WASHINGTON—In addition to its “Equipment Asset Line Plan” [see “Amtrak fleet plan would replace Amfleet I cars, prepare for replacement Superliners,” Trains News Wire, March 25, 2019], Amtrak this week released companion five-year plans dealing with the following categories (click on each for the documents):
Infrastructure
Service lines (Northeast Corridor, state-supported, and long distance)
Taken together, the planning documents cross-pollenate performance and information derived from all of Amtrak’s businesses and represent the first extensive articulation of company goals for the next five years under the leadership of President and CEO Richard Anderson.
The service line plans, in particular, reveal current corporate thinking by attempting to identify key issues, the competitive landscape for each product line, challenges and risks, and “Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats” (dubbed “SWOT”) analyses.
There’s a wealth of information in each section, but management’s biases against long distance trains are consistently apparent. In discussing that product line, for example, no mention of the transportation actually delivered — passenger-miles — is ever made. Instead, it talks of “subsidy per passenger” and a “$543.2 million funded operating losses on long-distance routes.”
Trains has repeatedly asked for specifics on just one route, the Southwest Chief, for the past year in preparation of a report revealing that 90 percent of these expenses are allocated [“Amtrak’s money mystery,” January 2019 Trains], but the company has yet to respond.
It also states that the long-distance network does not meet “the preferences of today’s travelers,” but makes no mention of specific marketing efforts to reach them. Trains News Wire will have more analyses on all of these plans in the weeks ahead.
For you airline guys – How about a SW seat with water dripping from overhead (A/C?) or a seat I measured 18″ between-and seat backs were up. How about a plane originating MCI which had to wait 3 hrs for a rested crew from Wichita. This plane trip took the entire day to get from KC to Washington DC. Then there are the times I called my wife to tell her I was in the ‘overbook’ room and wouldn’t be home until the next day. Then we had an overseas flight and the seats were so close together she could not let the tray table down for our ‘meal’. In my working career I really didn’t take too many flights, but these are some of my experiences – I have left others out which were just as bad.
I personally believe that Amtrak will be non-existent in 5 years.
I disagree that the long distance services are hopelessly uneconomic. Sure , they will never turn a profit, But the idea that they can’t be improved seems to be taken for granted. Even Amtrak’s 5 year plan basically carries on the same old same old. despite the talk of food service reform , the numbers change by 5-10 % over the 5 years. Talk of new daylite sectors and thruway services, and those numbers change by similar amounts. Probably the same amounts they did for the last 5 years. It seems little effort is put into reforming the long distance trains , and I can sympathise for the feeling extra costs are dumped on them,
Why don’t they take at least one train , and make the changes proposed , and see what happens?.
“but management’s biases against long distance trains are consistently apparent.”
is an editorial statement. This is the “News Wire”. Not the Op-ed. Put that stuff in the blogs!
As Amtrak was declared to be operating like the Kremlin, it is amazing to see how this agency even produces 5 Year Plans, just like in the Soviet Union.
These plans, and their deliberately intended bias to slant judgment against the long distance routes, are meaningless without financials evidencing accurate accounting of how costs are allocated to the state-supported, long distance, and NEC sectors.
Frankly, until the entire Board is relieved; a new vibrant team of railroad experienced management brought in, and the blatant bias of PRIIA eliminated, nothing will change. Amtrak will continue to be the frog slowly boiling in its own water until no longer.
Don:
Thanks; my thoughts/sentiments exactly.
Mary Stahl,
Those mail cars were everything in the pre-Amtrak days and the only reason why the passenger service didn’t sink the railroads long before Amtrak (please see my message before yours). And I can’t blame today’s RR’s for putting their customers first. Because of all the years of passenger financial troubles prior to Amtrak,especially those years when they were forced to operate without even a mail subsidy, and now all the years since Amtrak was created, they’ve paid their “dues” for having them removed from having to provide passenger service no matter what the cost.
I agree with Charles that you should try Southwest if you want to travel domestic and not drive. I’ve had over 40 flights with them in the last 10 years and never had a bad one. You do have to book them through their own website. They offer great senior fares, even on their cheapest “Get Away” bookings. They recently started to offer some limited international flights.
In today’s market and money driven world and especially in the transportation industry, only two forms of transportation appeal and make sense in the traveling public today and that is the commercial airliner and the private auto. For speed and wanting to get on time and cut the traveling time, you take the plane and for the freedom of being your own boss and controlling how and when you get there, you use your car and in some cases if you have an RV or camper you will travel that way. Nobody today has the patience or heart to travel on a train which to today’s modern generation the train is from a bygone era and ancient. To those folks who think that a bus can take the place of the train, think again If a passenger train carrying anywhere from 150 to 200 passengers can’t turn a profit how does an intercity bus carrying only 50 to 60 passengers a trip expected to make money. Also there are so many town and cities across this country where no bus serves it or maybe one a day or every other day. Most travelers hate making connections from one form of transportation to another. a one seat direct trip from Point A to Point B is the desire and intent of all travelers. You will either drive your car to your destination if you have the time and offers you freedom of time and no stress. If you are in a hurry you fly and when you get to your destination the majority of travelers will either rent a car, hail a taxi or call up Uber or lyft. and not bother with any public transit options if any are there. Today’ssociety is geared towards ease and how soon you can there and freedom of choice and managing your travel time and options. Unfortunely while Amtrak has had to fight and fend for itself, it has also done a great jobof shooting themselves in the foot and sabotaging their goals and missions with poor service, cutbacks and failing to meet or be receptive to their customers needs and wants.
Charles, You can still buy an Amtrak ticket from Albuquerque to Las Vegas on The Southwest Chief (bus/van shuttle service from Kingman,AZ) and the possibility does exist to connect Denver with The Chief which would in effect make it possible to have Albuquerque-Denver service.
How old are P40z & P42z? Start with those ugly things.
Sorry, pressed the wrong button. Let me continue:
(1) LD Passenger trains are hopelessly uneconomic, always have been, and going forward it will be far worse.
(2) No matter how many trains you keep or add, LD passenger trains will never serve more than a single digit percentage of Americans traveling long distances. A resident of Albuquerque traveling to Los Angeles is no more entitle to his train, than a resident of Albuquerque travelling to Denver or Las Vegas or Omaha or Austin, who doesn’t have a train to ride.
ERASMUS – I appreciate your optimism and your sincerity. No matter how you slice it, dice it, or re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic you must face two truths:
TRUTH#1
Charles, Bus connections where train connections are impossible (such as Kingman-Las Vegas/Laughlin) compliment the long distance trains,but without the train,there would be no use for the connecting bus. Albuquerque-Denver is possible now with the bus connecting with The Chief at Raton. It would be much better,however,if there was connecting train service to and from The Southwest Chief to and from Denver. This could be done by way of a morning train from Denver connecting with the westbound Chief at La Junta and and afternoon train from Denver connecting with the eastbound Chief at Trinidad. This would also have the added benefit of serving the Colorado cities of Castle Rock,Colorado Springs,Pueblo and Walsenburg which would give the first three cities two trains per day in each direction.
As a life-long rail traveler, I agree “they ain’t what they used to be”. However, my wife (who tolerates the train) and I recently rode the Sunset Limited to New Orleans. There was a young couple in a roomette who I befriended
ROGER WILLIAMS – If Amtrak functions through bus connections, then maybe bus connections can function without Amtrak.
MARY – You say airlines have rude employees who mistreat passengers. Maybe you ought to fly Southwest whose employees are a dream. Not that I’ve had bad experiences on other carriers either. My log book is about 142 flights so far. Who are those rude employees who mistreat passengers? I recall a British Airways cabin attendant smoking in the non-smoking section. That was in 1978. That’s it in about 142 flights in 52 years.
As someone who rode pre-Amtrak trains in late 50’s and early to mid 60’s,with a mother who grew up with railroading, we could see the contrast between what she talked about as how things were. Dad had never rode much until we started our travels. But service was still first class, even if they wanted to dump the trains. Full diners, no such thing as a snack car with just sandwiches, but the full sit down experience of a fine restaurant. Last train ride was in 1968 with GTW/CN into Canada and around. and service was still looking good. Some trains were better than others, but none were that bad. Amtrak has always been pushed aside by the freight railroads and that is the fault of the government for not holding them accountable for their part of the bargain. I know their priority is their own cargo but I have never seen any passenger trains today that are that long and going “into the hole” would not take that long. The railroads we rode years ago made it work and passenger trains could be 20 cars long with mix of sleeper, domes on western routes, bunch of coaches, full diner, baggage cars, even mail cars. Amtrak was created to provide transportation to the people who want to ride and that’s all the focus should be about, make it work. I flew a lot over the years with TWA to Europe multiple times, but have no desire to fly today, too many bad things happening, lots of rudeness and mistreatment of passengers. Others are afraid to fly or dont like to drive a long way for a trip-that was my Dad,we’d never have seen what we did without his train pass, as he’d have never drove that far. Give “prop head” the boot and get somebody in charge who loves trains and willing to work with them, and forget all the stockholders screaming for cuts so they get a fatter check. Prop head was the worst choice possible. just like a rail man would be to run an airline
I still maintain, the best way to “save” passenger service is to turn Amtrak into the ticketing agency, and possible car management/leasing for the national fleet. Otherwise return passenger service to the 7 current Class 1s here. Of course, the pot needs to be sweetened for those railroads.
1) Guarantee a mail contract. Not the sort of high dollar sorting mid route, but could conceivably be prepackaged/sorted for station stops along the way.
2) Allow head end freight on these trains, similar to the service the REA used to run. Remember, even Amtrak ran a service like this 15 years ago or so, and did decently well with it.
3) This is perhaps most crucial. Allow a tax break/credit/or exemption on any routes where passenger trains are operated and the associated facilities used to support them. Of course, there needs to be controls on this to keep it from getting abused. The service must be usable, timely (minimum of the current schedule), and decently convenient. For example, they can’t tack 1 passenger car on the back of a local freight that takes 20 hours to go 100 miles. I live in the Omaha area, so I’ll pick on UP for this example. The CZ currently runs on the UP from Denver to Emeryville across the old DRGW. So, the trackage, as currently utilized, from Denver to SLC on the Moffat route would become eligible for the program, while, as currently setup, the Overland Route from Omaha to SLC would not. Then, from SLC, the former WP around the base of the Salt Lake would be eligible, but the former SP across the Lucin cutoff wouldn’t. As you continue west, the former SP across Donner would be eligible, but the Feather River Canyon, wouldn’t. You get the idea. Of course, if UP wanted to start another train, that satisfied the requirements, then they could apply for additional mail contracts for those runs, and apply for the same tax breaks for the route(s) they sought to start service on. Further, because a portion of such facilities as the Harriman Dispatch Center, as well as the headquarters building in Omaha would be used to support these passenger services, then an arrangement (percentage of the square footage based on the percentage of track used for passenger services as an example) could be worked out for a reduction in property taxes on those buildings. In talking with someone about this idea some time ago, they brought up that its the local governments that would be most affected by the lost revenue from property taxes. I propose that the locals would still receive those taxes, but it be set up as a tax credit from the feds removed from income taxes. The better the service, the better the tax rewards.
In this way, some of the pitfalls from the past (multiple calls and ticketing frustration across multiple railroads, changing trains for no apparent good reason on a transcontinental run just because its the end of one railroads territory, etc) can be avoided. It would also put everyone, the government, and the railroads, with some skin in the game. Would it give large tax breaks to some very large corporations? Yes, but there would be something to show for it, and a public service for transportation would be maintained. It’s possible there could/would be an improvement in service, as the current beauocracy that cripples Amtrak would potentially be done away with, but that would depend on how the RRs actually execute the charge.
Will passenger service ever “make” money? Not likely. But I’m certain there are far better ways of doing things than what is currently being done now.
The railroads lost heavily on their dining service long before Amtrak was loosing heavily. That was told directly to me by the PRR VP-Passenger Operations in the later ’50’s. They were stuck running passenger trains but the over-all passenger losses weren’t as bad as later on, due to the mail revenues and enough people who wouldn’t fly or couldn’t afford to back then in the pre-discount airline days. Once LBJ’s people took the mail away from the RR’s there was nothing left to help lessen the passenger losses. The unions didn’t help either as they weren’t going to budge. A friend’s dad was an officer in one of the RR unions. They never thought the Feds would let the passenger rail system disappear so they figured if things got really bad the FED’s probably would nationalize all the rail companies or somehow keep forcing the passenger trains down the RR’s throat. When they finally realized that wasn’t going to happen it was already too late.
All you that think the future LD rail service will somehow just take off and grow into something similar to what the USA had in the past are just kidding yourselves. The culture of the US has moved beyond it.
We’ll see if the HSR can show new directions in FL and maybe TX. But one warning: politicians sunk PA’s HSR’s attempts in the 70’s and 80’s by demanding too many intermediate stops. By the time that was overcome it was too late as the western terminal [Pittsburgh] was in a downward spiral and couldn’t support the service. One of CA’s many HSR problems has been the political pressure to have too many stops which is one the primary reasons for its current location.
The freight RR’s will resist any pressure unless someone is willing to pay more for improved performance. I don’t blame them. Since the Feds totally pulled the rug out from them with the US mail they absolutely deserved being allowed to drop their passenger service. After all these years of Amtrak, its now time to have all passenger operations on their rails start paying up-to-date prices for using their physical plants.
As for sell-outs on LD trains, some are crowed during peak travel times or a particular season. Most of the time that doesn’t occur. As us old timers who consistently rode LD trains die off, we are basically not being replaced by new ones. As for me, my last LD train experience some years ago was so bad my wife said that was the end of it for her. Then my kids moved so far away I was forced to start exploring air travel since we didn’t want to drive so much. Once I discovered SW Airline, I’ve never looked back.
Anderson just doesn’t seem to realize what he has in passenger trains. I recall reading, during the original “California Zephyr” train-off petitions (by Western pacific, I think), the hearing judge recognized the “Zephyr” as “a unique national asset.” Now, not every train has the assets — scenery, etc. — as Amtrak’s “CZ”, but it seems like some route-by-route creativity could be employed such as the (discontinued) Pacific Parlor Car on the “Coast Starlight.” How about, on the medium-distance daylight trains, upgrading the dining service instead of the “sandwiches, snacks, and beverages” currently offered? Recall that the freight railroads routinely offered full dining service on many if not most of their daytime trains. Won’t be an easy task admittedly, but a little imagination put into the product and service might well make more people willing (even eager?) to ride and even pay a little more. Recently there was an account of a successful experiment some years back with 24-hour dining service on the “Sunset Limited.” Amtrak’s Superliner “cross-country café” cars appear to be under-utilized, in the lounge end of the car, on many of the trains I’ve ridden. Why not put them to use selling at least booze which people will pay for?
I agree with Ted Kulinna’s comments regarding the “real people” who ride the LD trains. One has to wonder if Anderson, upper managers, and board of director members have even ridden their own trains.
This whole L D Amtrak “spin” concerning the LD network does not meet “the preferences of todays travelers”, is a classic example of a false conclusion. And then making all the selected premises fit the conclusion. Anderson and company have no idea how each LD train accomplishes several “point to point’ travel options all in one long run. And, sadly they don’t care, our mind is made up, so don’t try to provide us with any positive information!!! I would be “willing to bet” that Anderson has NEVER ever ridden the” Builder” for example. He has no idea how it is a vital lifeline to thousands of individual REAL PEOPLE. As was stated by Jeffrey, it could/would be used by many more persons sometimes,IF IT WAS NOT SOLD OUT. Bottom line is that “airline Anderson” no more knows how to run an innovative passenger railroad——– any more than a doctorMD knows how to be a good Dentist or vs/vsa. ANDERSON HAS TO GO before it is tool late.
Run L D trains as close to schedule as possible with cooperation (and pressure if needed) ,with the host railroads. Has anyone noticed that the delays with the “CRESENT” have decrease somewhat the last 10 days! Could it be the “social media pressure” against NS? They have been kindly to the pressure.
Provide sufficient capacity at ALL times of the year!!!!!!! As it is now—— cut because it is winter—- that’s the thing we always have done. Just try to get some sleeper space on some LD’s for 4/5/19? They(Amtrak) will never admit it BUT “full sleeper space makes more than any other” passenger service.
Make all payment, for all service, EVERYWHERE, by credit/debit or prepaid cards. NO CASH. My guess would be that revenue would jump 5/10%.
Insist on consistently good service from all employees !!!!!!!! Train and retrain how to take care of the customers—- they are generally paid well,treat them good, and they will treat their “guests” good. BUT, I an well aware that that good customer service is foreign to AA, given how airlines treat the customer like sh__.
RAIL PASSENGER ASSOC. get off your behinds, quite “playing nice”, you can not reason, or make any progress with AA, he is a lost cause for Amtrak!
Horrors! The “new food model” being tested on the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited will be rolled out system wide by the end of 2020, if I am reading right. See the timeline graph.
Anderson is ruining Amtrak. Only with passenger railroading would this be tolerated.
Five year plan? Who’s running things? Stalin?
It is often impossible to get space on the long distance trains, not only in high season, but in off season when they cut back on the space on the trains. How can they say there is no interest in riding them?