Joe Boardman on C-Span

Joe Boardman was interviewed on CSPAN this morning. I'm on my crappy work computer so can't watch the interview; but here is a link:

http://www.c-span.org/video/?400752-4/washington-journal-amtrak-president-joseph-boardman

peter

Thanks for the heads up.

PerRock said:

Joe Boardman was interviewed on CSPAN this morning. I'm on my crappy work computer so can't watch the interview; but here is a link:

http://www.c-span.org/video/?400752-4/washington-journal-amtrak-president-joseph-boardman

peter

Click to expand...

When you get a chance, put Boardman in your thread hed. Joe could be Biden or Joe Blow. I almost passed over this.

Thanks much for posting the link.

Added Boardman to the thread title.

Just finished watching the whole thing. Everything comes down to money (capital). Lots of call in questions related why why why. The answer, no money, no money, no money.

Watched it (thanks for head's up). Didn't detect any passion for railroading from Joe. Also no attempt to state a justification for passenger RRs in the USA in the 21st cent. Just a bureaucrat stating facts and figures. We'd be the 5th largest airline. We'll carry 750,000 over Thanksgiving. We're working to improve access for disabled. I was not impressed by this performance. But I'm glad he did it.

Manny T said:

Watched it (thanks for head's up). Didn't detect any passion for railroading from Joe. ... Just a bureaucrat stating facts and figures. We'd be the 5th largest airline. ...

Click to expand...

Someone needs to point out that the fifth largest airline, with its hub for Long Distance trains in Chicago, can be and is a competitive force that helps hold down airfares.

I was surprised to hear Boardman say that the Auto Train is getting very close to making an operating surplus, but is not there yet. That seemed to back away from our favorite chart in one of Boardman's Congressional Committee presentations showing the Auto Train and the Palmetto above the line already, with other Eastern LD trains showing only modest losses.

WoodyinNYC said:

I was surprised to hear Boardman say that the Auto Train is getting very close to making an operating surplus, but is not there yet. That seemed to back away from our favorite chart in one of Boardman's Congressional Committee presentations showing the Auto Train and the Palmetto above the line already, with other Eastern LD trains showing only modest losses.

Click to expand...

The chart that Boardman showed was for direct costs. To make an operating surplus, the train has to cover its overhead costs which are considerable. Can't run a train service without rolling stock maintenance and overhauls, capital and debt service costs, support facilities & staff, national ticketing system, shared stations, marketing, management, human resources, security/police, etc. All of those are shared overhead categories and costs, without which the LD train does not run.

As of the August 2015 monthly report, the Autotrain was running at a net fully loaded operating surplus of $4.5 million for the first 11 months of FY2015. The Palmetto incurred a fully allocated loss of $11 million, but also the lowest loss per passenger mile among the LD trains other than the AT. A question to discuss is there a way to get the Palmetto close to breaking even in the next 5-6 years with the coming upgrades in Virginia & NC (reduced trip times, better reliability) and small bumps like a new station in Charleston?

Manny T said:

Watched it (thanks for head's up). Didn't detect any passion for railroading from Joe. Also no attempt to state a justification for passenger RRs in the USA in the 21st cent. Just a bureaucrat stating facts and figures. We'd be the 5th largest airline. We'll carry 750,000 over Thanksgiving. We're working to improve access for disabled. I was not impressed by this performance. But I'm glad he did it.

Click to expand...

I have not watched the Boardman interview yet, but this was on C-Span. Which is usually low key, very low key compared to the usual stuff on on the news cable channels. Not the place for passionate speeches and arguments. Think of the C-Span channels as the channels for the policy and government wonks, who may actually be interested in the numbers and factoids. Well, the small number that watch C-Span.

afigg said:

As of the August 2015 monthly report, the Autotrain was running at a net fully loaded operating surplus of $4.5 million for the first 11 months of FY2015. The Palmetto incurred a fully allocated loss of $11 million, but also the lowest loss per passenger mile among the LD trains other than the AT. A question to discuss is there a way to get the Palmetto close to breaking even in the next 5-6 years with the coming upgrades in Virginia & NC (reduced trip times, better reliability) and small bumps like a new station in Charleston?

Click to expand...

Reduction of total running time by even an hour or a bit more, and increase in timekeeing reliability potentially makes it possible to extend it to Jacksonville again adding significant city pairs. The added cost would be one additional set of T&E crew. If the added ridership covers that and then some, things could come out ahead.

It was interesting that he addressed a question re: return of the Sunset East by saying negotiations with the Mississippi government were ongoing. But of course no mention of Alabama or Florida, which really are some of the stumbling blocks to putting that train back in service.

AFAIK the only discussions Amtrak has had with Florida in the recent past was about offering to use the two Talgo sets to provide intra-Florida service. FDOT apparently turned it down, I suspect because it would not meet their 60% farebox recovery ratio. That was the reason they discontinued the intra-Florida Silver Palm many moons ago too.

Railroad Bill said:

It was interesting that he addressed a question re: return of the Sunset East by saying negotiations with the Mississippi government were ongoing. But of course no mention of Alabama or Florida ....

Click to expand...

Yes, he credited the Repub governor of Miss by name as being interested.

There's a strong corridor candidate for a Gulf Coast Shuttle, with New Orleans-Bay St Louis-Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula-Mobile stops again. The casinos, concentrated in Biloxi, would love to draw riders from Mobile and Naw'lins metros. Both Mobile and Naw'lins have cruise departures. It's just 125 miles of track, so even one train could give several daily frequencies; two sets would be like transit. LOL.

If Alabama and Louisiana would do their share, even 1/4th each, it would not be very costly to Mississippi. Well, Alabama is Alabama, where George Wallace is remembered as a progressive guy. But the governor-elect of Louisiana might try to support it. If Louisiana ain't careful, they could lose the role as a mini-hub, and mini-maintenance center, and even lose a train -- like a Crescent truncated at ATL or Birmingham. Or the system could grow, with a new train Naw'lins-Baton-Rouge-Shreveport-Dallas metro, in addition to the Gulf Coast Shuttle to Mobile.

Pushing all the way thru Mobile-Pensacola-Tallahassee-Jacksonville, that's a whole 'nuther set of problems. Un-signaled territory that with pax trains would need costly upgrades. Show freight tracks. Low population density beyond Mobile, but with lots of service membesr in Pensacola, and students and official business in the state capital. And pushing thru the City of New Orleans or the Sunset Shuttle from San Antonio would mean overnight runs, and why even bother with that?

WoodyinNYC said:

I was surprised to hear Boardman say that the Auto Train is getting very close to making an operating surplus, but is not there yet. That seemed to back away from our favorite chart in one of Boardman's Congressional Committee presentations showing the Auto Train and the Palmetto above the line already, with other Eastern LD trains showing only modest losses.

Click to expand...

All depends on how much overhead you allocate to the train. Boardman is probably referring to "fully allocated" nonsense mandated by Congress.

Based on direct costs, in FY 2015 the following trains are probably ahead (i.e. it would worsen Amtrak's losses to cancel them):

Auto Train $37.5

Meteor $15.9

Palmetto $7.5

Star $6.4

LSL $3.8

Empire Builder $0.8

The Cardinal would be on the list if it were daily.

I'm using naive extrapolation for September and assuming 2014 levels of overhead and 2012 allocation ratios of overhead, so there are probably some errors. The CZ, SWC, and SL are in the vicinity of $16 - $18 million in losses based on direct costs; the next worst is the CS at only ~9 million, so you can see that there's some pretty serious differences here.

Most of the costs are in overhead, so if Amtrak really wants to control costs, that's where Amtrak has to look. Completing the massive IT project from hell (replacing ARROW) is the only thing which I see in the next few years which could reduce ongoing overhead significantly.

neroden said:

WoodyinNYC said:

I was surprised to hear Boardman say that the Auto Train is getting very close to making an operating surplus, but is not there yet. That seemed to back away from our favorite chart in one of Boardman's Congressional Committee presentations showing the Auto Train and the Palmetto above the line already, with other Eastern LD trains showing only modest losses.

Click to expand...

All depends on how much overhead you allocate to the train. Boardman is probably referring to "fully allocated" nonsense mandated by Congress.

Based on direct costs, in FY 2015 the following trains are probably ahead (i.e. it would worsen Amtrak's losses to cancel them):

Completing the massive IT project from hell (replacing ARROW) is the only thing which I see in the next few years which could reduce ongoing overhead significantly.

Click to expand...

The cure for what ails Amtrak is more Amtrak.

If Amtrak had 2 times the rail miles as now, much of the overhead would increase by less than 2 times.

Take the yearly interest and debt amortization as the simple one. If Amtrak pays $100 million in interest and principle reduction, it is divided by, wild guess from memory, 17,500 rail miles. If we add two new runs of the Cascades, a Coast Daylight round trip, a daily Eagle/Sunset and daily Cardinal, another frequency on the Lincoln service, bust thru South of the Lake and get 4 or 5 more short runs to Michigan, etc.

Then we could divide that $100 million by, say wild guess, 20,000 rail miles instead of 17,500. In that case the debt service per train mile would decline from $5,714 to $5,000 even.

I've been massaging this notion in my fading mind, even hoping to work up estimates of how much total train miles will increase from the Stimulus expansions (not enuff to matter, alas) and which routes would make more of a difference, daily Cardinal and Eagle-Sunset.

I have NOT done any such calculations. The preceding figures are rough for showing the concept. I put them here, perhaps prematurely, because if we're talking allocated overhead, here's a simple part of it to understand. And to emphasize my claim that the cure to what ails Amtrak is more Amtrak. Lots more.

100% agreement with Woody here.

On the cost side I think the big improvement will come from getting rid of ARROW. ARROW's a non-modular hairball of ancient assembly language. There's really no way to do it other than to separate and rewrite one module at a time; I've done that sort of work and it's slow and tedious. It's expensive but it can't be accelerated by adding more programmers, because it's non-parallelizable. So it may be quite a few years before it's done. Once it's done, IT maintenance should settle into a more normal price range. This is basically a heritage cost like the cost of maintaining Heritage railcars.

afigg said:

As of the August 2015 monthly report, the Autotrain was running at a net fully loaded operating surplus of $4.5 million for the first 11 months of FY2015. The Palmetto incurred a fully allocated loss of $11 million, but also the lowest loss per passenger mile among the LD trains other than the AT. A question to discuss is there a way to get the Palmetto close to breaking even in the next 5-6 years with the coming upgrades in Virginia & NC (reduced trip times, better reliability) and small bumps like a new station in Charleston?

Click to expand...

Reduce the legroom and add more seats.

WoodyinNYC said:

neroden said:

WoodyinNYC said:

I was surprised to hear Boardman say that the Auto Train is getting very close to making an operating surplus, but is not there yet. ...

Click to expand...

All depends on how much overhead you allocate to the train. ... referring to "fully allocated" nonsense mandated by Congress.

...

Click to expand...

The cure for what ails Amtrak is more Amtrak.

...
... overall, sharing the largely fixed costs of Amtrak's overhead should cut the costs per train mile in the national system and substantially reduce the losses per train...

So we need a lot more train miles to fix Amtrak.

Click to expand...

Edit: I've removed the guts of this post. I'd put calculations here, "perhaps prematurely".

I'm completely confident that the arithmetic principle applies in this case, that growing a larger denominator (total train miles) under an unchanged numerator (fixed overhead) will yield lower per unit results, and that's good.

However, I do need to rework the garbled numbers in my example to make a stronger argument. Need a little time, but I'll soon return to this very important topic.