trains would already be running much more frequently. But all of the Class 1 railroads are unwilling to allow Amtrak to add frequencies without major taxpayer investment in their infrastructure. The major (flawed) mental hurdle for most taxpayers is "why should I pay to improve something owned by a privately owned railroad."

I think you nailed it, Rickey.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Oh and to the OP, first and foremost, kudos for being bold and thinking outside of the box. Even though I don't agree with everything you said... I applaud you for saying it.

RIGHT.

As to the frequency issue, if it was up to Amtrak there are many routes where the trains would already be running much more frequently. But all of the Class 1 railroads are unwilling to allow Amtrak to add frequencies without major taxpayer investment in their infrastructure. . . .

We've seen ridership more than double where frequencies increased. (Lincoln Service, Piedmont, and Crescent/Lynchburger off the top of my head). But the on-going equipment shortage is another big factor.

Two Empire Corridor trains run on very crowded CSX track Albany-Buffalo-Niagara Falls. If one of those state-supported trains could be extended to Chicago -- or even to Cleveland, LOL -- it would not add to congestion on the Albany-Buffalo segment. (Ignore for a moment congestion issues on the Buffalo-Chicago segment.) But even if CSX could be persuaded to allow an Empire train to become a second frequency on the Lake Shore Ltd route, could Amtrak equip three more trainsets? No time soon.

Back to politics, the part of Amtrak that needs to be contracted out would be Congressional Relations. If one of the Defense Dept suppliers got the job, they could probably get Congress to turn on the tap full blast for huge orders of new equipment.

I didn't say bribes. I said campaign donations. LOL.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

Part of the reason people will pay for those lay flat airliner seats is that it went from "nothing" to "lay flat seat." That's a step up. Going from "little private room" to "lay flat seat" is a step down.

 

[crescent2]

I know there are many who would welcome lie-flat seats in coach, but personally, I agree with Alexandria Nick. I like those little private compartments!

Part of the reason people will pay for those lay flat airliner seats is that it went from "nothing" to "lay flat seat." That's a step up. Going from "little private room" to "lay flat seat" is a step down.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Biggest Challenges I see:

1. Lack of frequency

2. Lack of public support in most areas outside of corridors in the US mostly due to lack of exposure

3. Schizophrenic customer service

4. No appeal to high end customers who can really help pay the bills

5. Political bickering between sides; absolutely no compromise (you see it all over this forum)

6. Budget bickering

7. Lack of new equipment

8. Insistence on things being "like they were" will make sure that things will never reach what they could be

9. Amtrak's biggest obstacle seems to be, quite frankly, the structure of Amtrak itself; Amtrak needs to identify what do they do best and let some other entity handle the rest (i.e. is Amtrak best at supplying equipment and transportation crew? Do they sorely lack in onboard service?)

Its impressive that I largely agree with everything on that list, except for something I would place above 1 which I would call "General Governmental Lunacy", and your lack of mention of OTP/reliability, yet disagree so thoroughly with your conclusions. So let me give you a background on who I am. Just briefly.

Background:

30 White Jewish retailer with largely so-called "liberal" leanings

A public transportation universal mobility advocate that thinks rail is a distinctly superior option in various instances

Effectively married (long standing committed relationship with somebody that I would have married long ago if it wasn't financially detrimental- as I said, I'm Jewish)

Self made distinctly profitable retailer that could have lots of discretionary income if I chose to not heavily reinvest in my business.

An MBA, with direct management experience bootstrapping my own company.

A minor in accounting, and substantial coursework in law, engineering, and economics.

The biggest problem Amtrak faces isn't unique to Amtrak. It is the catastrophic mess that the world and the government of this country are in. We have been using half-Keynesian, half-socialist, and fully-stupid economic theory in this country for 60 some years, then switched to a half inverse Keynesian, half-psychotic, twice as fully stupid economy with the Great Recession. What used to happen when the economy was bad, we'd invest more money in it and drop taxes. When the economy recovered, we cut spending slightly, and drop or leave flat taxes.

This time when the economy dropped out, we created a massive stimulus bill (good), that was highly flawed and dumped too much of itself into corporate and foreign pockets (not so good). We then proceeded to say, holy crap, we have a national debt! And we started to work on ways to cut government budget, especially in ways that reduced money going to the lower and middle classes (potentially viable idea, extraordinarily bad timing). Since I am largely an arsehole, I have recognized this as highly laughable, and have spent a lot of time holding my belly and laughing until I'm blue in the face. Pity real people are getting hurt and the basic structure of a sustainable long term economy is being demolished with impressive efficacy.

I don't really consider this a partisan issue. This is the result of the very basic structure of our country's government, the way the electoral system runs, and the fact that people that are too stupid to understand how to run a country are effectively given a choice between two narcissists who are both too vain AND too stupid to run a country. And the decisions that those imbeciles have made over the past 200 years or so have brought us to this point.

That system is the system that is required to decide about funding Amtrak. Compared to a lot of other, much larger programs in the government (lets not all go into what they are, and how deserving they are to be cut- that isn't the point of this rant!) Amtrak is highly efficient, with an impressive amount of the the money pumped into it going to the benefit of the average citizen. But it is also a tiny little spec, and besides people what live in large cities and are mobility impaired, and the economy of the Northeast Corridor's transportation, it is actually relatively irrelevant. If you split off the Northeast corridor from Amtrak, and then dissolved it, a few million people would be affected, only a few hundred thousand heavily, and only a fraction of those would actually be a heavy impairment.

What that means is, it is a perfect whipping boy. It is highly visible, and outside the northeast, largely seen as a folly. It is the perfect target to threaten cuts, chop funding, quietly restore it, and then chop it again. It can make a lot of noise, and take peoples attention off the fact that the government is insanely dysfunctional. It is distinctly a socialist program (thats simply true, don't argue) and can be heralded as such for the benefit of arguing socialism in government. As far as the powers that control it are concerned, except for maybe upgrading the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak is a paragon of exactly what they need it to be- tiny, but visible; functional, but seriously flawed; a useful concept, but terribly executed; potentially futuristic, but a dinosaur; and a funding number that is both extremely cheap, but large enough to impress the uninformed (which is why it has always hovered over a billion bucks, but has never hit two).

The very first thing you need to do to fix Amtrak, before any of the other issues can be addressed, is to fix the above mess. Until that mess is fixed, Amtrak is too important politically to die, but also too important politically to succeed. And so it will be held in a sort of purgatory, never being greatly useful, but never being completely condemned.

That being said,

Yes, the second biggest problem is a lack of frequency and routes. There is a lack of public support because the system is, outside the Northeast, Midwest, and West coast, useful for long distance trips to certain large cities, but entirely useless otherwise. There are not enough stops, not enough places served, and nowhere near enough frequency on any of the routes. There should be frequency on ANY train route of sufficient distance such that for any given station you can:

1) Depart that area early in the morning (say, 5:30 to 10:00 AM), reach a destination three to four hours away, and manage to return to the point of origin that day before midnight after a few hour layover.

2) Depart that area fairly late in the evening and reach a destination 6-10 hours distant by the next morning, and do the same on the return.

Amtrak's customer service is highly inconsistent. It either treats the customer terribly, or gives them half the world for a minor complaint. That is a huge problem with the system, without question.

As for appeal to high-end customer's, I'm not sure what you mean. No appeal as a vacation destination into itself, as sort of American Orient Express? It lacks this, certainly. But as far as sleeper class goes, it appeals to wealthy people- I'm wealthy, it appeals to me as a relatively nice way to travel relatively long distances, and most of the sleeper class passengers are fairly wealthy- they have to be to pay the prices. In the Northeast, Amtrak is THE premier carrier of people between Washington and Boston, ranging from middle class (Regional Coachclass) to upper middle class (Regional Businessclass and Acela Businessclass) to generally upperclass (Acela Firstclass). It doesn't appeal to the kind of people with private jets and private rail cars, but appealing to them is a waste of money. The lower middle and working class take the bus, which is much cheaper. So you are off on this one.

I explained the political bickering- its more the "sheeple" nature of people, their almost complete lack of education, and the carefully orchestrated divisiveness built into the current system. If people are arguing over relatively unimportant issues on the basis of right/left/Republican/Democrat/Socialist/Capitalist they are too divided to see that their government is so completely FUBAR that they need to band together and throw the whole bloody lot out, including the structure that put them there. You can't fix that on the basis of Amtrak. Its too much a part of the bigger picture. And the budget bickering I also explained, and has the same caveat. Working on Amtrak is attacking the symptom, not the problem.

Lack of new equipment is another huge problem. Not with the equipments age per se- the real dead ducks are on their way out, finally. But with the fact that they need a hell of a lot more equipment. They can't expand without that equipment, and can't meet demand without it, either. And we need to create something akin to a couchette (I toyed with all the other possibilities, they don't work financially, you might be able to search the forum and see the several different exhaustive analyses I have done on them, I ain't redoing). Creating an effective first class on regional trains similar to Acela First would be useful to if they had the equipment. But all of this is constrained by the fact that the key behind Amtrak is to keep it that 30 million rider, 1.5 billion buck cheap visible whipping boy.

Amtrak does have that huge problem of running the LD trains based on the systems of old, especially the basic system established on 5/1/71 and carried through to today. But once again, Amtrak has to be that whipping boy. They have to have the potential to be useful, in order to justify keeping it around. But they also have to be a dinosaur, to demonstrate that its not worth funding or running properly.

If I were king of the world, (Hint: What's 5000 politicians on the bottom of the ocean? A good start.) and fixed the underlying structure that is killing the country and Amtrak, I'd change Amtrak entirely. Amtrak, which would not retain that name, would be transformed entirely.

It would be called the Department Of Public Mobility. The operation of long-distance trains would probably continue to run under the name Amtrak, which would be a division of this department. All towns with a population density that qualifies as suburban would have bus systems that would run at least hourly (at midnight) and more frequently based on demand in such a way that 1.5 miles was the least walk required, and a minimum average speed of trip of 5 miles per hour (no matter how many connections). All such towns would have a transportation hub for that bus network, which would connect to a train network that would operate rapidly (say old Lackawanna commuter speed?) to the nearest city. Cities would have bus, light rail, and heavy rail networks to maximize transportation efficacy. All cities would be connected by InterCity rail that would operate at a minimum average speed of 30 miles per hour (in other words, pick any two cities in the country, and including all transfers, you would move at a minimum speed of 30MPH as the crow flies- so two cities 60 miles apart would never take more than two hours, even if they are not directly connected). That intercity rail would include certain long distance routes intended for longer travel. All of this would be funded and controlled at a national level.

But I will never be king of the world. Such a sensible system will never happen. I will continue working on my pet project of restoring rail service to Pottstown, Reading, Pottsville, and Shamokin via a shuttle at Norristown. Because that, with a few key people's help, might be doable.

 

[sldispatcher]

GML:

Excellent post and if I didn't know any better I struck a nerve!

I left off government mish-mash because that will always be the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room. As you say, rail is really a socialist type program and it must be. But we should be saying the same thing about interstates, airports etc.

Government is the single biggest problem but also stands as the only way to fund the system. Danged if you do, danged if you don't. The only way to even come close to changing that is to have Amtrak (and yes, a much needed name change would be in order) rebooted.

No one on here likes that idea. To reboot it would require most likely bankruptcy. That would cause hardship for many. Of course, if both sides could get together, you might see a way out without going down that path.

If you want republican support, you either need to get republicans between the left and East coasts onboard trains to raise exposure or put in place a plan where publicly held companies can come in and look for ways to generate profits. For Democrats, for all of their ballyhooed support of Amtrak, have done the most cutting to Amtrak under their administrations and seem to refuse to compromise when it comes any sort of adjustments to union agreements/capitalistic ideas.

Someone above mentioned the idea that the sleeper car passengers already fund a higher portion of the revenues on the train. I never mentioned losing that revenue. Besides, revenue is just one part of the equation. Reducing expenses is far better way to help with yields than pushing revenue. If you chopped the cost of the dining car, sleeping cars, and labor associated with those functions, the cost of running the consist would go down.

However, revenue still comes in via my model in a multitude of ways:

1) Amtrak could still sale sleeping accommodations on the new service on its site..becoming a travel agent, if you will, and taking in commissions.

2) Amtrak still gets paid per mile to haul those cars...make it a worthwhile charge to Amtrak to haul those cars.

3) Adding slumbercoach fares to an already trimmed down expense line

4) Shifting existing sleepers displaced by the changeover to other routes increasing frequency or simply adding capacity...for instance, would the California Zephyr benefit from having 2 additional Amtrak sleepers enroute each day? Of course it would!

I also realize that for basic transportation needs, Amtrak excels not in the Seattle to Los Angeles market, but in the Eugene to San Jose/San Luis Obispo to Vancouver, WA or San Jose to Klamath Falls trip. I am frequently guilty of looking at the LD trips as end to end. Those are, as you point out, inefficient ways to travel. However, with today's airline mess and high fares in smaller markets, rail becomes a super attractive alternative quickly.

As far as the slumbercoach idea, let's face it. We live in a society where most people like to one up the other. Or we fear that low fares attract 'Wal-Marters". The Slumbercoach allows one to pay a little more...enjoy comfort...get fed without the full dining car...and not sit with "the unwashed masses" that might be sitting in the $45 seat. Again, as someone pointed out, the difference between coach and sleeper service is too wide a gap and the quasi-public nature of Amtrak means the high end product gets watered down. Roomettes may be designed for two people, but let's be real. Again, it goes back to appealing to the people who will help keep those coach tickets at $45.

Finally, if you want to appeal to the "wealthy people" on long distance routes, I agree wholeheartedly that it that bunch that can afford Amtrak sleeper now. What I want is to create such a pent up demand for sleeper service that Amtrak is able to realize better revenue than they see now just because they are hauling the cars around.

Union Pacific doesn't need to grow the grain or mine the coal. They just need to haul it around. That's what I'm getting to at the core of this. Just have Amtrak haul the sleeper service around on back of an already revenue generating/basic transportation providing unit. I don't know how many cars it would take per train to make it worthwhile. Obviously, economies of scale favor the more cars the better.

I would wager, if executed properly, the Coast Starlight could easily handle 6 - 8 sleepers, a diner, a lounge, and a sightseeing area ( how much fun would a large picture window be with stadium seating in the rear car much like the KCS business train or BNSF business train?) on at least a 3 day a week schedule with booking and revenue management arranged by a team who know how to maximize revenue per trip.

Again, its just fun to think about. But I know if they remain in the early 80's mindset of service, it will never be perceived more than a museum attraction style ride to the general public at large no matter what one tries to do otherwise.

 

[FormerOBS]

I'm a little concerned about non-Amtrak personnel working on an Amtrak train. Not sure how this would work out. We once had a fellow who had previously worked on the American European Express. When he came to Amtrak OBS service, he learned an awful lot about the train, safety procedures, etc. This was new to him, as AEE had not given him much training in these things.

As for the proposed adjustments in service quality, I'm on the fence. Some of these suggestions may have merit. I'll have to think about it.

Tom

 

[sldispatcher]

I think of it as two different service areas...one would not really go from one consist to the other...isolated.

Two consists, one train sort of thing.

Just like now with private varnish hooked onto Amtrak.

I am tired, as are the rest of you, of mediocrity driven by decisions based on access to limited resources.

What could a Marriott, or Holland America, or some other entity do with appropriate capital that Amtrak just simply is not allowed to do with limited resources?

Alaska Railroad shows that you can haul other cars for other providers in the same consist. Amtrak does it now for private varnish. Somewhere in there is a mutually beneficial relationship possible between a public transportation entity like Amtrak and entrepreneurial spirit.

But alas, so often it is about control and not common sense.

We really can't compare our railroads to the rest of the world very easily. Our neighbors to the North are about as close as we come to having similarities. Freight pays the bills. If the railroads were publicly maintained, this would be a different discussion.

 

[Ryan]

There's nothing preventing this from happening now.

If there was money to be made in it, someone would be all over it. I can't wait to see how Iowa Pacific makes out in the long run.

 

[neroden]

Basically, your analysis is wrong. The main problems Amtrak has are:

(1) it runs on tracks owned by hostile landlords, who cannot or will not dispatch passenger trains on time;

(2) it cannot get steady funding, so it lurches from crisis to crisis and Congressional micromanagement to different Congressional micromanagement, preventing any form of coherent management.

Both are being alleviated slowly: #1 by states purchasing tracks, #2 by states providing steady operating funding and providing their own rolling stock (capital).

 

[neroden]

Back to politics, the part of Amtrak that needs to be contracted out would be Congressional Relations. If one of the Defense Dept suppliers got the job, they could probably get Congress to turn on the tap full blast for huge orders of new equipment.

I didn't say bribes. I said campaign donations. LOL.

Now *that's* outside-the-box thinking!

 

[neroden]

But I will never be king of the world. Such a sensible system will never happen. I will continue working on my pet project of restoring rail service to Pottstown, Reading, Pottsville, and Shamokin via a shuttle at Norristown. Because that, with a few key people's help, might be doable.

I wonder if perhaps those of us who are rail advocates need to integrate planning of our pet projects better.
According to my analysis, the biggest bang-for-the-buck routes we could add in the US are Allentown-Philly and Allentown-NYC; both relatively simple and cheap to reconstruct. This shifts a metro area of 800K in the direction of rail service. It should also help shift the politics of Pennsylvania, which is near a tipping point. That political shift is what is needed to get us the support for service to Reading, Scranton, and eventually better service to Pittsburgh (and ideally State College). This then gives the Binghamton advocates a chance, and may be enough to make Ohio envious...

Passenger rail support is reaching a (positive) tipping point in more states every year, with Florida having passed that point sometime recently and Texas likely to go soon. (Watch the Lone Star Rail District.) Obviously, politically speaking, the high-population states are more important. California, New York, Michigan, North Carolina, New Jersey, Washington, and Massachussetts are already pretty strongly pro-passenger-rail. Georgia is going to be a laggard. I think Ohio (and to a lesser extent Pennsylvania) is key. Around the time Ohio gets fully supportive of passenger rail, we should reach a political majority for passenger rail in both the House and Senate. At which point things should get better.

 

[afigg]

My Success Recipe:

Your suggestions for the LD trains is not going to fundamentally improve the economics of operating the train or help it break-even. It may increase the cost recovery percentage a little or more likely, make the LD trains lose more money. You suggestions only address the direct cost of staffing the train and running the equipment. A third party running the sleepers and premium services might work, but the third party may lose their shirt and then what? It does not address reliability issues, on-time performance, overhead and all the other stuff that goes into operating costs. It does not address the system and infrastructure outside of the LD train that is needed to run it.

To improve the LD train system and make it more healthy, we need more corridor services that operate over a portion of the LD train routes. More commuter train services over a segment of the route can help as well. If the entire proposed Midwest Regional Rail System were to be implemented as envisioned, it would result in major improvements to the corridor routes, fix bottlenecks, and allow Amtrak to share the cost of stations and tracks for the Chicago LD trains with the corridor services.

The LSL and CL have been having a terrible summer in delays on the NS route between CHI and CLE. If $1 to $2 billion had been spent to provide a multiple daily frequency CHI-CLE corridor service with some 90 and 110 mph track speeds, the severity of the track work disruptions done by NS would not have been allowed to interfere with the corridor service to this extent all summer long. If the LSL was able to run over an upgraded 90 to 110 mph CHI-CLE corridor service route and an upgraded Buffalo to NYP corridor route with faster trip times, it would be far more reliable and cost less to operate.

The Cardinal would be much better off if there was a state supported CHI-IND-CIN corridor service with significant track and capacity upgrades with several hours taken off from the CHI-CIN trip times. I can go on about other corridor and commuter service overlaps that will or could benefit the LD trains. Got to look at the big picture here. A greatly expanded system of state support corridor services with many new routes and many more people taking trains would provide a bigger and more robust foundation for the LD train system.

 

[afigg]

Also the Coast Starlight's schedule, while perfect for sightseeing, is totally useless for business travel between LA - San Francisco. Most companies wouldn't want employees spending every daylight hour sitting on a train.

But I think that there is a huge untapped market for an overnight train between the two cities. Right now if you have a morning meeting in San Francisco you either have to be at the airport by 5am (to catch the 6am flight) or fly in the night before and get a hotel room.

On a train a passengers can depart one city at 8pm (right after dinner), have a nightcap in the lounge car, get 7 hours of sleep onboard the train (avoiding the expense of a hotel room), have a continental breakfast and arrive in the other city at 8am, right in time for a full day of meetings.

But assuming California can ever get the Coast Daylight back up in running, to properly pull my plan off you'd need to either have 2-1 lie flat seating or bring back open sections of berths (which would be a more efficient use of space).

Overnight business travel between SF and LA? On a train? No, those days are long gone. Yes. there might be a few business travelers who would take the train, but I don't see it as more a curiosity for the serious business travelers. Besides if there was an overnight SF to LA train, it would die rather quickly when SF to LA HSR service begins.
A Coast Daylight service may survive the start of the SF to LS HSR service, but that would be because it serves coastal communities in the daytime that are a long way from the HSR route and it is a scenic route for those not in a hurry. Neither of those apply to an overnight service.

 

[neroden]

What afigg said.

The most valuable thing which a longer-distance train can have is solid, reliable, several-times-a-day corridor trains along the same route.

From where I'm sitting, the most useful thing which could happen to the LSL is the implementation of the NYS rail plans (110 mph on passenger-only tracks from Schenectady to Buffalo). The second-most-useful thing which could happen is the South of the Lake plan being backed by Michigan (110 mph on passenger-only tracks from Chicago to Michigan City). The third-most-useful would probably be a reroute through Detroit along the Michigan-owned passengers-first tracks from Michigan City to Detroit, and then some track or other from Detroit to Toledo. The fourth-most-useful would be corridor service along passengers-first tracks from Cleveland to Toledo to Detroit, at which point there's just Cleveland to Buffalo dispatched by the freight operator, and the train will probably be very reliable and spectacularly popular...

The second-most-valuable thing which a longer-distance train can have is a lot of connections with urban, commuter, and corridor trains.

This is both valuable *directly* for connections, and in terms of *awareness of rail travel*. It's documented that long-distance ridership tends to be higher out of cities with local rail than out of cities without it. There's a reason Chicago is the transfer hub for Amtrak, and it's not just the population; it's also the network of commuter and corridor lines radiating out of Chicago. St. Louis doesn't have nearly as much, so it lost out, and New Orleans doesn't either, so it doesn't manage to do nearly as well as the "southern hub".

Within California, CAHSR is going to completely eat the market for LA-SF service. The rule is that any connected passenger train service helps all passenger train service (by network effects: people start wanting to make connections to the service which is there, which means more demand). As a result, I'd bet CAHSR will create sufficient demand to get frequent Monterey-Salinas-Gilroy-San Jose-San Francisco service built and operating, since now it will connect efficiently to LA as well as the Bay Area; while the Pacific Surfliner will probably be extended to Paso Robles routinely. Meanwhile, the large number of additional people with the "train habit" will attract riders to the Coast Starlight north of Sacramento, the CZ, the SWC, and maybe even the Sunset Limited.