Amtrak Success Stories

[east point]

Any reduction in running times scheduled RGH <> CLT yet ?

[Bob Roberts]

Any reduction in running times scheduled RGH <> CLT yet ?

I don't believe so. It certainly does not feel like it but I'll admit that I have not compared timetables.

They may have removed a few minutes of padding. OTP is much better. Getting held at a signal is now a very rare occurrence. I had a conniption on Friday when my train get a red signal at Linwood, we were help for about 4 minutes -- felt like forever. It didn't take long to get spoiled.

[deestrains]

Schedule is back to 3:10 RGH->CLT, which is what the final schedule became ca. 2012.

No current plans to drop any time off that.

NS OTP last 2-3 months has been about 50%, so issues with ops at the moment.

[jamesinclair]

Are the monthly ridership numbers by route gone?

[Gilbert B Norman]

Mr. Sinclair, while greatly reduced in scope and now are in a "coloring book" format, Monthly Performance Reports are still there. Revenue, "some kind of" Profit and Loss, and ridership is still reported.

Here's the path from the Full Website:

About Amtrak/About Amtrak/Reports and Documents/All Reports and Documents/Monthly Performance Reports.

Enjoy.

[jamesinclair]

Gilbert, from what I see, the ridership is reported as "year to date" rather than the actual month. That makes it difficult to see what the ridership has been every month, since only 3 of them appear to be available.

[Gilbert B Norman]

I agree, Mr. Sinclair.

They hardly share what they used to; but what is shared is a whale of a lot more than what either VIA Rail or Brightline chooses to share with their stakeholders.

[jamesinclair]

I agree, Mr. Sinclair.

They hardly share what they used to; but what is shared is a whale of a lot more than what either VIA Rail or Brightline chooses to share with their stakeholders.

I wonder in the change in leadership to someone who came from the private sector resulted in that chance. As far as I know, Delta doesnt publish monthly numbers for their routes

[Arlington]

I wonder in the change in leadership to someone who came from the private sector resulted in that chance. As far as I know, Delta doesnt publish monthly numbers for their routes

Airlines report very detailed monthly stats route ridership and revenue via the USDOT including reporting a 10% ticket sample (and private providers who clean it up). It is arguably more detail than Amtrak ever published, but the Airlines go along with it because while they hate reporting their own numbers, they love seeing everyone elses, and this kind of visibility keeps the industry very competitive (it is pro-consumer).

The new MPRs at https://www.amtrak.com/about-amtrak/rep ... ments.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; are disappointing because you no longer see route-level ticket revenue (and no longer see sleeper vs coach breakouts). This means, among other blindspots, that in the route revenue pages, you can no longer see which routes are profitable from ticket revenues alone (eg. the Virginia ones) versus which ones rely on state subsidies to be profitable (eg Vermonter and Carolinian), (the corollary is that you can no longer back out what each State sponsor is paying per route).

[gokeefe]

Perhaps the greatest success story of them all:

Amtrak reported an adjusted operating loss of $29.8 million across the entire national railroad network, significantly beating a previous target of a loss of $75 million in the 2019 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. Its operating loss in fiscal 2018 was $170.6 million.

[Arlington]

$30m is really an amazing number. Congratulations to all who worked on this.

[Gilbert B Norman]

Volks, like it or not, Mr. Anderson IS doing what he was hired to do.

I'm sure the LD community will have a different "take" on this exciting development.

[ThirdRail7]

Volks, like it or not, Mr. Anderson IS doing what he was hired to do.

I'm sure the LD community will have a different "take" on this exciting development.

Yes...it shows that you CAN run the system WITH long-distance network....since it was just done. It also shows that if you actually run the trains (instead of canceling a 2000+ round trip due to a blizzard over a small portion) and added (instead of cutting) capacity, your ridership might rise by more than 1%.

I'd also like to add that if you listen to Amtrak, they were recovering up to 94% of their operating expenses prior to the arrival of Mr. Moorman and Mr. Anderson....without cutting service and actually feeding people. The best the current regime can do is close the gap.

[gokeefe]

Yes...it shows that you CAN run the system WITH long-distance network....since it was just done.

I strongly agree with this perspective. Perhaps the most significant takeaway of them all.

I'm not a huge fan of the transcontinental long distance services but I do feel they provide an essential service.

[SouthernRailway]

Saturday's Wall Street Journal also had an article about Amtrak just about breaking even.

That's terrific since it will help reduce the need for Amtrak to count on government.

I also note that Amtrak has pretty much achieved break-even status while having only about a 50% load factor overall. If it can break even by selling only about 1/2 of its seat-miles, imagine how well it will do once it figures out how to sell all of those unsold seats.