Employee Assignment Comparison Numbers, numbers and more numbers
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by Dennis Larson, 23 November 2001
During some miscellaneous travels sorting through the local spreadsheet some interesting Amtrak and airline numbers are appearing – all from FY 1999.
Rather than taking the total revenue from the three separate business units I looked at the totals from the various classes of trains.
NEC rail operations generated 489 million, long distance operations 501.8 million and the heralded corridor services generate 151 million plus additional revenue from the states at 93.8 million. Long distance services include some of those that operate partially over the NEC like the Florida services and the Carolinian.
The leading single train in revenue was the SW Chief at 61.1 million which includes its hefty express business. It makes over 32 million in passenger revenues.
The Auto Train was next at 54.2 in total revenue.
In conventional service the Empire Builder was the leader in passenger miles 381,353,000 and passenger revenue at 39.3 million, with the California Zephyr right behind. Passenger miles for both trains exceed all the Metroliners combined and the Southwest Chief was nearby as well. In total revenue the Empire Builder is right behind Auto Train at 52.5 million including express. The Builder only handles heavy express over 400 miles of its 2,200 mile route.
The average trip length, as reported by the Air Transport Association, on scheduled airlines is 824 miles, less than average trip length on the Sunset Limited, SW Chief, Texas Eagle, California Zephyr, Empire Builder, and the Auto Train. These trains in order are the trip length leaders with the Sunset and the Chief showing average trips of over 1100 miles and the Zephyr and Builder at 877. But rail passengers, according to the U.S. Census, go further yet in some areas because they use connecting rail services.
All of the above long distance trains have similar characteristics, long average trips, high average passenger loads around 200 and up and high total revenues.
The average trip for all long distance services on my list is 683.7 miles which doesn’t include the International.
The average airline passenger load, using Air Transport Assn. numbers, is 95 with a yield of 14 cents per mile. Add their express and miscellaneous items and the yield per passenger mile comes to 19 cents. By comparison, the average yield on NEC trains is 33 cents, 60 cents for the Metroliners, and 17 cents for long distance and corridor services.
Finally the profits airlines make and the hypothetical rail passenger profits. Operating profits in FY 99 were 1.3 cents a mile, this during a record year. If the same profit level were transferred to Amtrak operations we would see about 40 million dollars on long-distance services, 20 million for the NEC and 12 million for the corridor services around Chicago and California.