Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 10:13 am
By coincidence, a Bloomberg article answered some of my questions.
Although also somewhat of a trip report, it appears the writer's main point is the money; appropriately enough the article appears on: Bloomberg.com
The Amtrak That Works, and the Amtrak That Doesn’t
Its long-distance trains are expensive anachronisms that are dragging down the more successful parts of the system. But Congress can’t bear to give them up.
...
(see chart in article)
The chart I'm referring to is the corridor service chart. Empire SOUTH lost $17.4M on 1,150,498 passenger trips, with a revenue to cost ratio of .73, the WORST of Amtrak's most popular routes by ridership for FY18.
That's bad. The ALB-NYP route I would have thought would have been break even or better. It certainly should be.
gokeefe wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 7:08 pm
Completely agreed. I'm shocked at the poor farebox recovery. If the trains are consistently selling out and they're running 10 round-trips per day either fares are too low, trains are too short or both. It's an unfortunate policy choice which prevents additional service that could provide better utilization of public resources.
Does the Empire South calculation include the Lake Shore Limited? I would imagine it would drag down the statistics. Seems like the Lake Shore's erratic nature also forces unideal scheduling practices. On weekdays going southbound from ALB you have trains 242 and 244 flanking the Lake Shore (with 242 departing ALB at 3:15 PM weekdays only, train 48 leaving at 3:45 PM and 244 leaving at 4:20 PM) which would be a ridiculous cluster (especially given the 2-hour gaps during other times of day) if not for the Lake Shore's possible lateness. Likewise going northbound from NYP you have train 235 on weekdays (on weekends, 295/the Ethan Allen Express) leaving at 3:15 PM, barely a half-hour before the Lake Shore.
My first couple of trips on the Empire Service this year were all all-sold-out affairs so I figured that was the norm, but I took train 48/the LSL southbound from ALB-NYP one weekday right before Easter (thankfully running on time) and it didn't look to be sold out at all. It was fairly populated but I had nobody sitting next to me for the entire trip! I also took 235 one weekday in June and it was surprisingly pretty empty, and I again had nobody sitting next to me for the entire ride. Not sure if that was a function of the time of day, the date, its proximity to the Lake Shore, or something else entirely. For what it's worth, from my observations, $45 appears to be the typical "floor" for prices for ALB-NYP trips - that was always the lowest price I saw, except one day several days ago when I was putzing around on the Amtrak site and saw a $35 saver fare from NYP to ALB miraculously available one day on the LSL - I didn't even know the prices went that low. But it seemingly disappeared quickly. Granted the former broke college student in me wants to protest the idea that $45 is "too low" (especially when NYP-ALB coach seat prices typically jump up to $63-$80 as supply decreases) but it looks the Lake Shore might be bad for business? (big surprise, I know).
rcthompson04 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 19, 2019 1:25 pm
The next best comparison to the ALB-NYP route is the Keystone, which is pretty close to break even ($3 per rider subsidy is nominal).
Empire South and the Philadelphia-Harrisburg portion of the Keystone seem to have a lot in common - right down to a similar level of service between each pair of cities and even similar average speeds according to the schedules (54-57 MPH for both city pairs). I admittedly have never used the Keystone but I think PHL-HAR has a few things going for it that Empire South doesn't have though.
Greg Moore wrote: ↑Mon Jul 22, 2019 8:46 pm
NY has discussed (it's good at discussing) adding more trains.
A goal stated at one point was to increase to hourly service, not including the LSL (and perhaps not including the other named trains, I can't recall) so there would be a minimum of 12 trains a day in each direction.
For the longest time, all Empire Service trains with 5 cars (4 coach, 1 cafe/business) but over time more have started to run with 6.
The platforms can now support I believe 10 cars.
One thing that has been annoying is that the scheduled times have INCREASED over the years. This is frustrating. There's a variety of reasons, but a lot come down to the fact that NY can't get Metro-North and Amtrak on the same page.
Honestly, this is an area where NY should be spending the funds to get trip towns down to sub 2 hours. (I've been on trains that completed the route in just under 2:10, with 10 minute holds at POU and all "discharge only north of there).
There's a fair number of folks that already commute to NYC either daily (not common, but a few do) or weekly (far more common) from ALB or HUD.
As for the cafe cars, yes as stated, if the train begins or ends past Albany, it has a cafe car.
It would be great to bring back cafe cars for trains terminating in Albany. I know I'd prefer that for the times I've had to leave NYP around dinner time and didn't have time to get a decent meal before boarding.
But yeah.. this is one route I definitely don't think lives up to its potential.
Agree with you there. It's absurd that travel times are now 2 hr 30 mins on a typical trip. The infrastructure situation is definitely not ideal but it's one of those situations where you really wonder how the travel time got this long. I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the existence of another group of occasional commuters the Empire Service doesn't do the best job of serving - state assembly members, senators, staffers etc. traveling to/from Albany! Due to the nature of the state legislature these people usually travel to/from Albany once a week while the state legislature is in session (from January until June). The first trains to reach Albany each morning (train 63/Maple Leaf from NYP and train 280 from Niagara Falls) don't arrive until roughly 9:45 - meaning that anybody using them is probably not going to reach the state capitol until 10:15-10:30, potentially missing an early morning legislative hearing or committee meeting (which often start as early as 9:00/9:30 AM - to say nothing of performing other work in the office early in the morning!). And since the first northbound train is the Maple Leaf, that means travelers to Albany may be fighting for seats with people traveling as far as Toronto.
Going back southbound on weekday afternoons the scheduling is decent for a supercommuter/visitor to Albany but could be better with 242, 48 and 244 all back-to-back at 3:15, 3:45 and 4:15 PM (although understandable as I mentioned above) followed by an awkward two-hour gap until train 68/Adirondack at 6:15 and train 69/Maple Leaf, the last train on weeknights, at 7:15 PM. This doesn't seem to be a problem on the Keystone where the amount of service between PHL-HAR is similar to Empire South, but looks to be scheduled more conveniently for a commuter/visitor to/from the state capitol in Harrisburg. The more favorable geography (shorter distance) between PHL-HAR probably doesn't hurt either. Although again I've never used the Keystone so I have no idea how much usage it gets for that purpose.
This isn't part of Empire South but the grand total of four round trips a day between Albany and Buffalo speaks for itself. This New York Times article from January about this year's brand-new state senators seemingly agrees:
They Won Senate Seats. Now Comes the Hard Part: Adjusting to Albany.
Senator Rachel May had trouble finding parking.
Ms. May, a Democrat who represents the Syracuse area, was a few minutes late to her first tour of her office because she could not get into the parking garage for lawmakers near the Capitol.
“Somehow the magic words ‘incoming senator’ didn’t quite work,” she said with a laugh.
Ms. May, who coordinated sustainability education at Syracuse University before running for office, at times seemed almost surprised to realize the influence she could wield in state policy. She had hoped to take the train to Albany most weeks, she said, because it was a low-carbon alternative to driving, but only a few trains ran each day from Syracuse.
Then she perked up as she remembered that she could talk to her fellow legislators about improving infrastructure upstate.