Lake Shore Limited segment appears very expensive?

14 September 2016 from Syracuse NY to Chicago Union Station. 13 hours travel time and breakfast the only meal. Roomette is $451 for two Seniors. Is this normal for the LSL as it doesn't feel like value for money compared with other Amtrak train trips we have taken and are about to book if you compare price against riding time.

Don't get me wrong, riding the Amtrak system is up there with anything I've done before and I have always felt it's great value for money compared with other countries, but this one journey feels at odds value wise with others, have I got that wrong?

Believe it or not, that's middle of the road pricing. It's a quite popular train, so supply and demand is hard at work.

If I sell a sleeper space from Syracuse to Chicago, I can't sell it from the greater distances, because most of the demand for sleeper space will be by passengers traveling the overnight portion of the route. Seats will turn over with passengers to/from stops alonfg the route, but most people who want sleepers will use them for the late or overnight.

Yes I saw in the same mid-week that there were higher and lower and I do get supply and demand, but as the paying customer I also have a choice and Amtrak have to take that into consideration too.

The price of our rail journey from SYR to EMY has increased over the last 6 weeks or so by $331 and most of that is due to the LSL increase. As it's such a short journey I would guess it's cheaper to rent a car one way, and horror of horrors take an overnight Greyhound for $148.

I like driving quite a lot and always take at least one LD Greyhound journey on every US trip we make, yes we really do enjoy riding Greyhound too. Amtrak still comes out on top for us but it's pretty close to a Greyhound so at $303 extra for a bed and breakfast it's making us waver.

ps: I'm a dummy as didn't look at coach prices. At the current increased rates (over 6 weeks ago prices) 2 in Coach is $136 so that will do it. We have 3 LD Greyhound sections further down the line and that will suffice for our Fall adventure.

Still have to write that we would usually always take a roomette so even though Amtrak will/should get our money for that section it will lose out on over $300.

It almost certainly won't lose out on over $300.

Either someone else will pay it, or as PVD mentioned, they'll get even more money when someone purchases the room for a longer trip.

Excellent idea to go Coach on the Lake Shore vv.

There's a possibility that Biz Class will be added to this route since Amtrak is currently trying out BC on LD Routes. ( ie Auto Train,Cardinal,Starlight).

Whether or not this will be worth the Upgrade charge remains to be seen, but it may be worth looking into if it happens before your trip??

Likewise, I enjoy the Greyhound or Amtrak bus from time, don't think I could cope with an overnight on a bus though.

The LSL has always been expensive in sleepers/roomettes. I was going to suggest you look at the Capitol Ltd, going via WAS, but not sure about the connections from Syracuse?

Ed.

I'm sure you are right Ryan, if it's such a popular route there will always be another customer down the road. The real point of the thread wasn't how we spend our money rather the possible price difference per hour riding compared with other popular routes, CZ and SWC for example.

As you write it's a very popular route and as PVD mentions it's the most expensive part of the journey so I will accept that. Guess I'm peeved that we missed out on not booking a little earlier although we couldn't as there is a 3rd person involved and at that point we didn't know the score with them. I'll hold on a little longer as sometimes prices go down as well as up,

The fact that Amtrak can offer coach means they cover all options, and being very popular coupled to 'supply and demand' answers the original question.

Thanks for the suggestion Bob, but we rejected Business Class last year on 2 LD routes as it didn't feel as though it would work for us. The 3 sleeper and 2 coach journeys we took were spot on with one sleeper and one coach being the best of the five, both due to other passengers we met.

Ed, we are staying on a friend's farm near Syracuse so it's our start point for San Francisco, from opinions gleaned on this forum we would have preferred to take the Cardinal from New York but meeting up with a friend won hands down so no other rail options.

We used a Greyhound last year on a 30 hour journey with a bus change about in the middle. First night can't say either of us has slept better on a bus, fully refreshed and a full night's sleep. Second night was horrible, neither of us could get more than a half an hour at a time and it appeared to be the same bus model, no idea why, we just couldn't believe the difference. We had the Silver Meteor with roomette the following night and couldn't wait.

Think you have to try one out and make up your own mind, overnight buses have a different character to day buses.

Thanks for the comments

Very often, the Cap Limited, connecting either in WAS or PGH offers a lower priced alternative to Chicago, but that is just not a realistic option from Syracuse.

true...we're taking LSL NYP-CHI and it was pricier than I expected it to be, but the sleepers are now nearly sold out

Love to see that train pick up an additional sleeper when/if they become available, or at least maybe a bag/dorm so some additional rooms become available.

The LSL goes between New York City and Chicago (the 2 largest cities in the US), so that is part of the reason that demand and the price is so high. Also, if they sell a room from Syracuse to Chicago to you, they can not sell that same room to someone else from New York City to Chicago (or Toledo or Cleveland). And it's very likely that room will not be sold from New York City to Syracuse or Utica - a 6-7 hour evening trip.

Here are other ways to think of the LSL portion of your trip:

• Your trip is 7 months distant, and a lot can happen in that time - especially with Amtrak fares! At present, the Roomette buckets shown on Ryan's AmSnag printout are $444, $382, $315, and $258. That's 4 buckets shown. But there are a total of 5 buckets and the missing one is $191.

• You initially looked at the middle bucket of $315 and there is absolutely no reason to believe it will stay the same during the next seven months. Matter of fact I'd be willing to bet a tidy sum it will change (up or down) about 10 to 20 times between now and the 14th.

Here's my suggestion:

• Book now at the $315 Roomette fare - just to reserve it

• Check the fare every day. When it increases simply do nothing and keep checking

• When it inevitably decreases to the next lowest bucket of $258, call an Amtrak agent and have the fare modified to that lower fare and then. . .

• Continue checking on a daily basis, ignoring any fare increases from $258 but . . .

• When the fare most likely falls to $191 call Amtrak again and have the fare modified to that lower (lowest) rate

And here's an example of why you should check the fares daily when looking for a decrease. . .



. . . because they can and do change, often on a daily basis, often skipping a bucket. I've heard fare changes are posted once daily at about 0200hrs PST or 1000hrs GMT

But I've no idea why there are different prices on the same day for this Western portion of the LSL route. it's the same equipment, I think. It seems #449 can be higher than, the same as or lower than #49 and on about 1/3 of the days for each. Maybe somebody else can shed some light on that mystery.

Thank you niemi24s, it does appear a black art predicting Amtrak's pricing policy. We have decided to wait another 5 or 6 weeks to see if we can catch a lower roomette price, but if not we are quite happy to take coach that will get us back to within $20 of our budget for the entire journey. We are not looking for the lowest price but also don't intend to pay the highest either.

Lots of good reasons mentioned here as to why it's more expensive than other Amtrak rail journeys and happy to accept that. But as we are quite flexible re our travel arrangements we are pretty relaxed that we can stay within budget one way or another and however we travel it's always going to be interesting.

BTW, I have checked on a daily basis but the only direction so far is up.

v v said:

BTW, I have checked on a daily basis but the only direction so far is up.

Click to expand...

It can only increase two buckets. But keep checking. It might go from high to low bucket from one day to the next. Or it might stay the same for a week or more. It's totally unpredictable. And one check per day is sufficient because, as I've heard, changes are made only once a day. If your travel date is fixed at 14 Sep 2016, there's no real advantage to using AmSnag - the Amtrak website will suffice because you're only interested in that one date. How it changes from one day to the next can only be seen by waiting until the next day.

Let us know when it gets down to $191 for a Roomette. If it never does - as I said, it's totally unpredictable! :blink:

The numbers I am quoting are for 2 x senior for a roomette from SYR to CHI for the 14 September 2016. This morning it's at $451 for two people and at $383 for one person, it's been at this price for about 2 or 3 weeks checking every day. I don't see where you get $315 from in your post above, should I be checking in a different method outside the main online site?

I also check the whole journey from SYR to EMY starting on the 14 Sep and the journey from CHI to SFC on the 15 Sep, it's these last two that highlighted the cost of the short SYR to CHI section.

We tend to decide on visiting a few places or people into our travels and then work at fitting it all in, sometimes everything comes together really well and it flows beautifully, sometimes as this one with many other modifications not connected with Amtrak already made it doesn't, but that's the pleasure in being an armchair traveller until the real thing can happen. We now have a fixed arrival and departure in the US, we will visit our friend in Syracuse, we will travel on the Empire Builder and the Coast Starlight, we will travel on a bus from Reno to Las Vegas through the deserts, and we must be in OKC by the 23 September. All this has to be done within our budget which give or take is working ok. The following 3 weeks are not planned at all only vague ideas, with one or two exceptions we only have to think of getting get back to NYC by the 16 October.

Do appreciate your help it's tremendous.

$315 is the up barge for the room. Adding one or two people includes the base rail fare (~$68/ person if I'm doing the math right in my head at 0400).

1 person: 315+68=383

2 people: 315+68+68=451

(I think that's right)

Thanks Ryan, got it now and it all adds up. Best get some sleep though...

With luck, I'll sleep on the plane ride home.

I might have missed it if someone else mentioned this, but Fare Watch could be useful to V V (if you don't know about it already.) Simply go to the AmSnag website, click on "Fare watch" and make an account so they can send you e-mails whenever there is a drop in price on the segment you want.

Easier than checking prices every day (although it seems like I always get fare watch e-mails at 3 am, and by time I check my phone when I get up at 5 it's already been snagged. Just my luck!)

v v said:

The numbers I am quoting are for 2 x senior for a roomette from SYR to CHI for the 14 September 2016. This morning it's at $451 for two people and at $383 for one person, it's been at this price for about 2 or 3 weeks checking every day.

Click to expand...

My apologies for misleading you with the little chart back in Post #14 about how frequently fares change. I often confuse changes for the same travel date with the changes seen on consecutive days as on Ryan's AmSnag posting. Amsnag is a one time look at fares over a period of up to 30 days. But what you're doing is sort of the opposite - looking at the fare for one fixed date over a long period of time. I've only done and recorded that once. It was for a Bedroom on the Empire Builder over almost all of its route. Daily fares were recorded on 7 occasions during the 41 day period leading up to the months of March, April and May of 2015 - a 92 day period.

• Of those 92 dates studied, no change was seen for 27 dates (but undetected changes could have occurred in between the periodic fare checks) so the fares changed (one or more times) on 65 or 71% of those 92 dates.

With 7 fare checks done for that 92 day period, there were thus 6 opportunities to detect fare changes for each day of that 92 day period, or 6 X 92 = 552 opportunities for detecting a fare change.

• Of those 552 opportunities for change, 101 individual changes were noted for an 18% chance of change of any kind.

• Of those 101 changes, 51 were individual increases for a 56% chance of a change being an increase.

• Of those 101 changes, 44 were individual decreases for a 44% chance of a change being a decrease.

• The most active date for changes saw 5 changes of the 6 opportunities for a change.

In summary, fare changes for a single specific date probably don't occur nearly as often as I'd implied previously. Your Roomette fare may stay unchanged at $315 until 14 September. But it might drop to $191 tomorrow - or on 13 September. Totally unpredictable!

P.S.: Didn't know about AmSnag when collecting all those fares a year ago. Using the Amtrak website took over two hours to get and record each of the seven series of 92 to 134 daily fares.

The LSL is ultra-popular.

For those fond of fiddling with numbers, here's a refined form of the raw data that's the source for all the figures in Posts #22:

If only there were some way of electronically transmitting tabular data so that one could do something useful with it!