Amfleet I Replacement

[WoodyinNYC]

...

By the way, on the baggage/bag-dorm front? I got a look inside the baggage car of the Meteor a few weeks back while the train was at a stop since I was in the 9712 sleeper and the bag was next door...no, I did not go inside...and let's just say that I can see why Amtrak backed away from getting bag-dorms alone for many trains.

This is good, right? Passengers with more bags are happy passengers. I'll bet there are many sleeper riders who take the train because their cars' trunks are too small for all their stuff. LOL.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

How many Horizon single levels will be freed up when the state financed cars arrive? I realize that most board posters don't love them, but if refurbed, they could be useful, and getting them (full time) out of the really bad winters would take away one of their big sticking points. Like them or not, they are somewhat newer than the A2s, and considerably newer than earlier A1s, so are likely to be around for a while.

With additional Viewliner sleepers available, could you convert CONO and go daily Card, or would diners come up short? Same question for CL and a possible interchange with Penn?

It's about 95 Horizon single-level cars. Rebuilding them for longer routes would entail, iiuc, adding a toilet to each one, as well as re-spacing the seats for more leg room. Of course, they'd all get new LED lighting and up-to-date HVAC, new carpets and upholstery. They could get work done underneath to reduce their difficulty dealing with snow, cold, and ice. Even with all the reworking, they'd still be lower cost equipment than brand new cars from Siemens or CAF, so I expect they'll be used.

Also, politically, I don't see how Amtrak could send 95 Horizons to the scrap yard, turn around, and ask Congress to buy hundreds of brand new cars. Anyway, until new cars arrive in substantial numbers, Amtrak will need the Horizons' capacity, somehow, somewhere.

One obvious possibility is the Sunset Shuttle San Antonio-New Orleans, if/when the Texas Eagle runs thru to L.A. daily. That's not a lot of cars needed, maybe 10. Otherwise, I'd think anything on the East Coast south of NYC is a potential user. Yeah, I know New Jersey has snow, but nothing like the brutal winters of the Midwest, and the busy NEC is generally kept clear of snow and ice.

Amtrak needs to order more diners and sleepers while CAF is still building them. Then promise to switch the Capitol Ltd and the City of New Orleans both to single-level operation if/when Congress allows a large order for new single-level equipment. (Amtrak might have to use rehabbed Horizons to fill the consists until the new cars arrive.). Of course, when the new single-level cars arrive, send the liberated bi-level equipment (nicely rehabbed, of course) to the Western trains. The daily Eagle/Sunset Ltd will take another consist or two. Then add another sleeper to almost every Western train consists.

As Anderson explained, orders for both hundreds of single levels and hundreds of bi-levels is just too much at once. But concentrating on the Eastern fleet is the priority.

I'm thinking that the, how am I supposed to say this?, operating surplus/loss before allocated overhead, of the Eastern LD trains probably combined is not a large number. A daily Cardinal might reduce any loss. But the big reduction comes from having more sleepers. iirc Neroden calculated that $1 million, and possibly $2 million, would go to the bottom line for each and every Viewliner sleeper! So 25 sleepers plus half of the 10 bag dorms = 30 more sleepers, adding $30 million or possibly $60 million to the, er, operating surplus/loss before allocated overhead, figure, should make the combined total positive. That would put Amtrak in a good position to ask Congress for hundreds of new single-level coaches etc.

 

[Anderson]

Amtrak should jump on more equipment, agreed, but FWIW the option with CAF expired a while back. I've actually got a fun story on that front (again, it's one of those "over a drink" stories).

FWIW, I think the $1m figure is probably closer to the truth (this is about in line with the numbers a group I worked with on the aforementioned project...I think we came up with a tentative figure of $750-800k, but that was assuming a relatively short-distance route) on a per-car basis...but remember that on the Meteor, for example, you multiply that by 4x to get the impact of "adding a car" to a train.

Edit: Ok, I've got a slightly "off" estimate there. It was $650k-$1m for a two-car service (albeit with a "spare" assumed as a part of the startup cost), net of operating costs, on a relatively short route depending on various load factor assumptions. The numbers would shake out differently for a longer service.

 

[keelhauled]

Amtrak should jump on more equipment, agreed, but FWIW the option with CAF expired a while back. I've actually got a fun story on that front (again, it's one of those "over a drink" stories).

C'mon, you can't just say these things and not go into detail, it's just not fair...

 

[WoodyinNYC]

...

As to the Tennessee stuff, TN has generally had a desire for train service...but even if VA gets service down to Bristol (or even Knoxville), riders from TN would basically be looking at an all-day/all-night trip to get to DC. ...

O.K., I'm in this deep, I might as well keep slogging.

"If VA gets service down to Bristol (or even Knoxville), riders from TN would basically be looking at an all-day/all-night trip to get to" Florida I say. Let's not look in only one direction.

If VA gets service down to Bristol, the political pressure from Knoxville will be intense, with support from Chattanooga as well. These are the third and fourth largest cities in the state, not nothing in political clout. And Knoxville-Chattanooga could almost stand on its own as a short corridor, three or four trains going back and forth. Then Atlanta would seem inevitable. Well, we'd have to study the cost figures, but this whole plan sort of assumes another Stimulus-type Billions-fall-from-the-sky event. LOL.

But of course, such a train could stop in Atlanta only by adding costly facilities. If Amtrak gets in on it, and all-night trips scream "sleepers", than the current rules require that LD trains link two of certain named cities, NOT including Atlanta, the Appalachian train (and any Kentucky Colonel train) would have to continue to Miami, Sanford, or New Orleans, where Amtrak could service the cars.

Seems this southern extension would be as strong or stronger a route than Knoxville-Lynchburg-D.C..

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Amtrak should jump on more equipment, agreed, but FWIW the option with CAF expired a while back. I've actually got a fun story on that front (again, it's one of those "over a drink" stories).

I'm not surprised to think that the option date expired.

But I also think that CAF has every reason to bid as low as possible to get any additional order, to keep their line running. If they dream of bidding for some or all of the single-level fleet replacement, they'll be in a much stronger position if their plant is still busy, or only recently shut down. Besides, it would be very face-saving for them to get to extend the Viewliner run after the embarrassing delays. I'm sure material and parts costs have gone up, but I still think more cars from CAF would be a bargain.

 

[neroden]

Given all the extensive delays and problems with the CAF order, I don't see any great rationale for buying Viewliner coaches rather than simply tacking onto Siemen's intercity coach production line that's being opened up for All Aboard Florida. Best of all, they'll have worked out all the bugs for Amtrak ahead of time.

Amtrak owns the Viewliner design, and does not own whatever random design AAF is using. Amtrak does not want to multiply the number of different designs which Amtrak is maintaining. The Viewliner design is modular. The Viewliner design maximizes space usage through the Hudson Tunnels; AAF's design probably does not.

I'm sure there will be multiple bids, but I would expect Amtrak to explicitly demand Viewliner production, rather than some random design. If Siemens (or Bombardier, or Kawasaki, or whoever) can produce 'em cheaper and faster than CAF, great.

Remember, many different companies produced PCC streetcars.

 

[neroden]

My understanding/recollection is that there were two issues with the CAF order. One was that CAF had fairly little plumbing experience, leading to delays on the sleepers and bag-dorms (the diners were more or less unaffected). The other was that Amtrak hit them with a bunch of change orders mid-process (probably down to Amtrak having not placed a new sleeper order in close to 20 years).

Haven't heard either of these stories before.
What we do have hard evidence for, from multiple sources (I can think of four off the top of my head, two of which are in writing), is that CAF had very serious trouble hiring competent stainless steel welders in upstate New York. (It's a very specialized skill.) This was the cause of the 'stop work' order. I think CAF ended up having to raise the pay rate to attract suitable welders, IIRC. The most recent report to the Inspector General mentions the introduction of specific procedures for checking weld quality!

This seems to be the major cause of delay to the order, accounting for at least a year's delay.

This would be a problem for any company which attempted to set up an essentially-new factory in a city which didn't have one.

 

[neroden]

I'm thinking that the, how am I supposed to say this?, operating surplus/loss before allocated overhead, of the Eastern LD trains probably combined is not a large number.

East of the Mississippi (including CONO) without the Auto Train, 2014 total surplus-before-overhead approximately $9.1 million. With the Auto Train, surplus approximately $51.5 million. The Crescent has the largest individual loss among these trains, at $7.3 million, followed by the CONO; more riders out of New Orleans would be a big deal.
This estimation procedure required using Amtrak's last released data for direct-cost losses (the famous bar chart), retro-computing the overhead for that year by comparing to the official fully-allocated numbers, and assuming that the overhead is still allocated to trains in the same percentages it was at that time. (We have updated numbers for total LD overhead -- which has gone up -- but not for per-train overhead.)

A daily Cardinal might reduce any loss.

By a *lot*. In 2014 the Cardinal's loss-before-overhead was about $2.8 million. My conservative projection, based on multiplying revenues by 7/3 and direct costs by 1.5, says that a daily Cardinal would have a surplus-before-overhead of $2.3 million. That's a difference of $5.1 million per year. Which is enough to justify quite a large capital expenditure to make it happen; short payback period. More importantly, it's a shift from the loss side to the surplus side (before overhead).

But the big reduction comes from having more sleepers. iirc Neroden calculated that $1 million, and possibly $2 million, would go to the bottom line for each and every Viewliner sleeper!

Yeah, I've run that three or four ways and I don't always get the same numbers each time. It partly depends on train allocation, since some trains are running much higher ticket prices than others.
We have a specific test case in the Cardinal, which gained about $320,000 in sleeper revenue during 2014 by running an additional sleeper for only the last three months of the fiscal year. Annualize to get $1,280,000, multiply by 7/3 to get $2,986,666.

Operating costs for a sleeper, I worked out, were somewhere in the neighborhood of $525K for the LSL. ( Reference: http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/45804-viewliner-ii-production-status-photos/page-57&do=findComment&comment=569288) Of this, about $300K in maintenance/fuel; and about $225K in wages-and-benefits.

It depends heavily on how many hours the train runs, unfortunately -- cutting runtime by an hour saves $6800/year. The Cardinal runs 26.5 hours (call it 28 with delays) rather than the LSL's 21 with delays, so raise the wage-and-benefit estimate to $300K.

If the two sleepers on the Cardinal can be handled by one attendant (because one of the sleepers is half-full of staff), then there are no added staffing costs, so multiply by 3 to get a cost of $900K. If an attendant is needed, it's $1.8 million.

This gives a profit of anywhere from $1.2 million to $2 million for adding a second sleeper to an already-daily Cardinal -- $2 million if no additional attendant is needed, $1.2 million if the attendant is needed. Even if this is optimistic, it'll still be over $1 million in incremental profit.

Significant. At $2 million the car pays for itself in 2 years. At $1.2 million it pays for itself in 3 years.

A daily Cardinal is probably more significant, however, due to the shift from the loss-before-overhead side to the profit-before-overhead side of the register. Even if it required $150 million in improvements, that would be a payback period of less than 10 years. The payback would be quicker with more cars added to the train, of course, or with a faster schedule.

So 25 sleepers plus half of the 10 bag dorms = 30 more sleepers, adding $30 million or possibly $60 million to the, er, operating surplus/loss before allocated overhead, figure, should make the combined total positive. That would put Amtrak in a good position to ask Congress for hundreds of new single-level coaches etc.

The problem is that a hell of a lot of overhead is assigned to these trains. $195.3 million to the single-level "LD" trains combined, $256.1 million to all the East-of-Mississippi trains including the Auto Train combined. Adding $30 million to the surplus before overhead is great, but if Congress is still looking at the phoney "fully-allocated" numbers, they'll still see phoney "losses".

 

[WoodyinNYC]

I'm thinking that the ... operating surplus/loss before allocated overhead, of the Eastern LD trains combined is probably not a large number.

East of the Mississippi (including CONO) without the Auto Train, 2014 total surplus-before-overhead approximately $9.1 million. With the Auto Train, surplus approximately $51.5 million.

The Crescent has the largest individual loss among these trains, at $7.3 million, followed by the CONO … more riders out of New Orleans would be a big deal.

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WoodyinNYC

We have hints that maybe Amtrak wants to get more riders Memphis-Chicago to help the CONO.

Beyond that, network effects. A daily Sunset Shuttle bringing more passengers from Lafayette, Beaumont, especially Houston, some from San Antonio, and even a few more coach passengers from L.A. and Arizona enticed by a daily Eagle/Sunset could be helping the Crescent, and the CONO, too, within a few years. That would be especially strong if the states would add frequencies San Antonio-New Orleans, or flying pigs. Corridor service Mobile-Biloxi-New Orleans could help too, or flying pigs. Baton Rouge-New Orleans could help the Crescent down the line, or flying pigs. And I'm the lonely guy who thinks that in 15 or 20 years we could see a train from Virginia (and/or Louisville) come down thru Knoxville and Chattanooga to Atlanta and exchange added riders with the Crescent.

OTOH, while I'm amazed to see how the population has rebounded in New Orleans, I don't see much growth ahead in the Crescent City, or in Birmingham (or Anniston or Meridian or Hattiesburg).

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A daily Cardinal might reduce any loss.

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Neroden

By a *lot*. In 2014 the Cardinal's loss-before-overhead was about $2.8 million. My conservative projection, based on multiplying revenues by 7/3 and direct costs by 1.5, says that a daily Cardinal would have a surplus-before-overhead of $2.3 million. That's a difference of $5.1 million per year. Which is enough to justify quite a large capital expenditure to make it happen; short payback period. ...

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WoodyinNYC

That would really help to justify ordering a lot of single-level cars. But I hate to think how much investment the freights would demand.

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But the big reduction comes from having more sleepers. iirc Neroden calculated that $1 million, and possibly $2 million, would go to the bottom line for each and every Viewliner sleeper!

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Neroden

Yeah, … [it] ... depends ...

Operating costs for a sleeper … depends heavily on how many hours the train runs, unfortunately -- cutting runtime by an hour saves $6800/year. ...

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WoodyinNYC

I know NOTHING here.

Is the crew paid on an hourly basis, and/or does overtime kick in on the last day of the run, or what?

Likewise, the equipment charges. On each train's run, is the equipment use accounted for per day? Or per hour?

So, the Vermonter cut 30 minutes from its run time in 12/2014 iirc. Another 30 minutes out is due later this year, again iirc. And another 30 minutes when the full upgrades New Haven-Hartford-Springfield come on line. So taking 90 minutes out of the costs of the Vermonter -- no sleepers but overall -- should save a nice amount, but I can't even guess it. LOL.

In another example, the State of Indiana recently commissioned a study of the Hoosier State corridor train. Adding a couple of long sidings and assorted other upgrades could save 35 minutes out of the *within-Indiana* portion of the route for merely $200 million. (Another 20 or 30 minutes could come out of the Chicagoland stretch, but that was beyond the scope of the study, and only alluded to.) No mention of any benefit to Amtrak or the Cardinal from time savings, or even from higher ridership, LOL. Operating savings looks like it wouldn't be much, but more than nothing. Of course, added revenue from more Cardinal riders (and even higher ticket prices from an earlier arrival in Union Station/earlier return into Indianapolis) would be much more. That higher revenue could help justify the lousy $200 million investment needed here. A shame it wasn't mentioned in the study.

http://www.in.gov/indot/files/Amtrak_CostBenefitAnalysis_2013.pdf

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WoodyinNYC

So 25 sleepers plus half of the 10 bag dorms = 30 more sleepers, adding $30 million or possibly $60 million to the … operating surplus/loss before allocated overhead, figure, should make the combined total positive. That would put Amtrak in a good position to ask Congress for hundreds of new single-level coaches etc.

Neroden

The problem is that a hell of a lot of overhead is assigned to these trains. $195.3 million to the single-level "LD" trains combined ... Adding $30 million to the surplus before overhead is great, but if Congress is still looking at the phoney "fully-allocated" numbers, they'll still see phoney "losses".

WoodyinNYC

If we're talking about ordering more single-level cars, let's keep the Auto Train out of it. I'd include the Capitol Limited and the City of New Orleans results if the proposal would be to convert them to single-level cars and distribute the liberated bi-level equipment to lengthen the Western trains.

On the allocated overhead problem. Seems like the ratio is whack. The overhead is out of proportion to the current number of passengers/seats/cars/frequencies/routes, so I'd like to see more of all of those. LOL. Well, you always say successful railroading is about economies of scale. I say that the cure for Amtrak's problems is more Amtrak.

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Sorry about the formatting mess.

I tried to reply to too many points at once. Me and the software couldn't cope!

 

[Anderson]

On the Hoosier State bit:

Technically, system benefits are beyond the scope of IN's concern. For example, it isn't like Amtrak is going to turn around and cut IN's costs by some share of improvements to the Cardinal's performance from IN's work (or like MI is going to pay IL some share for improvements in Chicago because MI's trains suddenly get another 50k/yr in ridership and a few million off their operating subsidy). Of course, states also don't get slapped with a bill if they add several trains and it hurts the ridership/revenue of an Amtrak "system train".

 

[me_little_me]

$100 in upgrades? Sounds too low. I'll bet they'll spring for $150 - $200. :giggle:

But a month ago extending Indianapolis-Louisville looked hopeless, with terrible track. Well, along came an announcement that CSX is taking over that line and will invest almost $100 in upgrades. To my eye, that development improves the chances of service Chicago-Indy-Louisville-Frankfort-Lexington. Do that line, and the politicians from the coal country will be demanding their fair share, extending the route from Lexington to Knoxville.

 

[west point]

A one time look seemed to indicate cost allocation came from Revenue passenger miles or revenue seat miles. + station costs. Any thoughts ?

 

[jis]

$100 in upgrades? Sounds too low. I'll bet they'll spring for $150 - $200. :giggle:

But a month ago extending Indianapolis-Louisville looked hopeless, with terrible track. Well, along came an announcement that CSX is taking over that line and will invest almost $100 in upgrades. To my eye, that development improves the chances of service Chicago-Indy-Louisville-Frankfort-Lexington. Do that line, and the politicians from the coal country will be demanding their fair share, extending the route from Lexington to Knoxville.

Just a note .... I don't believe I said any of that :-/

 

[PRR 60]

$100 in upgrades? Sounds too low. I'll bet they'll spring for $150 - $200. :giggle:

But a month ago extending Indianapolis-Louisville looked hopeless, with terrible track. Well, along came an announcement that CSX is taking over that line and will invest almost $100 in upgrades. To my eye, that development improves the chances of service Chicago-Indy-Louisville-Frankfort-Lexington. Do that line, and the politicians from the coal country will be demanding their fair share, extending the route from Lexington to Knoxville.

Just a note .... I don't believe I said any of that :-/

You didn't. I somehow figured out the correct quote and changes it to show the correct original poster.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

On the Hoosier State bit:

Technically, system benefits are beyond the scope of IN's concern. For example, it isn't like Amtrak is going to turn around and cut IN's costs by some share of improvements to the Cardinal's performance from IN's work (or like MI is going to pay IL some share for improvements in Chicago because MI's trains suddenly get another 50k/yr in ridership and a few million off their operating subsidy). Of course, states also don't get slapped with a bill if they add several trains and it hurts the ridership/revenue of an Amtrak "system train".

I'm sure that's true. One day it could help if the 50 states could get united, but no time soon, I guess.

Meanwhile, at the federal level, when Indiana asks for a grant, even a little TIGER grant for the Hoosier State route, I'd hope that the DOT/FRA would try to look at total costs and total benefits because the potential cross-state and national system benefits do exist.

Of course, when there's plenty of money, such as the Stimulus year, we can get a bunch of improvements to state corridors that benefit the national system, like, the Texas Eagle/Lincoln Service Chicago-St Louis, the Coast Starlight/Cascades Portland-Seattle, and time saved on the Crescent from upgrades to the Piedmont route.

There are two megaprojects pending outside the NEC. One is South of the Lake for the 5 current Michigan trains. SOTL will greatly benefit the 2 current LD trains, the Lake Shore Ltd. and the Capitol Ltd. The other is the Potomac Long Bridge and the route D.C.-Richmond to cut an hour or more for a bunch of Virginia trains. That work will benefit the Palmetto, the Silver Star, the Silver Meteor, and the Carolinian, as well as some later round draft picks (Richmond-Raleigh).

Surely when the states ask for federal funds for these megaprojects, the feds will consider the system benefits when evaluating the requests. The other side of that is, when considering whether to make an effort for a costly project, like $200 million upgrades to the Hoosier State route, the states should note when their project has system benefits that might help get some federal funding.

 

[neroden]

Beyond that, network effects. A daily Sunset Shuttle bringing more passengers from Lafayette, Beaumont, especially Houston, some from San Antonio, and even a few more coach passengers from L.A. and Arizona enticed by a daily Eagle/Sunset could be helping the Crescent, and the CONO, too, within a few years.

You know, I hadn't thought about that... the current sub-daily service is really not satisfactory, and replacing it with a daily service with more reliable scheduling (due to a shorter run) really could send more passengers onto the south ends of the CONO and Crescent.
That would take some serious modeling to predict how many, but it seems to me that getting to daily service in the San Antonio-Houston-New Orleans corridor might have substantial network effects.

On the allocated overhead problem. Seems like the ratio is whack. The overhead is out of proportion to the current number of passengers/seats/cars/frequencies/routes, so I'd like to see more of all of those.

Looking at the overhead numbers, I think it is mostly done on a train-miles basis, or maybe it's a route-miles basis. Which is... arbitrary, really, and basically done that way as a matter of tradition. It's not a good way to represent the real economic situation.

LOL. Well, you always say successful railroading is about economies of scale. I say that the cure for Amtrak's problems is more Amtrak.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

WoodyinNYC

On the allocated overhead problem. Seems like the ratio is out of whack. The overhead is out of proportion to the current number of passengers/seats/cars/frequencies/routes, so I'd like to see more of all of those.

Looking at the overhead numbers, I think it is mostly done on a train-miles basis, or maybe it's a route-miles basis. Which is... arbitrary, really, and basically done that way as a matter of tradition. It's not a good way to represent the real economic situation.

O.K, but it's still out of whack if the ratio is of train miles to overhead.

I'm assuming that overhead should grow more slowly than train miles or route miles increase.

But I'm not sure what Amtrak includes in this overhead.

Consider the back shop facilities at Beech Grove, Bear, Wilmington, and 12 terminals "almost 300 acres of facilities and over one million square feet of under-roof production space" as well as maintenance facilities from Hialeah to Seattle. I'm thinking that Amtrak could handle many more route miles of work by adding employees but without needing to add more acreage or under-roof production space. So overhead from back shops and maintenance facilities would increase more slowly than train miles or route miles.

You like to point out that the reservations system and IT staff don't have to grow much if Amtrak grows, by taking the Cardinal daily or adding more sleepers to existing trains. Once they've built the reservation system, adding another 125,000 reservations from the daily Cardinal is almost no more cost at all.

Does overhead include corporate and headquarters stuff? Neither Boardman nor his secretary would be paid twice as much if Amtrak doubled its route miles. The VP and the staff who handle labor matters will be negotiating contracts with the same unions, and only see increases in grievances to handle. Advertising and marketing expenses don't have to grow faster than route miles. The bigger system would sort of advertise itself, with a stronger brand and a larger "mind share" among prospective customers than a small system. Some folks at headquarters are working on the pending order for Acela IIs, and the long delayed order for Viewliners. Are their costs allocated to the Coast Starlight and other trains by route miles?

Is debt service part of the allocated overhead? So higher revenues from a daily Cardinal would help to pay off the mortgage on Penn Station?

​I keep ending up where I left off. More Amtrak would spread overhead over a larger base, bring the ratio into balance, and reduce the allocated overhead per route mile or per train mile.

The best way to reduce Amtrak's losses is to grow the system -- passengers/seats/cars/frequencies/routes/train miles/route miles -- by every measure.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

On the Hoosier State bit:

Technically, system benefits are beyond the scope of IN's concern. For example, it isn't like Amtrak is going to turn around and cut IN's costs by some share of improvements to the Cardinal's performance from IN's work (or like MI is going to pay IL some share for improvements in Chicago because MI's trains suddenly get another 50k/yr in ridership and a few million off their operating subsidy). Of course, states also don't get slapped with a bill if they add several trains and it hurts the ridership/revenue of an Amtrak "system train".

[SIZE=16.2px]I'm sure that's true. One day it could help if the 50 states could get united! But no time soon, I guess. [/SIZE]

Meanwhile, at the federal level, when Indiana asks for a grant, even a little TIGER grant for the Hoosier State route, I'd hope that the DOT/FRA would try to look at total costs and total benefits because the potential cross-state and national system benefits do exist.

Of course, when there's plenty of money, such as the Stimulus year, we can get a bunch of improvements to state corridors that benefit the national system, like, the Texas Eagle/Lincoln Service Chicago-St Louis, the Coast Starlight/Cascades Portland-Seattle, and time saved on the Crescent from upgrades to the Piedmont route.

There are two megaprojects pending outside the NEC. One is South of the Lake for the 5 current Michigan trains. SOTL will greatly benefit the 2 current LD trains, the Lake Shore Ltd. and the Capitol Ltd. and would help a Broadway Ltd. train. The other is the Potomac Long Bridge and the route D.C.-Richmond to cut an hour or more for a bunch of Virginia trains. That work will benefit the Palmetto, the Silver Star, the Silver Meteor, and the Carolinian, as well as some later round draft picks (Richmond-Raleigh).

Surely when the states ask for federal funds for these megaprojects, the feds should consider the system benefits when evaluating the requests. The other side of that is, when considering whether to make an effort for a costly project, like $200 million upgrades to the Hoosier State route, I'd say the states should know when their project has system benefits that might help get some federal funding, and point out [SIZE=16.2px]a rough estimate of those benefits in any application for federal funds.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=16.2px]Even down at the local level, if I'm a legislator from Indianapolis, I'd want to know that upgrades to the Hoosier State route would make the Cardinal service on that segment either (a) leave Indy half an hour later or (b) arrive in Chicago half an hour earlier. So I'm annoyed that the Indiana consultants left out that information, which could help to "sell" the project.[/SIZE]

 

[Anderson]

Having dumped over the data on VA, I'm compelled to correct one point: While the plan is to knock time off of the VA trains, the medium-term goal is 90 minutes RVR-WAS. We seem to have whacked six minutes off that stretch recently (The Meteor, for example, went from 2:10 WAS-RVR to 2:04 for the same stretch. Most other trains seem to have dropped the same amount of time.), but the goal is dropping a total of 40 minutes Richmond-Washington (2:10 to 1:30). The timings for the Hampton Roads stretches are more of a tangle (IIRC there's about 10-15 minutes to drop RVR-RVM and it's hard to argue about dropping times NFK-RVR since that's a freshly-initiated service...there was time cut from the initial schedule simply because not all of the initial project work was done before service was started).

I'm not going to deny that there might end up being further improvements put on deck down the line (perhaps getting from 90 minutes to 75-80 minutes), but there's not much more time to be cut without a true megaproject that probably wouldn't hold up on a cost-benefit analysis.

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Network benefits do get mentioned in conjunction with federal applications for the most part, at least as far as I can tell. However, while they may get mentioned in federal applications the fact is that in many cases they're not really a consideration for a given state unless there's pretty good cooperation between a group of states (e.g. South of the Lake, which IN made clear they were applying for funds for largely for the sake of MI).

 

[andersone]

I still feel like many have their heads in the sand and refuse to think outside the box. In my humble opinion what gets involved in every discussion of LD service, and LD equipment to provide that service is that you have one place - New York - unable to handle bi-level equipment. Surely the combine intelligence of this group could figure out some way to leave all LD service west of the river and figure out someway to get the NY LD folks over there. I am not sure the impact that would have on the multi billion dollar tunnel that is needed, but it would sure make a level playing field and simplify the grand scheme.

I am prepared, as every time I bring this up, for the "busiest" shouts to echo off the wall at high volume. But if have to always do things the way they have been done we limit our possibilities. Sorry to be so blunt but we need new solutions based on new questions not merely revisions based on history.

 

[Anderson]

I still feel like many have their heads in the sand and refuse to think outside the box. In my humble opinion what gets involved in every discussion of LD service, and LD equipment to provide that service is that you have one place - New York - unable to handle bi-level equipment. Surely the combine intelligence of this group could figure out some way to leave all LD service west of the river and figure out someway to get the NY LD folks over there. I am not sure the impact that would have on the multi billion dollar tunnel that is needed, but it would sure make a level playing field and simplify the grand scheme.

I am prepared, as every time I bring this up, for the "busiest" shouts to echo off the wall at high volume. But if have to always do things the way they have been done we limit our possibilities. Sorry to be so blunt but we need new solutions based on new questions not merely revisions based on history.

The problem is not just the Hudson tunnels. The tunnels are a fatal error, yes, but they're not the only problem. You also have problems with the B&P tunnel in Baltimore (which precludes simply flipping the Silvers and Crescent to bilevel and running them to, say, Hoboken). Also at issue is the platforms...plenty of stations simply don't have a low-level platform to work with (I don't think either NYP or PHL have one, and I want to say that WIL is in the same boat). This means that you lose a lot of the added capacity from bilevel equipment...and it means that you can only use NJT-style bilevels instead of Superliner-style bilevels. There's also an issue with needing to raise catenary heights as well. I think there's also the issue of the East River tunnels, which you'd need to add height to in order to get trains from NYP over to Sunnyside.

As to terminating at Hoboken instead of New York, there are several major problems with this. One is the inherent broken connection, particularly with the Empire corridor/LSL (and the LSL can't be converted...though I suspect the existing single-level equipment would, in a pinch, keep it running for a long time) but also with the Regionals heading to Boston. Yes, you might be able to do something with Newark Penn that could get around this...but I'm not sure what the options are there. More problematic, however, is that the equipment gets serviced at Sunnyside (in Queens), meaning you'd need to move a bunch of servicing ops over there...well, somewhere. Basically this is an operational problem since now Amtrak would have two yards in the New York area.

I hate to say it like this, but while the split pool is expensive to deal with it is probably seriously cheaper to deal with it than it would be to try and make something work. It is a problem, no doubt about that, but this is one of those highly annoying "pick your problem" situations.

 

[jis]

Specifically the return on the huge investment to basically rebuild Penn Station from ground up to provide 17'+ clearance simple does not exist when so much else needs to be done to create a viable and useful passenger system nationwide. This has been seriously looked at and rejected a few times so doing it one more time will just fatten some more consultants. The end result will not be different.

 

[afigg]

The problem is not just the Hudson tunnels. The tunnels are a fatal error, yes, but they're not the only problem. You also have problems with the B&P tunnel in Baltimore (which precludes simply flipping the Silvers and Crescent to bilevel and running them to, say, Hoboken). Also at issue is the platforms...plenty of stations simply don't have a low-level platform to work with (I don't think either NYP or PHL have one, and I want to say that WIL is in the same boat). This means that you lose a lot of the added capacity from bilevel equipment...and it means that you can only use NJT-style bilevels instead of Superliner-style bilevels. There's also an issue with needing to raise catenary heights as well. I think there's also the issue of the East River tunnels, which you'd need to add height to in order to get trains from NYP over to Sunnyside.

WIL does have a low level platform on the north side, although I don't think it is in regular use. But low level platforms are really a minor consideration against the issue of clearances. In this discussions on clearance on the NEC, we tend to focus only on the high profile items, the tunnels in Baltimore and under the Hudson and East Rivers and the catenary. I don't have numbers, but I suspect there are multiple road bridges over the southern NEC that would prevent the catenary from being raised enough to increase clearance for Superliner trains. Then there are clearance issues through the PHL and NYP stations themselves. There is simply far too much physical infrastructure in place on the NEC for Superliner height trains to run.
The NEC and the eastern corridors will remain the domain of rolling stock that meet the existing NEC clearance envelope for many decades to come. Which means single level trains, unless Amtrak opts for a cramped split level design for capacity.

This thread has wandered rather far afield from the topic which is Amfleet I replacements. I think the question in the context of that topic is in the next 15 years, how many single level coach and cafe cars would be needed to replace the Amfleet Is in order to support the realistic projections of service expansion? Which I take to be trains running from NC to Maine with: more Regionals to VA, maybe a second NYP to Charlotte train, longer NEC Regional consists, several more daily Regionals (along with 28 Acela II trainsets), several more daily Keystones, a second Pennsylvanian & second Adirondack, maybe several more daily NYP-ALB trains, a third Empire service train across upper NY state, 3 Inland Route Regionals, 2 additional trains to & through VT (on each route), maybe 3 NHV-SPG-BOS trains, a NYP to Maine service, and possibly several BON to Concord NH trains (which might handled by the MBTA).

The current Amfleet I fleet size is circa 460 cars total. In the near term, there are a few Amfleets in CA and 2? Amfleet trainsets on the CHI-STL corridor that will be able to be moved east as the corridor bi-level cars enter revenue service. So, those will help add a little capacity in the east in a few years. Still, would an order for 550 Amfleet I replacements be enough for 15 years from now?

 

[west point]

Anderson: Have often wondered if cost benefit analysis be based on passenger minutes saved per dollar spent. That does have problems because it is very hard to quantify how many more passengers will be carried with quicker times. So 5 minutes less on NYP - PHL might have ROW costs more than say WASH - RVR -RNM but maybe more passenger minutes saved. .On the NEC Newark - PHL it would be interesting to see the Elizabeth "S" curve eliminated and the Trenton - PHL north section fixed especially at Frankford curve CP.

Another point maybe is anything less than a 20 minute reduction may not be significant for leisure travel but may be for business travel ? Then again reliable OTP may be more important ? It may be interesting to see results when the Vermonter travel times are reduced. Minutes saved might not be as important. There may be a tipping point as well once travel times over a segment including last mile are reduced over other surface / air transportation..