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Amtrak a victim of getting closer to sucess?

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  • From: Georgia USA SW of Atlanta
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Amtrak a victim of getting closer to sucess?
Posted by blue streak 1 on Friday, July 8, 2011 6:50 PM

To further the idea of getting closer to sucess I found Amtrak Apr & May performance results that have been posted. I had hoped that June ridership would be posted by today but it has not been released yet.

Amtrak showed fairly good results for these 2 months. First result figure will be Apr then May then YTD.

Revenues are up $21M for Apr and $46M for May over budget; YTD total revenue $1780M (+60M).

The net loss is - $60M & -14.8M with YTD -$65M less than budget.

Capital spending is $35M over due to ROW clearing and an undetermined amount over for the Frequency converter work at Metuchen converter station. Extra freq converter work may be a result of all the low voltage problems that have occurred on the NEC. 

Load factor 55.2%, 54.5%; YTD 51%. So Amtrak finally is over the 50% load factor mark for any year.

Out of service pass fleet 11.9, 12.4, YTD 12%:   Locos 16.9, 18.7, YTD 15.9 %. Indications are that the loco fleet is wearing out. There is no break down between diesels and electric motors.

Figures Vs. 2010 for Passengers; April then May all are increases except where noted.

Acela 3%, 5%, Regional 13, 10%, Short Dist 11, 15%, LD 8, 5%:

Revenue Acela 9, 13% Regional 11, 9-1/2%, SD 15, 13%: LD 13, 11% LD would have been even better except for City of NO and Builder cancellation. The Empire Builder revenue was down 50%. The Cardinal was up the most.

Car overhauls are still behind plan; Amfleet -14 from budget, -6 Superliners, -1 Surfliner, -1 Viewliner, -2 Baggage. ARRA overhauls Amfleet -5, Long Distance cars Beech Grove -4. Found an interesting item on April’s report stating that Dinner 8400 was expected to be completed by end of September. May report listed one of the Nevada destroyed wrecks coming in for overhaul so maybe other overhauls can be substituted.

FY 2011 Amtrak has replaced 114,000+ ties; CAT renewal 19.2 track miles, 7 Transformers replaced.

Fully allocated costs are measured by passenger cents/mile. Acela is +15.9, +24.8 YTD 17.8; NEC total 4.5, 8.8, YTD 2.9 cents.

Those routes meeting or exceeding fully allocated for May are: Hiawathas, Adirondack, Lynchburg, Newport News, Kansas City – STL, Piedmont -0.1 cents.

The worse routes were NH- Springfield, Hoosier, Keystone, Sunset, & Cardinal.

Best routes SD -- Lynchburg 4.1 cents/mile.

Both months delay minutes per 10,000 miles major RRs -- worse CN best BNSF.

Train delays are measured by delay minutes/ 10K miles traveled. Ethan Allen still worse train delays ( VTR +7000, CP 3500 ) NS next 2 worse for Blue Water (3500) & Pere Marquette (4000).  CSX is best on its portion of NYP – Albany at only 181.

End point OT---Capitols at 95% - UP only has 470 min/10K miles delays. Worst is still Cardinal at 34% . This appears to be due to BBBr RR delays that are unable to be made up by NYP.

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