FY 2012 Final Budget Document

AlanB said:

Those needs include at least two things; protecting the ability to run daily for the future in that area, the hospital shuttles, and there may be more that I'm unaware of. The fact that Amtrak collects some revenue to help offset the hospital runs is simply a bonus for Amtrak.

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Just our of curiosity, does the Hoosier ridership offset the cost of having additional staff beyond that required for an empty, non-revenue hospital shuttle on non-Cardinal days? Otherwise, could Amtrak save money by making the route a non-revenue move if the host railroad were to allow it?

Not that I think it's a good idea, just wondering from a hypothetical point of view. There are probably legal reasons why Amtrak couldn't do it anyway, just like the Fast Mail ran into.

TCRT said:

AlanB said:

Those needs include at least two things; protecting the ability to run daily for the future in that area, the hospital shuttles, and there may be more that I'm unaware of. The fact that Amtrak collects some revenue to help offset the hospital runs is simply a bonus for Amtrak.

Click to expand...

Just our of curiosity, does the Hoosier ridership offset the cost of having additional staff beyond that required for an empty, non-revenue hospital shuttle on non-Cardinal days? Otherwise, could Amtrak save money by making the route a non-revenue move if the host railroad were to allow it?

Not that I think it's a good idea, just wondering from a hypothetical point of view. There are probably legal reasons why Amtrak couldn't do it anyway, just like the Fast Mail ran into.

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I would guess that the revenue does indeed cover the extra staff, since the train only requires one extra employee above and beyond a non-rev shuttle; that being an assistant conductor. There is no cafe car, so no extra employees there. A non-rev move would still require a conductor and an engineer.

But remember, another part of this equation is that the Hoosier protects a daily slot should Amtrak decide to take the Cardinal daily. Amtrak will still have to work things out east of Indy with the host RR's, but west of Indy they have no worries as long as the Hoosier runs.

And yes, Amtrak would have to get special permission from the host RR to do a non-rev move and that would cost Amtrak considerably more than what they're paying now for things. When the Pennsylvanian was extended to Chicago years ago, it wasn't done for the passenger's sake, it was done to move freight. And most times there was far more freight on the back of the train than there were passenger cars. Out of that came a rule that a maximum of 20 cars could be tacked onto the rear of the train.

Oddly enough the Pennsy actually saw decent ridership west of Pittsburgh, especially during the summer months. But again, it's reason for existence was the freight on the rear and not the passengers up front. If Amtrak could have just run a freight movement for the same track charges they would have.

Just a bit more number crunching:

-As noted before, the $64.02/passenger times 32,050,001 passengers equals $2.052bn in ticket revenue. Total revenue given assumes about $325m more revenue, coming from a mix of food and beverage sales on the one hand and state support on the other hand.

-However, per the MPR for November, Amtrak is running above this at a PPR of $65.24.

--Note that the full FY11 came in $.08 below Oct-Nov ($62.67 vs. $62.75).

-Assuming that things cool off for the year (January and February are awful months as a rule) and Amtrak gets $65.02, that's $32 million extra in the bank ($2.084bn).

-Further assuming that ridership comes in about .5% below target, revenue comes in at $2.073bn. Assuming a 1% shortfall, that's $2.063bn. Both are above target. Ridership would have to miss by over 1.5% to fail to meet the ticket revenue target.

-And of course, Amtrak has hiked fares again since November. It will be interesting to see if the year-end PPR comes above or below where the trend indicates it is likely to.

afigg said:

jis said:

On the NER situation, the sooner they get more cars allocated to NER the more they can improve the farebox recovery. There is a pot of money sitting there limited only by available capacity. True of Acelas too, but reallocating the single level fleet from the midwest upon the arrival of the 130 corridor bi-levels is going to be a cheaper proposition than buying 40 Acela cars. Though I am glad that it looks like both will happen. Looking forward to 10 car NERs in a few years! and of course 8 car Acelas too! Once the capital cost is out of the way incremental addition of cars to existing trains is very low cost additional revenue stream.

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The FY12 table for the train services on page 97 projects that the NE Regionals will show a profit this year, above the rails that is. That is an significant improvement because the last monthly reports with the full financial data still showed the Regionals operating at a slight loss.

Table 14 on page 26 of the FY12 budget is the rolling stock count. It shows the total number of active Amfleet Is at the end of FY11 was 458, while the total number of Am Is at the end of FY12 is projected to be 473. That has to be the last of the wreck and miscellaneous Am I restorations to service. What happens to the 95 Horizons is still probably To Be Determined. Whether Amtrak can get to 10 car NE Regionals with what they have, don't know.

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Actually the extra Amfleets do seem to show up as extra revenue in line with what jis is suggesting. In table 5 - summary of changes in revenue - it states that "Increased capacity on Northeast Regional and Empire trains" is supposed to generate 3.2 m of revenue growth.