Summer rail travel tips and challenges
Amtrak has a problem and it’s too much travel demand for the equipment assigned on its long distance-routes. This translates to a difficult summer for U.S. travelers seeking to ride the rails.
In addition, since the company utilizes inventory “yield management” — in which fares rise as seats or sleeping car space fills up — prices charged where capacity is challenged remain high with little relief in sight, even into fall.
But knowing where the sellout, or “choke” point, usually occurs on a route can sometimes help alleviate the pricing and availability pain that travelers encounter when attempting to book a trip on amtrak.com. And many regional corridors with frequent service are often more accommodating to tight travel budgets.
Trains operating on these state-supported routes and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor are good candidates for Amtrak’s “kids ride free” promotion. That begins June 20 for Monday-through-Thursday travel between June 30 and Sept. 30, 2023.
Cross-country logjam: the East
Amtrak has three overnight routes from the East Coast to Chicago, but all have constricted capacity.
To and from New York City there are two choices: the daily Lake Shore Limited via upstate New York and Cleveland, and the Cardinal, which runs only three times per week. The latter’s roundabout journey also serves Washington, D.C., rural West Virginia, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis. The Capitol Limited to and from Washington operates daily on a more direct path through Pittsburgh.
Unfortunately, all three of these trains are usually sold out of coach or sleeping car space for at least one segment of each route as of early spring. This is because Amtrak never refurbished enough idle coaches and sleeping cars after it sidelined them in 2020 following the Covid-19 pandemic [see “Amtrak continues to provide mobility in an uneven fashion: Special Report,” News Wire June 1, 2023].
Which segments? Since the Lake Shore’s “Achilles heel” in coaches is usually the New York-Albany-Rensselaer, N.Y., portion, and the Cardinal’s choke point is Washington-Charlottesville, Va., it’s possible to book an earlier train westbound and later train eastbound between those points to bypass the sellout. The Lake Shore’s Boston-section offers additional capacity between Albany and Chicago, but there is no remedy for getting aboard the Capitol unless Amtrak manages to find a second Superliner coach in addition to the one now operated.
Western strategies
The same workaround, riding a different state-supported regional train over a sold-out segment, applies to the Chicago-San Antonio Texas Eagle, whose three coaches are often completely occupied between Chicago and Bloomington-Normal, Ill. For travelers attempting this less-than-optimal solution, restaurants and an interesting Children’s Discovery Museum provide worthwhile layover activities steps from Normal’s modern downtown station.
The Eagle offers a triweekly connection to and from Los Angeles with a through coach and sleeping car on the Sunset Limited. It may be the only West Coast option out of Chicago if the Empire Builder (to Seattle and Portland, Ore); California Zephyr (to Emeryville, Calif., across from San Francisco); and Southwest Chief (to Los Angeles) have no through space.
A summer snapshot of inventory obtained by Trains News Wire shows westbound California Zephyr bedrooms to Emeryville sold out on 40 of 43 dates (June 12 through July 24) and through roomettes only available on 14 of those days. Space on the Empire Builder and Southwest Chief is also spotty.
But most departures of each of these cross-country trains might have availability on either side of popular mid-route destinations. The Zephyr often sells out between Denver and Glenwood Springs, Colo. Albuquerque, N.M. and Flagstaff, Ariz., see many Southwest Chief passengers boarding and getting off, as do St. Paul, Minn., and Glacier Park, Montana, on the Empire Builder.
Consider utilizing one of these changeover points to split up a longer trip or overcoming a sold-out segment to switch between a coach seat and a sleeping car room.
Doing this yourself on amtrak.com of course, requires knowledge of all the intermediate stations. Although Amtrak no longer publishes timetables and its electronic substitute is cumbersome to use, the Rail Passengers Association offers printable downloadable versions here.
An Amtrak agent at 800-USA-RAIL may also be of assistance, but long wait or call-back times of 20 minutes or more are often the rule, rather than the exception.
Regional bargains
Depending on the demand for a particular trip and how far in advance a ticket is purchased, the Chicago-Emeryville, Calif. coach seat price range for one adult through early September is $99 to $390, roomettes average $1,455 and bedrooms $2,706 to $3,196. Fares may drop from these levels close to departure if space isn’t selling, otherwise the business philosophy is simple: why lower the price if space will sell out anyway?
Yet on many routes where state sponsors and Amtrak offer many daily frequencies, uniform pricing on all trains or deep discounts on some trains are prevalent.
The following corridors offer flat rates that only vary by the length of the trip, not percentage of coach seats sold. From west to east:
- California’s Capitol Corridor: San Jose-Sacramento and Auburn
- California’s San Joaquins: Oakland-Bakersfield
- California’s Pacific Surfliner: San Luis Obispo-San Diego (schedules available here; they have been changing frequently because of landslide issues in the San Clemente, Calif., area)
- Hiawatha: Chicago-Milwaukee
- North Carolina’s Piedmont: Raleigh-Charlotte
- Pennsylvania’s Keystone: Harrisburg-Philadelphia portion
- Hartford Line-Valley Flyer: New Haven, Conn., to Springfield and Greenfield, Mass.
- Downeaster: Brunswick, Maine, to Boston’s North Station
Prices vary with a given train’s sellout percentage on the Eugene, Ore. to Vancouver, B.C, Cascades and Midwest corridors out of Chicago to downstate Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan.
But perhaps the greatest fare fluctuation of all occurs on the heavily-traveled route with the most daily departures, Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor. Northeast Regional fares between Boston and beyond Washington, D.C. to Roanoke, Richmond, Newport News, and Norfolk, Virginia, vary widely.
Priced in mid-June, the New York-Washington coach fare for departures booked two weeks in advance ranged from $40 (for a train leaving New York at 3:20 a.m.) to $161. Not surprisingly, that $40 nocturnal bargain disappeared if the same trip were taken the next day, when the range was $82 to $206.
Kids ride free
Until June 20, Amtrak announced that it is altering its discount policy for children ages 2 to 12. Normally, kids in that age group pay 50% of the adult fare (children under age 2 always ride free). During the limited promotion, good for travel June 30 through Sept. 30, 2023, there is no limit on the number of youngsters that can accompany at least one adult.
Amtrak has created a special landing page to book tickets for this promotion, https://www.amtrak.com/summer-sale?cmp=wsp-summer-travel-flash-sale-deals or the C618 code can be input on the amtrak.com booking page or the Amtrak app in the “promotional code” field.
Some notable limitations are lurking in the “terms and conditions,” however. The promotion is only offered in coach or Acela business class trains departing Monday through Thursday; it’s not good on California’s Pacific Surfliners; and “seating is limited and may not be available on all trains.” As noted, that caveat certainly rules out most long-distance routes, where finding even one seat for an adult continues to be a challenge
Trains News Wire will continue to report on summer rail travel developments as they occur.
Amtrak has plenty of equipment sitting around in yards and repair shops not being overhauled or fixed. Fix up the present equipment no matter how old it might be and get it out on the rails. Don’t wait until the so called new equipment arrives or the mechanical or tech issues are resolved. Years ago railroads were very resourceful and creative in fixing up and getting old and motballed equipment up and running to meet customer demand. Even now there are several airlines that are still operating some of their older aircraft like MD 80s and MD 83s to meet service and customer demands. No reason why Amtrak can’t do the same and get those trains sitting around repaired overhauled and operating again. People will ride and use the train if you give them decent service daily and not just one train a day and affordable fares also
Joseph C. Markfelder
Quite a few facts are on display here: long-distance equipment is all ancient, worn out, and spread so thin that one bad-ordered car disrupts service to hundreds of cities and for a thousand passengers at a time.
I’m pretty sure Amtrak is aware of that. They’re going to war with the equipment that they have.
The issue is why equipment was stored during the pandemic. The prevailing opinion around here seems to be that there is an anti-long-distance bias within Amtrak, and the pandemic gave them an excuse to act on their wild fantasies of shutting down overnight passenger rail service through strangling the equipment pool. I do not believe this is accurate. If it is, it is not the whole story. Could it also be that this equipment, after 29 to 44 years of continuous use, needs more than just a quick dust-off to return to service? Even when something this old and unknown comes in for overhaul, when you get into it, you discover some very expensive issues that also need addressing. Management hates scope creep like that, but it is inherent in mechanical work on something of that age with that many millions of miles on it. That blows your budget apart, even after just a few units. Upper management’s heads will explode. So this equipment was stored, but reactivating it is not something you can do overnight. It is going to (and has already taken) years to complete. It will continue to take years. There’s no end in sight. The low-hanging fruit has been picked. Now you need to whip out the crowbars to convince management to spend $450k to fix up another rolling museum piece of some deep-down issue it’s had for ten years, when in their view they are just about to let a contract to buy new cars. The mismatch: getting them to accept the reality that replacement equipment is going to take eight years to get in service. Until then, it’s going to cost a painful amount of money to keep the service going. That doesn’t make economic or bidness sense to them, and hence why Amtrak is a federal operation to provide a public benefit, not a profit-driven private enterprise. But will Amtrak management behave that way?
Also wik: will the lawsuit between Amtrak and CN •EVER• be resolved? Will midwestern trains ever stop soaking up zero-revenue cars to satisfy axle count minimums? Instead of running Superliners on the Illinoise Zephyr, could they get creative and lease some freight cars (no, would have to work with 110-pound air) or something? It’s an obscene waste of equipment that could be out on the road providing revenue and capacity and instead using it to permanently deadhead on a corridor train. Or, heaven forbid, they could permanently fix their grade crossing detectors so they worked reliably.
I rode the Capitol Limited last weekend. What a joke! One locomotive, a baggage car (for all the bikes), one sleeper sold out months in advance, a neutered diner, and one coach. “Why don’t they assign a transition dorm/sleeper?” Because they are running as axle count cars. “Why no more coaches?” Because they are mothballed with carbody issues and major mechanical needs. Why not change the train over to single level? That I don’t know why (not). All I can tell you is that the one coach assigned to the train was the best riding car I’ve been in. So which need is more important in the eyes of their management: a Capitol Limited passenger being able to make a reservation and ride overnight in the summertime, or a Pennsyltuckian passenger in coach to have better accommodations than someone in bidness class?
So, the system is what it is. Get more midwest cars online and bump the axle counters over to intercity. Instead of having congrefspeople looking at Amtrak as just another “wasteful government program” to cut, why not insist they provide a higher level of service to your constituents? (Because that would make sense, and that’s not why they were elected.)
The labor shortage is far from over, too. As far as shop forces and operating crews, good luck with that!
Amtrak is depending for on-time deliveries of new equipment. That hope has proved dismal with past performances. Only Amfleets came even close to delivery times. What makes them think it will be any different this time? AX-2s (4 years so far) and V-2s (lost count) are extreme examples. Then reliability of current deliveries has proved questionable.
Solution? Fix present equipment and use it for surge fleet times when new equipment finally gets reliable. I suspect that if Amtrak had all delivered equipment reliable and 80% of today’s present legacy equipment road and passenger worthy, we would still be belly aching about near sold-out trains this summer. There is no indication that demand will wither in next few years.
Relevant to explain the operational issues that continue to confound Amtrak would include identifying the number and type of passenger cars sidelined; since what date; the reason for lack of maintenance and/or repairs. This issue should have been vigorously pursued during the congressional inquiry last week of Amtrak’s leadership, as the inadequacy of equipment has forced the operation of abbreviated consists directly impacting revenue opportunity.
Unlike Amtrak’s attempts to point to the Class 1s, infrastructure, weather, etc. as the contributing factor creating operational issues, the lack of sufficient equipment during the high summer season rests directly in the lap of Amtrak’s Board of Directors and corporate management. Lacking any check-and-balance symbiotically working together, they apparently knew enough to massage the numbers to create bonuses; yet, were sadly deficient in their railroad experience by cutting skilled labor to reduce maintenance costs during the pandemic. Despite special funding authorized by Congress to retain a skilled maintenance workforce, Amtrak lost irreplaceable staff and valuable time to repair equipment to competently serve the summer season by providing complete consists.
Given this dilemma that directly impacts revenue-and passenger satisfaction, Congress should also express its concern for how Amtrak intends to secure–and maintain-additional equipment. How will Amtrak prevent that from being sidelined in the yards?
As well, Congress should be interested in asset utilization-how Amtrak operates and turns around its trains; the extent and impact of padded schedules. Before Amtrak, the railroads were quite competent to turn around their passenger trains on arrival day, e.g., running overnight from Chicago to New Orleans, Washington, New York. The Burlington further maximized same day asset utilization by turning back to Chicago or Minneapolis “Twin Cities Zephyrs.”
The issues elaborated upon in this story are not new; do not require a physics degree and slide ruler. Sadly, Amtrak lacks the leadership with the requisite historical knowledge base as successfully evidenced before by Claytor, Gunn, and Reistrup.
No. 21 and No. 22 have three coaches between Chicago and St. Louis. However, south of St. Louis, on most days it has two coaches.
The normal consist for the Eagle is a sleeper, diner/lounge, and three or two coaches.
I rode the Eagle from Temple, TX to El Paso and back last month. The Eagle and the Sunset, believe it or not, were on time going and coming. The equipment was clean; the staff were courteous and efficient; and the food in the diner was OK., made more so by a complimentary glass of wine.
As well, a second train Chicago-Denver or at least Chicago-Omaha/Lincoln.
Nothing new that the LDs sell out closer to the Metro areas and run comparatively empty across the rural areas. In any other developed country besides USA and Canada, the solution would be increased frequency out of the big cities. Here in Wisconsin, the proposed second CHI-MKE-MSP train is pretty much a no-brainer.