by Greg Moore
I had not heard that, but I think it's a pretty decent idea.
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Railroad Forums
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jp1822 wrote:This is now a CHRONIC problem for this train. It gets TOTALLY booked up between Saratoga Springs and New York Penn. Meaning it does not run at capacity NORTH of Saratoga Springs and ruins the "once a day" crowd or people trying to get to upstate NY (Plattsburgh - and then even over to Vermont) or more importantly MONTREAL!!!!It's not a chronic problem to have sold out trains, instead I suggest it's great to have the train selling out. It's easy to suggest adding a car to the train will allow selling more seats and collecting more fares, but I ask how many more seats will it sell, and whether the increased operating costs for the extra car will be paid for with extra fares?
Be it the horse races or whatever, Amtrak needs to figure out a way to deal with this issue. In the past when someone cared about the train, cars were added/subtracted at Saratoga Springs OR a shuttle train was run between Saratoga Springs and Albany OR a totally separate train (a special) was run from Saratoga Springs to New York Penn.
electricron wrote:It's not a chronic problem to have sold out trains, instead I suggest it's great to have the train selling out. It's easy to suggest adding a car to the train will allow selling more seats and collecting more fares, but I ask how many more seats will it sell, and whether the increased operating costs for the extra car will be paid for with extra fares?NO it is not a chronic problem to have sold out trains. But to have sold out trains for only half the train's journey - that's a problem. So then it is good utilization to run practically an empty train from Saratoga to Montreal? Sometimes if you don't make that booking MONTHS in advance of the races, you are not going to Montreal. Amtrak has revenue capacity managers that should watch these "passenger loads" and suggest the addition/subtraction of a coach at Saratoga Springs like they used to in the past. The train pulls into Saratoga Springs and it feels like the WHOLE train has just turned over. through traffic heading on north past Saratoga Springs on certain days of the races becomes rare. And for a once a day train north of Saratoga Springs/Whitehall, it's just not good practice. This has gone on for years and Amtrak has ignored it. It didn't though for a few seasons when they literally add/subtracted Amfleets at Saratoga OR ran a special train from Saratoga Springs to Albany and New York JUST for the races and it didn't mess up the Adirondack's patronage.