New Way to Look at OTP???

Hey all...I was wondering about the way we look at On-Time performance. Giving percentages of time that a train arrived at its terminal doesn't always tell the full story. For example, let's say that one train has 0% OTP. However, the average delay for this train is 45 mins. Another train has 20% OTP, yet when it is late, it's average delay is 5 hours. I believe that the average rail passenger is more interested in average delay over %OTP. Not sure if this makes sense...but just a thought.

I think it is a brilliant idea, but it won't happen for two reasons:

1. It's just poor marketing for Amtrak, to word OTP as "our trains average XX minutes/hours late". It is better just to pad the schedule so much, that it becomes near-impossible for the trains to run late (until the dispatchers get wind of the scheme, and toss that idea into the wind).

2. It would require Amtrak to provide statistics on a route-by-route basis, something that it is having an incredibly difficult time doing (and, ironically, is also part of nearly every "reform" debate).

Likewise, you don't see the airlines provide that information - the best you can get is system-wide OTP, as well as average delay per airport (and that's provided by the FAA, not the airlines).

wigwagfan wrote: ...Likewise, you don't see the airlines provide that information - the best you can get is system-wide OTP, as well as average delay per airport (and that's provided by the FAA, not the airlines).

Airline on-time rates are available by carrier, airport, route, flight number: basically however you want to view it. The available data includes not just on-time percentages, but average minutes late, number of flights cancelled, diverted, etc.

The major on-line travel services provide flight on-time info on their reservations pages. The source of all the detailed information is:
http://www.bts.gov/programs/airline_information/
and click on any of the various options under Airline On-time Performance. The Searchable Database is the source for detailed drill-down data.

I don't believe that system is accurate either. Take any of the Silver service trains when they leave NYP on time and make all their stops on time until Wash Union Station. After this they leave and enter CSX territory and get delayed the remainder of the trip. They are not going to change the system and say that on this particular trip 50% of the stops were on time. Every carrier is going to put a ton of fat in the schedule to make up time. Airlines are also only going from point A to B. Just think of some of the Long Distance trains and the amount of different Carriers they have to travel over.

Part of the problem here is sampling v population. While it takes work, it's possible, across a year, to quantify the delay and measure it on a normal distribution. It's also possible, in any given month, to use the Student's T statistic to test various hypotheses about WHY trains were late.

Another issue is WHY for a delay. I can forgive when a host railroad is renovating or building track. The delay now reaps benefits later.

OTOH, putting the passenger train in the hole for a freight train is "back to the future" of 1969-70, when FIRST CLASS in an ETT meant nothing.

Of course, incentives and penalties matter, if they have enough reward to matter or enough pain to hurt. As we've seen, Amtrak's incentive and penalty system with the host railroads is "so what, who cares" in terms of the bottom line.

My thoughts.

John Perkowski

I don't think it's a bad idea but it I don't think it would work that well personally.

In their advertising, which is about all most of the public sees, airlines often report only percentage of "on time departures." Reason being is they count an on time departure defined by the airlines as closing the door and pushing back from the gate on time, regardless of the minutes (or hours) the plane may wait before it is cleared for takeoff. That's one reason they load the plane if it is at the gate and have everyone wait on it, rather than simply telling everyone there will be delay and please report back to the gate at a given time.

Details on delays are available in extreme detail at the Amtrak web site. Go to "Press and Media" - the link is at the bottom of the first page - and then click on "Other Reports"; the monthly reports are there. Delays are discussed very near the end of each report, starting on page 85 for the July, 2005 report. It's a pdf document.