The future of sleepers

[Greg Moore]

As I've said in the past, I don't think LD will go away. Amtrak is a political creature and it's an easy one for politicos to horsetrade on.

"Oh, you want more Quad Cities service, sure, but I want to keep the CZ going through my district."

So, the Western LD trains will continue to exist.
It's the eastern overnight trains (I hesitate to call them LD as many may end up being just evening to morning runs like I proposed way back) I think have potential for growth. For example, I do foresee a sleeper returning to 66/67.

And I continue to think, properly marketed, there's other potential routes.
So no, I don't see their day as over.

[Gilbert B Norman]

Mr. Moore, if there is any market in the US where the "Night Train" could make it. it must be BOS-WAS.

But I'm not about to place my bets.

"We" here at the forum would use it, but to the present day road warrior, it simply is an inconvenience.

Assuming the Roomette fare level is set competitive with a 6AM flight, which on either end could mean a 3AM "wake up", I still hold that the road warrior will prefer Logan or National to the alternatives. You can also be sure the corporate travel facilitator would definitely prefer same.

[Arborwayfan]

Evidence in Mr. Norman's favor: I think in 35 years my father flew from Boston to Washington on business fifty or a hundred times, and took the train once. It wasn't hard to drive to the airport for the earliest flights and I think he probably preferred to have an evening at home. I don't know how expensive the roomettes usually were, but I don't know if I've ever seen one that wasn't more expensive than flying.

On the other hand, it doesn't really matter if most people still fly. It only takes 15 or 20 people to fill a sleeper, right?

And then there are the people who hate early departures so much they will always get a hotel room the night before. If they can sleep on trains (my wife can't, really) they might be open to them because the price comparison would be train vs. plane + hotel night.

The corporate travel people in many places may prefer planes because they are more familiar with them (our travel forms here at my little Indiana college don't even have a place to list plane fare) but I would guess that in Boston and Washington they are familiar with train tix because of people taking shorter trips (Bos-New YorK, where Acela is as fast as flying from downtown to downtown.

So it could be done, probably enough to fill several sleepers a night BOS-WAS, if Amtrak thought it out right.

[mtuandrew]

Amtrak could do all of this, and I think there’s a latent market that doesn’t know it wants to travel in a sleeping car *in 2019*, not just in black & white movies. Single-overnights make business sense if you combine “flight and hotel” into “train.”

But Amtrak would need an advertising budget of tens of millions to see even a modest bump in sleeper ridership in that target audience. There’s a fair amount of evidence that by adding network capacity though, Amtrak would be able to sell out an additional sleeper per train in most days of the week by targeting its existing tourist clientele. (Namely, the evidence that bedrooms on Eastern trains in particular sell for many hundreds more than the standard coach fare.) They’re more time-insensitive travelers too, which allows Amtrak the time to get its OTP in order before advertising itself as a viable business travel option for people who absolutely need to be there (wherever “there” is) by 9am.

[Arborwayfan]

Good points, mutandrew.

A train like 66/67, where pax get on after dinner and arrive early in the morning, also has no need to include much if any food in the sleeper ticket. That's got to be good for the bottom line.

[CarterB]

The concept behind the Viewliners is great - a true multipurpose passenger car platform that maximizes space - but I wish Amtrak hadn’t gold-plated the current batch. Imagine if Amtrak had fielded the full fleet of V-II diners well prior to Anderson’s term; we might have had enough demand to justify keeping some form of prepared food for all passengers. We could have had a trial of Slumbercoach modules too, if the V-II sleepers had shipped much earlier.

Exactly what I have been proposing for years!!! BRING BACK THE SLUMBERCOACHES!!

[John_Perkowski]

As I've said in the past, I don't think LD will go away. Amtrak is a political creature and it's an easy one for politicos to horsetrade on.

"Oh, you want more Quad Cities service, sure, but I want to keep the CZ going through my district."

So, the Western LD trains will continue to exist.
It's the eastern overnight trains (I hesitate to call them LD as many may end up being just evening to morning runs like I proposed way back) I think have potential for growth. For example, I do foresee a sleeper returning to 66/67.

And I continue to think, properly marketed, there's other potential routes.
So no, I don't see their day as over.

Problem is, how many districts are on the routes of the Western LDs? Once you leave IL, and until you get to CA, not many.

The LDs are on borrowed time IMO, unless there’s a dramatic price increase in JP-8.

[Matt Johnson]

Fuel for the Anderson is out to gut the LD network fire:

Amtrak CEO Wants to Bring Airline Nimbleness to the Rails

Anderson: There will always be a place for the experiential long-haul train, because Congress has told us clearly that that’s an important part of our mission. What we do is follow the law at Amtrak. The laws are clear that the national network is an important offering.

Probably today, we operate 15 of them, including Empire Builder across the northern western half of the U.S., the Zephyr from Chicago to San Francisco, the Southwest Chief, and the Coast Starlight. In an ideal state, we probably would operate somewhere between five to 10 and instead focus our efforts and resources on short-haul intercity transportation, because that’s where the demand indicators are for Amtrak.

[Matt Johnson]

I'll be gone before all of this happens, but I'll be "checking in from topside".

I'm counting on some good karma and a national network of maglev trains by the time I return, if I have to be reincarnated on this planet! But there are still quite a few trips I'd like to do in this outing, including the California Zephyr one of these days.