Aaron
Lead Service Attendant
Of course this starts out as "I heard from someone who heard from someone that...", so don't get too excited just yet. However, Jim Loomis writes on his blog that he had a conversation with an Amtrak higher up regarding the Sunset Limited. Among other things, the Amtrak dude said the SL East study was "serious" (whatever that means). The bigger news is that the Amtrak person said the Sunset would go daily at the end of next year.
This is only slightly different from the usual "I heard from someone on the train who said..." stories. But Jim Loomis as a long time train writer and NARP board member should be at least slightly more reliable than the average internet poster. There's no telling about the reliability of his source, though, and whether that person is truly in the know or only repeating what they've heard idly discussed.
I think the Sunset going daily eventually is a foregone conclusion (unless it gets cut entirely), but I'm excited to see that it might happen relatively soon. I think it's very possible that this might be coming at least within the next few years based on what we know, or at least think we know.
Here's what we "know":
With regards to equipment, the PIP plan to consolidate the Sunset and the Texas Eagle into a daily Chicago-LA "Texas Sunset Eagle LImited" actually used fewer cars overall than what they were using at the time, although I don't know how it compares to utilization on the current schedule.
With regards to Congress, an almost assure guarantee in increase of the subsidy is tough to sell, and you have to rely on them seeing the business case for daily service and the eventual increase in revenue. That's hard. That's where I think the plan of combining the Sunset and the Eagle works, because they can give the train a new name and tell the congress-critters "Look, we're getting rid of those old money losers the Sunset Limited and the Texas Eagle. Of course, we'll provide some replacement service for some of those affected with this replacement train, the Desert Prairie Frontier Scirocco" (or whatever). I'm not quite naïve enough to assume Congress would fall for that, but I wonder sometimes...
This is only slightly different from the usual "I heard from someone on the train who said..." stories. But Jim Loomis as a long time train writer and NARP board member should be at least slightly more reliable than the average internet poster. There's no telling about the reliability of his source, though, and whether that person is truly in the know or only repeating what they've heard idly discussed.
I think the Sunset going daily eventually is a foregone conclusion (unless it gets cut entirely), but I'm excited to see that it might happen relatively soon. I think it's very possible that this might be coming at least within the next few years based on what we know, or at least think we know.
Here's what we "know":
- Amtrak and UP negotiated for a daily Sunset before, and supposedly had a intention to go daily in 2010, but one of the parties (reported to be Amtrak) somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by screwing up an almost done deal at the last minute.
- UP asked for a ton of money (reported to be $750 million) for improvements to be able to accommodate a daily Sunset. This is widely reported to have been exaggerated high as UP's way of shutting down those previous negotiations after they fell apart.
- UP was so peeved by Amtrak in those last negotiations that when they last changed the scheduling of the Sunset in 2012, they made Amtrak promise to not even ask about a daily Sunset for two years as a condition of making that schedule change.
- UP has in the last few years almost finished double-tracking the Sunset route between Los Angeles and El Paso with their own money, greatly adding to the capacity of this line.
- A daily Sunset would initially increase the financial loss of this train in absolute total dollar amounts, but would likely decrease the loss per passenger mile. With time and more ridership increase, it's probable that the total loss could be a net decrease as well.
- Amtrak's rolling stock is pretty much all in use, with not a lot of extra equipment anywhere.
- Amtrak is continually under attack from some of the purse-string-holders in Congress, some of whom have targeted the Sunset specifically.
With regards to equipment, the PIP plan to consolidate the Sunset and the Texas Eagle into a daily Chicago-LA "Texas Sunset Eagle LImited" actually used fewer cars overall than what they were using at the time, although I don't know how it compares to utilization on the current schedule.
With regards to Congress, an almost assure guarantee in increase of the subsidy is tough to sell, and you have to rely on them seeing the business case for daily service and the eventual increase in revenue. That's hard. That's where I think the plan of combining the Sunset and the Eagle works, because they can give the train a new name and tell the congress-critters "Look, we're getting rid of those old money losers the Sunset Limited and the Texas Eagle. Of course, we'll provide some replacement service for some of those affected with this replacement train, the Desert Prairie Frontier Scirocco" (or whatever). I'm not quite naïve enough to assume Congress would fall for that, but I wonder sometimes...
