Paul Milenkovic Question: In working out the seat-miles/gallon figures, what is your accounting for the Diesel-gallon equivalent of the kW-Hr electric portion of Amtrak energy usage? Ideally, we would have train-miles, seat-miles, and passenger-mile figures separated by route, or failing that, separate figures for the electric and Diesel portions of the Amtrak network. But Amtrak famously pools all of their numbers. For
Question: In working out the seat-miles/gallon figures, what is your accounting for the Diesel-gallon equivalent of the kW-Hr electric portion of Amtrak energy usage?
Ideally, we would have train-miles, seat-miles, and passenger-mile figures separated by route, or failing that, separate figures for the electric and Diesel portions of the Amtrak network. But Amtrak famously pools all of their numbers.
For
I agree 100%. That was part of the reason I emphasized that so much. I am very skeptical of the figures especially fuel miles in particular. As you say do they combine electric in or not??
For example, one could argue that electric trains use a "free" source of energy because in theory, the electric power could come from nuclear or renewables without depending on oil imports, even though electric in this day and age has substantial environmental impact -- coal, and even gas when you consider the environmental effects of the shale gas they are tapping.
On the other hand, large portions of Amtrak will continue to be Diesel powered for the forseeable future, including many of the regional trains such as the new one from Madison to Milwaukee. Since Amtrak doesn't separate electric from Diesel, assigning some "Diesel equivalent" to the electric power usage at least gets a handle on the energy usage of the Diesel trains.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
July 2010 Amtrak Stats are now available
Overview; By almost all measurements Amtrak has had a record month for July 2010, Longer trains, more available seats, most passengers (beat June 2010, July & Aug 2009), highest load factor 60.7% (same 3 months) (however load factor is much harder to quantify due to: How many revenue seats considered in sleepers?, coach over 100% certain legs on some trains if non revenue space occupied happens especially train 171 which often picks up stranded MARC passengers; how dead head cars counted?; Private cars?) Record revenue and expenses. Net loss down. Note Amtrak is being very conservative in FY projections. Have my own theory. . Note: FY is also trending up. Capital spending is still under budget for various reasons. May be due to contractor problems ex: the frequency converter upgrades and replacements are not working as planned? System fuel consumption (Gallons/mile) is more probably because of longer trains but until route specific information available very hard to compare. Ex: A three loco Cal Z (over mountains) vs a 1 loco 4 car flatlands Illinois service? Fuel cost up. I estimate trains used 7,711,200 Gallons of fuel = TM x G/M. Add + 5% other = 8.096M gallons?
On time is down (Worse than any month since before Oct 2008 may be due to more freight trains on routes, some trains slightly longer, maybe longer dwell for the more passengers? All this with essentially same train miles even though 1 more weekend day in 2010. Note: some metrics lack a sufficient definition and so may not mean what you or I assume they mean!
Detailed summary read at your own risk!
As usual most comparisons will be FY 2010 first vs. FY 2009. Several errors were found in May June reports and have tried to fix same. Have mostly rounded figures to nearest million
Operations only Revenues up $15M over budget, ticket revenue up $17M. Expenses $4M under budget however +$4.5M of over expenses were for additional ROW work YTD revenue up 95M. Exp $24M under budget including +$13.5M for better OT. Month net loss $10M under budger. Net loss for FY $70M under budget. Forecast FY loss $25.6M compared to May’s forecast of42.5M projects are ahead of spending. Budget capital spending 52M vs 74M budget. FY under 195M. Forecast end of yr 131M under. ARRA FY capital spending 1.423B and 110M under
Train miles 3213K up 1/2% from 2009 (Lynchburg and extra Piedmont of each 173 miles makes the 21K miles difference). Available seat miles 1095M were up 3.8% from 2009 so there had to be some longer trains again this month. Revenue Pass miles 665M up 12.3%.(great - May up 10%). Average Load factor 60.7% up 4.7% from 2009 which again means average passenger trip longer ( This gets load factor at 51.2% for FY . Locos out of service 15.5% - 1.3% worse than 09 (maybe due to longer trains?). Pass fleet 10.9% OOS vs May’s 10.4% OOS .5 worse 09. (reliability starting to trend but will look for trends later this year)(Note overhauls costing more than budget see below).
Again Diesel Gallons per mile 2.4 vs. 2.3 budget and 2.3 in 2009. Note By table below average train is longer. It is significant that there are several fixed consists that cannot be lengthened such as Acela, Talgo, some California due to lack of California car equipment (however California was able to add 1 car to some consists in Aug). As far as I know there are no other train length limited in the NEC since none of the regular equipment is operated at the 14 car NYP limit. But if any western LD adds at least one car then available seat miles go up. Ex Cal Z 2438 miles add 1 - 90 seat coach to every consist = 13,604K seat miles Seat miles = SM, Train miles = TM, Average seats per train SM/TM = TRS, Gallons per mile = GM, TRS/GM = SM/G = seat miles per gallon, Passenger Miles = PM, Average Trip length PM/TM = TL.
SM 000s TM 000s TRS GM SM/G PM 000s TL
FY 2008 11,800,602 37,324 316 2.4 131 6,159,689 165
FY 2009 11,909,350 37,301 319 2.4 133 5,897,441 158
Mo 2009 1,055,614 3198 330 2.3 139 592,142 185
2010 YTD 10,241,078 31,102 329 2.3 143 5,243,663 168
Jn Month 1,045,901 3118 335 2.3 145 600,992 192
Jl Month 1,095,351 3213 340 2.4 142 665,358 207
An average passenger trip up 22 miles (suspect that is from the much higher LD travelers & Pass up 12.3% from last year.
Segments Revenue riders comments
Total +17.9% +9.8%
Acela +13 +8
NEC Regional +12.5 +3.7
Short Dist +22 +12 longer dist per pass
Long Dist +23 +12
Now for short distance route summaries. One City pair down is BOS – PHL due to south west air starting service in June. 322 Train miles 5 Hrs -- Fares Amtrak $187 – 234 Acela. NEC $ 83 – 118 Add $42 NEC Business and $106 First for Acela. SW Air 8 RTs 150+ seats $130 coach 150 business. 2400 seats/day
Lynchburg $844K 14,075 pass pass 187% over budget Rev +163% over
Newport News 2847K 50K P Only route better than Lynchburg/train
Carolinian 2.0M 31K P Includes NEC trips and 2 above do not
Overall +22% +12% must be longer trips on train again
Most improved Short Dist Pass from 2009 were piedmonts (12653) 129% ( 2nd train upped passengers 2-1/2 times but 12K passengers still only 102/tr vs 88/tr 2009). Other improved were Vermonter, Heartland 42%, Blue water 49%, Best single train figures would be Carolinian 502/tr, Pennsylvanian 306/tr, Blue water 314/tr, Newport news at 270 Pass/Tr, Adirondack 246/tr, Lynchburg with 227/train. Almost all above 187/tr except Hoosier, Vermonter, Ethan Allen. Only SD in minus column was Downeaster -0.6%,
Long distance
All trains up both in passengers and revenue. Cal Z and SW Chief up the most over 25%. EB and c starlight least but they carry the most passengers so maybe trains are full on some days. Revenues up 15% for them.
July 2010 Long Distance trains south towards Florida (SS, SM, Palmetto, Auto Train) , carried 24.2% of all long distance passengers and 26% of revenue. June 2010 Long Distance trains south towards Florida carried 24.5% of all long distance passengers and 35.8% of revenue. Factor in the Carolinian and Newport news by adding their figures into long distance trains and the figure would go to 35% passengers and 32% of revenue. It appears to this poster that maybe there is an increase of other LD relative to Florida but emphasis on improving Florida service appears that there is potential). Overall LD passengers up 12.35% and revenue up 22.9%. More passengers traveling longer distances.
Sleepers
Ridership up 26% + for Cal Z (suspect another sleeper at least some days); For irst time Builder had 10,000+ sleeper passengers or 166/train. Exceeded Auto train. Most trains revenue up over 15%. Total sleeper ridership +9.7% & Revenue +13.8 (traveling longer distances?)
Capital spending:
The normal budget (proposed before any ARRA or Tiger proposals) capital spending is still very much behind schedule. Engineering of $277M is $150M behind with big items bridges, various CAT items $52M, Track renewal 6M, ADA compliance 86M. Projected at end of FY 150M behind.
Pass equipment has spent 128M which is 8M over and year end projections 21M over. Amfleet and Superliners 27M over. Again an interesting point is that only 1.3M has been spent on Heritage cars (probably only diners) which is 262K less than budget but no more money planned to spend on Heritage cars this FY. (maybe the reprogramming?). Note all projections may be beyond FY 2010.
ARRA engineering projects now $318M being $118M behind. Weird FY projections of $1B and now over $85M vs 62M at end of June.
Passenger Eq ARRA $80M spent 24.8M over projected 161 vs June 137.6M. Again $18K spent on heritage with no more to spend. Note projections all go thru FY 2011
Rolling stock outputs both regular budget and stimulus funds. Superliner Overhauls at Sanford is level 1s only
BEAR
Type plan actual YTD plan]YTD Actual
Amfleet 12 4 118 113
ARRA Am 5 6 32 25 now will be caught up by Sep
Total AM F 17 10 150 138
Total Beech all equipment Horizon, Surfliners, Viewliners, Heritage, and Cabbage cars (8) transferred to Beech
14 13 133 127
(heritage dinners 2 4 Carry over from 2009)
LD ARRA 2 1 12 8
Acelas 1 1 8 8
Sanford SL 0 1 0 15 New location after budget
Totals Beech 32 29 274 275 Includes some other items
P-40 ARRA 1 3 8 8
Electric 2 1 23 12 Yr plan lowered
Note: many cars are almost finished in Beech still waiting for a 404A module and other parts. Some will not be complete until FY 2011 October or later. Much output under other stimulus programs
On Time Performances
On time performance of major RRs were best to worse BNSF, UP, CP, CSX, NS and CN being the worse again for last 12 months, last yr, and yr thru June 2009. For all RRs most minutes of delay were from freight train interference, slow orders (BNSF may get it on August and later months), Signals, & Pass train interference. Host RR delays 73%, AMTRAK 21%,(mostly passenger related)
Amtrak now publishes a measure of number of minutes host RRs delay per 10K miles for all host RRs for each train. Standard is 900 or less.
The best was the Coast Starlight on BNSF at 327,silver star at 410 on NS’s 28 miles (Raleigh - Selma), next 337 on CSX NY-Albany Some of the worse offenders (over 3000)--- BBr rr Cardinal – 3555min 132Miles , CN Adirondak 5027 49M , NS Pere 4565 - 39miles, Blue water 4063, VTR still bringing up the tail end for the Ethan Allen 8409 - 24Miles( scheduled time is approximately 45 – 50 min for VTR portion but they are delaying each train approximately 135 minutes [8409/62] vs 162 for June so train is only actually making 1/3 speed of schedule. This problem has been for at least the last 5 months). Certainly doesn’t help the passenger loads of an anemic 5720 or 92/train All figures can be seen on page E-4 of monthly report. Report also breaks down delays on each route by RR.
Now for individual train performance. End to end.
Pennsylvanian - -95%, Capitols, San Joaquin 95+ %... Worst is Pere at34%, Carolinian at 37% (arrival late at WASH causes inability to make up time)( maybe new crossovers in North Carolina will help CSX?).
New metrics: effective speed (?) change last 12 months from July 2008. Worse Acela -1.0 (mph?). Hiawatha -.6MPH Best Missouri river runner at +8.3. Next heartland at 4.1. All stations on time performance (OTP) Capitol corridor 97.1% worst Adirondack at 47%.
LD -- The best end to end was the Auto train 98.4%, City NO 90.3% Worse LD - ETE is Cardinal at 18.5% 3 Months running (BBrRR culprit), Cal Z 22%. All stations Meteor 63%, Worst Cardinal 22%. Effective speed Sunset, Eagle +3MPH Worst Crescent at 0MPH.
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