Mid-Point LD Passengers

I can't think of a good name for this subject, but we have had lots of interesting discussions of Anderson, dining cars, and the future of LD trains. Who knows what the end result will be. But years ago I used to ride from Chicago several of the LD trains like the Empire Builder, Southwest Chief, and others. I noticed back then, and I think that this still probably holds true, that most of the traffic was 'on and off' traffic to and from mid-points either from the terminal station or another mid-point. In other words it appeared to me that only a small portion of the traffic was end-point to end-point (eg Chicago to LA). I feel that Amtrak has missed a marketing opportunity (and argument for a greater subsidy) for not emphasizing this aspect of Amtrak LD service. For many, if not most, of these smaller communities Amtrak LD trains are the only public transportation available to them. What do you think?

You have a good point. A lot of the LD trains are really several locals, overlapped by more than one long-distance route, maybe connected by long stretches of almost nothing and almost no passengers that are purely LD. CZ, for example, is:
1. a pretty fast midafternoon to morning 1000 mile LD train from Chicago to Denver -- faster than I think any sane person would make the drive, with a lot of people
2. a very slow scenic train from Denver to Grand Jct.
3. A kind of slow LD train from Denver to SLC and points west.
4. A regional express Denver to Grand Jct. A regional local to Green River, Price, Provo, SLC.
5. An Illinois-Iowa local (or regional express, really, compared to the real locals on the NEC, Downeaster, Vermonter, San Diegan to some extent, etc.)
6. An LD night train across the desert west of SLC.
7. A regional express in California.
And so on.

When I lived in Champaign the City of NO would get dozens of passengers from there to Chicago. Now sometimes we drive to Effingham or Mattoon and use the City in direction or the other; plenty of passengers from those stations north, too. (I loved to take that ride alone and get a nice diner breakfast, but it could be very hard to find seats for a family at 6 am.)

Amtrak seems to make this point politically. I don't know if they advertise strategically (so that the Empire Builder would pop up when anyone along its route searched for Glacier National Park, etc.) Something works, because a lot of people do board not just at the big intermediates (Denver, Salt Lake, KC, etc) but also at quite small towns (Hastings, Ottumwa, etc.) I wonder if they ever study the LDs to see where the stretches with the fewest passengers are, and then try to market those stretches. Everyone gets off in Central Illinois? Offer low fares from there to Memphis, or wherever folks tend to board. Make it dynamic: every time you sell a ticket from Chi to Chm, add a ticket to the cheap bucket for Chm-Memphis, or whatever. I'm not sure how the ads would work, though. There are so few routes and stations, and the routes are so long east-west with no connections north-south, that they couldn't just sell national ads that said "traveling between two little towns? try us!" because most trips wouldn't work. And on the other hand any given station town probably doesn't provide enough passengers to pay to create and publish specific advertising.

Good thought.

I have the image of people finding the train convenient for trips between places that are each a couple of hours from an airport. The western LDs go through a lot of places that can't possibly have very frequent air service nearby. I don't have any statistics to know, but I'd think that the train would be attractive there -- to the relatively few peole wanting to go between two such places.

Empire Builder I know from experience gets a lot of pickups in Washington state to and from Seattle to the point where the next super long term goal is to extend Cascades service to Spokane.

Amtrak ridership patterns for long distance trains are higher at their terminus stations may be because they arrive and depart from them during the day or early evenings - when most Americans are awake and are traveling. Many of the middle - fly over - stations see Amtrak trains late at night when few Americans are awake or wish to travel.
For example, the one I'm more familiar with, is the Texas Eagle, where it travels through Texas and Illinois during daylight, but travels through Missouri and Arkansas at night. Guess where ridership is highest? You got it, where the sun is shinning on it instead of the moon.
Of course, one could suggest Amtrak plans it that way because they set the schedule and determines when the train arrives at your station. Suppose the timing was reverse, and the Texas Eagle ran in Arkansas and Missouri during the day? Would you then suggest Illinois and Texas don't deserve the train - because ridership dropped liked a rock with the train running in Texas and Illinois when the sun doesn't shine?

Now I'm not going to suggest ridership in larger population areas will ever be lower than ridersip in the boondocks, but I strongly believe ridership at the various stations along the route is effected by when the train arrives at them. So not only are these cities smaller, they also get poorer ridership because of poorer timing.

electricron wrote: Many of the middle - fly over - stations see Amtrak trains late at night when few Americans are awake or wish to travel. For example, the one I'm more familiar with, is the Texas Eagle, where it travels through Texas and Illinois during daylight, but travels through Missouri and Arkansas at night. Guess where ridership is highest? You got it, where the sun is shinning on it instead of the moon.

Cleveland is a good example is a overnight "flyover" stop. Even Pittsburgh only has late night/early AM service.

However the overnight Regional (66/67) apparently does decent even passing NYP and PHL at "flyover" hours.

R36 Combine Coach wrote:

electricron wrote: Many of the middle - fly over - stations see Amtrak trains late at night when few Americans are awake or wish to travel. For example, the one I'm more familiar with, is the Texas Eagle, where it travels through Texas and Illinois during daylight, but travels through Missouri and Arkansas at night. Guess where ridership is highest? You got it, where the sun is shinning on it instead of the moon.

Cleveland is a good example is a overnight "flyover" stop. Even Pittsburgh only has late night/early AM service.

However the overnight Regional (66/67) apparently does decent even passing NYP and PHL at "flyover" hours.

But contrast the demand for one overnight Regional, versus how many daytime Acelas, Regionals, and Keystones serving the same route, to get a good idea of just how much higher daytime demand is.

Rode 66 tonight. Wasn’t too heavily loaded, and it seemed like maybe the cars behind the cafe were missing? Seemed shorter than the usual train, and the cafe was on the back. My guess is baggage, 4 coaches, and a cafe.

electricron wrote:Amtrak ridership patterns for long distance trains are higher at their terminus stations may be because they arrive and depart from them during the day or early evenings - when most Americans are awake and are traveling. Many of the middle - fly over - stations see Amtrak trains late at night when few Americans are awake or wish to travel.
For example, the one I'm more familiar with, is the Texas Eagle, where it travels through Texas and Illinois during daylight, but travels through Missouri and Arkansas at night. Guess where ridership is highest? You got it, where the sun is shinning on it instead of the moon.
Of course, one could suggest Amtrak plans it that way because they set the schedule and determines when the train arrives at your station. Suppose the timing was reverse, and the Texas Eagle ran in Arkansas and Missouri during the day? Would you then suggest Illinois and Texas don't deserve the train - because ridership dropped liked a rock with the train running in Texas and Illinois when the sun doesn't shine?

Now I'm not going to suggest ridership in larger population areas will ever be lower than ridersip in the boondocks, but I strongly believe ridership at the various stations along the route is effected by when the train arrives at them. So not only are these cities smaller, they also get poorer ridership because of poorer timing.

The one train I have suggested in the past that they should reschedule the train to improve ridership in the middle is the Cardinal. It doesn't need to be scheduled to be compatible for east-west transfers, the LSL and CL serve that purpose. If the train leaves Cincinnati after say 7am in the morning en route to Chicago and returns to Chicago before midnight, I'll bet ridership in Cincinnati would be higher. The train would also have better hours in the east coast. The only places the train would be in the graveyard shift would be in the least populous part of the route. Right now, the Cardinal is a way slower CHI-NYP/CHI-WAS train. IND and CIN could benefit from it but its times are lousy. Give them good times and they might. If you don't reschedule the train, the train is worthless.

Day vs night ? Let us compare Palmetto numbers with SM and SS passenger counts.

Thank you to everyone for your thoughtful responses. Ideally (but really fantasy today) it would nice to have 2 trains / day on the LD routes with about an 8 or 10 hour difference in departure times thereby avoiding the middle-of-the-night inconvenient schedules for some stops along the route.

AgentSkelly wrote:Empire Builder I know from experience gets a lot of pickups in Washington state to and from Seattle to the point where the next super long term goal is to extend Cascades service to Spokane.

Is that really a viable option currently the corridor runs north-south through the Cascade mountains going east-west not through the cascades doesn't seem right. They should name it differently.

ryanov wrote:Rode 66 tonight. Wasn’t too heavily loaded, and it seemed like maybe the cars behind the cafe were missing? Seemed shorter than the usual train, and the cafe was on the back. My guess is baggage, 4 coaches, and a cafe.

That's been the consist every time I've ridden it. It's always shorter than daytime Regionals.

ryanov wrote:Rode 66 tonight. Wasn’t too heavily loaded, and it seemed like maybe the cars behind the cafe were missing? Seemed shorter than the usual train, and the cafe was on the back. My guess is baggage, 4 coaches, and a cafe.

There might be a way to use 66, 67, 68 to advantage. If a day train ATL - CLT - RGH - Richmond was to combine / split with the trains mentioned at Richmond that may give more traffic to the night owl to BOS ?

benboston wrote:

AgentSkelly wrote:Empire Builder I know from experience gets a lot of pickups in Washington state to and from Seattle to the point where the next super long term goal is to extend Cascades service to Spokane.

Is that really a viable option currently the corridor runs north-south through the Cascade mountains going east-west not through the cascades doesn't seem right. They should name it differently.

Cascades right now runs parallel to the Cascade Mountains...a Seattle/Portland to Spokane would go thru them. WSDOT has this in a report actually...