This Week At Amtrak 2007-05-10
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- If you’re going to make a mistake, make an embarrassing one, don’t fool around with something trivial. In the last issue of TWA, a comment was made about the Silver Fleet of the Seaboard Air Line Railroad, which consisted of three daily trains. Two of those were named correctly, but, the third was named in haste instead of in accuracy. The Seaboard’s train between New York City, Atlanta, and Birmingham was the Silver Comet, not the name applied in the last TWA. It’s tough getting a fact wrong you’ve know your entire life because of a simple typo. Thanks to the many friends who caught the embarrassing error, and apologies to all.
- We know the Florida trains in pre-Amtrak days were always considered money-makers. Even up to the end the year before the advent of Amtrak, Seaboard Coast Line operated the Florida Special, a winter season, extra-fare train that always had good patronage. During the height of the Great Depression, this train and others of the Seaboard and Atlantic Coast Line would often run with extra scheduled sections.At the end of private passenger service, Seaboard Coast Line was operating daily into Florida from New York the Silver Meteor, Silver Star, Champion, Gulf Coast Special, and the Everglades.Between Jacksonville and New Orleans the Gulf Wind was operated, and between Chicago and Miami the City of Miami and South Wind alternated running one train on even days, and one train on odd days.
When Amtrak Day came on May 1, 1971, the surviving trains into Florida were the Silver Meteor, Silver Star, and the Champion. Chicago to Florida was covered by the South Wind, which later became the Floridian.
This ancient history is important because it shows there has always been a demand for passenger rail service in and out of Florida. When Amtrak was being formed, it was highly unusual for any long distance route to have three surviving trains. Even New York – Chicago originally was only served by one train, the Broadway Limited. For Florida to retain three trains was remarkable, and a strong indicator of how much business existed between the Northeast and Southeast.
Today, Amtrak’s Florida service is ghost of what it was even in 1993, before the arrival of a transit mentality at Amtrak, and the scourge of the “common consist” where one size train fits all; passenger demand be scorned and ignored.
- URPA completed a white paper in 1999 on the effect of the common consist and the resulting loss of passenger business, all in the name of saving expenses without regard to passenger revenue.By 1993, the Sunset Limited had arrived in Florida, and the Silver Meteor and Silver Star were operating, as well as the Palmetto and Auto Train. The Palmetto only operated to Jacksonville.In Fiscal Year 1993, using Amtrak figures, ridership (revenue passenger mile figures were not available) on all Florida trains combined was 1,262,059 passengers. By FY 1998, just five short fiscal years later, and by the time Florida trains had been converted to Superliners on the Auto Train (providing greater passenger capacity), and the Meteor and Star were carrying Viewliner sleepers, replacing Heritage sleeping cars, ridership on all Florida trains combined was 976,301 passengers, a drop of 285,758 passengers per year.
This drop in ridership was not due to changing market conditions. It was deliberately planned by Amtrak to reduce its fleet of sleeping cars and close maintenance bases. In 1993, Amtrak had three full maintenance bases in Florida, and was performing minimal turn maintenance at Jacksonville for the Palmetto.
By 1998, the Tampa maintenance base was closed, and the Palmetto had been converted to the Silver Palm, and was operating to Miami via Tampa, as today’s Silver Star does.
As always with the caveat that Amtrak managers are praised for saving expenses, but not praised for raising revenues, the Tampa maintenance base, and the two trains which terminated there (The Silver Meteor and Silver Star operated as one train each into Florida, but were split at
Jacksonville or Auburndale into two additional trains to provide service to the old Seaboard main line through Ocala, and into Tampa.) disappeared. No more trains were split in Florida, but three trains, instead of two, operated from Miami to New York City, with one detouring through Tampa.Again, using Amtrak numbers and 1999 expenses and fares, the closing of the Tampa maintenance base saved about $4 million dollars a year in expenses, a hefty amount. On the other side of the ledger, Amtrak gave up $14 million dollars a year in revenue by taking one train a day out of Tampa, and replacing it with a Thruway bus connection.
The Silver Meteor often ran with a consist of three to five Heritage sleeping cars depending on seasonal demand, and the Star usually with three sleepers. By getting rid of the Heritage sleepers and replacing them with fewer Viewliner sleeping cars, Amtrak automatically cut down on passenger capacity. The pre-common consist trains also carried nine Amfleet coaches; these were reduced to four to accommodate the common consist requirements. Eighteen car trains quickly became 10 car trains.
Somehow, this screwy logic made sense to Amtrak managers and the Amtrak board of directors.
- Not satisfied with just about killing its Florida business, Amtrak, under former President and CEO David Gunn, made more cuts into Florida, all in the name of “improving service.” When the mail and express business disappeared, so did the Silver Palm. It was shortened to its inefficient southern terminus of Savannah, Georgia, and turned into an all-daylight train along the East Coast, to New York City.When questioned as to why the newly-minted Palmetto, replacing the Silver Palm, at least didn’t return to its more logical terminus of Jacksonville (which did not require any more crew members, but only 148 additional train miles in each direction between Savannah and Jacksonville), the response was “it’s an easier turn for the train crew at Savannah than Jacksonville.” To put it more bluntly, the public be hanged, it was easier for Amtrak’s operating department to end the train at Savannah instead of Jacksonville. Profits don’t matter, passenger convenience doesn’t matter, because there is always another annual subsidy of free federal money to make up the difference in any mistakes in judgement by Amtrak.Between 1993 and 1999, the Sunset Limited was also scaled back from Miami to first Sanford, the home of the Auto Train terminal and a far suburb of Orlando, and then, more logically, Orlando, about 25 route miles away, but a much more desirable destination. This cutback did make sense, since Orlando was the primary destination of Sunset riders in Florida, after those making connections in Jacksonville to the north, and those using the service for transportation to cities in Florida’s panhandle such as Tallahassee, and Pensacola.
In another gross misjudgment by Amtrak, when the Sunset was originally cut back, it went to Sanford, because it shared a common Superliner maintenance base with Auto Train. The timetables showed unknown Sanford as the eastern terminus of the train, with a Thruway bus connection to Winter Park, Orlando, and Kissimmee, the real destinations of passengers. As a result of such a huge miscalculation by the Sunset’s product line director of now showing Orlando as the final destination of the train, business dropped dramatically. When it occurred to him to deadhead the train the 25 or so miles from the maintenance base at Sanford to Orlando to complete the full route by rail, ridership soared. Passengers simply want to take a train the entire trip, and aren’t interested in the inconvenience of shifting from a train to a bus in a small town.
- Today, Amtrak in Florida has changed, even more. The Sunset Limited hasn’t been seen in almost two years, since the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast. Amtrak has had a myriad of “the dog ate my homework” excuses for not reinstating this vital link in the national system, but has never really indicated anything would work short of states putting up money to reinstall a train which has never been officially cancelled. Amtrak has made plenty of telltale statements however, with its Chicago spokesman saying things recently in the Tallahassee Democrat such as “We don’t start running new services in states without state financial support.” The problem, of course, is this isn’t a new service, but a service which has never been officially advertised as being discontinued (to meet union requirements and other legal matters), so the Chicago spokesman’s statement doesn’t hold water.Amtrak service in the spring of 2007 in Florida consists of two daily trains from the Northeast, both serving Orlando, but only one serving Tampa. The old Seaboard line through Ocala, one of the fastest growing areas of Florida, has no train service, only Thruway bus service. Tampa and the lower West Coast of Florida have Thruway bus service, too.Auto Train still serves Sanford.
No service exists west of Jacksonville to New Orleans.
- Going back to URPA’s 1999 white paper, we find the following statistics:
Annual Ridership in Florida
FY 1993 1,262,059 FY 1994 1,167,838 FY 1995 1,125,571 FY 1996 1,002,009 FY 1997 928,252 FY 1998 976,301 … FY 2005 841,240 FY 2006 764,363 You may discover, by following the numbers above, that Amtrak ridership in Florida, one of the strongest travel destinations in the United States, continues to decline at an alarming rate. The difference between passenger counts in FY 1993 and FY 2006 is a staggering loss of 497,696 passengers annually. To put that in a simpler number, that’s a half of a million passengers a year not coming or going in Florida on Amtrak from what there was in FY 1993.
Do some math. Presume each passenger generated an average ticket value of $87, based on revenue passenger miles generated in FY 2006 by the Silver Meteor and Silver Star and revenue per mile. Multiply 497,696 passengers by an average of $87 per ticket, and you can calculate Amtrak is happy to give up $43,299,552 in annual passenger revenue, or roughly, 14% of what Amtrak says is its annual operating deficit for the entire national system outside of the Northeast Corridor.
- A rational person would be quick to point out that coming up with that extra nearly $43 million in ticket revenue would cost some big bucks, too. Yes, that is correct. However, as we saw with the closing of the Tampa maintenance base and the idiotic idea of common consist trains, it wouldn’t be too hard or too expensive to restructure the Florida service to regain much of that lost $43 million without spending more than Amtrak would be making.How can this be done? Simply by putting the Sunset Limited back, restringing the current Florida schedules, and running the Palmetto back into Tampa. Some other improvements could be made, too, that would take a bit more effort, but provide even better results.
- Most of the long distance trains operating in and out of New York City’s Pennsylvania Station do so at times convenient for the many regional and commuter trains operating in the region. Long distance patrons make up a minuscule segment of travel from New York’s stations.The Silver Meteor and Silver Star depart New York Penn at times these trains have been departing New York since the Seaboard days. The Star provides a morning departure, the Meteor a mid-afternoon departure. The Star has the more lengthy route, since it follows the old Seaboard route through Raleigh, North Carolina and Columbia, South Carolina before rejoining the current CSX I-95 corridor route at Savannah, Georgia. Again, in Florida, the Star goes in and out of Tampa, which the Meteor does not, adding an additional two hours to the schedule. Even though the Star departs New York more than four hours before the Meteor, both end up in Miami within an hour of each other.The Palmetto launches out of New York Penn Station early in the morning at 6:15 A.M., and arrives at its terminal in Savannah at 8:34 P.M.
Northbound, the Meteor and Star both leave Miami early, at 7:15 A.M. and 8:50 A.M., but again, the Star, taking the longer route, arrives in New York Penn over five hours later than the Meteor. The Meteor arrives at 10:30 A.M., and the Star at 3:43 P.M., with the Palmetto arriving at 10:56 P.M., after a morning departure from Savannah at 8:00 A.M.
The Auto Train, in both directions, departs its terminal at 4:00 P.M., and arrives at the opposite terminal at 9:30 A.M., with no stops between Sanford, Florida and Lorton, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.
- Let’s do the most modest rearranging of the schedule, first. Considerations have to include the provision for late running trains, and adequate time to turn trains at endpoint maintenance bases. The trains sit overnight at both endpoints, so it takes four trainsets to run each service for the Meteor and Star, but only two trainsets for the Palmetto because it doesn’t travel overnight. The Auto Train uses four trainsets, too. The Sunset, when it runs its full route, takes seven days for a return trip coast to coast, so every day it departs, it needs a trainset, needing seven sets for daily service.The Meteor and Star schedules, considering that Tampa is served by the Star, are not bad schedules. Both schedules could easily be tinkered with by an hour or so, but overall work.The Palmetto is where the real opportunity is found.
Tampa took the most dramatic hit in ridership when the common consists arrived in the 90s, and Tampa was then served by just one train. Tampa ridership went from 149,722 passengers a year, down to 39,936 passengers, a perilous drop of 109,796 passengers a year. In the past two years, that ridership has edged back up, with FY 2006 reporting 60,778 passengers using Tampa Union Station, but that is still significantly less than half of the passengers in FY 1993.
Tampa needs the Palmetto. Currently, the Palmetto ties up for the night in Savannah, where routine turn maintenance and cleaning is performed. This function could easily be moved to Tampa at no additional expense. Extending the train, keeping the spirit of its present schedule, would require no new stations, but keeping some stations in Florida open all night.
Currently, Amtrak has 50 Viewliner sleeping cars in its active fleet, with a daily requirement of 39. The Silver Palm, when it was today’s Palmetto operating in and out of Miami and Tampa, carried only one sleeping car. That’s okay, because the Palmetto also would only need one sleeping car on each of three trainsets to operate the service from Tampa to New York City.
Envision a late night departure from Tampa, at 10:30 P.M. That would put the train into Orlando at 12:30 A.M., into Jacksonville at 3:30 A.M., and into Savannah at 6:00 A.M., then resume a similar schedule to today’s Palmetto, but operating about an hour earlier.
Some at Amtrak, and certainly the paid help at the National Association of Railroad Passengers, will instantly squawk about “marketable times” in Florida for the proposed train. That is a semi-valid argument, but, considering this is a service designed for residents of Florida to use (versus the tourist trade found on today’s Meteor and Star), those hours are not unusual or unreasonable as a second or third frequency. The business generated from Tampa and Orlando can easily support the train, with any additional business generated at Jacksonville a bonus.
A southbound Palmetto could leave New York City at 9:00 A.M., arrive in Savannah at 11:30 P.M., Jacksonville at 2:00 A.M., Orlando at 5:00 A.M., and Tampa at 7:00 A.M.
And, if you don’t think people will board a train in the middle of the night, look at some of Amtrak’s own numbers. Columbia, South Carolina is currently served by the Star at 1:44 A.M. and 1:12 A.M., daily. In FY 2006, Columbia generated 34,431 passengers. Cleveland, Ohio is served by the Capitol Limited at 2:31 A.M. and 2:15 A.M., and the Lake Short Limited at 3:27 A.M. and 7:00 A.M., and Cleveland generated 29,334 passengers in FY 2006. Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota has early morning and late evening hours for its one daily train, the Empire Builder. FY 2006 ridership there was a whopping 137,227 passengers. Even Newton, Kansas, the closest stop to Wichita on the Southwest Chief route, which is served at 3:25 A.M. and 3:01 A.M., had FY 2006 ridership of 12,580 passengers.
Go to any airport early in the morning, and see how many passengers arrive before 6 A.M. to take the first flight out, or arrive back in the airport after 11 P.M. on the last flight of the evening.
What would it cost to extend the Palmetto from Savannah to Tampa? One more train and engine crew than is currently used. One sleeping car attendant. Three sleeping cars, and probably one or two extra coaches to handle the increased ridership (this, in the real world, is considered a plus, not a detriment). Keep this as a downgraded train, without full dining car service, but the new Diner Lite. Longer hours for the existing onboard services staff, plus extra train mile costs, and costs of fuel. Keeping some stations open for a longer period of time. For this 394 mile extension, the likely annual costs are $8,760,000. The likely annual revenue is in excess of $25 million.
Does Amtrak really need state funds to extend this train? No. It just needs the will to look at opportunities to help itself, serve its passengers better, and fulfill its mandate to create and operate a national passenger railroad system.
Further simple tweaking to the Silver Meteor, Silver Star, and Palmetto can raise a lot of money, quickly. Currently, all of these trains are discharge/receive only trains on the Northeast Corridor. That means no local business between New York City and Washington. You can listen to all of Amtrak’s excuses for this, but the only valid excuse is it wants to drive business onto the NEC trains, at the expense of the long distance trains.
Every year, during the busy December travel season, Amtrak opens up the Meteor, Star, and Crescent to local business on the NEC, citing a lack of space for all of the demand. Suddenly, NEC travelers are exposed to the more comfortable long distance train coach seats, the availability of private sleeping car space, and even a full service dining car. Ridership always goes up every December when this phenomenon takes place. You may suggest this is only moving money from one pile to another. Certainly, some of that would occur, but what this really accomplishes is a better use of long distance train assets and different travel opportunities which may entice travelers who would otherwise not use a train on the NEC.
On the subject of the Sunset Limited, the solution is simple. Put it back, but treat it better, and make it at least four frequencies a week, instead of the most expensive way of operating a train, which is three frequencies. Ideally, it should be daily.
- Let’s move to a slightly bolder scenario. What if the Silver Meteor, based on its present schedule, really fulfilled its destiny, and became a Montreal – Miami train? The current run of the Adirondack from New York City to Montreal is about 10 hours. Keeping the Meteor’s same general schedule, it would arrive in Montreal about 9:00 P.M., and depart the next morning around 7:00 A.M., pushing the southbound schedule back an hour or so to accommodate the longer run. This would tie the Meteor into the entire VIA Rail Canada eastern network, and provide same-train service between eastern Canada, which is a huge source of tourism in Florida, and all of the major Florida destinations. The worst case scenario for this is the train could be too successful, and have heavy capacity demands. This would also greatly benefit the Adirondack, by offering a second travel choice, and therefore pushing up demand for existing as well as new trains.As an adjunct to this, extend the Silver Star and the Crescent both to Boston. No extra trainsets required, and only one additional train and engine crew for each train, plus extended onboard staff hours.
- Obviously, there is much which can be done with Amtrak’s Florida service to benefit the company’s bottom line, plus provide better passenger service. There are many in-state scenarios, too, which include use of the Florida East Coast tracks from Jacksonville to West Palm Beach, and the old Seaboard tracks via Ocala, which serve a fast growing part of the state. A part of Florida which has been overlooked for decades is the lower West Coast, including Bradenton, Sarasota, Punta Gorda, Fort Myers, and Naples. These tracks need major assistance for upgrading for passenger use, and would be an ideal project for the Florida Department of Transportation to undertake. There is also demand for cross-Florida service, linking Tampa with South Florida with more than one train a day, and Tampa and North Florida with more than one train a day. TWA will have more details on these ideas in a later edition.
- Just in case anyone forgets the real reason for running passenger trains, VIA Rail Canada issued this press release today.
VIA Rail Sees Customer Focus as Strategic Business Advantage – Scores 98% Satisfaction Rating -
MONTREAL, May 10 /CNW Telbec/ – VIA Rail Canada’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Paul Côté, today emphasized that the company has chosen to focus on the total customer experience as its core business strategy, citing this as a strategic business advantage.
Addressing a group of business people at a Board of Trade meeting in Montreal earlier today, Mr. Côté indicated that customers gave VIA a 98% satisfaction rating in the most recent surveys.
“Not only have we achieved exceptionally high levels of customer satisfaction, 40 per cent of customers say that VIA not only met but exceeded their expectations,” said Mr. Côté. “People choose the train because it offers something different – a more comfortable, safer and less stressful way to travel, and it offers the opportunity to use tools such as WiFi and cell phones, making travel time more productive. We call it the more ‘human’ way to travel.”
This strategy has produced tangible results. In the 2006 Commerce-Léger Marketing Survey, respondents ranked VIA as the most admired transportation company and one of the top 30 most admired companies overall. Last year, VIA’s revenues increased, for the third straight year, to close to $300 million.
More than four million passengers boarded VIA trains last year; the Quebec City-Windsor corridor alone carried a record 3.5 million passengers.
About VIA
Montreal is home to VIA’s headquarters, the second busiest station in Canada, and the company’s largest maintenance center. 1,300 VIA employees live and work in the Greater Montreal area, over 40 per cent of the total workforce.
As Canada’s national passenger rail service, VIA Rail Canada’s mandate is to provide efficient, environmentally responsible and cost effective passenger transportation services, both in Canada’s business corridor and in remote and rural regions of the country. Serving more than 450 communities with a network of inter-city, transcontinental and regional trains, demand for rail services continues to grow as more Canadians turn to train travel as a safe and convenient travel choice.
Keep in mind VIA is also a child of government, just as Amtrak, and has often been ridiculed as one of Canada’s worst managed companies. They must be doing something right to receive high ratings like these from its passengers.
