CHICAGO — Airports and highways generally get the most media attention at Thanksgiving because they accommodate the majority of the people on the move during the nation’s busiest travel period. Passenger rail did get rare coverage last week on “CBS Mornings” with coverage of Brightline including a live shot and an interview with Amtrak President Roger Harris. But where Amtrak provides convenient alternatives, its trains experience sellouts.
This Thanksgiving was no exception on all of its business units. What was different, however, was the lack of capacity on long-distance trains compared with previous years, and almost no additional service added to absorb regional patronage from Wednesday and Sunday travelers.
Northeast Corridor: one extra Acela round trip, high prices
Pre-pandemic, Amtrak routinely deployed extra full-route Northeast Regional trains and beefed-up Acela schedules, plus shorter distance round trips with leased commuter equipment from NJ Transit, Philadelphia’s SEPTA, and Maryland’s MARC.
But this year, with the ranks of serviceable Amfleet cars depleted, and four of 20 Acela trainsets out of service, the company added only one Boston-Washington Acela round trip on Wednesday and no extra trains on Sunday.
Though seats are almost always available on any train between certain city pairs, Trains News Wire observed the following sellouts and fare levels when attempting to book Wednesday travel on Tuesday and Sunday travel on Saturday:
Source: Trains News Wire research
The number of Sunday sellouts grew from Tuesday to Saturday, indicating last-minute travelers were willing to pay these hefty prices (Most New York-Washington midday fares this Tuesday start at $137). Between Boston and New York on Sunday, eight of 18 southbound trains and 14 of 19 northbound trains were sold out as of the previous afternoon.
Amtrak clearly was able to exert pricing power to generate substantial revenue while offering numerous departures on a travel corridor clogged with highway congestion and airport inconvenience.
National network: Sellouts pervasive
When equipment and personnel were more plentiful, Amtrak was able to squeeze additional holiday round trips on some Illinois and Michigan corridors serving Chicago and the Seattle-Portland, Ore., segment of the Cascades. Even with the extra trains, the routes experienced Wednesday and Sunday sellouts. This year, the regularly scheduled trains filled up well in advance of departures. Only the Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawathas had widespread availability on both days.
Reprising a Thanksgiving tradition dating to Amtrak’s inception, office personnel and off-duty onboard service volunteers descended on major terminals to answer questions from harried holiday travelers. Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner was one of them on Wednesday, directing passengers in Chicago Union Station’s spacious but crowded Great Hall to separate boarding lines for the Blue Water to Michigan and the Illini to southern Illinois. The trains are scheduled to depart within 5 minutes of each other.
Gardner, in the city for meetings with employees and a visit to the Chicago Maintenance Facility, remarked to News Wire, “We lost a trainset in Michigan” — referring to the still out-of-service locomotive and cars involved in the highway crossing derailment of Wolverine No. 355 the previous week [see “Amtrak train derails in Michigan …,” News Wire, Nov. 17, 2023]. This only added to holiday equipment issues.
With the company-wide Superliner coach shortage, virtually every long-distance train experienced sold-out segments around the holiday weekend. On Sunday, for example, the northbound Coast Starlight had no coach seats north of Santa Barbara, Calif.; the northbound Texas Eagle’s cars were sold out north of Cleburne, Texas; and both the eastbound and westbound Sunset Limited leaving San Antonio and Los Angeles had no coach seats.
Back in Chicago, the three Capitol Limited equipment sets were finally assigned a second coach on Nov. 17 after regularly selling out one car all summer and through the fall. Predictably, the additional seats were immediately snapped up for holiday travel, but the train’s two coaches and two sleeping cars finally have inventory in the traditional lull between the Thanksgiving and Christmas surges.
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