Sunset East: Good news for a change?

[George Harris]

No time to go into details right now, but I'll make a quick list.
SAS-HOU-NOL stub train will not work because;

1. I-10 HOU-NOL by I-10 4.8 hours Amtrak 9 hours

2. Southwest Airlines

3. transfer if going west of SAS

4. transfer if going beyong NOL

5. Amtrak can sale a LD trip on a train in this region, but not an intra-regional trip unless it is HSR or a tourist type train with a steam engine on point.

6. Only a LD or HSR can work along this route.

Houston - New Orleans in 4.8 hours? Taht is truly road warrior style. According to Mapquest, the distance is 349 miles and the driving time 5 hours 37 minutes. Even that is 62 mph, which, given potential congestion at several points along the way seems unrealisitic and excludes any stops. (I tend to refer to Mapquest driving tims as the 3:00am to 5:am times.) But 4.8 hours? That is an average start to stop speed of 73 mph. I think we all know that we can drive Houston to New Orleans is considerably less time than the Sunset takes to cover the distance, but let's at least use realistic numbers. Give a gas stop, a couple of potty breaks and a meal stop, 7 hours is probably a more realistic end to end driving time.

Rule one in all these things: Just because you don't think you would do it, does not mean that nobody would do it. There are plenty of people out there that will take a train that is slower than realisitic drive time because they:

1. Don't like long drives

2. No longer feel capable of making long drives

3. Enjoy the chance to read, relax, and eat along the way as they travel

4. Hate the thought of driving I-10

5. Have the need to stop and move around to the point that driving would take as long as the train.

6. Hate the thought of dealing with a kid spending 6 hours in a car seat.

5. Etc., etc.

 

[el Guapo]

Thanks to those who replied.

I don't necessarily mind what they're trying to accomplish. I just would like to have know that information before I booked my tickets.

Thanks again.

 

[had8ley]

Interesting observation here in tallahassee....for the past 3-4 months, I would see no train activity on the CSX line running through here on my way to or from work. In the past week, I have seen 5 trains. Just wondering if CSX has shifted some or all of their traffic back through here from southern georgia and why?

Flood waters north of you might have a big effect on detours. The Crescents have fallen way behind so I'm guessing they don't want to chance trains hung up with rails under water.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

GML I used $136 as the coach fare between NOL and LAX as that is what comes up on the Amtrak site. Round trip is $272. Coach fare between NOL and SAS is $68. Room charges were all over the place so I went out to October to get the lowest. Fares btween NOL and SAS and between NOL and LAX were.....Roomette $105 & $241, Bedroom $311 & $522 and family room $452 and $1,033. Just rechecked this and discovered tomorrow's train is sold out for the whole distance. Amazing. Must be for spring break. It wouldn't be such a 'poor performing' train if they had enough equipment to handle the demand.

I didn't consider coach fares at all. Alan was talking about the revenue from sleepers and diners. The CCC is a half-diner with similar meals availible, especially price wise, so that point is invalid, and the loss due to the sleepers would be, on average, about $30 a person. The Sunset currently runs with 24 sleeper rooms, say an average of 36 people. You'd need, in my estimation, 50 more coach passengers a day (25 per train) to cover that revenue loss. I think that is easily achievable, as that works out to only 18,250 more riders a year, and Amtrak has pretty much talked about 5 times that many.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

This benefits Chicago-Dallas-San Antonio-Los Angeles passengers by and large. Houston and New Orleans get daily service and new departure/arrival times, but since the train's schedule really can't be speeded up much if any, coupled with the loss of on board amenities, chances are slim that that segment...SAS-HOS-NOL...will gain any meaningful ridership.

We have consistently seen that going daily for any given train boosts its ridership considerably. Not just long-distance ridership, all ridership. In fact, its primarily the short-distance riders that benefit. If I want to get from any point A to any point B on this route, I have 4 basic choice: Drive, fly, bus, or train. Flying is increasingly unpleasnt, many people don't like driving long distance, and the amenities on the train, downgraded though they may be, are vastly more than when you ride that little grey dog.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Thanks to those who replied.
I don't necessarily mind what they're trying to accomplish. I just would like to have know that information before I booked my tickets.

Thanks again.

Since they do not know if this will ever happen, let alone when, and all destinations will be served, they would have it in their best interest to keep selling you tickets as if nothing happened, and then inform you in plenty of time if it does.

 

[NativeSon5859]

We have consistently seen that going daily for any given train boosts its ridership considerably. Not just long-distance ridership, all ridership. In fact, its primarily the short-distance riders that benefit. If I want to get from any point A to any point B on this route, I have 4 basic choice: Drive, fly, bus, or train. Flying is increasingly unpleasnt, many people don't like driving long distance, and the amenities on the train, downgraded though they may be, are vastly more than when you ride that little grey dog.

Well, we'll see. Problem is, I don't think there are many short distance riders to begin with on this train. You'd think NOL-HOS would be a natural route, but the travel time turns people off. Plus Southwest and Continental combined offer 24 nonstops a day with a 45 minute flying time. There's not really a market for intra-Louisiana travel...very minimal at best. Schreiver and New Iberia in LA and Beaumont in TX provide almost no ridership regardless, so you might as well take those off the list...those cities won't contribute much at all. Perhaps HOS-SAS could see some more riders, but it's only once a day, and it'd be arriving HOS from SAS at around 1:00pm and returning at around 5:00pm....so who do you market that after? Amtrak's never been well know in Houston, and that's a shame, so they better market the heck out of this. This isn't like a route in the Northeast...you're talking about a 15-hour route with only six en-route stops and the cities along the way have been used to tri-weekly service for decades. So my point is, if they were truly concerned with these markets, why take the half a$$ed approach by offering a downgraded product and increasing in the inconvenience for anyone needing to go west of SAS?

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Well, we'll see. Problem is, I don't think there are many short distance riders to begin with on this train.

Of course not. That's because short-distance travellers aren't going somewhere for 3 days, 5 days, most of the time. They want to leave this morning, get there that afternoon, spend a day or two there, and then head home. You can't predict that safely with a tri-weekly. So people don't try. Send it through daily, and the short distance ridership hits the roof.

By the way, its not a 45 minute flight from NOL to HOS. It takes about 30 minutes to get from NOL proper to NOL airport, (Versus about 5 to the train station), 2 hours for security to be on the safe side, about 25 minutes to get from HOS to houston proper, and about 15-30 minutes (call it 20) to get out of HOS. So figure 4 hours.

 

[NativeSon5859]

Well, we'll see. Problem is, I don't think there are many short distance riders to begin with on this train.

Of course not. That's because short-distance travellers aren't going somewhere for 3 days, 5 days, most of the time. They want to leave this morning, get there that afternoon, spend a day or two there, and then head home. You can't predict that safely with a tri-weekly. So people don't try. Send it through daily, and the short distance ridership hits the roof.

By the way, its not a 45 minute flight from NOL to HOS. It takes about 30 minutes to get from NOL proper to NOL airport, (Versus about 5 to the train station), 2 hours for security to be on the safe side, about 25 minutes to get from HOS to houston proper, and about 15-30 minutes (call it 20) to get out of HOS. So figure 4 hours.

I agree in principle about short distance ridership increasing by a large margin on most routes, but I have my doubts on this one, due to the reasons I mentioned above. If this was a corridor train in some other part of the country or if it was timed to take advantage of same-day business traffic (realistically, no city pairs on this route are a good example to use based on trip time), I'd agree that daily would work better for this route. But in this specific case I think the more cities that you can reach on the same train while not alienating the passengers who pay a premium to ride in the sleeper is the better alternative. Amtrak doesn't agree with me. C'est la vie, right?

Re: the flight...yeah, adding in total trip time, if you're going downtown-to-downtown, you're probably really close. Still, it's by far the easiest way to travel between the two cities. I wish that wasn't the case, but it is.

 

[henryj]

I didn't consider coach fares at all. Alan was talking about the revenue from sleepers and diners. The CCC is a half-diner with similar meals availible, especially price wise, so that point is invalid, and the loss due to the sleepers would be, on average, about $30 a person. The Sunset currently runs with 24 sleeper rooms, say an average of 36 people. You'd need, in my estimation, 50 more coach passengers a day (25 per train) to cover that revenue loss. I think that is easily achievable, as that works out to only 18,250 more riders a year, and Amtrak has pretty much talked about 5 times that many.

I was comparing a full coach vs a full sleeper. A sleeper fare is the coach fare plus the room charge. If someone wants to calculate it themselves go for it. I believe my numbers are correct. I did not complicate it by worrying about business class, diner revenue, or percent of occupancy. Why bother. So worst case scenario, it takes about 10 additional coach passengers to make up the missing revenue from a three times a week sleeper which is all you have now. It takes about 25 additional coach passengers to make up for a missing sleeper daily. I don't see that as much of a problem. Certainly not 4 million dollars or whatever Alan was thinking.

 

[henryj]

No, my mind isn't made up. I'm just not seeing anything that says that this is the best and only alternative available.
And now please go do the calculations that show what could be acheived simply by running the Sunset daily as is between NOL & LA.

The Sunset currently has 5 trainsets allocated to it. With the revised schedules out of LA, Amtrak only need find one more trainset to run the train daily. With 2 Trans/Dorms coming out of Beech Grove and 6 sleepers, that's easy to do. Heck, if they felt that they wanted the cushion, they could even find 7 trainsets.

So why are we accepting sloppy seconds when real improvements could be made by simply running the existing service as is daily? Why are we rolling the dice and hoping that people will accept a stub train?

Ps. Sorry about the typo of Billion vs. Million.

I never said it was the best alternative. But apparently it is what we are going to get. The Sunset has 4 trainsets allocated to it, not five. It takes five train sets plus spares to run daily service between NOL and LAX if you turn the train same day in LAX and overnight in NOL which the SP never had a trouble doing. But as you stated, it would only take one more train set to do it. The answer to your last question is we are doing this because that is what TEMPO and Amtrak want to do. The current schedule, particularly eastbound is an abomination and three times a week isn't 'service' so I just wish they would get on with it and do something.............anything.

 

[henryj]

No time to go into details right now, but I'll make a quick list.
SAS-HOU-NOL stub train will not work because;

1. I-10 HOU-NOL by I-10 4.8 hours Amtrak 9 hours

2. Southwest Airlines

3. transfer if going west of SAS

4. transfer if going beyong NOL

5. Amtrak can sale a LD trip on a train in this region, but not an intra-regional trip unless it is HSR or a tourist type train with a steam engine on point.

6. Only a LD or HSR can work along this route.

I drive to New Orleans every year. It always takes around 6+ hours with fuel and meal stops. Louisiana speed limits are 70mph and every local yocal along the way plus the highway patrol is on the lookout to make a little money. To fly, it's two hours before you leave, an hour flying time and another hour to get downtown. About 4 hours. Houston to NOL by rail is 363 miles. The fastest the SP ever ran it was around 8 hours. the Mopac route through Baton Rouge was always around 9 hours. Amtrak schedules 9 hours for the route but the Sunset has been arriving over an hour early at times so obviously it could be speeded up. The route is also a designated HSR corridor so it will be getting more attention as time goes on. Outside of the NEC virtually every Amtrak route is slower than driving so I don't see that as an issue. So I disagree with your option 6 as the only two things that can work. I do think that 9 hours on the train is excruciatingly slow, but people don't seem to mind it. If the train runs on time and on the schedule they have proposed I think it will be popular and a success. Daily service will make the difference, not the speed.

 

[AlanB]

No, my mind isn't made up. I'm just not seeing anything that says that this is the best and only alternative available.
And now please go do the calculations that show what could be acheived simply by running the Sunset daily as is between NOL & LA.

The Sunset currently has 5 trainsets allocated to it. With the revised schedules out of LA, Amtrak only need find one more trainset to run the train daily. With 2 Trans/Dorms coming out of Beech Grove and 6 sleepers, that's easy to do. Heck, if they felt that they wanted the cushion, they could even find 7 trainsets.

So why are we accepting sloppy seconds when real improvements could be made by simply running the existing service as is daily? Why are we rolling the dice and hoping that people will accept a stub train?

Ps. Sorry about the typo of Billion vs. Million.

I never said it was the best alternative. But apparently it is what we are going to get. The Sunset has 4 trainsets allocated to it, not five. It takes five train sets plus spares to run daily service between NOL and LAX if you turn the train same day in LAX and overnight in NOL which the SP never had a trouble doing. But as you stated, it would only take one more train set to do it. The answer to your last question is we are doing this because that is what TEMPO and Amtrak want to do. The current schedule, particularly eastbound is an abomination and three times a week isn't 'service' so I just wish they would get on with it and do something.............anything.

Ths Sunset still has 5 trainsets allocated to it because they've never undone things from when it ran through to Orlando. And back then with the delays at that time, they needed 5 trainsets.

This is why if you pick the correct day to visit NOL, you'll find 2 Sunset Limited trainsets sitting in the yard.

Regarding your answer to my question, all the more reason to start making some noise and do things the right way instead of the wrong way.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

My experience, Alan, is what will happen if you try to get them to do it the right way, as you put it, is derail the whole thing.

 

[AlanB]

My experience, Alan, is what will happen if you try to get them to do it the right way, as you put it, is derail the whole thing.

Sadly, you’re probably quite correct sir!

However, frankly at least with what I'm seeing presently in terms of numbers, I think that Texas would be better off with no change compared to what I fear will happen if the currently proposed changes do happen. Something just smells wrong to me with this deal and I truly believe that the only winner here is Amtrak; Texas, Louisiana, and the riding public will wind up the losers.

While I mean no insult to anyone, I think that everyone is just being blinded by the idea of daily service.

 

[MrEd]

I would be happy with service 3 times a week if it went to Mobile, AL.

I think I agree with Alan.

 

[henryj]

The Sunset currently has 5 trainsets allocated to it. Ths Sunset still has 5 trainsets allocated to it because they've never undone things from when it ran through to Orlando. And back then with the delays at that time, they needed 5 trainsets.
This is why if you pick the correct day to visit NOL, you'll find 2 Sunset Limited trainsets sitting in the yard.

Alan you can delete my posts all you want as you are the administrator and it's your 'toy', but it's still four sets.

 

[Guest]

No time to go into details right now, but I'll make a quick list.
SAS-HOU-NOL stub train will not work because;

1. I-10 HOU-NOL by I-10 4.8 hours Amtrak 9 hours

2. Southwest Airlines

3. transfer if going west of SAS

4. transfer if going beyong NOL

5. Amtrak can sale a LD trip on a train in this region, but not an intra-regional trip unless it is HSR or a tourist type train with a steam engine on point.

6. Only a LD or HSR can work along this route.

I drive to New Orleans every year. It always takes around 6+ hours with fuel and meal stops. Louisiana speed limits are 70mph and every local yocal along the way plus the highway patrol is on the lookout to make a little money. To fly, it's two hours before you leave, an hour flying time and another hour to get downtown. About 4 hours. Houston to NOL by rail is 363 miles. The fastest the SP ever ran it was around 8 hours. the Mopac route through Baton Rouge was always around 9 hours. Amtrak schedules 9 hours for the route but the Sunset has been arriving over an hour early at times so obviously it could be speeded up. The route is also a designated HSR corridor so it will be getting more attention as time goes on. Outside of the NEC virtually every Amtrak route is slower than driving so I don't see that as an issue. So I disagree with your option 6 as the only two things that can work. I do think that 9 hours on the train is excruciatingly slow, but people don't seem to mind it. If the train runs on time and on the schedule they have proposed I think it will be popular and a success. Daily service will make the difference, not the speed.

Well yeah, meal stops takes a good 45 minutes. Try it without stopping. The police won't stop you below 77 mph in a 70 mph zone.

6 lanes for 1/3 of the route. If there is no wrecks or no rush hour traffic in Beaumont and Baton Rouge, 4.8 hours. I did it last year at 70 mph.

1 quick gas stop near Lafayette.

 

[AlanB]

The Sunset currently has 5 trainsets allocated to it. Ths Sunset still has 5 trainsets allocated to it because they've never undone things from when it ran through to Orlando. And back then with the delays at that time, they needed 5 trainsets.
This is why if you pick the correct day to visit NOL, you'll find 2 Sunset Limited trainsets sitting in the yard.

Alan you can delete my posts all you want as you are the administrator and it's your 'toy', but it's still four sets.

Your post didn't get deleted because I disagree with the 4 sets, it got deleted because of the personal attack in the post.

Keep the personal attacks out of your posts and they won't go away, even if I disagree with what you've stated.

 

[had8ley]

Just my two pennies in Alan's defense...if I see an article on the Sunset daily or east or supposed SAS-NOL stub train it immediately catches my eye. Now if a NE regional is tied up on the main line I tend to skip over it since it is not in my territory or even close. I know how many seats are in the Magnolia Room in NOL but could care less how many there are in the Acela Lounge in NYP. It all comes down to one's back yard and I think Alan has done a good job of tolerating each and every ranting or negative review about Amtrak service on a national basis. I will add that since the Gatherings started there seems to be more understanding of what our admins face from those that attended.

 

[DKpartyguy]

I am finding thie discussion of Amtrak service between Houston and New Orleans very interesting. I travel to Houston every once in a while and I like to swing through New Orleans if I have a chance, where I often get the Crescent back to New York.

I don't ever take Amtrak from Houston to NOLA because, iirc, it leaves Houston around 6:30am, and well, as I am not a morning person this is not an attractive option.

I usually take a Greyhound bus from downtown Houston to NOLA, which takes about 6 hours or so.

Every time I have taken Greyhound to NOLA, the busses have been completely full.

I would think that some of these passengers would gladly take Amtrak instead if Amtrak ran daily from Houston at a reasonable hour. I think that the passengers are potentially there for a daily train, but Amtrak will have to do it the right way.

If I take the Crescent going down, I do get the westbound Sunset to Houston the following morning.

I don't really mind the length of this trip per se, but I wish it got into Houston a little earlier.

As for the Crescent, I don't like the 7:30 am departure time, but I finally figured out a way to make that work for me.

I stay out on Bourbon Street all night the night before and don't sleep!

Last time, I left Bourbon Street around 6am, went to my hotel, got packed and got a cab just in time to get the Crescent.

I got right to bed in my roomette, and woke around 1pm for lunch.

Also, it is very difficult to generalize about the type of passengers who would take this train.

I am sure that there are many like myself, who just hate the thought to driving to NOLA.

There would be tourists, college kids, businessmen/women, weekenders, etc.

I don't think that Amtrak has any real clue about the ridership potential out of Houston.

It is the largest city in Texas, yet doesn't have any daily train service.

Go figure.....

David

 

[Guest]

Everyone agrees that daily service between SAS and NOL is needed. Many believe a daily Sunset is the answer not a daily stub train.

Amtrak claims not to have the coaches for a daily Sunset while planning new routes.

 

[AlanB]

Amtrak claims not to have the coaches for a daily Sunset while planning new routes.

Actually all the new studies for train service include monies to buy the train cars that will be needed for said service. Short of the planned extension of one more Regional to Richmond, VA. thinking quickly I'm not aware of any other extensions/new services that are being planned that don't include the required funding for new cars.

 

[dlagrua]

I don't understand the big deal here. The tracks are still in place and being used by CSX for freight. The only problem appears to be that the signaling needs to be fixed to enable passenger service. They need not reinvent the wheel to get the Sunset Limited running. Some necessary signaling repair work and they should be able to run. At least that's the way I understand it.

 

[Hytec]

I don't understand the big deal here......Some necessary signaling repair work and they should be able to run.

Unfortunately, there are NO signals to repair between Flomaton, AL and Tallahassee, FL. The entire ~250 miles is Dark (no signal) Territory dispatched by Track Warrant.