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.
Whether Amtrak is capital starved is debatable. At the end of FY22 it had more than $3 billion in short term investments and available for sale securities. These are assets sitting on the balance sheet that the company can use for repairing and restoring equipment and/or purchasing new equipment.
Why Amtrak cannot clear its backlog of repairable cars and get them back on the road appears to be more of a management problem rather than a funding problem.
Well, it’s still better than last year. The California Zephyr has regained a transition car after running with just two sleeping cars during the fall foliage season. The Coast Starlight gained a third coach, and the Capitol Limited has finally regained a second coach for a 5 car consist not including the baggage car. They didn’t address two additional consist shortfalls, like giving the Southwest Chief a second sleeper, and restoring a sightseer lounge on the Texas Eagle, which once again, officially has the shortest consist with a pathetic 4 car train. It sucks that Amtrak doesn’t add any additional cars to the train with the fewest cars! Equipment put into storage three years ago are slowly trickling back into service. So we’ll hopefully see consists get somewhat longer in the coming months.
I was at CUS before Thanksgiving likely while Gardner was there, even though I did not recognize him. I noticed 2 things: Amtrak employees everywhere assisting customers. I even mentioned to one, “I didn’t know Amtrak had so many employees.” This in itself was an anomale. But I also noticed Amtrak employees were not yelling at or being rude to customers. Humm. Another departure from the norm at CUS. Too bad it takes the presence of the CEO to get people to do their jobs responsibly.
It’s easy to throw spears at Amtrak and they deserve to be the target of many. However, capital funding is the biggest issue and Amtrak is capital starved. Take a few minutes and write your local federal representatives and tell them that Amtrak needs more money to be a viable transportation alternative. Yes, Amtrak can always do “more with less,” but that is not the solution.
No. 21, The Texas Eagle, that departed Chicago on Sunday, November 26th, had three coaches. It has been running with two coaches.
For the last week or so, the dinning car on No. 21 has been positioned behind the locomotive, followed by two coaches, with the sleeper at the back of the train. Heretofore, the sleeper had been right behind the locomotive. Unless one wanted to pay a premium fare to be awakened by the locomotive horn blowing for every crossing during the night, putting the sleeper at the back of the train makes sense.
Sleeping car! I have always wondered about that term. Does it mean that people in the sleeper can sleep, but people in coach class cannot?
Bring ear plugs.
Yet dozens of Superliner cars sit dormant at Beech Grove unless they’ve gotten to the point of cannibalizing them for parts in which case it will lead to even more shortages. Yes, I’m sure staffing is a big issue too as most people don’t want a job that entails working 48 hrs straight with little sleep.
Finally, Amtrak is covering cars involved in incidents when there may be openings that would allow rain & snow to get in cars and freeze.
IMO it is time to reject Corsica and any others presently on the Board of Directors. Then a new board can clean house!
In other words…business as usual.
Aren’t the Turnpikes looking good?
What Amtrak doesn’t want to talk about is that they don’t have enough workers to run these trains, let alone new ones.
Amtrak is disfunctional.
Without a doubt.
Very much so, alas !
Sad but true.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
Missed opportunity does not bode well for the company. Providing competent and reliable traditional service is the way to build a customer base. The metric of out of service equipment numbers is likely being overlooked.