News on daily Sunset (incl older east of NOL discussion)

[neroden]

Based on the incremental subsidy numbers, Amtrak is not going to do this without state or local support. I could actually see this being funded from local support, however, it's just not much cost.

Yeah, but an extension of a LD train does not require state support. If they weren't considering doing this by themselves, why even bother with alternative A1? Amtrak might finally be thinking of the network effect.

Amtrak was very specific in the report. They aren't required to charge the loaded-with-overhead overpriced rates if it's a longer-than-750-mile... so they won't. But Amtrak has also faced flat federal funding for many years, so it makes no sense for Amtrak to increase its deficit.

Therefore Amtrak estimated the *actual* incremental costs and incremental revenues. If the states or localities cover the difference (~5.3 million/year), Amtrak will run the train, otherwise not.

The loaded-with-overhead rate would have been $20 million or more.

 

[TylerP42]

Sorry if I've been living under a rock and missed a thread (I looked for one and couldn't find it), but someone just sent me this on facebook. For me it's a rumor. Anyone else know any truth to this?

He said he found the info in a trains magazine saying it'll be back.

 

[lo2e]

Not exactly what you're seeing there, but there's an article in the Tallahassee Democrat from December 31 stating there's at least a group looking at the possibilities: http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2015/12/31/all-aboard-rail-service-could-returning-tallahassee/78131404/

The Amtrak report looks at three possibilities of restoring the rail line, all with stops in Tallahassee.

One would be a daily trip from New Orleans to Orlando with 16 stops along the way. Another would extend the New Orleans line to two daily trips between Mobile where passengers would change trains on their way to Florida. The third would be an overnight trip from New Orleans to Orlando.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

For the projected loss of Alt A1, we've been using the figure of "$5.48 million in combined annual funding needs for the long distance train extension (down from $5.71 million [for Alt A])".

But the study also notes "Potential cost reductions of $654,000 annually are possible if the chef position in the Cross-Country Café is removed from the proposal, and food is instead prepared and served by the Lead Service Attendant and Service Attendant. A trial of this staffing plan is currently underway on the City of New Orleans."

Subtracting the $650,00 saved from eliminating the chef (sorry about that), a CONO sans chef could be extended to Orlando for $4,930,000 only $5 million a year. Take the $5 million, divide by the estimated 138,300 new passengers, gets about $36 loss per passenger, in line with other Long Distance trains.

(Yeah, I know loss-per-passenger isn't the best measure. But it's the simplistic number that will be used by Amtrak's enemies on hate talk radio, so it matters. And it's good to be fairly low.)



I expect the overall results could turn out better. If Amtrak overestimates the ridership and underestimates the losses, it's hell to pay and forecasters' heads could roll. But nobody gets mad if ridership exceeds estimates and losses come in below projections.

Unless I missed it, the study made no reference to the SunRail connections at Orlando, or to the future Brightline service to Orlando Airport. (Yes, I could easily imagine backpackers riding the CONO to Orlando, spending a day or three in theme parks, then taking the Brightline from the airport to Miami if that seems most convenient.)

It's for another thread, but this CONO makes me think about extending the Palmetto to Jacksonville. It's just 2 hrs 20 min down the way from Savannah, so the SB arrival would be 11:20 p.m. That's later than we'd like, but so much better than none, when the Meteor and Star both arrive in the a.m. The NB departure would be at 6 a.m., earlier than we'd like, but both the Star and the Meteor pass thru in the p.m. The extended CONO and the extended Palmetto would not connect exactly, but with an "overnight connection" as they say. Still some riders would use it to make a connection to the CONO. The network effect can be powerful even overnight.

I'm used to seeing talk about extending the Palmetto to Miami, adding sleepers and a dining car and oh my! But I'd be happy to see it reach the Jacksonville metro area, a 1.3 million market. (No dining car, but I'd probably want a lounge with sandwiches n stuff; the current Palmetto offers "vending machines".)

There's probably good reason why the Palmetto sleeps in Savannah -- limits on crew hours n stuff -- but I'd like to see it a day train to Jacksonville. Maybe the extended Palmetto would need to go to Orlando and arrive well after midnight. That way it could be serviced at Sanford, tho their skills are for Superliners. That degree of extension would require a third consist, and that would wreck the operating numbers. But if it could go just two hours further down the road from Savannah to Jacksonville without requiring a maintenance base (no sleepers, no diners keeps things simpler), that I'd like to see.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

... an article in the Tallahassee Democrat from December 31

http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2015/12/31/all-aboard-rail-service-could-returning-tallahassee/78131404/

I counted six factual errors, including an incorrect lowest projected loss (they give too high a figure) and the wrong train that was discontinued (it wasn't the Gulf Coast Limited and it wasn't "popular").

But given the standards of today's press, it's not a bad article overall. LOL.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Am I the first to notice that the proposed CONO extension to Orlando would pass thru the heart of Cong John Mica's Congressional district? Just saying'.

Mica's sure brought home the bacon with tens of millions of federal funds for his favorite homestate project, SunRail, which Wikipedia reports:

"During its first year of operation, SunRail made a total of $7.2 million ... spent a total of $34.4 million ... ending it with a $27.2 million deficit and an average daily ridership of 3,700 passengers."

I'm getting a $20 to $30+ loss-per-passenger out of those and other statistics? guesstimates? found on Google. (Surely they are doing better. But I couldn't find any more recent or official financial figures on the SunRail home page. What could they have to hide?)

The projected results for the extended CONO -- 138,000 riders, possibly more, and a loss-per-rider of only $36, and probably less -- is not a bad deal at all.

 

[bretton88]

As much as adding to your losses is generally a bad thing, 5 million a year is a pretty small amount in their overall losses. If they schedule things right, they could increase ridership elsewhere with the network effect, making the impact to their bottom line low for running the train. Plus there's the added political benefit of putting a train in an area that would have previously not been inclined to fund Amtrak because they didn't have a train, with a train they might flip to funding Amtrak.

 

[TylerP42]

There should be no loss per rider...

 

[bretton88]

There should be no loss per rider...

In which case the entire LD network is doomed. All LD trains lose money, except occasionally the auto train.

 

[jis]

Am I the first to notice that the proposed CONO extension to Orlando would pass thru the heart of Cong John Mica's Congressional district? Just saying'.

Mica's sure brought home the bacon with tens of millions of federal funds for his favorite homestate project, SunRail, which Wikipedia reports:

"During its first year of operation, SunRail made a total of $7.2 million ... spent a total of $34.4 million ... ending it with a $27.2 million deficit and an average daily ridership of 3,700 passengers."

I'm getting a $20 to $30+ loss-per-passenger out of those and other statistics? guesstimates? found on Google. (Surely they are doing better. But I couldn't find any more recent or official financial figures on the SunRail home page. What could they have to hide?)

The projected results for the extended CONO -- 138,000 riders, possibly more, and a loss-per-rider of only $36, and probably less -- is not a bad deal at all.

Oddly Mica has been pretty silent about the Gulf Coast project even though the proposal does extend to Orlando. It is Congresspeople and Senator from Mississippi and Alabama that have been pushing this more than anyone else. That is the reason I believe in reality what will materialize is a NOL Mobile service and the Florida extension may wait for another day.

FDOT was offered am intra-Florida service by Amtrak and they turned it down because it would not meet their 60% farebox recovery threshold for intercity rail service that they have been using for decades, and which caused the original intra-Florida Silver Palm to go bye-bye. I doubt that FDOT could be convinced that a Tallahassee - Jacksonville - Orlando service will meet that threshold when they do not believe that a Jacksonville - Orlando - Tampa - Miami service would. Just the way things blow in Florida these days. I think FDOT will for the moment just concentrate on SunRail and Tri-Rail expansions and politically supporting AAF, and not be contributing to any Amtrak expansion in Florida for a while at least. Just my semi-educated guess of course.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Perhaps when the people of Florida wake up and run off the health care criminal Rick Scott, the Absentee Senator Mark Rubio and like minded politicians, Florida's DOT will be more open to working with Amtrak on Rail service?

 

[jis]

Perhaps when the people of Florida wake up and run off the health care criminal Rick Scott, the Absentee Senator Mark Rubio and like minded politicians, Florida's DOT will be more open to working with Amtrak on Rail service?

Who knows? FDOT's 60% threshold was set way back when some of these guys were in cribs. But seriously, if Florida wants to setup and operate its own intra-Florida service operated by someone other than Amtrak using their own equipment, why should anyone complain? Whether that will happen or not is a different matter. The trend at present seems to be to just smooth the path of anyone that wants to do such exemplified currently by AAF. A lot will depend on how that pans out, since Amtrak hasn't exactly covered itself with laurels of efficiency, service quality and transparency either. We mostly seem to support Amtrak more because it is the only game in town rather than because it is really wonderful, after all.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

... notice that the proposed CONO extension … would pass thru … Cong John Mica's Congressional district?

Mica's sure brought home the bacon with tens of millions of federal funds for his favorite homestate project, SunRail, which Wikipedia reports:

...

The projected results for the extended CONO -- 138,000 riders, possibly more, and a loss-per-rider of only $36, and probably less -- is not a bad deal at all.

Oddly Mica has been pretty silent about the Gulf Coast project even though the proposal does extend to Orlando. It is Congresspeople and Senator from Mississippi and Alabama that have been pushing this more than anyone else. That is the reason I believe in reality what will materialize is a NOL Mobile service and the Florida extension may wait for another day.

...

The figures for Mobile-New Orleans train were dismal, low ridership working out to a high subsidy per passenger. The numbers work much better for the full distance train. So I hope that doesn't happen.

If Senators and CongressCritters can deliver federal funds to cover the costs of any upgrades CSX demands, then maybe states and cities could pick up the $5 million yearly loss for the CONO sans chef. Four states, $1 million each, with Tallahassee, Mobile, Biloxi/Gulfport (or their casinos), and New Orleans putting up $250,000 each. That $5m million is such a small amount that it's hardly worth making your neighboring states mad at you by refusing to share at all.

As for the Florida DOT, Tallahassee's delegation in the legislature, with a little help from Pensacola and the rest of the Panhandle, can make the simple pitch: Everybody us is getting trains but you oppose letting our train get a lousy million or two?

Florida could also make a large non-financial contribution by leaning on CSX to make it happen. The states seem much more effective at leaning on the freights than Amtrak can ever be.

 

[jis]

I just don't see the Florida delegation doing much of anything about it, unless some miracle happens. Specially given the court ordered redistricting that is going to be forced which will put everyone on an edge specially in North Florida where the most egregious gerrymanderings are to be found, they will simply not shake the boat for for an election cycle or two until things settle down.

On the Senate side, if Sen. Nelson comes out strongly in favor there is some hope. The other hope would be Corrine Brown, but she could be threatened by the redistricting since she is in one of the made for Democrat gerrymanders. Absent that, Florida will sleep this one out for now. Again, just IMHO from the ground in Florida. I don't think anyone will actively oppose. They will just mostly do nothing. If the local communities can push a few legislators to shake lose some money from the state to support their local matching funds that might work. but who know? This is Florida afterall.

The results from the 2016 elections will be quite critical in determining which way the winds blow.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

I just don't see the Florida delegation doing much of anything about it, unless some miracle happens. ...

I wasn't talking about the Florida delegation in the Congress. You already said the push in Congress was coming from Alabama and Mississippi Critters (as well it should).

I meant members of the state legislature from the Panhandle, that is, mostly from the capital city, when I said, "Tallahassee's delegation in the legislature". Unless all the rules of politics have been upended, they will push for $1 million or so a year out of the state budget for their train. South Florida has Tri Rail, and Central Florida has SunRail, they will share the Brightline. So the Panhandle will have a very good argument that their part of the state has been completely left out. A lousy million or two for the CONO sans chef would help answer that problem.

While Jacksonville and Orlando already have Amtrak LD trains, they should be happy to go along with the plan and get another!

The Timetable works so well in this iteration, Alt A1. The CONO sans chef is set to stop in Jacksonville at 8:15 a.m. between the SB Star, at 6:39 a.m. and the SB Meteor, at 9:09 a.m. Then NB it would hit Jacksonville at 7:25 p.m., between the Meteor at 5:07 and the Star at 11:03 p.m. The freights like the passenger trains to run only a couple of hours apart, to minimize disruption to their freight schedules. So the CONO sans chef would work well on the SunRail line, the former CSX A line which still carries some freight traffic.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Here's another article, in USA Today, that's very friendly to the project:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/nation-now/2016/01/01/officials-pushing-return-passenger-rail-gulf-coast/78175902/

Interesting choice of words that I put in bold:

... re-establishing a Gulf Coast line could produce ... nearly 154,000 annual passengers for round trip service to Orlando. ...

Money to pay for it ... would come from local, state and federal sources. Amtrak ... owns only the lines in its profitable Northeast Corridor and uses subsidies from states in which it operates to fill the gap between revenue from passengers and federal funds.

Apparently the reporter was told about the funding formula for the state-supported corridor trains. But he doesn't mention the subsidies of the other LD trains from Congressional appropriations, without any state contributions.

Makes me wonder if Congress is pushing Amtrak toward getting the states to pay part, or all, of the costs for the LD trains, with the CONO sans chef extension as a $5 million test case.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

I think you give Congress too much credit.

 

[jis]

While Jacksonville and Orlando already have Amtrak LD trains, they should be happy to go along with the plan and get another!

AFAICT they don't give a rodent's rear end about whether they have one more Amtrak train or not. Actually if Amtrak tries to can the Star, only us rail aficionados would raise a stink about it. Most of the Florida legislature would not worry about it too much.

You are making the mistaken assumption that they think that a train is something important to have. They in general don't. They mostly think that Miami and Orlando are fools to be pissing away money on trains. That is the level of problem we face in Florida, and specially the north end of it.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

But the Mobile Press-Register, aka AL.com, revealed an opening to change minds and votes, my bold:

http://www.al.com/news/mobile/index.ssf/2015/06/all_aboard_what_the_gulf_coast.html

... U.S. Rep. Bradley Byrne, R-Fairhope ... voted ... to eliminate Amtrak's funding. ...

...

"I don't want to take taxpayer dollars to subsidize a failed public transportation system," Byrne said. "... But Amtrak doesn't operate down here. They abandoned us years ago. It really doesn't help the people in my district."

This CongressCritter tells us that his vote might change if it were about something good for his District. That's how representative government is supposed to work. So if Amtrak "unabandons" southern Alabama, well, a million bucks or two in subsidy isn't really all that bad, now is it? LOL.

 

[jis]

Yes, miracles can happen however probabilities are low.

The main means for funding such relatively small grants targeted to individual projects used to be a mechanism wherein a legislator could direct specific funds to specific project in his district by attaching them via amendments to a main bill, and these were hashed out in back room deals and appeared in the final bill. This process was gutted and is explicitly not allowed in Congress anymore, and is more or less difficult to pull off in the Florida legislature too. Now the whole thing has to be go through the subcommittee process and compete for attention among a whole plethora of other often much more pressing and bigger things, and hence get buried. That is the problem that is of the creation of Congress and various state legislatures which makes funding of such small projects difficult. They were generally characterized as "pork" and therefore as undesirable. Now the only path open is to try to land a CMAQ or a TIGER grant through a competitive process managed by the executive branch to dole out a relatively small pot of money in relatively small chunks, and the equivalent of that in states.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Wikipedia says, "Tallahassee has traditionally been a Democratic city, and is one of the few cities in the South known for progressive activism. It has had a black mayor and a black state representative." The city's population is 35% black, the county 30% black. That's quite different from other parts of northern Florida. (The state is only 16% black.) And Tallahassee is the ultimate college town, with more than 70,000 students mostly at Florida State and Florida A&M, out of the metro area's nearly 400,000 total population.

Wikipedia also says that Jacksonville is increasingly black, up to 31% in 2010. Again, it's politically different from the rest of northern Florida, the Deep Dixie counties.

I'm saying that the two Florida cities that will most benefit from the CONO sans chef will support it. If their representatives in the legislature nag their colleagues enuff -- why does Southeast Florida get Tri Rail and Central Florida gets Sun Rail and we get nothing? -- they could probably get a lousy million or two a year in 'go away don't bother me' money. And that should be enuff.

Of course, as the headquarters of CSX, Jacksonville is a special case of its own. If CSX goes along with the CONO sans chef, fine. If CSX hates the project, its strong voice in the city and state would be a huge problem politically.

Of course, the Mayors of Tallahassee and Jacksonville, as well as Pensacola and a dozen other towns along the way, have signed letters of support for the train. What that's worth in dollars, well, I wouldn't spend it til I get it.

 

[jis]

Yeah, I know. That is the problem. City Mayors typically do not have a budget to serve even what they need to minimally do for their cities and they have very little control over what even the County Commissioner goes of doing, let alone the state legislature. And then Counties barely have enough money to do what they are supposed to do. Usually it boils down to should the school teachers get a raise or should we buy two buses, and such.

For example, in Palm Bay the Mayor strongly supports AAF, but the Commissioner (whose area covers all of Palm Bay and most of West Melbourne) strongly opposes. Fortunately Brevard County overall has been in balance supportive by one vote difference at the county level, so the project for getting an AAF station is moving along. But if the Commissioners had voted differently by one vote it is almost assured that there would have been no AAF station project in Brevard County. The state legislator from the constituency that Brevard County falls in is a T-Party person who is opposed to any investment in passenger rail and all for any infrastructure investment on roads. So it is almost a miracle what is happening in Brevard County. That is what I meant when I said "miracles can happen". But in this case all that the commissioners had to do was approve matching funds for grade crossing work and allow for the Bond issuance, and not really come up with any huge pile of money.

 

[Palmetto]

If the truth be told, Florida is very blasé about rail service from what I can tell. Certainly the city of Miami has been, and they're now paying for it in spades: gridlock everywhere on the roads, including non-expressway streets.

 

[jis]

If the truth be told, Florida is very blasé about rail service from what I can tell. Certainly the city of Miami has been, and they're now paying for it in spades: gridlock everywhere on the roads, including non-expressway streets.

That is why now they are in a veritable panic tog et Tri-Rail expansion going, and get an LRT to South beach up and running. But still they seem to be unable to bring themselves around to extending the Metro line to Homestead.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

HOWEVER: New trains can may add more connecting passengers instead of adding trains to present routes. The PRIIA reports do not address this metric very well. Connections to / from CHI, NYP, WASH, PHL would be improved The Sunset and Sunset east do not add to connections except at SAS, LAX and JAX. New Orleans only with an overnight stay.

Hopefully with my SL schedule change, the overnight stay will not be necessary for transferring from the SL to the CONO (east to Florida or north to Chicago) or the Crescent. It also gets rid of the late night times in SAS and the arrival in LAX before 6am.

http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/65927-proposal-for-extending-crescent-to-sas-improving-te-schedule/?p=640928