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Gunn on Amtrak: Here come the Train Offs

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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by garr Mitch, That is a very good point. Where a competitive edge has been given, i.e. the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak has done realatively well. However, the NE Corridor is a perfect niche for train travel--densely populated and just the right size geographically for trains to outperform planes and automibles. Plus, Amtrak owns the track, thus it controls the amount of traffic and when it can run. There are other corridors, such as Seattle/Portland/Vancouver; Chicago/Milwaukee, etc. but, in nearly all the cases, the big problem is that Amtrak doesn't own the tracks. If what you suggest were to happen, my guess is that the subsidy would go even higher. If the track time was available from the host railroad, the increased ticket revenue from an extra train on a route would quickly be depleted by the cost of the additional train sets and employees needed along with equipment maintenance. If new track had to be built from scratch for Amtrak, today's subsidy would seem but a pittance. In the case of long distance trains, I don't think that the volume of passengers is there to justify additional train sets. In certain seasons, some LD trains do sell out, but, as a whole, the speed of the trains combined with price/time comparisons of air vs rail vs car limits Amtrak's passenger growth. Jay [/quote] This is what I've learned in my 36 years of railroading. One round trip gets you about one train worth of passengers. Two round trips on a route get you 2.25 trains worth of passengers and so on. The more product provided the better the demand. As for crew persons. When we had a train only 3 times a week the crew was not used to its optimum. Deadheading and crew availability negated any advantage of a small operation. On the Milwaukee corridor crews make 2 round trips a day where once we only made one. You can't ask for better utilization as the hours of service come into play. The type of overwhelming demand for service doesn't exist now because of the basic level of service. But as you stated even these trains get booked far in advance. What would happen if the thing were run right? Mitch
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