August 2010 Amtrak Stats are now available
Overview this report is being abbreviated as FY 2010 figures of 24,716,857 Passengers for year and revenue of $1.74B both records have been announced for FY;
Amtrak had the 3rd best month in Aug 2010 behind July (best) & June, Longer trains, more available seats, most passengers (beat June 10, July & Aug 2009), (however load factor is much harder to quantify due to: Ticket Revenue was actually $3.2M under budget because of lower NEC revenue. How many revenue seats considered in sleepers?, with 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 down 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
On time is down (Worse than any month since before Oct 2008 may be due to more freight trains on routes? And some trains slightly longer? All this with essentially same train miles. 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, July reports and have tried to fix same. Have mostly rounded figures to nearest million
Operations only Revenues $3.0M under budget, ticket revenue dn $3.2M. Expenses $5.1M over budget however $8.1M of over expenses were for additional ROW labor and materials. (may be concrete tie replacements?) YTD revenue up 91.6M. Exp $29.6M over budget a change of $53.6M from last month. Month net loss $8.5M under budger. Net loss for FY $61.7 vs Aug 70M under budget. Forecast FY loss $35.5M compared to May’s forecast of 42.5M projects are ahead of spending. FY capital spending forecast $729.8M vs 915.7M budget. ARRA FY capital spending thru month $1.343.2B and $30.1M under.
Train miles 3228K up 1% from 2009 (Lynchburg and extra Piedmont each 173 miles almost adds up to the 29K miles difference). Available seat miles 1094M vs 1095M for july were up 2% from 2009 so there had to be some longer trains again this month vs last year. Revenue Pass miles 593M vs july of 665M but up 2.6% over 2009.( growth may be leveling off). Average Load factor 54.2% vs july 60.7% down 1.0% from 2009. (This gets load factor at 51.5% for FY . Locos out of service 18.8 vs 15.5% July - 1.0% worse than 09 (maybe due to longer trains?). Pass fleet 10.2% OOS vs May’s 10.4% OOS 4.8% better than 2009. (car reliability still trending better, locos worse, but will look for trends later this year). YTD locos 17% OOS still not good. Cars 11.8% for FY(Note overhauls costing more than budget see below).
Again Diesel Gallons per mile 2.3 vs. 2.3 budget and 2.2 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.
I will no longer compare seat mile per gallon because Amtrak will not confirm if figures are separated out from Electric operations (cannot get definition of core diesel gallons per mile) and how many seat miles operate under diesel. Thanks for other posters point out this mistake on my part.
On time performance still below 2009 at 78%
An average passenger trip is up to 183.75 miles vs 180.6 for 2009.
Segments Revenue riders comments
Total +8.6% +2.3%
Acela +11.6 +7.7
NEC Regional +2.2 -2.8 This is not good maybe because of SW Air flying Bos-Phl!
Short Dist +9.5 +4.9
Long Dist +11.3 -1.5
All figures for FY are up over 2009
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 revenue 14,075 pass pass 172% over budget Rev +153% over
Newport News 2669K 49K P Only route better than Lynchburg/train
Carolinian 3.9M -1.7K P Includes NEC trips and 2 above do not
Overall +9.5% +4.9% avg longer trips on trains
Most improved Short Dist Pass from 2009 were piedmonts (10394) +95.61% ( 2nd train upped passengers. Blue Water 17,903 +37.9% Other improved were Vermonter 10.7, Hoosier, Wolverine, Albany – BUF, Lincoln service, SD in minus column was Pennsylvanian at -7.5%.
Long distance
Trains up both in passengers Sunset and Cal Z over 11%. Many down around -6%. Total LD -1.5% Revenue +11.5%. Florida down somewhat as well about 5%.
Sleepers
Ridership up 31.3% + for Cal Z; Second straight month Builder had 10,000+ sleeper passengers or 165 sleeper passengers/train. Exceeded Auto train. Unset, Eagle,Meteor, SW Chief, City NO all up over 10% Cardinal worse at -6.6% All FY sleeper passengers up except Cardinal Total sleeper ridership +6.8% & Revenue +13.3% (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 $310M is $169M behind. Projected at end of FY 192M vs July 150M behind. No explanation why budget capital spending is falling further behind.
Pass equipment has spent 133M which is 7.6M over and year end projections 20M over. Amfleet and Superliners 26M 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 no change from June. Also 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 $404M being $68 behind vs 118M behind end of July. Weird FY projections of $961M and now over $17.4M vs 62M at end of June.
Passenger Equipment ARRA $99.7M spent 18M over projected 154.5 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 5 6 127 119 includes cab cars
ARRA Am 5 3 37 28 now will be caught up by Sep
Total AM F 10 9 164 147 still missing parts
Total Beech all equipment Horizon, Surfliners, Viewliners, Heritage, and Cabbage cars (8) transferred to Beech
15 13 148 140
(heritage dinners 0 2 Carry over from 2009)
LD ARRA 5 3 25 19
Acelas 1 1 8 8
Sanford SL 0 1 0 16 New location after budget
Totals Beech 32 29 274 276 Includes some other items
& Sanford
P-40 ARRA 1 3 8 8 July figures as Aug omitted
Electric 2 0 21 13 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 CP, BNSF, UP, NS, CSX. CN is the worse again for last 12 months, last yr, and yr thru Aug 2009. For all RRs most minutes of delay were from freight train interference, slow orders BNSF got it on August and will probably later months then freight train interference, (), Signals, & Pass train interference. Host RR delays 73%, AMTRAK 22%,(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 silver star at 353 on NS’s 28 miles (Raleigh - Selma),& Ns Lynchburg 366, Some of the worse offenders (over 3000)--- BBr rr Cardinal – 3549min 132Miles NS Blue Water & Wolverine, SCrrA, CN Adirondak &Eagle; VTR still bringing up the tail end for the Ethan Allen 10993 - 24Miles( scheduled time is approximately 45 – 50 min for VTR portion but they are delaying each train approximately 177 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 6 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 vs enroute delays.
Short distance -- Capitols – 95% only one over 90%, Worst is Wolverine at 46%. Amazling Eathan Allen at 62% so CP, CSX and MNRR working hard to make up time on southbounds.
Long distance – Best City NO 90%, Auto Tr, Starlight, Sunset (e gads I cannot believe it)Worse Cardinal at 30.8% (good old BBBrRR)
New metrics: effective speed (?) change last 12 months from July 2008.
Not published this month below is July
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%.
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