I still wonder:
Why they can't use the old dining cars and just do SDS using them. After all, they have the cars why not use them? It seems to me that a little creative thinking could work out the ways and means of using them with the new SDS service, or perhaps even a little revamping of the kitchen areas to work it out. I'm thinking of the millions being spent, that could have been used to repair cars sitting in the dead line at Beech Grove!
Sigh...OK diatribe off.
Because in today's world if you tell a manager to cut costs, most will take that to mean cut labor. Granted labor is one of the biggest costs of doing business in today's world, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other alternatives to cutting costs. Unfortunately though it seems that those put in charge of following Congress' mandate to cut food service costs have mainly focused on "how do we cut staffing", without consideration of other possible alternatives or the possible consequences of their decisions.
While I agree Alan, that most managers would think cost cutting=cutting labor, that's not what I meant and I was probably imprecise in my thoughts. You can only cut labor so much before service begins to suffer and I think that Amtrak reached that point long ago.
Couldn't an SDS type menu be set up that could use the current configuration of an Amtrak diner car? Couldn't hours be increased, prices for meals decreased, portions shrunk, and passengers encouraged to use the diner? I don't see how they can possibly save money if they are spending millions on redoing these cars. Sure, you might have less labor(staff), but it will be a long time before you recapture the money spent on the cars. Meanwhile cars that need repair sit and rust at Beech Grove. Imagine how many cars could have been refurbished and repaired for the same amount of money.
It seems that Amtrak is cutting off it's nose to spite it's face!
I wouldn't argue Frj that Amtrak IMHO has already cut staff beyond where it should have been cut. But that however doesn't seem to be the opinion of those in charge of cutting the costs of food service, so first we got SDS, which has been running now for almost one year in the current/normal dining car. That however apparently wasn't enough savings, so further cuts are being made by marrying SDS into the Diner-Lite car. Now they can once again cut at least one, if not two more OBS positions and as an added benefit reduce fuel costs by about 4% whenever they can run just one Diner Lite car instead of either 2 Diner Lite cars or 1 diner and one lounge.
As for the money being spent, which by the way for the first 18 cars should total around $4.7 million assuming no cost overruns, that comes out of the capital budget since it's a car improvement and it of course can be depreciated. Since it comes out of the capital budget and not the food service budget, those tasked with cutting food service costs don't care. Their job is to cut the food service costs as mandated by Congress.
The rest of us of course see this for what it really is, just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it slowly sinks into the waves. But it satisfies the Congressional mandate to cut food service losses, even though it does nothing to cut the overall funding provided to Amtrak by Congress. :blink: The next part of the Diner-Lite program however will cost quite a bit more, since converting the 40 Sightseer Lounges will cost considerably more because they don't have any of the kitchen equipment already in place on the 18 Dining cars that are currently being converted.
I will say that having Diner-Lite cars does simplify things for the crews putting the trains together, since they don't need to find a lounge car when one is bad ordered, or a diner when one is B/O'd. They only have to find a Diner Lite car when one is bad ordered.
Of course the really sad thing in all of this remains the fact that no one at Amtrak has learned from the SDS experiment this year. According to Amtrak's own end of fiscal year numbers, there is what's called the FRA contribution. In simple terms, this is the number based upon FRA allowed costs that the Federal government gives to each route that Amtrak runs to keep the trains running. In other words, it is the amount of subsidy needed for that train over the income generated by that train minus the allowed expenses to run that train. Anyone want to guess which train reduced its subsidy the most last year? :unsure:
If you said Empire Builder, you're right. While the EB still lost money, it was one of only three* LD trains that actually reduced its subsidy and it did the
best of the three reducing its subsidy by $2.7 million dollars. In second place was the City on NOL which reduced subsidies by $900M, followed by the Cardinal which reduced its subsidy by $400M. All other LD's despite running with SDS for almost 6 months, required more subsidy monies in 2006 than they did in 2005.
Just to be clear, the train that did the best at reducing its overall subsidy last year, was one of only two trains that did
not cut services by implementing SDS.
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*To be fair I will say that it does appear that the Silver Service may also have cut its subsidies last year, however due to the way that Amtrak presented the numbers in 2004, 2005, and 2006 I can't be sure. Some years they broke out the costs of all three trains and in other years they combined them, so it makes it hard to be sure what the real numbers are.
Like 8 bucks an hour or so, these days even McDonalds pays almost that much an hour.
