schlimmThus, it seems unlikely that very many of that 55,410 (for three months) use the Pennsylvanian to or from Pittsburgh.
Schlimm,
The fact of the matter is that we simply don't know how many Pittsburgh boardings and alightings are to or from the Pennsylvanian, how many are to or from the Capitol Limited and how many are changing between those two trains. I cannot see any reason for assigning one half of the total number to each train although I don't have any idea of what the number is. Short of a Freedom of Information Request I don't know how to find out.
Also, to the extent that people are changing trains that is not reflected is assigning have of the boardings and alightings to each train.
John
Don,
As I understand you, you argue Amtrak should run trains in the best way possible to serve the maximum number of people. You also make some specific suggestions about how Amtrak could better serve people than it is now. I have no quarrel with your position and in a better situation that would be a much better way to operate Amtrak. But, as you have pointed out in other posts, Amtrak is beholden to the Congress and must come hat in hand every year to beg for operating funds. This has imposed a limit on the initiative Amtrak is able to take.
The only difference I have with with you (and correct me if I am wrong) is that you seem to expect Amtrak to solve this problem itself. I don't see how Amtrak can solve the problem.
bill613aThe ridership figures I used were from the latest issue of PTJ which listed total ridership from July thru September at 55,410.
Bill,
I added up my figures from Amtrak's monthly reports. The total for July, August and September is exactly what you report, 55,410. However I don't see how it is possible to derive the number of people riding between Harrisburg and PIttsburgh from that information.
Also, if you look at the numbers you will see that they vary widely. In December, 2010 56,530 people rode the Pennsylvanian. In Februrary there were only 13,578, fewer than one quarter of the December number. The mean number of riders per month is 22,526 so July, August and September are relatively low ridership months.
schlimmSpeak for yourself. you seem to be saying all or nothing. But it isn't that the folks who post are saying no to subsidies, period. It is examining services route by route and determining which ones have higher subsidies, figuring out why, modifying the price structure or reducing the costs (sleepers, diners, baggage cars), or possibly elimination if the ridership is low.
I do speak for myself. I accept Amtrak not because I think it is the best way to run our rail passenger service but because since it was provided by the Nixon Administration it has been the only way. And I will support it until a better way is here. Not just ideas about a better way although the ideas in themselves may be very good but until we actually do have a batter way. But I don't see that happening any time soon.
If, as you propose, we do away with sleeping cars, dining cars and baggage cars I believe the number of riders will drop and the service will further erode probably to the point of the "elimination" you call for. I don't suggest that you want "elimination" but I still fear that it could happen.
schlimmThe reason for all this is the PRIIA (Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act) of 2008. Section 209 of PRIIA requires that the Pennsylvanian transition to a state supported service by 2013. Future operation of the Pennsylvanian will require funding support from Pennsylvania.
After all the Babeling on this topic, somebody finally brings up what the 'controversy' is really likely about. Can we please refine the discussion to the original general topic, now that we have a framework for guiding what it ought to address?
bill613a The ridership figures I used were from the latest issue of PTJ which listed total ridership from July thru September at 55,410.
The ridership figures I used were from the latest issue of PTJ which listed total ridership from July thru September at 55,410.
According to official figures from the Amtrak state fact sheets, Pittsburgh, which hosts the Pennsylvanian and Capital Ltd. had only 129,372 "boardings + alightings" for the entire 2012 year. If you assumed each train accounted for half the total (likely the CL has more than the Pennsylvanian) that would be 5390/month or about 90 passengers each way per day on the Pennsylvanian. Thus, it seems unlikely that very many of that 55,410 (for three months) use the Pennsylvanian to or from Pittsburgh.
The reason for all this is the PRIIA (Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act) of 2008. Section 209 of PRIIA requires that the Pennsylvanian transition to a state supported service by 2013. Future operation of the Pennsylvanian will require funding support from Pennsylvania.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
John WR oltmanndThat's a $50 a passenger subsidy. Pretty steep. And, bus service is available everywhere on the route except Huntingdon. Don, If we are going to say that to subsidize Amtrak travel is unacceptable then we will immediately stop every single Amtrak train except the Acelas. And without the Northeast Regional Service the Acelas will lose money to so we will stop them and there will be no more Amtrak. If there is no more Amtrak there is nothing to discuss. John
oltmanndThat's a $50 a passenger subsidy. Pretty steep. And, bus service is available everywhere on the route except Huntingdon.
If we are going to say that to subsidize Amtrak travel is unacceptable then we will immediately stop every single Amtrak train except the Acelas. And without the Northeast Regional Service the Acelas will lose money to so we will stop them and there will be no more Amtrak. If there is no more Amtrak there is nothing to discuss.
I'm certainly not saying that. I'm saying the $7 M could be better spent on rail service, either by PA or by Amtrak.
Amtrak's goal should be to get the most "bang for the buck". Only then can they silence most of the critics and be able to secure some long term capital.
The Pennsylvanian is a "line on the map". There are some of us who get overly concerned about how many lines get drawn on the map to the exclusion of all else. I know that I like to look at Amtrak's map and think about all the places I can go, but I know that preserving lines may be counterproductive.
A good compromise solution would be to make the Capitol a single level train and run it through Harrisburg and Philly and shift the schedule an hour so that it hits Pittsburgh about 6 AM eastbound Westbound, you'd have to move the departure from DC up about 2 hours to keep the Pittsburgh time about the same. Yes, it would add a couple hours of running time, but it would run through denser market. Riders of LD trains aren't very time sensitive.
Cumberland, Connelsville, Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg have about 30K boardings and alightings a year - about 40 per train. The last two have MARC train service, so they can still get the train out of DC. The largest stop, Cumberland, is only an hour by car (and Bud Shusters I-99) to Altoona, so most of them could hop on the train there (there's about 15 per train - maybe Cumberland could fund a small shuttle bus like Roanoke does for the Lynchburg train). The route through PA would gain you more than you'd lose and wouldn't cost a thing to implement.
To balance the equipment, make the LSL a Superliner train to Boston. For Chicago to NY service - do "across the platform" at Albany-Rensselaer and Philly. Or, if having to service sleepers in DC is a problem, have the train go to NY (you could call it the "Broadway Limited"!) and do across the platform at Philly for the DC passengers. (You'd essentially be moving the Capitol's equipment to the LSL and the LSL's equipment to the Capitol's route.)
And, this is just me with about 15 minutes of thinking Imagine the solutions that could arise if it was several people's full time job to come up with ideas....or if the whole company had their brains engaged in improvements.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
MidlandMike bill613a ... The future of the PENNSYLVANIAN revolves around it being consolidated with the CAPITOL LIMITED while maintaining its present schedule and providing thru convenient service between Chicago and NYC via Harrisburg, Philadelphia and New Jersey The Pennsylvanian is run like a compromise between a corridor train running in daytime, but with the schedule skewed to provide a "reasonable" connection time (3-4 hrs) to the long distance Capitol Ltd. I have waited longer than 4 hrs to make a reasonably priced airline connection. If the Penn was rescheduled to make tight connections to the present Capitol Ltd, you would loose many of those 400 people who don't want to arrive at Pittsburgh at midnight or leave at 5AM, all for a handful of people connecting from the Cap Ltd. How would you schedule the 2 trains? The main adjustments would be to the CAPITOL having it depart WB at 1PM getting into Pittsburgh at roughly 8:30PM and adjusting the PENNSYLVANIAN's WB departure by 30-60 minutes. EB the CAPITOL would arrive at 7AM and depart after dropping off the NY cars. The arrival and departure times out of Chicago would be determined by the schedule needed for the "dog leg" reroute via Fort Wayne. If this restructuring is done it would be similar to the LSL schedule east of Buffalo which sees all the major markets with decent train times both ways.
bill613a ... The future of the PENNSYLVANIAN revolves around it being consolidated with the CAPITOL LIMITED while maintaining its present schedule and providing thru convenient service between Chicago and NYC via Harrisburg, Philadelphia and New Jersey
...
The future of the PENNSYLVANIAN revolves around it being consolidated with the CAPITOL LIMITED while maintaining its present schedule and providing thru convenient service between Chicago and NYC via Harrisburg, Philadelphia and New Jersey
The Pennsylvanian is run like a compromise between a corridor train running in daytime, but with the schedule skewed to provide a "reasonable" connection time (3-4 hrs) to the long distance Capitol Ltd. I have waited longer than 4 hrs to make a reasonably priced airline connection. If the Penn was rescheduled to make tight connections to the present Capitol Ltd, you would loose many of those 400 people who don't want to arrive at Pittsburgh at midnight or leave at 5AM, all for a handful of people connecting from the Cap Ltd. How would you schedule the 2 trains?
About 270,000 ride the Pennsyvanian each year and of that number about 86,000 board or alight from Lewistown to Greensburg. That is about 32 per cent of all riders. And of course some boarding and alighting at Harrisburg and Pittsburgh are part of the Harrisburg and Pittsburgh traffic so I suspect that a lot more than a third of all riders use that segment of the Pennsylvanian.
In addition to the Pennslyvanian there are 13 trains Monday through Friday in Keystone service. All Keystone trains either run between New York and Harrisburg or have a connecting train at Philadelphia 30th Street. The Pennsylvanian is the 14th train in Keystone service.
Here are the boardings and alightings from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh for fiscal year 2012 from the Pennsylvania Fact Sheet:
Harrisburg 571,217; Lewistown 8,315; Huntingdon 5,837; Tyrone 3,108; Altoona 26,978; Johnstown 23,964; Latrobe 4,669; Greensburg 13,395 and Pittsburgh 129,372.
Harrisburg is from the 14 trains that stop there. Pittsburgh includes the Pennsylvanian and Capitol Limited.
Adding the numbers in my head there are about 86,000 boardings and alightings each year from Lewistown to Greensburg.
Overmod,
The data I give includes east and west bound passengers. It seems reasonable to assume the numbers are about equal but I don't know of any published data that will give this information.
Station stops west of Harrisburg are Lewistown, Huntingdon, Tyrone, Altoona, Johnstown, Latrobe, Greensburg and Pittsburgh.
If I am not mistaken, the figures you provided are for ALL riders of the train, both eastbound and westbound. So you'd have to divide by two to get a rough idea of the "Pittsburgh-to-New-York" riders vs. the 'New-York-to-Pittsburgh' ones.
This cries out for better data. Are the ridership numbers balanced for eastbound vs. westbound? How many people are connecting with the National Limited in either direction? What ARE the intermediate points where people are boarding or detraining -- Harrisburg may be a logical intermediate destination in both directions, but with asymmetry due to the Keystone service east.
Can this be extracted from published sources?
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports 400 passengers a day ride the Pennsylvanian between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh.
Bill said 300 ride the train each day. He said nothing about where they get on an off and he did not attribute that number to Amtrak. He did not say where he got the statistic.
I went to Amtrak's performance reports. These the the numbers of riders Amtrak reports for each month from December, 2012 to January, 2010 in that order:
56,530; 37,072; 18,536; 16,423; 19,392; 19,595; 19,146; 17,718; 18,582; 17,060; 13,578 and 16,765.
The total is 270,317. Dividing by 365 gives an average daily number of passengers between New York and Pittsburgh of 740.59. However, there is no way to know where these people get on and get off the train. Amtrak does publish boardings and alightings by station. However, in PIttsburgh the figures include those of the Capitol Limited as well as the Pennsylvanian and in Harrisburg there is no way to know which passengers come or go from east bound stations and which come or go from west bound stations so you cannot separate out those traveling between New York and Harrisburg from those who begin or end their journies at stations west of Harrisburg.
I calculated by mean with a paper and pencil and calculator if you want to check the calculations yourself. Amtrak's Monthly Performance Reports are available on their website.
Earlier on this thread we heard 300 ride this train daily according to Amtrak. That means Pittsburgh to Philly and all points in between. So it is unlikely 400 or even 300 are west of Harrisburg and that nthe train deadheads on to Philly.
schlimm Assuming those 400 ride all the way to or from Pittsburgh is not true. Most are between Harrisburg and Philly.
Assuming those 400 ride all the way to or from Pittsburgh is not true. Most are between Harrisburg and Philly.
The "nearly 400" is west of Harrisburg.
Yes there was. When Conrail advised Amtrak it wanted the BROADWAY & CAPITOL rerouted there was very little if any public discourse about possible alternatives. As a matter of fact an Amtrak official recently said of the 1990 reroute that they just "did it". As part of the deal Conrail paid for (IIRC $1million) a connection just east of the Cleveland station so as to avoid an in/out back up procedure.
As for the BROADWAY it was put on the ex-B&O line which with the exception of the stops at Akron and Youngstown (which hadn't had intercity rail service since 1971) there wasn't much of a ridership base. The ex-PRR line over the decades had generated good ridership out of Canton, Lima and especially Fort Wayne. IMHO the best routing would have been the ex-B&O Pittsburgh to Fostoria and then Fostoria-Fort Wayne-Chicago over the NS (ex-NKP). The ex-NKP and ex-B&O line cross at grade just past the station. Amtrak should have requested a connection similar to what the CL got in Cleveland. Of course this was an OTB solution which Amtrak seems to always have trouble with.
bill613a FYI when Amtrak started on May 1, 1971 the NY-Pittsburgh service consisted of the BROADWAY & NATIONAL LIMITEDS running combined between NY-Harrisburg and as separate trains west of Harrisburg after picking up their respective thru cars from Washington D.C. There was also a day train between NY-Pittsburgh (The DUQUESNE). IIRC within a year or two Amtrak made the NATIONAL a separate train between NY-KC and the DUQUESNE was dropped. After the NATIONAL was dropped in October 1979 the PENNSYLVANIAN began in April of 1980. The problem with the PENNSYLVANIAN IMHO is not that it is a legacy route (which it is that between July and September 2012 averaged 300 passengers per train) but that Amtrak has mismanaged the former BROADWAY NY-CHI line beginning with the less than well thought out rerouting west of Pittsburgh in 1990 and the final discontinuance in 1995. The future of the PENNSYLVANIAN revolves around it being consolidated with the CAPITOL LIMITED while maintaining its present schedule and providing thru convenient service between Chicago and NYC via Harrisburg, Philadelphia and New Jersey
FYI when Amtrak started on May 1, 1971 the NY-Pittsburgh service consisted of the BROADWAY & NATIONAL LIMITEDS running combined between NY-Harrisburg and as separate trains west of Harrisburg after picking up their respective thru cars from Washington D.C. There was also a day train between NY-Pittsburgh (The DUQUESNE). IIRC within a year or two Amtrak made the NATIONAL a separate train between NY-KC and the DUQUESNE was dropped. After the NATIONAL was dropped in October 1979 the PENNSYLVANIAN began in April of 1980.
The problem with the PENNSYLVANIAN IMHO is not that it is a legacy route (which it is that between July and September 2012 averaged 300 passengers per train) but that Amtrak has mismanaged the former BROADWAY NY-CHI line beginning with the less than well thought out rerouting west of Pittsburgh in 1990 and the final discontinuance in 1995.
Johnny
John WR The article says the average is almost 400 riders for the "segment" which I understand as Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. Since there are two trains a day -- one in each direction -- I think they mean the average is almost 200 between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh on each train. Some people argue that a better connection with the capitol limited would increase the number of riders.
The article says the average is almost 400 riders for the "segment" which I understand as Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. Since there are two trains a day -- one in each direction -- I think they mean the average is almost 200 between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh on each train.
Some people argue that a better connection with the capitol limited would increase the number of riders.
Okay. I estimated 100,000 a year. 400 a day is 140,000 a year. It's not an order of magnitude difference. For $7M. That's a $50 a passenger subsidy. Pretty steep. And, bus service is available everywhere on the route except Huntingdon.
To paraphrase: "Never were so many words wasted for so few people." I believe Don Oltmann made it quite clear on the other thread that the bulk of the Pennsylvanian's ridership is Harrisburg and points east, with perhaps some from Altoona.
400 passengers per day seems pretty good! Is this a round trip figure, or an average of 200 each way? Can't help but think that additional frequencys would really grow that market.
Henry,
Arlen Specter actually road Amtrak trains. Often with Joe Biden. And he was a supporter of Amtrak in general; not just trains in Pennsylvania.
oltmanndBud Shuster directed as much pork home as he could.
I didn't intend to suggest anything different, Don. Everything I read about Representative Bud Shuster indicated he was big on sending pork home. However, I just could not find any specific reference that links him to the Pennsylvanian. John
schlimmRoutes based on political favors and pork. No Way to Run a Railroad and no way to have a modern, useful passenger service.
I agree that pork barrel legislation is no way to run a railroad, Schlimm. But neither is it a way to run an interstate highway system. In Pennsylvania that has gotten a lot more pork than Amtrak and part of the reason Amtrak finds it hard to compete is the pork for the interstate highway system.
In the US pork goes back to the days when George Washington got money for the C&O canal. I doubt it will stop any time soon.
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