All Things Empire Builder

sepersr wrote:There is a 100 mile expansion of the Pennsylvania turnpike proposed and may be financed by an Australian Company.

The same company, Macquerie Bank, is planning on funding two toll roads in Oregon - one which would be located halfway between my parent's home and my current home; another on the other side of the Portland metro area.

Interestingly, the stories I have seen state that Macquerie is a part-owner of every toll road project in the United States. That includes the Chicago Skyway, and the new toll roads in southern California.

URL Link
URL Link

Macquerie Bank owns part of great southern railway in Australia . USA railroads own significant railway operations in Australia .

David Benton wrote:Macquerie Bank owns part of great southern railway in Australia . USA railroads own significant railway operations in Australia .

Genesee & Wyoming sold off a large chunk of its holdings in Australia; however purchased the half-interest in a part of the South Australian lines from a local concern.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zht ... highlight=

Unfortunately, they have not updated their corporate website with the new information; you have to locate a press release in order to discover that much of their operations are no longer under the orange and black flag.

sepersr wrote:Question in order is, if Dubai were to propose buying and running a national American railroad passenger corp., of which we will leave nameless, how many objections would be posted on this forum?

Lots o' questions are turning up about the Dubai deal, and why President Bush was pushing so heavily for it (one thread of the deal apparently lead to good ol' Neil Bush!). This deal was apparently tainted pretty bad... (alright, alright, Yes I do read Usenet and Daily Kos too much, but some of those posters do make solid, realistic, non-tinfoil-hat points)
Actually some of those toll road deals ain't too pretty smelling either.
So, if the question is do we want a shaky, questionable investor (yes, yes, as opposed to shaky, questionable Amtrak) to come in and run National passenger service, I'd say no...

Sir Ray wrote:So, if the question is do we want a shaky, questionable investor (yes, yes, as opposed to shaky, questionable Amtrak) to come in and run National passenger service, I'd say no...

We allow private investment in every other transportation mode - in fact we have two Class One railroads that are headquartered in Canada. We allow investment in our airlines and even many of our airports. We allow private investment and operations of maritime ports.

And, as a country, we forego public ownership of most everything - in favor of capitalism and private investment.

So if we are against private ownership of a passenger rail system - are we arguing for the formation of AmRail (the new national freight carrier), AmBus (the new national bus line), AmAir (the new national airline), AmShip (the new national steamship company), AmBell (the new national telecommunications company), AmPower (the new national electric provider), AmOil (the new national oil company), and AmMedia (the new national media conglomatate - after all, Fox News Channel is owned by an Australian company) - among others?

The Nationalization arguement does go back and forth - from government owned industry being unresponsive and inefficent, to private industry being overly greedy and unresponsive. Multitudes of cases have been made on either side of the question, and there is not enough room on this forum to go into this.

Right now there are huge questions about private industry taking over formerly public/quasipublic electric and water utilities - so far the results are discouraging in upstate NY, with rates increasing greatly while service declines. There of course have been corresponding privatization successes too. Then again (there are way too many twists here), there is complaints that private companies are trying to prevent muncipal WiFi service in several cities). There is, of course, hybrid private-public partnerships (with all sorts of terms like Design-Build-Operate)

Remember ConRail was more or less a government entity at start-up, eventually to taken be public and then sold off.
I kinda of support large natural monoplies which provide basic necessities being public (if there is only one Airline... which may eventually happen) while everything else can be private. Ah, this is the subject of a thesis - heck, probably 200 thousand thesis have been done this already.
One thing I am highly against is 'cream-skimming' - in other words a private entity competing against a public one by serving only the easiest, most profitiable customers and ignoring the unprofitable ones.
For example I would not be against private mail companies competing against the US Postal Service for 1st class mail but only if they offered the same level of service that the USPS does - from big city to the most remote area - no just serving Mid-Town Manhattan and Chicago's Loop and that's it.
Oh, and absolutely no foreign companies with known ties to terrorist groups, which is what the whole Dubai Port debacle was about in the first place...

Amtrak Empire Builder offers close-up of America

By STEVE BROWN / The Dallas Morning News

SHELBY, Montana – Across the dirt parking lot, the Oasis Bar & Casino beckons with the neon promise of "Dancing" and "Live Bait."

But I have only 15 minutes to spend here in Shelby, hardly enough time to pick up some night crawlers and do the two-step.

"Don't leave the platform," warns Gary Young, the sleeping-car attendant. "When the conductor yells 'Aboard,' we are out of here."

For most folks, "here" would qualify as the middle of nowhere.

High-plains towns such as Shelby, 35 miles south of the Canadian border, Cut Bank, Mont., and Williston, N.D., aren't on the usual tourist itinerary.

But if you're riding Amtrak's Empire Builder, you'll get to see them along with more than 2,000 miles stretching across the northern edge of the United States....

Dallas Morning News

My wife and I are doing the entire trip from Seattle to NYC in a couple weeks (midDec). We have a superliner bedroom to Chicago and are wondering, judt for comfort, whether it is better to have an upper or lower room? Do the temperatures fluctuate much? Noise levels due to doors, traffic to showers etc? What is the better side of the train to be on eastbound, as far as stuff to look at etc?

Any comments on the viewliner roomette that we have from Chi to NY would be appreciated as well.

We are later continuing on to Montreal on Amtrak, and Ottawa on VIA if you have any other tips.

THANKS!
Ramblinman, Vancouver Island, BC Canada

I don't know about upper or lower or which side, but I have heard that it is better to be in the middle of the car away from the wheels.

Upper vs. lower really depends.

Personally I tend to prefer upper. It will sway more, but that tends to put me to sleep. Others it keeps awake. :-)

On the Superliner, I'd probably suggest upper, since the views tend to be better. And you're not going up/down stairs.

But downstairs puts you closer to a bathroom generaly.

jmac wrote:My wife and I are doing the entire trip from Seattle to NYC in a couple weeks (mid-Dec). We have a Superliner Bedroom to Chicago and are wondering, just for comfort, whether it is better to have an upper or lower room?

This would be a non-issue aboard the Empire Builder as all Bedrooms in a Superliner Sleeper are upper level.

Regarding your Lake Shore Roomette; although it may not be possible considering peak season travel, try to upgrade such to a Bedroom or two Roomettes. It will be "come down" enough to go from the Builder to the Lake Shore in same accomodation, let alone to a downgrade.

You will of course have occasion to see a Roomette while en-route on the Builder. Somehow I think your reaction will be one of "are we both going to fit in THAT?".

As I have often noted here at the Forum, simply because a Roomette (wisely) has two beds in it does not make it a two adult accomodation.

Rockin Roller is so very right about getting in the center of the car - I rode on the end of a superliner, and I've never minded the side-to-side motion of the coach, but the pitch motions experianced at the last row of seats was awful - I will always attempt to get mid-coach seats or mid-sleeper berths from here on out.

GeorgeF wrote:Although the Congressional limitation on sleeper and diner finances is still in effect, the NARP newsletter for December, 2006 has an interesting quote. Amtrak Chariman David Laney addressed the NARP board in October. From the newsletter: "He is encouraged by early results from Empire Builder enhancements: 'to the extent there is demand enough, we will add capacity' whether coach or sleeper'." Additionally, " 'I think we are going to end up trying' similar enhancements elsewhere".

GeorgeF brought up the above statement in the thread Amtrak Amentity Curtailments, and I thought I'd share some numbers regarding the Empire Builder, now that its enhanced on-board amenities are a year old (and we have full FY06 numbers to compare with full FY05).

Ridership:
FY06: 497,020
FY05: 476,531
change: up 4.3%

Revenue:
FY06: $48,695,783
FY05: $42,131,747
change: up 15.6%

Revenue per passenger:
FY06: $97.98
FY05: $88.41
change: up 9.8%

Sleeper Ridership:
FY06: 81,568
% of total: 16.4%
FY05: 78,164
% of total: 16.4%
change: 4.2%

Sleeper Revenue:
FY06: $20,620,017
% of total: 42.3%
FY05: $17,127,536
% of total: 40.7%
change: 17.1%

Route Performance Metrics:
FY06:
Total Revenue: $54.0M
Direct Labor: $26.8M
Other Direct Costs: $40.1M
Loss after Avoidable Costs (Labor + Direct Costs): ($12.9M)

FY05:
Total Revenue: $46.3M
Direct Labor: $25.3M
Other Direct Costs: $36.6
Loss after Avoidable Costs (Labor + Direct Costs): ($15.7M)

Comparison:
Revenue: up $7.7M (14.3%)
Labor Expense: up $1.5M (6.6%)
Other Direct Costs: up $3.5M (8.6%)
Loss: down $2.8M (17.8%)


CONCLUSION:

The Empire Builder is growing passenger count, but hardly at the rate of increase for certain other trains (i.e. Silver Star, Cardinal, Palmetto). However of the transcontinential trains, it was the fastest growing of the two that experienced ridership growth (the Southwest Chief had an increase of 1.7%, and the California Zephyr, Sunset Limited and Texas Eagle all had ridership drops.)

The Empire Builder is also growing revenue, and trails only the Auto-Train in total revenue earned. It is third in revenue growth, beat only by the Palmetto and Cardinal.

Sleeper usage is flat; although it increased, it increased in line with total ridership. Percentage of sleeper passengers to total passengers is the same both years. However sleeper revenue is up, likely associated to higher fares.

Revenue per passenger is up by close to $10.00. Because Amtrak doesn't provide passenger-mile numbers on a train-line basis, there is no way to provide revenue-per-mile, which Amtrak does measure systemwide.

RPS shows that costs (labor and direct costs) are both going up; however the rate of revenue increases is outpacing the rate of cost increases. This resulted in a net loss that is lower in FY06 compared to FY05, but still just under $13M. That resulted in a loss of $25.95 per passenger - again, there is no way to provide loss per seat-mile or passenger mile since those statistics are not available.

Stay tuned to next year, when we'll compare the Coast Starlight before and after the Pacific Parlour Car experiment...

Well I HAD hoped that the California Zephyr was the next train to receive the upgrade that the Empire Builder did, but not sure if that will ever happen (I think this was on Gunn's wish list - not Laney's). I hope Laney means what he said - along the lines of Amtrak will add coaches and sleeper as demand is needed. This is certainly key, and something Amtrak falls short of at present, in my view.

In general Amtrak can certainly improve its revenue on the long distance trains, be it the creation of Parlor Cars from those removed from trains that will operate with a combo diner/lounge, selling space in the Superliner Trans Dorm/Sleeper, being more proactive in selling items onboard (i.e. souvenirs etc.), or trying to re-negotiate labor agreements for long distance train onboard staffing.

Even with a second LSA in the Empire Builder Sightseer Lounge selling snacks and beverages on the upper level, the revenue seemed to have paid off on the expense - if this was included in the analysis.

jp1822 wrote:Even with a second LSA in the Empire Builder Sightseer Lounge selling snacks and beverages on the upper level, the revenue seemed to have paid off on the expense - if this was included in the analysis.

The Monthly Performance Report doesn't break out F&B costs per train-line; however the increase in revenue outpaces the other costs, so that could be seen as an indicator that the on-board service offered by the Empire Builder is a success.

On the other hand, it could also be construed that the Pacific Parlour car style of service isn't necessary; that smaller improvements can be made (i.e. staffing the upper level of the Sightseer, at-seat service) are more cost-effective - by generating more revenue, and doing so at less expense. The Pacific Parlour car is just one more car to maintain and haul around - and is by and large a non-revenue car (except for whatever wine bottle sales it generates; that makes it one heck of an expensive wine tasting room!)