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" Amtrak should rebuild the old Heritage Budd Coaches and Sleepers so they can relieve crowding on most of the Amtrak trains."For the first eights months of FY 2008 Amtrak carried approximately 18.4 million passengers.  Of these 376,539 or 2.04 per cent booked space in a sleeping car.  This percentage is in line with the ratio of sleeping car to coach and business class passengers for the FY ended September 30, 2007.The average system wide load factor through the end of May was 49.2 per cent, up from 46.2 per cent for the corresponding 2007 period.  Ridership for the first eight months of FY 2008 was up 10.9 per cent over 2007.  The figures for each route vary.The average load factors, as examples, were 63.9 per cent for the Acela; 52.6 per cent for the Northeast Corridor; 35.9 per cent for the Hiawatha's; 34.5 per cent for the Keystone service; 44.2 per cent for the St. Louis service; 35.1 per cent for the Empire trains; 33.8 per cent for the Pacific Surfliners, and 28 per cent for the Capitols.   Clearly, on some routes, for select trains, on certain days, i.e. Friday and Sunday nights, the load factors may approach or even exceed 100 per cent.  In many instances the high load factor may only exist for a relatively short distance.  For example, the load factor on trains between New York and Philadelphia is higher than the load factor south of Philly. Also the load factor between New York and Albany or Chicago and Springfield tends to be higher than the load factor west of Albany or south of Springfield.To hear some reporters tell it Amtrak is busting at the seams.  But the average load factors don't support the story.  The problem requires further analysis.  The question is when, where, how often, and to what extent does the bursting at the seams occur?  If all the trains departing Chicago, for example, between 3:00 and 6:00 p.m. on a Friday are sold out, one might conclude that Amtrak should add more equipment to handle the overflow. But what if the overflow is only six passengers, on average, and the capacity load was only for the first one or two segments of the trip?  Adding addition equipment would not be a good management decision.  Or what if some of the people who could not get on the 4:00 p.m. train could catch a train at 7:00 p.m. to get to their desired destination.  Again, adding more equipment would not be a good idea; a better idea would be to provide enough incentive pricing to persuade some of the passengers who would like to take the 4:00 p.m. train to opt for the 7:00 p.m. train.  There are, of course, numerous scenarios to examine, but concluding that Amtrak needs more equipment may be premature.       For the FY ended September 30, 2007, Amtrak's debt stood at $3.3 billion.  This is the unamortized debt incurred by Amtrak to purchase equipment, right-of-way, and facilities. This is for an organization that has lost a total of $22.9 billion since its inception.Given these numbers, it is difficult to see that Amtrak has a demonstrable need to purchase new equipment; it may have a need to repair and restore some of its out of service cars for corridor trains that are experiencing high loads factors at select times.  It is equally difficult to see where it will get the money for new equipment, unless it uses some of the anticipated increase in federal funds to under write the equipment acquisition.  It certainly won't be able to generate the funds from operations.
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