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AMTRAK not marketing Cresent route properly

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[quote user="Phoebe Vet"] [quote user="Sam1"] No matter what spin (advertising) is put on the service, most people are not going to get up in the middle of the night to take a passenger train when they can fly or drive in the morning. Moreover, most business people who have access to good air service are not going to spend two to four hours on a train when they can fly to their destination in an hour or two. [/quote] Charlotte has lots of transportation options.  We have 2 daytime trains, we are USAir's largest hub, we have Greyhound, and we are at the intersection of 2 Interstate Highways, yet quite a few people DO get up in the middle of the night to take that train, and the train is usually pretty full. My point in claiming that advertising is needed was that a significant portion of the population in Charlotte doesn't even know that we have passenger train service or where the station is if they did want to take it.  In fact, if NC had a train that went to the Greensboro Airport it would be well used because a lot of people drive to Greensboro to get on a USAir flight that then comes through Charlotte because it is substantially cheaper than boarding in Charlotte so it doesn't seem like time is the big motivator.[/quote] My point was that Amtrak appears to spend a reasonable amount on sales and advertising.  Moreover, it increased significantly between 2007 and 2008, although the numbers for 2009 have not been finalized.  How much of the advertising dollars was spent on the Crescent is not disclosed in Amtrak's annual reports. An average of 43,904 passengers departed daily during FY09 on flights from Douglas International Airport.  A nearly equal number arrived.  The number of folks taking the Crescent or the other trains to and from Charlotte would hardly register on a comparative radar screen. Amtrak should spend money for sales and marketing where there is a likely payoff, e.g. relatively short, high density corridor trains.  Spending money on advertising for a long distance trains that lose buckets of money, especially in cities where they call in the middle of the night, is not a good business decision.  Whoops, there I go again.  Assuming that Amtrak is run like a business.
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