Just a quick calculation based on Amtrak's numbers. Amtrak 2007 had 1.7B in "passenger" revenue, 1.1B in "loss". Assuming for the sake of argument (and i do remember dissecting ass_u_me) the sleeper portion and meal portion of revenue is about break even and accounts for .6B doubling the coach fare (AND magically not loosing any passengers) would have Amtrak breaking even! One and a half would allow room for capital replacement and addition of rolling stock, routes, etc. This 1.5 increase is kinda close to the numbers quoted by other posters for 1948 coach fares adjusted for inflation. Mean while we have to allow Amtrak to struggle on as best it can, and "bucket" fares seem to be a reasonable means for management to be financially responsible.
Two questions.
I'm not a numbers person, but what would happen if Amtrak tried something like this:
Assume a route from A to B and the low bucket coach is $100 and the high bucket coach is $300.
What if they sold EVERY coach seat for $200 with no bucket system involved. everyone would pay $200 today or 11 months in advance. You would always know what it would be, no surprises.
Is there any logic to a system like that? Could they find the magic number that would be what the price should be as compared to using the bucket system?
I did work in retail many years ago and I know we would buy a widget for $1 each. 1000 widgets cost $1000.
We sold them for $10 each. When we had sold 100 of them we had our $1000 back. The cost of doing business could be met by selling another 200 widgets, leaving us with 700 widgets to sell that became profit, so to speak. We might or might not sell them all in a season, but they would start lowering the price of widgets into the season to help that process along as it was all profit, anyway.
The point is, there must be formulas for all this to figure out how to sell train tickets. Is that what the bucket system is all about?