Silver Star Downgrade and Diner Discussion

This whole thing sounds like a race to the bottom. Nothing like operating like a third world country to appease politicians whose sole motive is to have the rich keep getting richer.

CHTT1 wrote:This whole thing sounds like a race to the bottom. Nothing like operating like a third world country to appease politicians whose sole motive is to have the rich keep getting richer.

In most of Europe, trains have a snack cart or cafe. I don't see a correlation between diners and progressive social policy. Diner food benefits the upper middle class in their roomettes, not the working stiff in coach.

If you want to help working people, supply them with cheap, practical, reliable transportation for school and work, maybe a flat bed in a roomettes, but not grilled specials.

CHTT1 wrote:This whole thing sounds like a race to the bottom. Nothing like operating like a third world country to appease politicians whose sole motive is to have the rich keep getting richer.

Even on the crack passenger trains pre-Amtrak, diners were a money-loser. They were there to make the travel experience pleasant. What a novel idea!

Nothing seems to have changed in the last 50 years, but some of our politicians, for some reason, seem to think that dining cars should at least break even.

Rockingham Racer wrote: Even on the crack passenger trains pre-Amtrak, diners were a money-loser. They were there to make the travel experience pleasant. What a novel idea!

Nothing seems to have changed in the last 50 years, but some of our politicians, for some reason, seem to think that dining cars should at least break even.

While it was true dining cars have always been money losers, it's not true passenger trains were with very profitable mail contracts.
Congress established Amtrak 50 years ago with the long term goal of making passenger trains profitable, or at least breaking even. Politicians haven't lost achieving that goal although it didn't take long for Amtrak administrators to lose it. Any good management team should always look at where the money is being made and where the money is being lost so they can make adjustments to their business.
Here's a question I ask you, why are regional trains breaking even and long distance trains are not? Additional questions that should be asked. Are each regional train that much fuller? Are regional trains earning far more money per seat? Are regional trains losing far less money serving food and drinks? Why?
Whereas I also think having a diner on a long distance train helps sell more seats and bunks on them, I also agree Amtrak needs to find ways to lessen the losses serving food. I don't know if Amtrak will ever solve this problem. Many in Congress have already given up, if a few more do so long distance Amtrak trains and political will fade away, which will soon afterwards affect Amtrak's shorter distance trains. Therefore Amtrak needs to be seen actively trying to find the solution, keeping the status quo isn't the solution if Amtrak expects to survive.

Rockingham Racer wrote: Even on the crack passenger trains pre-Amtrak, diners were a money-loser. They were there to make the travel experience pleasant. What a novel idea!

Nothing seems to have changed in the last 50 years, but some of our politicians, for some reason, seem to think that dining cars should at least break even.

Nothing seems to have changed?

What's missing from that statement is that labor has gotten more expensive since the heyday of passenger rail. This is because for most of the economy, technology and organization have made work more productive and thus more valuable. But in the case of passenger rail, and in the particular case of the dinning car, this has not been the case to the same extent.

In such circumstances, it's not unreasonable to question whether labor intensive passenger inducements are really of the same value that they were 50 years ago, (or perhaps much earlier. This question might have been as pertinent in 1965 during the tail end of private passenger service, and it certainly wasn't 'working' then.) It's not enough to assume that because it worked for the the old railroads in 1920 that it works for Amtrak today, because it's relatively more expensive to offer labor intensive amenities than it was all those years ago. As Arlington has pointed out, perhaps they can be induced more effectively by cheaper means (like lower fares)

Things have changed. The middle class does not employ the same swarms of domestic employees that it did in the heyday of passenger rail for much the same reason

[quote="electricron"][quote="Rockingham Racer"]

Here's a question I ask you, why are regional trains breaking even and long distance trains are not? Additional questions that should be asked. Are each regional train that much fuller? Are regional trains earning far more money per seat? Are regional trains losing far less money serving food and drinks? Why?

Regional trains loose less money because the below rail costs are spread out over many more passengers per unit of cost. WASH Union station has many more passengers ( including commuter ) that spreads the cost among many passengers less than say Meridian, Ms.
Above the rail costs are less as well electric costs are less than diesel. Efficiency for many crews is greater as many do round trip NYP - WASH / BOS which is almost 500 miles either R/T. No LD out of the NEC gets that kind of mileage.

Even in terms of direct costs alone, according to Boardman a lot of the LDs are losing quite a bit of money. The regionals are going to be doing better on a direct cost basis because they have more passengers per car, a greater share of revenue space per train, and don't have the rolling hotel costs

Regarding previous comments about the pre-Amtrak railroads providing high-quality dining-car service at a loss, it should be mentioned that in that era, at least until the late 1950s, virtually all business travel was by rail. Many of those business travelers were industrial traffic managers who controlled the movement of large quantities of freight and decided which railroad was going to handle it. (Think of the competing railroads between New York and Chicago; Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Kansas City, Omaha, St. Louis ...) The railroads were not so much interested in holding onto the passenger business as they were in holding onto their freight business by making sure those freight traffic managers were satisfied with the service they received when traveling. A railroad could easily lose many months' worth of freight from a major company if the traffic manager thought the service in the diner was slow or the steak unsatisfactory. Those factors are not present today; a traffic manager who gets mad at an airline isn't going to take it out on BNSF.

west point wrote:Regional trains loose less money because the below rail costs are spread out over many more passengers per unit of cost.

Kinda, and maybe true some places, but stations and rails aren't the killer (or there's no service change to test this, but there is for testing the diner). Most likley, Staff and floor-plate-per-fare-dollar are the killers (above the rail)

1) Services like the Missouri River Runner and Vermonter and Lynchburger serve their little stations the same few-or-1 times per day, but never had losses as bad as the LDs. ALso consider that the "big" stations (CHI, NYP, WAS, PHL) are also in "big city" labor and real estate markets and have higher levels of service, facilities, and amenities--and added layers of management staff. In the end, I'm sure that the small towns are expensive on a per-train basis, but are not what's causing $1b of losses on the LDs (or not the $300m lost on eastern LDs)

2) Corridor services rent from the freights at about the same cost-per-train-mile as if they operated on the NEC (or not enough different or too small a cost factor to matter). We know that ROW costs (for LD+States) is about $150m in fees paid to the host freights...not a bargain for States/Corridors that are 100% rented (eg Missouri) and not what's causing $1b of losses on the LDs. Most likely Amtrak pays about NEC rates per-train to the freights (who find it profitable given their rural nature and more efficient MOW).

3) Electricity in the NEC isn't that much cheaper than diesel, particularly once you've converted it to 25Hz and shipped it over company-maintained wires. For the raw energy costs, I just read that operating a Nissan Leaf is now the same, per mile, as running a Prius in New England because of high electric costs (more than 20c/kWh in winter)

4) The diner concentrates all of Amtrak's problems in one car: energy use, labor-inefficient, customers not willing to pay what it costs. The best guess for what sets the LDs apart from the Regionals and State Corridors, economically, is the diner, and to a lesser extent, the sleepers. That's what's so exciting about a test that keeps sleepers but drops the diner.

The Palmetto's superior economic performance points to this (best guess: it's either its lack of diner or its lack of sleepers since it does about as much sharing as the Star or Meteor). Since the Silver Star and Silver Meteor overlap with the Palmetto and do a decent bit of corridor ops, they all end up having about the same basic ingredients (a bit of corridor and a good bit of station-sharing). But it is the Silvers that lose the big bucks. Other tests that could have been tried t

- Put a room car on the Palmetto and see how day-room rates (without diner) compare to the Star's past intra-Florida (with diner)
- Take the diner off the Star intra-florida
- Take the diner off the Star while in NEC/Va/NC territory

Amtrak chose the Star for this test for all the right reasons:
- It is a daring, complete, end-to-end test
- it focuses on a train that is actually very "Palmetto" both from NY to NC, and intra-Florida
- they isolated one factor (the diner) and didn't take off the sleepers
- Foodies can take refuge on the Meteor
- the Palmetto and Carolinian and Meteor provide decent "control group" for other factors

Tangentially, I've wondered if if you couldn't improve the economics of certain LD trains that do a lot of 'corridor-type' business by substituting a corridor coach to the consist. For instance, according to NARP's data from 2013, only two of the top 9 city-pairs for ridership on the Star were longer than the 334 miles from New York to Richmond.

You could sell it as a 'day coach' and have the long-distance 'night-coach' as an upgrade for those traveling further or wanting more space, with the day-coach going for a discount overnight. That would enable Amtrak to sell 20% more seats per corridor coach with Amfleet equipment, and 22% more seats with Superliner-type equipment, which is a similar gain in seats-per-car as found in upgrading an LD train from single-level to bilevel equipment (23% more seats). Back in the olden days such an arrangement wouldn't have made any sense, since you didn't need to take a train running to New York from Miami to get to Tampa, but here we are.

There are other LD's that run heavy corridor-length passenger trips - the Starlight, for instance, which passes through three separate corridors, and whose busiest city-pair is the 187 miles between Seattle and Portland. It would be enlightening for Amtrak to borrow a few California Cars and see what happens

bdawe wrote:Tangentially, I've wondered if if you couldn't improve the economics of certain LD trains that do a lot of 'corridor-type' business by substituting a corridor coach to the consist. For instance, according to NARP's data from 2013, only two of the top 9 city-pairs for ridership on the Star were longer than the 334 miles from New York to Richmond.
You could sell it as a 'day coach' and have the long-distance 'night-coach' as an upgrade for those traveling further or wanting more space, with the day-coach going for a discount overnight.

I like the way you think. Here's hoping that the outsourcing of the Hoosier State and the arrival of new Amfleet II coaches allows them to try stuff like this. My fave thing (also OT here) would be to see more Business Class (a la Palmetto), better Cafe, and mixes between the two (the half-business class / half Cafe car)

Maybe a solution to dining car losses can be found in another travel mode. I enjoy taking riverboat excursions. Typically, river boats do not have the food preparation facilities needed to prepare more than simple sandwiches.

If you want to eat a full meal onboard, generally the passengers make their food selection and pay for it when boarding. The boat will then make a scheduled stop where an on-shore vendor will load prepared meals onboard. The passengers will get their drinks onboard, and will not even need a dining room.

This could be done on trains with a little pre-planning. The costs could be calculated to provide the service at cost or at a small profit. A lounge car could provide a place to eat, or the passengers might eat at their seats. If a dining car were to be provided, tables and drinks only, that cost could be factored into either the price of the meal or in the price of the ticket.

Les

^ when domestic airline food was on the way out (1991 - 2001) you may recall American Airlines tried the "Bistro Bag" ( you picked it out of a cooler on the Jetway and carried it to your seat). Ultimately what really happened was that in-terminal food choices expanded over that same decade as on-board domestic food shrank to nothing. Somehow, board-your-own is likely to be the answer. The riverboat solution sounds great too (I nominate cities like Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston and Jacksonville.

Arlington wrote:^ when domestic airline food was on the way out (1991 - 2001) you may recall American Airlines tried the "Bistro Bag" ( you picked it out of a cooler on the Jetway and carried it to your seat). Ultimately what really happened was that in-terminal food choices expanded over that same decade as on-board domestic food shrank to nothing. Somehow, board-your-own is likely to be the answer. The riverboat solution sounds great too (I nominate cities like Richmond, Raleigh, Charleston and Jacksonville.

Which would be great if the long distance trains ran consistently on time, but they don't. I'm not even sure having food delivered would be cheaper. I remember on one of my trips where the fridge in the diner failed and sleeping car passengers were served KFC chicken delivered to the train. Not everyone received their choice of pieces or type; ie. original, grilled, or crispy. At least the chicken wasn't cold and it was filling. But I wouldn't want to wish that as a daily experience on anybody.

The right kind of off-board caterer would use the Dixieland Software tracker to know where his/her customers are, when they are due in town, and would use Wireless internet of some flavor to collect orders and payment, and synch final prep with arrival.