Sam1 And my untested accounting approach would be what? My numbers come from Amtrak's operating reports, which are available to anyone who wants to read them. I was in Seattle last week. I rode the Cascades to Portland and back. Amtrak had six horizon cars parked at King Street Station as augmentation equipment in anticipation of the heavy travel over Thanksgiving. The conductor on my Talgo train said that the equipment had come from Chicago. Amtrak has a Superliner coach and sleeper parked in San Antonio in case the Sunset Limited (Texas Eagle) cannot make its connection with the Texas Eagle out of San Antonio. It also has had two Superliner cars in reserve at Fort Worth. This makes me wonder how equipment constrained Amtrak really is. Clearly, Amtrak probably does not have all the equipment it would like for the peak travel days, i.e. holidays and a portion of the summer vacation season. But there is little in its operating reports to suggest that the equipment constraints are as severe as some claim. When a train sells out, is it sold out for one segment or multiple segments? What is the overflow? And would it justify adding equipment? If the typical overflow is five per cent, adding additional equipment probably could not be cost justified. These are the questions that management must ask before adding additional equipment. I don't know the answers. As far as I know Amtrak does not make this information available in its public reports. If Amtrak could earn a return on the incremental equipment, it could could borrow the money to buy or lease it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, Amtrak does not have the kind of numbers that would make a lender feel warm and fuzzy about getting its money back.
And my untested accounting approach would be what? My numbers come from Amtrak's operating reports, which are available to anyone who wants to read them.
I was in Seattle last week. I rode the Cascades to Portland and back. Amtrak had six horizon cars parked at King Street Station as augmentation equipment in anticipation of the heavy travel over Thanksgiving. The conductor on my Talgo train said that the equipment had come from Chicago.
Amtrak has a Superliner coach and sleeper parked in San Antonio in case the Sunset Limited (Texas Eagle) cannot make its connection with the Texas Eagle out of San Antonio. It also has had two Superliner cars in reserve at Fort Worth. This makes me wonder how equipment constrained Amtrak really is.
Clearly, Amtrak probably does not have all the equipment it would like for the peak travel days, i.e. holidays and a portion of the summer vacation season. But there is little in its operating reports to suggest that the equipment constraints are as severe as some claim.
When a train sells out, is it sold out for one segment or multiple segments? What is the overflow? And would it justify adding equipment? If the typical overflow is five per cent, adding additional equipment probably could not be cost justified. These are the questions that management must ask before adding additional equipment. I don't know the answers. As far as I know Amtrak does not make this information available in its public reports.
If Amtrak could earn a return on the incremental equipment, it could could borrow the money to buy or lease it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, Amtrak does not have the kind of numbers that would make a lender feel warm and fuzzy about getting its money back.
So last I checked, Texas and Washington State were not part of the Midwest geographically speaking. I think you should ask Amtrak why they are short equipment in the Midwest. While your talking to them you could show them your Accounting to the effect that they could make more money using your Accounting approach. BTW, your count of coach cars is not enough to make up the charter train I was asking for. So I am still going to take their word for it.
Oh I agree that Amtrak needs changes in pricing and marketing, among other things. That's one reason why it will be "interesting" if and when the several "private" passenger rail outfits are actually rolling. I also was reminded while looking for the C&NW information that they turned a profit on commuter service for awhile after they modernized and improved services.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
It is fine to check this matter. But the point I was trying to make was to "think outside the box" with respect to passenger operations and balancing passenger loads. The airline mode is to charge more for capacity-constrained travel whereas the railroad mode had been to offer some manner of discount to users of their most capacity constrained times and route segments.
I am supportive of your position that chasing after high load factors in the manner of the airlines is maybe not where we want to take Amtrak -- do we want to impose airline levels of inconvenience on passengers? On the other hand, I would like to see the advocacy community be open to changes to Amtrak that may help it serve more people with the available resources, whether it is fare differentials to encourage off-peak, use of higher seating density equipment at peak times (gallery bi-levels on the "rush hour" Hiawathas) and the like.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul: I am unable to post the image of a Milwaukee Division timetable from 1971 for Chicago-Kenosha, but I will send to you as a private message. Perhaps they dropped the 10 and 25 ride tickets later when you rode.
schlimm To commute derives from the Latin commuto = to exchange or interchange, which comes from the Latin root muto = to change. Commuting a prison sentence means to change or alter the original. Meanings change from the original usage, often in parallel, and in the case of commute the term refers to the back and forth trip a commuter makes. The Romans did not use that term, rather, iter ab urbe. So commuting has nothing to do with a discount. All three C&NW lines offered unlimited monthly tickets for many years from Madison Street Terminal to the specific suburb (later to zones - groups of suburbs) and at a considerable discount over RT tickets or even 10 or 25 ride tickets (also discounted). In your case I would have thought you would have been better to buy a monthly ticket to Madison Street but exited at Davis Street, but I guess the discount was not sufficient.
To commute derives from the Latin commuto = to exchange or interchange, which comes from the Latin root muto = to change. Commuting a prison sentence means to change or alter the original. Meanings change from the original usage, often in parallel, and in the case of commute the term refers to the back and forth trip a commuter makes. The Romans did not use that term, rather, iter ab urbe. So commuting has nothing to do with a discount.
All three C&NW lines offered unlimited monthly tickets for many years from Madison Street Terminal to the specific suburb (later to zones - groups of suburbs) and at a considerable discount over RT tickets or even 10 or 25 ride tickets (also discounted). In your case I would have thought you would have been better to buy a monthly ticket to Madison Street but exited at Davis Street, but I guess the discount was not sufficient.
Well, I guess railroad history author Hamilton Ellis along with (cough) Wikipedia (cough) as in "The word commuter derives from early days of rail travel in US cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, where, in the 1840s, the railways engendered suburbs from which travellers (sic) paying a reduced or 'commuted' fare into the city" have this all wrong, so I defer to superior knowledge on this subject.
Back in the day, the monthly pass exceeded 10% of my pay after payroll deductions working as a COBOL programmer in the summer, and as a student, I had to squeeze every dollar to make George Washington cry. We are talking 35+ years ago, but I remember the only options were buying individual tickets or the monthly pass. There weren't any multi-ride booklets at the time. If there were such a thing, I would have bought them because C&NW also had this thing that if the train station ticket counter were open, you had to pay extra to pay the fare to the conductor, but if the station counter were closed, the extra fee was waived, and it was this catch-as-catch-can situation regarding whether the station was open or not, and if a train was pulling into the station just as you got there and whether you would stand in line at the ticket counter, well, you get the idea.
The other thing is, I was not going to leave any money standing on the table. I was going to college at the time, and I looked at the fare to Davis Street in relation to what I was paying with the monthly pass from every different direction. I will stipulate that you are right and Ellis and Wikipedia have it all wrong, but as to the fares on C&NW, who am I going to believe, you or my lying eyes?
Streak,
Thank you for the additional information. TIGER means transportation investment to generate economic recovery. I'm sure many people object to this program and this kind of program in general. It sounds to me like it is in the spirit of FDR's WPA, CCC and similar programs. Since political comments are discouraged here I will not say anything further on the issue.
schlimm Looking at a couple of old C&NW commuter Galena Division TT from my youth, there is no discount for riding rush hour trains.
Looking at a couple of old C&NW commuter Galena Division TT from my youth, there is no discount for riding rush hour trains.
Hamilton Ellis in "The Lore of the Train" writes that the term commuter comes from a railroad company "commuting" the fare for frequent riders where to commute means to reduce, as the authorities "commuting the sentence" of a prisoner in response to a public outcry regarding the severity of the punishment. Ellis goes on to say that someone "commutes by automobile" completely misses the meaning of the term, that a fare is charged for the trip and that the fare is reduced.
In the mid 1970's, I "commuted" on the C&NW North Line. During the semester (actually, Northwestern University had three school-year quarters, with the summer session being quarter number four), I rode inboad as far as Davis Street. During the summer, I rode the line all the way to Northwestern Station for a summer job "downtown." Actually, I was quite fortunate that the job was only a block from Northwestern Station, which is (now called Ogilvie Center) a couple miles from "the Loop", requiring many commuters to take a bus or L train to get to their destination.
The trip all the way inbound could be made with a monthly pass, which was a substantial discount from individual train tickets. The trip to Davis Street offered no such discounted pass. The individual ticket fare to Davis Street was in absolute dollar terms somewaht less per ride than the trip all the way to Northwestern Station on the pass (otherwise people would have just purchased the pass and gotten off the train), but the passengers going the full distance were getting considerably more "transportation" in terms of miles travelled and avoidance of the congested final leg of the Edens or Kennedy Expressways.
In other words, the fare to Northwestern Station was substantially discounted in the monthly pass over the single-ticket price for that trip, whereas the fare to Davis Street offered no monthly pass. And no, the monthly pass was not a rush hour discount, but one is being coy to suggest anything other than that the monthly pass was used mainly by riders 1) during rush hour and 2) who travelled the leg from Clybourn (for North and Northwest lines), where the C&NW trains were most highly capacity constrained, both in time and in route segment.
There may have been a technical, operational, and economic reason for this as there is for a lot of other things. One feature of the monthly pass is that it made the job of the conductor somewhat easier in that the passenger needed to display it but the conductor didn't need to punch it and then collect the stub before you got off the train. A Davis Street monthly pass may have made the conductor's job much harder of figuring out who was on the train with the correct pass being displayed.
On the other hand, the C&NW could have been on "auto pilot" regarding a commuter operation, giving a discount to the commuter, their bread-and-butter customer, while charging full fare for the occasional, off-peak, or student rider. Maybe this was like airlines giving discounts to business travellers during their peak times while charging full fare to occasional or vacation or discretionary travellers during off peak?
John WR I don't have a problem with someone else owning the equipment and contracting with Amtrak to operate it. The key point is that there is a clear audit trail with respect to the costs associated with the purchase or lease and operation of the equipment. I have only on question to the above, Who has the equipment to lease to Amtrak? Thx IGN
I don't have a problem with someone else owning the equipment and contracting with Amtrak to operate it. The key point is that there is a clear audit trail with respect to the costs associated with the purchase or lease and operation of the equipment.
I have only on question to the above, Who has the equipment to lease to Amtrak?
Thx IGN
blue streak 1 John WR The article you link to says California is buying some of these cars and Illinois, Michigan and Missouri are buying the rest. Nothing actually says they will be used by Amtrak so I was wondering if there is more information here. What is clear is that Amtrak is not buying these cars. However, Amtrak may well be operating them for the states involved in the purchase. The purchase is not by AMTRAK but if you note the funds come from a FRA grant (tiger funds I believe ). So the IMHO AMTRAK is buying these cars using a financial sleight of hand to prevent them going on the books. I know SAM1 will not like this method. Now a history lesson..... AMTRAK's first fleet strategy plan noted that about 65 bi-level cars would be needed per year for various services. At some time the FRA stepped in and wisely required that all bi-levels be identical except for minor passenger items. AMTRAK, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Washington state, & California were invited to attend a equipment conference to flesh out specifications. May have been others as well ? California was designated lead agency somewhere in this process. The conferences settled on the design early this year. The specs are very important for commonability of equipment with much compatible with the Viewliners now under construction. Any change of equipment will be required to be backwards compatible. The FRA then designated a grant for 130 cars and the conference issued a request for bids. In September the bidder was selected and CALIFORNIA awarded the contract listed in the announcement. These cars will be used for AMTRAK service in CA and the midwest. Nothing may prevent some other operator in the future but for any FRA money for future cars these specs will be followed. There is nothing in the fleet strategy plan that says any of replaced cars in midwest or california will be retired for several years. They most likely will be used to add cars to other services
John WR The article you link to says California is buying some of these cars and Illinois, Michigan and Missouri are buying the rest. Nothing actually says they will be used by Amtrak so I was wondering if there is more information here. What is clear is that Amtrak is not buying these cars. However, Amtrak may well be operating them for the states involved in the purchase.
The article you link to says California is buying some of these cars and Illinois, Michigan and Missouri are buying the rest. Nothing actually says they will be used by Amtrak so I was wondering if there is more information here.
What is clear is that Amtrak is not buying these cars. However, Amtrak may well be operating them for the states involved in the purchase.
The purchase is not by AMTRAK but if you note the funds come from a FRA grant (tiger funds I believe ). So the IMHO AMTRAK is buying these cars using a financial sleight of hand to prevent them going on the books. I know SAM1 will not like this method.
Now a history lesson.....
AMTRAK's first fleet strategy plan noted that about 65 bi-level cars would be needed per year for various services. At some time the FRA stepped in and wisely required that all bi-levels be identical except for minor passenger items. AMTRAK, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Washington state, & California were invited to attend a equipment conference to flesh out specifications. May have been others as well ? California was designated lead agency somewhere in this process.
The conferences settled on the design early this year. The specs are very important for commonability of equipment with much compatible with the Viewliners now under construction. Any change of equipment will be required to be backwards compatible. The FRA then designated a grant for 130 cars and the conference issued a request for bids. In September the bidder was selected and CALIFORNIA awarded the contract listed in the announcement. These cars will be used for AMTRAK service in CA and the midwest. Nothing may prevent some other operator in the future but for any FRA money for future cars these specs will be followed.
There is nothing in the fleet strategy plan that says any of replaced cars in midwest or california will be retired for several years. They most likely will be used to add cars to other services
If the cost of the equipment, as well as its maintenance, is not on Amtrak's books, it makes determining the true cost of the service more difficult. One needs to look to Amtrak for the revenues and the operating costs; then go to the lessee for the depreciation and perhaps maintenance costs.
As it is, I believe, Amtrak is the operator of several state supported train sets that are owned by the states or an independent authority.
CMStPnP Sam1 Are the cars being bought because Amtrak is short of equipment for its midwest trains or because its existing equipment is outdated and needs to be replaced? I have to take their word for it. Amtrak has stated to me officially that it is very short of reserve equipment and that charters that require a seperate trainset are probably off the table right now. I asked about a Chicago-Green Bay charter tentitively for next fall's Packers vs Bears game and I was told to consider another option. So perhaps it is part of some larger conspiracy not to use your untested accounting approach...............or maybe they are telling me what they percieve to be the operational truth?
Sam1 Are the cars being bought because Amtrak is short of equipment for its midwest trains or because its existing equipment is outdated and needs to be replaced?
Are the cars being bought because Amtrak is short of equipment for its midwest trains or because its existing equipment is outdated and needs to be replaced?
I have to take their word for it. Amtrak has stated to me officially that it is very short of reserve equipment and that charters that require a seperate trainset are probably off the table right now. I asked about a Chicago-Green Bay charter tentitively for next fall's Packers vs Bears game and I was told to consider another option. So perhaps it is part of some larger conspiracy not to use your untested accounting approach...............or maybe they are telling me what they percieve to be the operational truth?
Paul Milenkovic I heard of some high, airline-level load factors on the TGV trains in France. But I am in the camp that there are "engineering" limits on load factor without making the service inconvenient, that people cannot travel at the times they want. For instance, the Hiawatha Service is a success story in terms of frequency of service and a burgeoning ridership, perhaps helped by the mess Illinois made in upgrading all of its toll roads at one time. On the other hand, it seems that the increase in ridership has been accomodated by adding cars to the train and that the overall load factor remains below 50 percent. What I think is happening is that it is capacity constrained at rush hour as the Hiawatha train is a de facto commuter train for many people who need to get between Milwaukee and Chicago on a daily basis, but it is not cost effective to switch cars out of the consist for the off peak times, hence a low off-peak load factor and a middling overall load factor. The other thing to do is a differential pricing scheme, where you charge more for rush hour and less for off peak. Funny thing is that on the pre-Metra C&NW, you got a deal on a monthly pass, which I believe was for riding all the way to Northwestern Station (now Ogilvie Center) whereas there was no monthly pass if you got out at Davis Street station in Evanston and no deals for riding outside of rush hour. So they were discounting rush hour and charging more for off peak for some reason or another. In my opinion, seemingly low load factors do not mean that the train isn't popular or that no one is riding it. In fact, it may be more economical to keep passenger consists as unit trainsets and trail empty cars rather than to switch, whereas with airlines, they don't form airplanes into "air trains' but instead dispatch different sizes of planes on different routes at different times using massive "linear program" optimization computer programs, where everything works like a Swiss watch until you have one mechanical breakdown or weather delay in some distant city and everything goes to pot. So I wouldn't disrespect Amtrak on load factor, and I take such realistic rail load factors into account in making energy efficiency comparisons.
But I am in the camp that there are "engineering" limits on load factor without making the service inconvenient, that people cannot travel at the times they want.
For instance, the Hiawatha Service is a success story in terms of frequency of service and a burgeoning ridership, perhaps helped by the mess Illinois made in upgrading all of its toll roads at one time.
On the other hand, it seems that the increase in ridership has been accomodated by adding cars to the train and that the overall load factor remains below 50 percent. What I think is happening is that it is capacity constrained at rush hour as the Hiawatha train is a de facto commuter train for many people who need to get between Milwaukee and Chicago on a daily basis, but it is not cost effective to switch cars out of the consist for the off peak times, hence a low off-peak load factor and a middling overall load factor.
The other thing to do is a differential pricing scheme, where you charge more for rush hour and less for off peak. Funny thing is that on the pre-Metra C&NW, you got a deal on a monthly pass, which I believe was for riding all the way to Northwestern Station (now Ogilvie Center) whereas there was no monthly pass if you got out at Davis Street station in Evanston and no deals for riding outside of rush hour. So they were discounting rush hour and charging more for off peak for some reason or another.
In my opinion, seemingly low load factors do not mean that the train isn't popular or that no one is riding it. In fact, it may be more economical to keep passenger consists as unit trainsets and trail empty cars rather than to switch, whereas with airlines, they don't form airplanes into "air trains' but instead dispatch different sizes of planes on different routes at different times using massive "linear program" optimization computer programs, where everything works like a Swiss watch until you have one mechanical breakdown or weather delay in some distant city and everything goes to pot. So I wouldn't disrespect Amtrak on load factor, and I take such realistic rail load factors into account in making energy efficiency comparisons.
The Trinity Railway Express adjusts the size of its trains throughout the day. By not running the cars empty it is saving maintenance on them. But then the TRE is operated by Herzog, which understands a thing or two about watching out for the bottom line.
schlimm After looking at the question a bit more, I think Carmichael's point [he's not just an amateur passenger advocate or poster on a forum, he was an FRA administrator] is that passenger trains, except for non-stop ones, none of which currently exist, are different from airlines, and therefore the load factor criterion for most efficiency needs to be lower than that of a well-run airline.
After looking at the question a bit more, I think Carmichael's point [he's not just an amateur passenger advocate or poster on a forum, he was an FRA administrator] is that passenger trains, except for non-stop ones, none of which currently exist, are different from airlines, and therefore the load factor criterion for most efficiency needs to be lower than that of a well-run airline.
I heard of some high, airline-level load factors on the TGV trains in France.
Is there perhaps some further information here?
If a train is full between two points on a run from A to F, i.e. B to D, then it is operating well below capacity between the other points if the overall load factor is 65 per cent. It can attain a 65 per cent load factor without being 100 per cent full.
Amtrak's average load factor for the first 10 months of FY12 was 52.9 per cent, which was down from 53.2 per cent for the corresponding period in FY11. The NEC had an overall load factor of 52.0 per cent, with the Acela trains racking up 62.2 per cent and the NEC regionals coming in at 48.2 per cent. The NEC Special Trains accounted for the difference. The State Supported and Other Short Distance Corridor Trains had an average load factor of 43.5 per cent, and the long distance trains had an average load factor of 62.8 per cent.
The load factor is only part of the story. The NEC had a $302.8 million operating profit through August of FY12. However, after depreciation, interest, and ancillary charges, it incurred a substantial loss. The long distance trains, with their relatively high average load factor, lost $539.5 million before depreciation, interest, and ancillary charges over the same period.
One way to increase the load factor so that it approximates the load factor for the airlines would be to lower the fares and rack even greater losses. That would not be a good business decision, but it might make for good politics.
"Load factor measures usage by capacity. It is calculated by dividing passenger-miles (the aggregation of trip lengths for individual passengers) by seat-miles (the sum of the products of total seats available and total miles traveled for individual trains). Data are available beginning in January 2003."I'm wondering for passenger trains, making multiple stops, what the maximum percentage would realistically be so as to have sufficient capacity en route? Although a number approaching 100% might be good on a non-stop between two cities (like on an airline), might not that result in turning away potential customers? Gil Carmichael (former FRA Administrator during the GHW Bush administration) once said, "As a rule of thumb, because of on/offs at intermediate stations, a train with a 65% load factor is generally full and at some point in the route peaks out with no seats available."
erikemThe California purchases may be in part to allow retirement of the Amfleet cars from Pacific Surfliner service.
Which they can then convert to baggage cars and then....oh, never mind!
Happy Thanksgiving!
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
The California purchases may be in part to allow retirement of the Amfleet cars from Pacific Surfliner service.
The average load factor on the midwest trains during the first 11 months of FY12 was 45.9 per cent, which is significantly below Amtrak's average system load factor of 52.9 per cent. Only the Wolverines and KCS-St. Louis trains had an average load factor above 50 per cent.
Some of the trains probably are periodically space constrained (holidays, vacation season(s), etc.), but the average numbers don't suggest that space availability is a major problem for Amtrak.
Amtrak is very short of cars in the Midwest and I think this is great news.
Now finally the contract is let for the bi-levels. 88 for midwest service and 42 for California. Max speed wil be allowed 125 MPH. average cost $2.7M / car. Cab cars will cost more. Interesting to compare with new Viewliners.
http://www.progressiverailroading.com/high_speed_rail/news/Illinois-Gov-Quinn-announces-352-million-railcar-contract-for-highspeed-lines--33393
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