July performance report is out

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neroden

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http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/855/870/Amtrak-Monthly-Performance-Report-July-2014.pdf

Things I noted:

- the catastrophic collapse in on-time performance isn't hurting ridership or revenue as badly as I'd expect. This could just be a delayed-response issue, but it also could mean that the underlying latent demand for train service is just so high that it's swamping the results of the poor performance.

- On "loss per passenger mile", for July, the so-called "long-distance" trains are starting to sort out almost entirely on the basis of how many seats per day they offer, with the longest trains doing best. The extra coach has been very good for Auto Train. The Silver Meteor is doing about as well as the Palmetto. Next in line (by this measure) are the Empire Builder and the Lake Shore Limited -- despite all the troubles! So, during peak season at least, it seems that Amtrak is primarily capacity-limited, and comes close enough to filling every seat it runs at good prices. Longer trains are just pure revenue at this point, at least in July. The benefit of the extra sleeper on the Cardinal is obvious from the numbers as well.

- It is noted by Amtrak that the best-performing "long-distance" train segments are those overlapping with "corridor" trains. Not surprising. Together with everything else, this reinforces my belief that Amtrak should continue to focus heavily on improving the routes it runs on (longer trains, more frequencies, more passenger-priority track), rather than starting additional routes.
 
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Comments on the July, 2014 Monthly Performance Report. There is a lot of information in the MPR, but I'm not inclined to write a lot of material on the individual route ridership or revenue numbers at the moment. I think the most interesting aspect of this and recent MPRs are the good financial results despite slumping ridership and on-time performance taking a hit.

Financial Results
For the month of July, Amtrak had a net operating loss of $74.2 million. But the adjusted loss, after depreciation and OPEB costs are backed out, was a surplus of $2.8 million. For the Year-To-Date (YTD), the adjusted loss is only $129 million. Some of the reduction in losses is due to deferred capital expenditures due to delays in spending for the ACS-64s and infrastructure projects, which will show up if not in FY2014, but almost certainly in FY15.

It should be emphasized that the LD trains are still losing a lot of money, although LD cost recovery is improved; it is the operating surplus from the Acela and NE Regionals that is the biggest reason for the reduced system losses.

Food & Beverage Metrics
Starting in the MPRs early in FY14, Food & Beverage (F&B) financial numbers were broken out in the Key Performance tables. I consider this new section to be the sop to Congressman Mica section. The good news for the YTD is that system F&B cost recovery ratio is up to 50.8% from 45% last July with an increase of $11.7 million in revenue and a reduction of $8.9 million in expenses.

Ridership: Adjusted system ridership is down -0.3% YTD compared to last July while revenue is up +4.2%. Not likely to be another record breaking year for ridership, even for the adjusted numbers. The Acela continues to do very well while the state corridors are a very mixed bag. Track work related delays and freight congestion for the LD trains are a significant factor for hurting ridership for a number of train services. We will see if some of the state corridor and LD trains bounce back this fall and return to positive growth after the summer track work season and some HSIPR funded projects wrap up.

On-Time Performance: No surprise that it continues to be worse than FY2013, both for YTD and the month of July. There are a few bright spots in the OTP tables with some corridor services doing >90%: Capitol Limited, Pennsylvanian. Hiawatha.

Moderators: I suggest this thread be re-titled "July 2014 Monthly Performance Report" for clarity.
 
It seems like Amtrak is doing their best to take "stating the obvious" to the point of high art. The other thing that strikes me here is that Amtrak seems stunned that there are people who would opt to take the Meteor or Star instead of a Regional.

At least speaking anecdotally, the Silvers have been close to sold out RVR-WAS lately. This doesn't entirely line up with the ridership numbers; however, I do have a hypothesis...

Outside of the aforementioned traffic, what metrics should I look for if ridership is being "lost" because of lower seat turnover (i.e. more through passengers crowding out short-distance traffic)? Obviously, a passenger going MIA-NYP only counts for one in the passenger count, while that same seat could easily host passengers MIA-ORL, ORL-RVR, and RVR-NYP (for three). At the same time, IIRC that through passenger will pay less than the other three would have combined. This combined with the sleeper ridership being basically unaffected suggests that this may, in fact, be at issue.
 
It seems like Amtrak is doing their best to take "stating the obvious" to the point of high art. The other thing that strikes me here is that Amtrak seems stunned that there are people who would opt to take the Meteor or Star instead of a Regional.

At least speaking anecdotally, the Silvers have been close to sold out RVR-WAS lately. This doesn't entirely line up with the ridership numbers; however, I do have a hypothesis...

Outside of the aforementioned traffic, what metrics should I look for if ridership is being "lost" because of lower seat turnover (i.e. more through passengers crowding out short-distance traffic)? Obviously, a passenger going MIA-NYP only counts for one in the passenger count, while that same seat could easily host passengers MIA-ORL, ORL-RVR, and RVR-NYP (for three). At the same time, IIRC that through passenger will pay less than the other three would have combined. This combined with the sleeper ridership being basically unaffected suggests that this may, in fact, be at issue.
This is hard to spot. If Amtrak had its through-traffic prices set so that MIA-NYP costs a similar amount to MIA-ORL + ORL-RVR + RVR-NYP, then you'd spot it because ridership would be down, but revenue would be constant and so would revenue per passenger mile. However, because Amtrak discounts end-to-end travel quite heavily, there is a fall in revenue per passenger mile when Amtrak gets more through passengers. You could spot it by looking at load factor but Amtrak doesn't report that.

If through passengers are crowding out more valuable short-distance passengers, this may induce Amtrak to adjust the pricing system (so that through passengers pay similar amounts to the sum of the short-distance passengers). I'm also not sure how you'd spot it if they do that!
 
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