End of Amtrak chasing profitability?

[exvalley]

I suspect that Flexible Dining on east coast trains is here to stay - unless management has a substantial change of heart.

This is because, as best as I can tell, it has brought about savings and it really hasn't hurt ridership numbers. Whether you like Anderson or not, you have to give him credit for rolling out the Contemporary/Flexible dining program slowly. This allowed Amtrak to get real data before fully committing to it. No doubt they liked the data that they got.

Any business, whether for profit or not, will have a hard time ignoring the reality that Flexible Dining saves a lot of money while apparently not harming revenues to any sort of substantial degree.

[east point]

We have to suspect that the dinning changes are not entirely understood. It appears that Amtrak is so capacity constrained that the persons that no longer use Amtrak due to the dining changes are being replaced by other persons that could not get reservations before ? What might signal such a trend would be more closer to departure time reservations ? I am not saying this as gospel but it does need consideration by the powers that be.

[exvalley]

It appears that Amtrak is so capacity constrained that the persons that no longer use Amtrak due to the dining changes are being replaced by other persons that could not get reservations before ?

If you are correct, you have made a pretty compelling argument in favor of Flexible Dining. Money is saved while revenues remain intact.

Again, I am no fan of Flexible Dining, but it is clear that Amtrak took many months to study its impact on just a couple of routes before rolling it out. That was a responsible thing to do.

And one correction: I am not a fan of the food offered under Flexible Dining (among other things). I like the "flexible" part quite a bit. I am not a cruiser, but it is similar to Norwegian Cruise Lines doing away with set times for your dinner. It's nice to be able to eat exactly when I want to eat.

[rcthompson04]

And one correction: I am not a fan of the food offered under Flexible Dining (among other things). I like the "flexible" part quite a bit. I am not a cruiser, but it is similar to Norwegian Cruise Lines doing away with set times for your dinner. It's nice to be able to eat exactly when I want to eat.

That is why I don't think people care. People seem to champion convenience.

[WashingtonPark]

And one correction: I am not a fan of the food offered under Flexible Dining (among other things). I like the "flexible" part quite a bit. I am not a cruiser, but it is similar to Norwegian Cruise Lines doing away with set times for your dinner. It's nice to be able to eat exactly when I want to eat.

That is why I don't think people care. People seem to champion convenience.

I also prefer the flexible dining option, but boy, do they need to upgrade the food on it. Terrible.

[exvalley]

And one correction: I am not a fan of the food offered under Flexible Dining (among other things). I like the "flexible" part quite a bit. I am not a cruiser, but it is similar to Norwegian Cruise Lines doing away with set times for your dinner. It's nice to be able to eat exactly when I want to eat.

That is why I don't think people care. People seem to champion convenience.

I also prefer the flexible dining option, but boy, do they need to upgrade the food on it. Terrible.

A lot has to do with the presentation. I found the beef to be good enough, but there is something depressing about eating it out of a plastic microwave meal bowl. The chicken alfredo was very disappointing, but that could be because it was not heated enough. I had it right as they opened for lunch and they hadn't given the food enough time in the oven. Lukewarm alfredo sauce is never going to be good.

I am scheduled to take the Ocean in May and it will be interesting to contrast the food and its presentation. To be fair, there is at least one extra staff member in the Ocean's dining car. Staff is not cheap.

[Literalman]

Actually, by some kind of weird finagling, the Jersey Turnpike claims to be losing money.

I lived in Jersey for a long time. If I recall correctly, the enabling legislation said that the turnpike authority would operate until the turnpike broke even.

[andegold]

Part of the turnpike losing money may also have to do with their forced purchase of a significant portion of I-80 which they are then obligated to maintain without any corresponding toll revenue.

[Suburban Station]

“I think part of the problem we’re dealing with is the original mandate from Congress, which said that this is supposed to be run as a for-profit corporation,” Mr. DeFazio said. “I think they should think about efficiency but not profit…Amtrak is a service, and it can be a better service.”..Amtrak’s steadying financials have helped it make passenger improvements, like renovating the interiors of passenger cars and replacing aging track and the overhead catenary wire system to improve train speeds on the Northeast Corridor line....lawmakers barred Amtrak from moving ahead with a plan to reorganize the railroad’s police, which unions said would mean shrinking the workforce.

Surging Amtrak Seeks Congress’s Green Light https://www.wsj.com/articles/surging-am ... 1577889706
On the one hand defazio wants amtrak to focus on efficiency but on the other he doesnt want them to be efficient. Always the rub with amtrak, in the end individual constituencies are more powerful than better service itself...or the political cost of being efficient is greater than the perceived cost savings to Congress

[ryanch]

... if amtrak had an NEC like service in chicago, la San Diego, texas, and the pnw it would probably be sustainable

If only Midwestern cities lined up in a row the way they do in the East!

But if you set aside the idea of a corridor, and consider the centrality of the Chicago hub, I do think that many of the problems at Amtrak could be solved by solving the south side of Chicago/NW Indiana. How many delays systemwide are attributable to the tangle of railroads between Porter, IN, Aurora, IL and Lake Forest, IL? Would LDs be significantly more timely across the entire country if they could get out of Chicagoland on time? How many short and middle distance corridors from Chicago are on the verge of critical mass, but will never make it to another level as long as their on-time percentage is below 75%?

The Milwaukee corridor has reached critical mass, because OTP is very high, but nothing heading south, east or west really works, limiting the function of Chicago as a true hub.

I believe a true solution to Chicago, CREATE plus South of the Lake, could completely change the attitude of the country to passenger rail. And upend ideas about its profitability.

[Suburban Station]

If chicago operated as a through station you'd have decent corridors since many of the midwestern cities were built around rail initially. That said, you'd still have to fix the otp issue as you've pointed out

[rcthompson04]

“I think part of the problem we’re dealing with is the original mandate from Congress, which said that this is supposed to be run as a for-profit corporation,” Mr. DeFazio said. “I think they should think about efficiency but not profit…Amtrak is a service, and it can be a better service.”..Amtrak’s steadying financials have helped it make passenger improvements, like renovating the interiors of passenger cars and replacing aging track and the overhead catenary wire system to improve train speeds on the Northeast Corridor line....lawmakers barred Amtrak from moving ahead with a plan to reorganize the railroad’s police, which unions said would mean shrinking the workforce.

Surging Amtrak Seeks Congress’s Green Light https://www.wsj.com/articles/surging-am ... 1577889706
On the one hand defazio wants amtrak to focus on efficiency but on the other he doesnt want them to be efficient. Always the rub with amtrak, in the end individual constituencies are more powerful than better service itself...or the political cost of being efficient is greater than the perceived cost savings to Congress

Lets be honest what this is about... most transportation funding battles in the future are going to be urban/suburban versus rural. DeFazio realizes that if you use Anderson's model, many of the long distance trains that serve western constituencies are going to get axed or modified while funds will be used for corridor services elsewhere. DeFazio knows that districts like his will see cuts if the Anderson mentality is applied to other areas of the transportation funding game.

[Suburban Station]

Lets be honest what this is about... most transportation funding battles in the future are going to be urban/suburban versus rural. DeFazio realizes that if you use Anderson's model, many of the long distance trains that serve western constituencies are going to get axed or modified while funds will be used for corridor services elsewhere. DeFazio knows that districts like his will see cuts if the Anderson mentality is applied to other areas of the transportation funding game.

no reason they can't require those routes to be run without getting in the business if micromanaging decisions while at the same time talking about efficiency. I think they are separate issues. He seems confused, amtrak doesn't make a profit, it is simply trying to end operating subsidies but rather than find money to improve the railroad, he he using legislation to set amtrak's staffing priorities based on union guidance.

[Tadman]

Lets be honest what this is about... most transportation funding battles in the future are going to be urban/suburban versus rural. DeFazio realizes that if you use Anderson's model, many of the long distance trains that serve western constituencies are going to get axed or modified while funds will be used for corridor services elsewhere. DeFazio knows that districts like his will see cuts if the Anderson mentality is applied to other areas of the transportation funding game.

I don't think this is necessarily a zero sum game. A while back I started a thread that asked, If PRIIA were set aside, how many of those flyover states only served by long distance trains could be reconfigured to see a more productive regional train. As an example, if Colorado lost the Chief and Zephyr, it could see Springs-Denver-Boulder-Cheyenne. If Arizona lost the Sunset, it could see TUS-PHX maybe with one LAX train, too. Quite a few of the LD-only states could see a regional train substitute that carries more people and provides more utility.

[quad50cal]

“I think part of the problem we’re dealing with is the original mandate from Congress, which said that this is supposed to be run as a for-profit corporation,” Mr. DeFazio said. “I think they should think about efficiency but not profit…Amtrak is a service, and it can be a better service.”..Amtrak’s steadying financials have helped it make passenger improvements, like renovating the interiors of passenger cars and replacing aging track and the overhead catenary wire system to improve train speeds on the Northeast Corridor line....lawmakers barred Amtrak from moving ahead with a plan to reorganize the railroad’s police, which unions said would mean shrinking the workforce.

Surging Amtrak Seeks Congress’s Green Light https://www.wsj.com/articles/surging-am ... 1577889706
On the one hand defazio wants amtrak to focus on efficiency but on the other he doesnt want them to be efficient. Always the rub with amtrak, in the end individual constituencies are more powerful than better service itself...or the political cost of being efficient is greater than the perceived cost savings to Congress

DeFazio isn't contradicting himself, he simply doesn't see profitability as the end-all be-all metric for efficiency. Commuter railroads and metros certainly don't prioritize profitability over other performance metrics like ridership or passenger trip miles. Using the LIRR as an example, their farebox recovery ratios are roughly 60-70% for electric branches and 20-30% for diesel branches, but they also proudly tout that the passenger traffic they manage would require 14 additional lanes on the LIE to accommodate them in cars. That alternative would be a true inefficiency of resources.

Consider how the 2010s have treated Amtrak and LIRR
- LIRR's Avg. Weekday Ridership increased from 270,000 to 381,000 (an impressive 40% increase)
- Amtrak's ridership remained largely flat while slowly approaching profitability.

Despite the progress made on profitability, Amtrak is still unpalatable to the ideologically driven congressmen that have been the most adamant that Amtrak pursue profitability over all other considerations. As recently as Fall 2017, they put forward yet another attempt to defund Amtrak completely. All in all, the 2010s have left Amtrak still unable to address the looming crisis of the decades old backlog of expensive infrastructure deficits that no amount of cutting amenities and price gouging the NEC ( Acela runs a 210% farebox recovery ratio and the NEC Regional 140% I believe) can hope to solve.