by Woody
Gilbert B Norman wrote:Mr Norman, I'm not sure that I'm a railfan, not sure what the definition might be. You've probably noticed over at the Amtrak Unlimited blog that most who post there proudly list the trains they've ridden. Not me. I've done plenty of Regionals to D.C.. And once I rode to and from Rocky Mount, NC, but paid no attention to the name of the train! (I certainly remember calling to arrange to rent a car, from a service station near the train station, it turned out. My arrival and departure were before or after the owner's working hours. So he told me to collect the keys that would be "hidden" behind the Coca-Cola vending machine, and return them there when I left. That told me quite a lot about *the quality of life* in Rocky Mount.Woody wrote:I'm worried if they'll go ahead with some or all of the 70-car option. We'd need to see more Viewliners to get any expansion -- added frequencies like overnight service to Toronto and Montreal, or another route to Florida down the Florida East Coast or a thru train like the Three Rivers instead of a Pennsylvanian do-si-do in Pittsburgh, or even adding still another sleeper to some LD routes if they can fill the added 1 ½ sleepers they'll be getting. At one point the rumor was to get 15 more diners, bag-dorms, sleepers, and 25 baggage cars, that's about three routes' worth, no? (Maybe even enuff to convert the Capitol Ltd and the City of New Orleans and maybe a daily Sunset Shuttle proposed New Orleans-San Antonio.) But instead get no more equipment at all? Ouch.Woody, I realize and respect that you are both a railfan and a long distance passenger train advocate, and that I'm 'not all that much' of the first and absolutely none of the second.
)I am an Amtrak advocate first, and a long distance passenger train advocate second. Why? Maybe because I'm a defender of underdogs and lost causes? LOL. Actually I started getting into these issues when Obama was for passenger rail and his most rabid opponents were against anything the Black Man in the White House was for. (Yeah, I live in NYC now, but I was born in Austin and grew up in small town Texas, so I know how that mind works.) When I tried to defend the $10 Billion or so investment in rail in Obama's first years with facts, I got interested in the whole passenger rail question, and it's grown on me. Guess I'm like the majority of Americans who tell pollsters that they like Amtrak and want more of it; I'm just "more so."
Gilbert B Norman wrote: The 130 VII's were simply ordered, in the case of the 55 Baggs and 25 Diners, as an in-kind replacement of maintenance starved cars at least 55 years of age and most older.I knew that, but didn't know this next part:
Gilbert B Norman wrote: The 25 each Sleepers and Bagg Dorms simply represent 'restoring' half the berths (remember during 1994 there were still Dorm cars on the roster) that were lost twenty years ago when it was a sure bet that there were to be 100 V-I's, and 'last minute' the order was whacked in half.Right. With the 130-car order, Amtrak will be running in place, but not getting very far. I'm impatient to see more progress.
Gilbert B Norman wrote: I highly doubt if the 70 car option will be exercised as it stands, but the next generation of LD Coaches could well be formed from the Viewshell. Lest we forget, no licensing fees need be paid to anyone, as Amtrak owns the rights to that particular design.I may have to console myself with the thought that a big order for Viewliner II coaches could at some point down the line accommodate a small order for more baggage cars, bagg/dorms, sleepers, even diners. So I'm willing to wait for more V II sleepers etc until after we get a large number of single-level coaches in the fleet.
---------------------------------------------
When I look at some of Amtrak's issues, I make some generalizations. For one,
In every instance that I know of where frequencies have been added, ridership has grown smartly, usually doubling or better. The Cascades, the State of Illinois trains, the Piedmont, the San Joaquins and Capital Corridor, the Downeaster, the Lynchburger, probably the Norfolk train too, as an add-on to the Newport News service. And the PRIIA studies on the Cardinal and the Sunset Limited forecast that ridership would double if those trains could go daily. So I believe that ridership would more or less double with a second frequency on an LD train, but I don't know of an example where a single LD route has gained a second frequency.
So I conclude: More frequencies is better for ridership, because I believe these instances demonstrate that there's substantial untapped demand for Amtrak.
Another related general point: More frequencies spread costs over more trains, reducing the cost per train and cost per rider. That's mostly station costs and advertising/marketing, but probably other overhead that I don't know enuff to point to now.
Take that to another level: More cars on a train are cheaper.
The heaviest car on the train is the locomotive. It's also heavy on crew costs. If that locomotive is hauling five cars and one more coach or sleeper is added, the additional weight has negligible impact on fuel costs and none at all on the engine crew costs. Refine that to another level, if a train has a baggage car and a diner, or diner-lounge, to support a sleeper and a handful of coach cars, putting on another sleeper would add a revenue car and thus improve the ratio of revenue cars to supporting non-revenue cars.
We know that many LD trains sell out of sleeper space, and even coach seats, fairly frequently. Let's add capacity until it meets demand. We can't do that without much more equipment, which gets us back to why I want to see another 70 or so Viewliner IIs from the option.
I didn't even get into network effects. Obviously each additional train connection brings more passengers to each train involved, whether that's at Chicago with many trains, or at Raleigh where one more Piedmont created a new connection from Charlotte and Goldsboro to a Silver to Florida.
And "saturation marketing". Every time you drive past a branch bank, that's a kind of advertising for that bank. Every time another Amtrak train passes you -- and more so when it makes a station stop, LOL -- that's advertising for Amtrak. More trains, a bigger Amtrak, gives passenger trains more 'mind share'.
Cutting, or stagnating, rarely lead to business success. Amtrak will get better when it grows, because it grows.
