Trying to Improve Amtrak Schedules in Ohio

[keelhauled]

Recent data: http://narprail.org/site/assets/files/1038/cities_2014.pdf

Silver Meteor: NYP 87,227, PHL 25,600, WAS 39,941

Silver Star: NYP 61,363, PHL 23,971, WAS 38,991

Palmetto: NYP 45,323, PHL 21,497, WAS 40,593

Almost twice as many NYP passengers ride the SM than the Palmetto. A lot more NYP passengers ride the SS than the Palmetto. You would think that would be normal because it includes Florida but WAS has slightly more passengers riding the Palmetto than the Silver Meteor. WAS ridership among the three trains is roughly even. Same with PHL. But huge gaps in NYP. Do you think it's a coincidence the worst scheduled train is the least attractive to NYP? If the lack of Florida is the reason for the drop, why don't we see similar drops for PHL and WAS?

Considering that about 200,000 people rode the Palmetto, compared to about 400,000 on the Star and 342,000 on the Meteor, it is entirely unsurprising that the Palmetto would serve fewer New York passengers. Furthermore, the 45,000 passengers that rode the Palmetto to New York represent about $3.8 million in revenue, presumably lost if it were cut back. After all, it provides the only daylight service along the line that the Meteor passes through in darkness. Surely you can appreciate the value of daytime service. In any case, Palmetto comparisons are like to be moot now, considering that it now serves as a Regional frequency north of WAS...unless you consider the possibility of a day train across New York making local stops south of Albany, which incidentally currently lacks a late night southbound frequency.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

Recent data: http://narprail.org/site/assets/files/1038/cities_2014.pdf

Silver Meteor: NYP 87,227, PHL 25,600, WAS 39,941

Silver Star: NYP 61,363, PHL 23,971, WAS 38,991

Palmetto: NYP 45,323, PHL 21,497, WAS 40,593

Almost twice as many NYP passengers ride the SM than the Palmetto. A lot more NYP passengers ride the SS than the Palmetto. You would think that would be normal because it includes Florida but WAS has slightly more passengers riding the Palmetto than the Silver Meteor. WAS ridership among the three trains is roughly even. Same with PHL. But huge gaps in NYP. Do you think it's a coincidence the worst scheduled train is the least attractive to NYP? If the lack of Florida is the reason for the drop, why don't we see similar drops for PHL and WAS?

Considering that about 200,000 people rode the Palmetto, compared to about 400,000 on the Star and 342,000 on the Meteor, it is entirely unsurprising that the Palmetto would serve fewer New York passengers.

Then why do we not see this same phenomenon in PHL and WAS?

 

[keelhauled]

Recent data: http://narprail.org/site/assets/files/1038/cities_2014.pdf

Silver Meteor: NYP 87,227, PHL 25,600, WAS 39,941

Silver Star: NYP 61,363, PHL 23,971, WAS 38,991

Palmetto: NYP 45,323, PHL 21,497, WAS 40,593

Almost twice as many NYP passengers ride the SM than the Palmetto. A lot more NYP passengers ride the SS than the Palmetto. You would think that would be normal because it includes Florida but WAS has slightly more passengers riding the Palmetto than the Silver Meteor. WAS ridership among the three trains is roughly even. Same with PHL. But huge gaps in NYP. Do you think it's a coincidence the worst scheduled train is the least attractive to NYP? If the lack of Florida is the reason for the drop, why don't we see similar drops for PHL and WAS?

Considering that about 200,000 people rode the Palmetto, compared to about 400,000 on the Star and 342,000 on the Meteor, it is entirely unsurprising that the Palmetto would serve fewer New York passengers.

Then why do we not see this same phenomenon in PHL and WAS?

Probably cause midnight is late. I ain't saying it isn't. I am saying it's a whole lot better terminating the Palmetto at NYP than Washington for the sake of not letting people travel after some arbitrary time defined as "apparently past your bedtime" and throwing away millions of dollars of revenue in the process.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

Recent data: http://narprail.org/site/assets/files/1038/cities_2014.pdf

Silver Meteor: NYP 87,227, PHL 25,600, WAS 39,941

Silver Star: NYP 61,363, PHL 23,971, WAS 38,991

Palmetto: NYP 45,323, PHL 21,497, WAS 40,593

Almost twice as many NYP passengers ride the SM than the Palmetto. A lot more NYP passengers ride the SS than the Palmetto. You would think that would be normal because it includes Florida but WAS has slightly more passengers riding the Palmetto than the Silver Meteor. WAS ridership among the three trains is roughly even. Same with PHL. But huge gaps in NYP. Do you think it's a coincidence the worst scheduled train is the least attractive to NYP? If the lack of Florida is the reason for the drop, why don't we see similar drops for PHL and WAS?

Considering that about 200,000 people rode the Palmetto, compared to about 400,000 on the Star and 342,000 on the Meteor, it is entirely unsurprising that the Palmetto would serve fewer New York passengers.

Then why do we not see this same phenomenon in PHL and WAS?

Probably cause midnight is late. I ain't saying it isn't. I am saying it's a whole lot better terminating the Palmetto at NYP than Washington for the sake of not letting people travel after some arbitrary time defined as "apparently past your bedtime" and throwing away millions of dollars of revenue in the process.

But could the Palmetto be rescheduled for better arrival/departure times in NYP? Just looking at the times quickly, you could leave around an hour later from NYP (7am) and arrive around an hour earlier (11pm). That would be around a 10pm arrival into Savannah and a 7am departure and still have a day train. Even if you leave two hours later from NYP (8am) you'd still get to Savannah around 11pm which is earlier than the current Palmetto gets in now. And as I said before, you'd rather arrive at home late and then drive home or have a family member pick you up late than arrive late in a big city away from home which could be unsafe.

I do know that they did terminate the Pennsylvanian at PHL because the arrival into NYP would have been well after midnight. Should they have just continued and arrived in NYP at 1:30am? Who knows?

Or better yet, improve the schedule. For any train this long, someone is going to draw the short end of the stick. Why have it be the biggest and most popular city along the route?

 

[CCC1007]

Equipment and crew rotation need to be considered in these schedules. You don't want to have a train arriving too late to turn for the next morning's train, and you don't want to have a crew siting around for a full day because their rest forced them to miss the outbound train.

 

[keelhauled]

But could the Palmetto be rescheduled for better arrival/departure times in NYP? Just looking at the times quickly, you could leave around an hour later from NYP (7am) and arrive around an hour earlier (11pm). That would be around a 10pm arrival into Savannah and a 7am departure and still have a day train. Even if you leave two hours later from NYP (8am) you'd still get to Savannah around 11pm which is earlier than the current Palmetto gets in now. And as I said before, you'd rather arrive at home late and then drive home or have a family member pick you up late than arrive late in a big city away from home which could be unsafe.

I do know that they did terminate the Pennsylvanian at PHL because the arrival into NYP would have been well after midnight. Should they have just continued and arrived in NYP at 1:30am? Who knows?

Or better yet, improve the schedule. For any train this long, someone is going to draw the short end of the stick. Why have it be the biggest and most popular city along the route?

The 7:00 am slot out of NYP is the Carolinian's. 8:00 is close enough to rush hour Amtrak is never going to move a nonessential train against the inbound flood of movements through the tunnels. Northbound running the train earlier is no longer an option since they combined a Regional frequency into the Palmetto (the same is true southbound), and in any case the earlier you put it the closer it comes to running up against the Carolinian again.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

But the Carolinian runs 3 hours earlier than the Palmetto going north.

 

[jis]

So I guess finally we have agreement that a train arriving at 10 or 11 pm in New York is fine. Now we have just devolved back into solving non existent problems to waste our time as is often the case on AU. Really, the Palmetto is just fine and needs no change. Can we now move back to discussing hypothetical trains in Ohio?

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

What about midnight though?

This train isn't for NYP. Sure we can shift it a little bit to accommodate New York, but that can't affect CIN too much IMO.

 

[keelhauled]

What about midnight though?

If I could direct your attention to posts 251, 253, 255, and 256...

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

But, nobody really agreed to it. I agree if there's enough time to turn it, and there's another train along the route that serves it better, but nobody really said "Midnight is bad!" or "Midnight is good enough" or something like that. We just discussed the pros and cons of it.

 

[jis]

Is there a proposed schedule with an endpoint midnight arrival we are struggling with? Or is this question with regard to en route stops?

If you look at dense commuter service typically there is massive service reduction from a little after midnight to around 4:30 to 5 am.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

It's NYP we're struggling with. CIN to NYP or DET to NYP both put NYP around midnight.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

So look

BUF represents all of upstate NY here.

NYP to BUF? Empire Service or LSL.

BUF to CLE or CIN? use this train.

NYP to CLE or CIN? use Liberty Limited.

That's why this day train would exist.

You could also ride the train the entire way, but that would be tiring.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

NYP 647A

CIN 1042P

CIN 718A

NYP 1146P

Sorry I didn't combine the last 3 posts :/

 

[jis]

NYP 647A

CIN 1042P

CIN 718A

NYP 1146P

Sorry I didn't combine the last 3 posts :/

That looks absolutely fine to me.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

I think it *mostly* fits the compromise Philly suggested, just the westbound departs earlier by 20 mins and eastbound arrives 5 mins later at NYP.

If this runs, I think this is good.

Now:

Cardinal done,

Liberty Limited done,

NYP-CIN or DET day train done (people liked DET better I think)

but CLE-CIN has some disagreement.

Should this day train run NYP-CIN or NYP-DET or both and split at CLE?

I'm going off of Philly's schedule. I'm in the 'paranoid of slow trains' group, especially as this is a far-future (at least 10 years) train.

1. LVL to CLE connect to LL.

Move the LL earlier.

NYP 905P

PGH 615A/630A

CLE 930A/1005A

CHI 530P

CLE 1015A

CIN 400P/415P

LVL 845P!

LVL 930A!

CIN 200P/215P

CLE 800P

2. NSH to CIN to connect to the Cardinal.

NSH 1045A!

LVL 315P/330P!

CIN 800P

Cardinal 917P/927P

Cardinal 731A/741A

CIN 845A

LVL 115P/130P

NSH 600P

L&N did CIN-LVL in 3 hours and LVL-NSH in 3 hours. I extended each to 4.5 hours.

Again, NSH-LVL-CIN is gonna be a very uncompetitive train.

 

[Seaboard92]

Actually if both trains Split it would be an interesting experiment. And I would love to see the times if both trains split. But that makes things more complicated.

 

[neroden]

Philly can you add my times on there as well?

This has both of my 3-C scenarios, your schedule, and two of Max's (through cars to my Cardinal and the day train). The 3-C route is on top followed by any other part of the same trains.

OK. I like Max's basic scheme for a Cardinal schedule. It loses all western connections (without an overnight) and it loses the scenery in the New River Gorge.

But the top cities on the route are Chicago, Charlottesville, DC, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati, and it's significantly better for all of them. My presumption is that the Hoosier State would stay in place and go daily.

The key question here is of course how much connecting traffic the Cardinal actually has at Chicago, information which I do not have. If there's lots, the existing schedule is better.

I think none of the Cleveland-Columbus-Cincy options are plausible. all would require the capital investment of the original Ohio 3C plan, and if we can get that, we can get the original Ohio 3C plan, whcih is better. So I am ignoring them.

Philly's proposed "Broadway Limited via Dearborn" schedule looks pretty cool. It makes connections at Toledo to the LSL to upstate NY, whether the LSL is rescheduled as the PIP suggests (which it should be) or not. It provides the desirable "day train for Cleveland" and runs overnight from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg. The eastbound is, however, in Pittsburgh station at the same time as the westbound Capitol Limited, *and* it's in the commuter rush into NY, which really won't work.

 

[Philly Amtrak Fan]

Philly's proposed "Broadway Limited via Dearborn" schedule looks pretty cool. It makes connections at Toledo to the LSL to upstate NY, whether the LSL is rescheduled as the PIP suggests (which it should be) or not. It provides the desirable "day train for Cleveland" and runs overnight from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg. The eastbound is, however, in Pittsburgh station at the same time as the westbound Capitol Limited, *and* it's in the commuter rush into NY, which really won't work.

Does PGH have only one track? If they do have two, they can't have one east and one west at the same time? Is there any double tracking on the route between CLE and PGH so the CL and LL can cross paths?

We're kind of limited between PGH and NYP eastbound. AAO had its "Three Rivers" arriving in NYP at 8:58am. I pushed my LL back to 9:28am to avoid NYP's rush hour. It is scheduled to arrive in Newark at 9:03am so it shouldn't be in the tunnels until after 9am. If the train gets into NYP before the rush hour it would get into PHL really really early. We could have the train arrive/leave PGH later but 12:15am is already kind of undesirable. Would a 12:30am departure from PGH with 9:43am into NYP be better both in PGH and NYP?

And would this train be profitable above the rails or close to breaking even?

 

[Seaboard92]

I can't speak for how many tracks PGH has. But I know the Pennsylvanian overnights in the station. So in that case there would be three trains in at one time.

 

[neroden]

And would this train be profitable above the rails or close to breaking even?

Not at all sure. It's not an easy thing to project.
It's easy to project a daily Cardinal -- we have lots of experience with daily vs. three-a-week. We can naively multiply costs by (new # trainsets / old # trainsets), and historical evidence suggests we'll do better than that. We can naively multiply revenues by 7/3, and historical evidence suggests we'll do better than that.

With the Pennsy-Cap through cars, they have to increase ridership and revenue, and the costs were estimated to be tiny. Amtrak already did a study which estimated tiny incremental losses. It's easy to guess that on today's higher base level of ridership and higher average ticket yields, the revenues would exceed the costs.

With the Dearborn-Toledo connection, I need only look at all the passengers unhappily and grumpily taking the bus connection, and the passengers refusing to take the trip because of the bus connection, and figure they'll pay a lot more to take a train.

But figuring out breakeven for a whole new schedule? You have to do a lot more modeling. Guessing the costs isn't so bad. But guessing the ridership and revenue? Gravity model with city populations, discounts for bad calling hours, huge discounts for delays, bonuses for college towns, it gets complicated.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

There are 2 tracks at PGH and 3 disused. 3 platforms and 1 disused. This is from Wikipedia, and was pretty easy to search up.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

Seaboard92!

Could you be kind enough to provide IND to STL (via Effingham) schedules if they exist? Thanks so much!

 

[Seaboard92]

Most of the CSX likes in Ohio are FRA class 4 track so 60 freight with a max of 80 passenger. Interesting things to factor in for anyone making timetables.