WASHINGTON — Amtrak says it will add capacity on many of its corridor routes for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, its busiest of the year, but is urging customers to plan ahead and purchase tickets early.
Northeast Corridor plans include additional frequencies and added capacity for Acela Express and Northeast Regional trains, and additional capacity on Keystone Service, Pennsylvanian, and Empire Service trains. More trains, including the Keystone Service and Pennsylvanian, will require reservations Nov. 25-Dec. 2.
Corridor trains operating from Amtrak’s Chicago hub — Wolverine Service, Hiawatha, Pere Marquette, Illinois Zephyr, Lincoln Service, Saluki, and Illini — will add capacity, and the Hiawatha will require reservations Nov. 26-Dec. 2.
In California, Capital Corridor, San Joaquin, and Pacific Surfliner trains will add capacity, with the Surfliner requiring reservations Nov. 27-Dec. 2.
Amtrak’s press release on its planning is available here.
Your are correct Mr. Schneider. A lot has been written about Amtrak’s accounting systems. Unfortunately, all of it has been written by people that have had no access to Amtrak’s accounting policies, procedures, and practices. Not to mention access to the company’s books! In other words, they don’t know what they are talking about.
I am a CPA. If I offered an opinion about the accounting policies, procedures and practices of an entity, i.e. business, government, educational, etc. institution, my license would be revoked.
Unless you have evidence to the contrary, one should assume that you views on Amtrak’s accounting practices are based on rumors. And only rumors!
There’s been a lot written in recent years about Amtrak’s accounting system. Or lack thereof. We truly have no idea how much it is costing Amtrak to operate long distance trains. And under Anderson, getting actual numbers is harder than ever. Near as I can tell, most of the costs allocated to long distance trains are fake numbers—estimate or other accounting allocations, not actual costs (like crew pay, lodging for crews, actual fuel used, cost of on board food and ice, etc).
Thomas Carney wrote,
“Amtrak is a public service and not an income driven company.“
Not according to the law. I believe the confessional acts funding Amtrak require it to act as an income driven company. That’s part of why Amtrak is so bad at what it does. It is Jekyll and Hyde. It’s customers want it to be a public service, it’s PR people portray it as a public service, but it’s managers are required by law to maximize revenue and minimize losses. That’s quite a different mission than providing the best service to the most people, which is what most of us wish for.
All you ever see on the long distance trains during holidays are crowded same size trains. The consist of running additional sleepers and coaches is lost on Amtrak. I bet the Crescent could fill six sleepers at Thanksgiving and Christmas.
Amtrak is a public service and not an income driven company. When are people going to understand that? Even so, Amtrak could be carrying paying loads every day if its movers and shakers would just provide the cars, the power and provide place-to-place service right underneath (symbolic) airlines’ profitable service. Amtrak should either bludgeon (through congress) the railroads into giving it the priority on the rails it, by law, already has or else lay dedicated track alongside freight tracks on existing right-of-ways. Amtrak would do well to study where people actually go, and provide services accordingly. Maybe some of the rails to trails paths ought to revert. Europe does it, Japan does it.
I know in the past Amtrak leased cars from the various Commuter Railroads Metra for instance in Chicago etc.
Wonder if they’ll be adding extra cars to their trains, or running extra trains, as opposed to simply making people scramble or pay more to ride currently available consists?
Yes, Amtrak could add equipment to use (and fill) on this, one of the busiest travel weeks of the year. But, then, what does that equipment do the other 51 weeks?
Don’t misunderstand me, I think that more cars need to be added to the inventory to help with things like this but we have to remember that Amtrak is already underfunded to begin with.
Amtrak’s long-distance trains lost $541 million before depreciation, interest, and miscellaneous charges in 2018. Assuming the long-distance trains wear 10 percent of these capital expenses, the fully allocated loss probably was in the neighborhood of $600 to $620 million in FY18.
Buying or leasing surge capacity equipment for Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc. would not be good business decision for a company that is losing well over $500 million running long-distance trains that are used by less than one percent of intercity travelers.
Additional capacity on the NEC and corridor trains makes some sense. The corridors are where passenger trains make sense.
Mr. McFarlane
Unless you have access to Amtrak’s books, which you don’t, you have no idea how Amtrak allocates its overhead costs. By you own admission, “what percentage no one knows.” That includes you.
Mr. Pins stated, “That’s because we don’t have any equipment to add, right?” If the company does not have the equipment for surge traffic, it has to buy it or lease it. It appears that you are the one who needs to read more carefully.
If Amtrak could generated enough incremental revenue to cover the incremental cost of peak demand equipment, it probably would have acquired it decades ago. Long before Richard Anderson took over the helm! But the long-distance trains are money losers. Adding peak equipment would exacerbate the losses.
Richard Anderson knows a great deal about hauling people and making a buck doing it. Whether it is on a plane or train or bus, the concepts and principles are the same. Charge enough for the ride to cover all of the expenses and return something to the shareholders. Anderson did it at Delta. It is unlikely that he will be able to do it at Amtrak because of the long-distance trains, which are run for political purposes as opposed to legitimate transport needs.
No added capacity for LD trains, right? That’s because we don’t have any equipment to add, right? Extra sleepers? Are you nuts? Need to keep those numbers down, even if we did have the cars.
In the last century Pennsy did not scrap old equipment they simply stored it. And when the holidays rolled around Pennsy had the ability to increase their trains capacity. Now when Amtrak replaces their long distance equipment and the Amfleet cars they’ll probably scrap the old equipment instead of keeping it as a reserve.
Oh my…..I can’t wait till all these riders discover what a turkey the east coast diners have become!
Paul Smith, so you’ve also fallen for the false loss claims of Amtrak when it comes to the LD trains(remember that they allocate NEC costs to the LD trains as well, what percentage no one knows). Also, if you had bothered to read George Pins post you would’ve noticed no where in there does it say anything about leasing or buying surge capacity equipment for the LD trains. If Amtrak was run by someone that knew what he was doing running a railroad(not an airline), then there would already be extra equipment sitting around for just that purpose. A properly run passenger system would purchase extra equipment in the first place in order to be prepared for among other things, surges in business around holidays and the summer travel season, winter weather playing havoc with schedules allowing you to still run a train on time if the original consist is delayed, spares for maintenance or accident repairs…but no, we have an airline exec trying to run a railroad and failing miserably at it.