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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] Actually your most recent post was not to the guy in South Dakota, it was to Mathewsaggie, who lives right here in the Charlotte area.  From your perch in Texas you told him that his observations didn't square with your statistics and were therefore wrong.  We actually ride the trains that in your opinion should be replaced by a bus.  We can see first hand how many people are on the trains.  Unlike the USAir flight from Raleigh to Charlotte, the train makes stops in smaller towns along the way. There is no USAir service from Charlotte or Raleigh to those small towns.  It is unrealistic to expect every seat to be occupied for the entire trip from end to end, so of course the seat mile occupancy does not approach 100% from end to end.  In fact, if every seat is occupied when the train pulls out it probably means someone was turned away.  Unlike the airline, when the Piedmont is over booked, they don't turn people away, they put on another car.  We like and use our trains and our light rail, and we don't care whether or not you approve. [/quote] My initial response was to Dakota Guy's post re: number of people and load factor on the Piedmont.  I further responded to Mathewsaggie, who posted impressionistic data about the load factor on the Piedmont; that is to say, personal impressions as opposed to hard data regarding the loads on the train.  Again, the statistics are not mine.  They are Amtrak's official statistics.  Unless you or Mathewsaggie rode the train both ways every day and did a count of the passengers, you would not know how many people ride the train.  Even a train conductor, who does not work every train every day, would not have a complete picture of the load factor. With a 43.2 per load factor one can be assured that every seat is not occupied every day.  In fact, based on these statistics, it only would be on a few occasions that every seat is occupied for any segment of the run.   The one way fare from Raleigh to Charlotte on the Piedmont is $25.  The subsidy is $19.20 before interest, depreciation, and other charges.  If Amtrak charged enough to cover just the operating costs of the train, the fare would be $44.20.  By comparison it would cost me $42.63 to drive my car from Raleigh to Charlotte.  And that is the fully allocated cost with only one person in the car.    As is the case with many Americans, so goes the claim, North Carolinians love their trains.  However, the love affair is suspect.  Only a small percentage of the population uses them, and then only because they are the most heavily subsidized form of public transportation in the country.  The love affair does not include paying fares sufficient to recover their operating costs let alone the fully allocated costs.  If they had to cover the cost of the service, I suspect the average load factor on the Piedmont would be considerably less than 43.2 per cent. Like NARP, many people who post to these forums offer opinion to support their views without telling the whole story.  Frequently they don't even have the correct information.  When I see that I set the record straight.   Clearly, if people want to subsidize trains, that's their prerogative.  A key question, however, is how many understand the amount and nature of the subsidy.  I suspect that most people have no idea how much it costs to subsidize intercity trains and light rail.
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