Why are Chicago-New York sleepers ridiculously expensive?

[neroden]

The low bucket price is adjusted intermittently (supply and demand y'know). I'm used to getting quotes for low bucket in February but I guess I'm out of date. :shrug:

 

[niemi24s]

I'm almost certain the low bucket price (and prices of all the other buckets) are adjusted periodically due to inflation - and not due to supply & demand.

I've only been compiling data for LD fare bucket charts since Oct 2015, but get the notion that fare buckets themselves are adjusted primarily due to inflation. As an example, the low bucket Roomette fare on the LSL has been: $216 in Oct 2015; $225 in Jan through April 2016; $227 in Nov 2016 through early Jan 2017; $229 in late Jan 2017. The increase over this 15 month period period has been $13 or 6.0%. And increases are seen in all the buckets when new bucket values are established. It also appears adjustments are made to all the buckets every three months or so. Even though 6% is much greater than published CPI figures it always increases - never decreases. As an estimate, your $183 for a low bucket Roomette on the LSL or Card would have probably been its price over 4 years ago.

However, once the value of each of the 5 buckets for each category is established for a given train, it may be supply & demand that determines which of the 5 buckets is offered for sale on any given date. And the dollar value of the bucket (or the bucket price) offered for sale on a given date does go up and down with supply & demand. In short:

• Individual bucket increases every 3 or so months are due to inflation

• Short term (even daily) fluctuations between buckets due to supply & demand

 

[Lonestar648]

I imagine marketing gauges what the route will pay without impacting ridership. The pressure is intense to increase revenue per passenger and lower costs. By slipping a couple dollars of increase every few months, coupled with the supply and demand bucket fluctuation, most riders most likely will not notice, or if they do, most likely will no one will complain about a couple dollars.

 

[CoachSlumber]

Reading of these high fares makes me nostalgic for the days of the NYC Sleepercoach....just $7.accommodation charge, added to the $51.25 Coach fare....

And for years Amtrak ran Slumbercoaches on the Broadway and sometimes on the Lake Shore. They were a godsend to a young high school/college traveler like me.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I have very fond memories of the Slumbercoaches on the Crescent! Rode many a mile between Washington and Greenville,SC and Atlanta in them at low cost upgrades. (And wonderful a la carte Breakasts in the Diners were icing on the cake! )

 

[JoeBas]

Yup, and apples used to cost a nickle...

 

[dlagrua]

I have very fond memories of the Slumbercoaches on the Crescent! Rode many a mile between Washington and Greenville,SC and Atlanta in them at low cost upgrades. (And wonderful a la carte Breakasts in the Diners were icing on the cake! )

I have toured the Slumbercoaches at museums but never rode in one. The arrangement of small roomettes in an under/over configuration resulted in something like a 60 passenger capacity. The roomettes were tiny but each one had a sink and toilet. You will never see them again due to the stairs up to the upper level rooms. Great idea for low cost sleepers.

 

[afigg]

If I may steer this discussion back to supply and demand, well supply to be specific. How many roomettes are taken up by OBS on the LSL in the current diner substitute configuration? Is it still a total of 9 to 10 crew members? With only 2 sleeper cars and thus 24 roomettes from NYP, 15 to 16 roomettes (and 6 bedrooms) is not a lot of capacity for NYP-CHI traffic.

The Viewliner II bag-dorms and sleeper cars, if they are ever delivered in the life time of someone born before the contract was awarded, will effectively double the number of roomettes available to and from NYP. A bag-dorm for the OBS and a 3rd sleeper car for the LSL NYP section will make a big difference in supply and should ease price pressure.

 

[chakk]

I have very fond memories of the Slumbercoaches on the Crescent! Rode many a mile between Washington and Greenville,SC and Atlanta in them at low cost upgrades. (And wonderful a la carte Breakasts in the Diners were icing on the cake! )

I have toured the Slumbercoaches at museums but never rode in one. The arrangement of small roomettes in an under/over configuration resulted in something like a 60 passenger capacity. The roomettes were tiny but each one had a sink and toilet. You will never see them again due to the stairs up to the upper level rooms. Great idea for low cost sleepers.

Slumbercoaches built by the Budd Company had 24 single rooms and 8 double rooms, for a total car capacity of 40 passengers.

New York Central rebuilt some of their 22 roomette sleeping cars into "Sleepercoaches" with 16 single rooms and 10 double rooms, for a total car capacity of 36 passengers.

I rode in these cars on Amtrak, who also ran regular 10-6 sleepers as slumbercoaches for awhile, with no free meal service provided to the occupants.

 

[PVD]

In the present config, do the Boston OBS (cafe car and TAs) take space in the Boston sleeper, or wait till Albany for the ones from NY? A Bag Dorm would be a huge help for the LSL, assuming one group of OBS, either NY or Boston, gets their space in Albany.

 

[Anderson]

Amtrak prices sleepers on the Cardinal to discourage through travel between CHI and the NEC (Alexandria north to New York City), as these points are convenient enough to the LSL and CL. You'll find that prices drop off significantly when one end of your trip is somewhere between Dyer, IN and Manassas, VA, the market that the Cardinal intends to serve.

Regarding high prices on the LSL, hmm, yeah, supply and demand. ;-)

Note that NYP-CHI on the LSL and Cardinal have the same buckets for the endpoint market. The LSL can actually be the more expensive of the two (as it is this Friday...the LSL is $654 while the Cardinal is $575), but it will tend to be the Cardinal because of constrained supply (the LSL has 2-3 sleepers NYP-CHI, depending on whether they're running one to Boston or doing a transfer at ALB, while the Cardinal only has 1-2 depending on the season). Both are hit with a constrained supply crisis, it just stands out more for the Cardinal because the intermediate markets are discounted,

 

[Larry H.]

Reading of these high fares makes me nostalgic for the days of the NYC Sleepercoach....just $7.accommodation charge, added to the $51.25 Coach fare....

When I have recalled this fact here or one like it I often was criticized for being wrong. None the less the actual room fares were many times less the ratio between coach and sleeper fares seen recently with Amtrak. Many here simply want to defend Amtrak at any price, (no pun intended). I still can't help but feel that operating larger amounts of sleepers at more reasonable cost would boost the ridership significantly. It only makes sense that if in the days of rail a train would carry 5 or more sleepers and now carries one, the passenger load is going way up so long as the cost is reasonable, which to many of us quit happening a long time ago. This is only a thought process, I know Amtrak hasn't the money or government support to do it, but perhaps given the thrust toward energy saving and pollution saving alternatives wanted by many the cost of rail transportation could be well worth the investment.