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Connecting sleepers to the Pennsylvanian

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[quote user="Alan F"] [quote user="Sam1"] Has the Pennsylvania Legislature ponied up the $4.5 to $6 million per year to continue the Pennsylvanian? According to a story that appeared several months ago in the New York Times, the jury was out on whether the legislature would put up the money. If the state does not fund the train, it is probably history. What is the market demand for a through sleeping car from Newark, Trenton, Philadelphia, Paoli, etc.? If it is not sufficient to generate enough revenue to off set the incremental cost of the service, Amtrak should not be adding any capacity anywhere. [/quote] PA has agreed to provide $4.8 million in subsidy for the Pennsylvanian service. This was restated by PennDOT after the state legislature failed in the last day before the July 1 budget bill had to be passed to come to an agreement to raise the state gas tax and increase transportation funding. The state legislature will try again in the fall on gas taxes and increasing state transportation funding, but the Pennsylvanian is safe for the next year at least. As for market demand, read the 2010 PRIIA Capitol Limited Product Improvement Plan report which discusses adding the through cars from the Pennsylvanian (On the Amtrak website on the Reports & Documents page). The 2010 report predicts an increase of 20,400 in ridership and a 4% improvement in the cost recovery ratio. The ridership increase projection is likely on the conservative side. The plan has been around since 2010, but Amtrak has not been able to implement it because they don't have 3 Viewliner sleepers available for the 3 train sets (one Viewliner sleeper, 2 Amfeet IIs, 1 Amfleet cafe car per pass-through set). The delivery of the Viewliner II sleepers will fix the shortage. [/quote] If the state legislature failed to pass an budget and appropriations bill for the coming FY year, where does the PADOT get the money to continue the Pennsylvania?   The PRIIA Capitol Limited Product Improvement Plan report claims that ridership on the through cars would increase by 20,400.  It says nothing about sleeping car passengers.  Moreover, adding through cars would increase the net loss for the train(s) by more than $700,000. I cannot think of a business that would add a money losing product line that would increases its losses.  And claim that it would increase its cost recovery factor to boot. What is the basis for claiming that the ridership and revenue estimates are conservative?  They could be overly optimistic.  As the GAO pointed out in its study of high speed rail projects, the proponents almost always overstate the benefits and understate the costs. This is not to say that this is the case here, but it could be. Without access to Amtrak's market assessment methodologies, it is impossible to determine the accuracy of its ridership and revenue projections.  Once thing is reasonably certain.  Their numbers are based on statistical samples.  One would need access to the sampling construct to determine the tightness of the projections. Anytime someone says that ridership will increase by a specific number, they are almost always wrong.  If they said that they are 95 per confident, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 per cent, that the ridership increase is likely to be between 19,788 to 20,012, but could be below or above that estimate, I might buy into their estimates. I  would be even more interested to see the regression statistics used to forecast the projections.
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