September report is out: Best year since 1973

Link

Couple of highlights:

$188.7 million loss for the year makes it the best year in nominal dollars since 1973.

Acela is the Juggernaut. There is seemingly no stopping ridership and revenue increases on it.

$91.3 million in expenses have been trimmed from the long distance trains this year.

The vanishing Auto Train expenses have put it $4 million from break even.

Vermonter and Carolinian ran profits with state payments, but lost money just looking at ticket revenue.

National Train System only lost $133.1 million, a $326 million improvement.

NEC routes operating profit of $482.2 million, a 32% increase in just one year.

All the routes ranked according to cost recovery

Yes, it was a good year financially with the system wide operating deficit continuing to decrease despite a lousy year for On-Time Performance and ridership erosion on some corridor and LD trains. In the September 2009 monthly report, the net operating loss was $476.6 million, so a reduction to $188.7 million is close to $300 million lower in 5 years. That is a good trend putting Amtrak in a stronger financial position to survive what the new Congress might do for FY2016.. Even if much of the improvement can be attributed to the increase in the operating surplus from the Acelas and Regionals, state subsidies and reduced total costs for the LD trains (by whatever means that was achieved).

Lots of data to analyze here, which I may leave mostly to others to do for now.

I'll process a bunch more once I have my dinner on the Meteor, but if there's a bottom line to the report it seems to be that a lot of things hit bottom over the summer and have either stabilized or gotten better. OTP is one such item, and LD ridership seems to be in that category as well.

One thing I want to caution which was not, as far as I can tell, accounted for in the notes: There's an unusually hard slump in coach ridership on the Crescent and Silver Star this month. This is at least in part an artifact of the fact that last September Amtrak offered space on those trains (and maybe the Meteor as well) in coach between NYP and WAS as an experiment and/or to goose the LD numbers for the year. That was not done this year (likely to allow some room for re-improvement for next year), likely hitting those trains with at least some of their drop. Aren't quirks like this fun?

I'm going to do a quick analysis on VA and the NEC proper; more will follow on the full year elsewhere shortly.

NEC
The big story here was, unsurprisingly, the Acela. That service added nearly $55 million for the year in revenue, and it finds itself chasing the Regionals in terms of revenue once again. Ridership was up sharply as well (my read is that a lot of that was on NEC-North, due in part to a lack of disruptions this year and in part to spill-over from the Regionals). Per-passenger revenue was up from $158.78 to $165.22 (+4.1%), which is quite strong...actually, it was a bit more than the fare hikes of around 3% (likely due to more high-bucket seats being sold, particularly on NEC-North which had a big ridership spike).

The story on the Regionals was a bit more of a mixed message. Revenue was up almost $35m. PPR was up close to 6% (by actual figures from last year) or 4% (by adjusted figures), but I don't want to run those numbers twice so I'm not going to go into the usual extreme detail there. I'll point out, however, that a lot of the effect here was the rise in fares noted elsewhere.

Ridership on Regionals was slightly better than flat before adjustments, and up modestly afterwards. Some of this was down to the addition of weekend MARC service (which likely cost the Regionals a few thousand riders per month in people shifting over); this also likely increased PPR slightly by removing a batch of short-hop riders from the system (BAL-BWI, BAL-WAS, etc.) and replacing at least some with longer-distance riders.

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Virginia Regionals

As I address the Virginia Regionals, for what is hopefully about the last time for a while I have to put in an oft-repeated caveat: Last year's results do include the start-up of the Norfolk service so you don't quite have a 1:1 comparison. However, Norfolk itself does not seem to have been a truly massive trip generator (I think it's somewhere around 4,000/month) so you'd probably add about 10,000 riders on the Norfolk extension if you wanted to control for that last year. The other caveat is that the individual route numbers aren't comparable: All three trains were part of the Newport News route at the start of last year. Norfolk was split off from December onwards, while Richmond's trains were also part of Newport News' trains for all of last year.

With that being said, in FY13 the Richmond-bound trains had 706,305 riders (Norfolk plus Newport News). In FY14, the total was 687,303 (Norfolk plus Newport News plus Richmond) due to a midyear slide (which was, I believe, related to lousy OTP heading up to Washington). The effect of pass adjustments here was minimal (about 5000 riders, less than 1%, were dropped as a result of the adjustment). Revenue was up minimally as well (also due to that midyear slump; revenue was up about $250k for the year between the routes).

Over on the Lynchburg trains we at least don't have an that particular accounting headache (Edit: The Lynchburg train is a true innovator...it has found a new way to make me want to scream at Amtrak's accounting office). Ridership was up slightly (if below projections) while revenue was up sharply (and above projections).

In terms of profitability, we get the following mix:

Train Fare | Oth. | Total | Profit | Adj. Profit
WAS-LYH 12.6 | -0.4 | 12.2 | 4.0 | 4.4
WAS-NPN 22.1 | 2.9 | 25.0 | 6.6 | 3.5
WAS-NFK 7.7 | 1.5 | 9.2 | 1.5 | 0.0
WAS-RVR 9.6 | 0.7 | 10.3 | -1.7 | -2.4
Overall 52.0 | 4.7 | 56.7 | 10.4 | 5.5
Fare: Farebox revenue (ticket sales)
Oth.: Other revenue (state funding plus OBS revenue)
Total: Total farebox revenue plus other revenue
Profit: Profits as given before OPEBs and IG
Adj. Profit: Profits as given adjusted for non-farebox revenue

Do note that non-farebox revenue includes at least some OBS revenue...I might guess around 2.5% of ticket sales, but I don't have numbers for this to go on so for the moment I'm going to assume this is somewhere close to $0.

The Virginia trains appear to have posted a collective profit, after kicking out any state funds and OBS revenue, of about $5.5m; adding in OBS revenue would probably put that number somewhere in the range of $6.5-7.0m. With that said, I need to prod someone, since either $400k was transferred from the Lynchburg train's ticket revenue to some other account or those numbers are off. I will put forward an inquiry on this point to some friends to see if anyone can decipher the puzzle here, since this makes no sense (somehow the Lynchburger, which increased ticket revenue by about $850k, lists a minimal drop in revenue in the year-over-year change).

For the record, my best guess is that this is some of the "dog caught the car" accounting trouble that VA has. The Lynchburger had a profit of at least $4.0m, and quite possibly $5.0m or so (last year there was a slight increase between ticket revenue and total revenue, likely indicating OBS revenue), but some of this may be getting applied elsewhere in some fashion.

Edit: For comparison, I've got the NE Regional and Acela figures below:

Train Fare | Oth. | Total | Profit | Adj. Profit
Acela 585.8 | 18.0 | 603.8 | 314.0 | 296.0
Regional 603.5 | 22.1 | 625.6 | 185.2 | 163.1As neither of these routes presumably gets state sponsorship revenue, for comparison the Acela adds 3.1% in OBS revenue while the Regionals add 3.7% in OBS revenue. This makes sense in the context of Regionals often running with around twice the capacity of the Acela but with a decent amount of shorter-distance ridership. Were we to apply this figure to VA, it would reduce apparent state support by somewhere in the range of $1.6m to $2.0m. Frankly, this seems reasonable based on the Lynchburger's apparent revenue from OBS last year (somewhere in the range of $400-500k based on the difference between total revenue and ticket revenue; $400k would be equal to 3.4% of ticket revenue while $500k would be equal to 4.3% of ticket revenue).
With that in mind, it looks like somewhere just under a $1m was taken away from the Lynchburger (if the proportion from last year held, total revenue would have been about $13.14m instead of the $12.2m given). Again, my best guess is that VA got this money credited back to it in some fashion (i.e. applied against possible or real losses elsewhere).

In the light of the extended, ahem, discussions over the effects of the amenity cuts for the dining cars, the monthly reports now break out the Food and Beverage (F&B) revenue and expenses in what I consider the Chairman Mica table. For the month of September, the F&B cost recovery ratio was 60.5% compared to 49.4% in September 2013 with net losses reduced by $2.9 million. But this is mostly due to a September revenue increase of $3.46 million, which may be mostly from shifting sleeper revenue to covering the diner meals.

We will see if there are F&B expense declines as the electronic Point of Sale systems are finally deployed with efficiency gains from better tracking of inventory and tighter management oversight.

'

Afigg: Where's the "Mica table"?

With regards to food and beverage, the Surfliner makes about $5 million in F&B revenue which would be a 7.7% increase in its revenue (just based on ticket revenue).

Anderson said:

Afigg: Where's the "Mica table"?

Click to expand...

The F&B Metrics tables on the Key Performance Tables on pages A-2.1 and 2.2. The F&B system wide data first showed up in the November 2013 monthly report.

Amtrak claims to have saved $111 million dollars from the Long Distance Train cost cutting measures! They must have been paying a King's Ransom for Flowers, Cranberry Juice and Chocolate Squares!

OlympianHiawatha said:

Amtrak claims to have saved $111 million dollars from the Long Distance Train cost cutting measures! They must have been paying a King's Ransom for Flowers, Cranberry Juice and Chocolate Squares!

Click to expand...

I suspect the changes made in the LD BU include, but are not limited to just those changes. I have not seen a comprehensive list of all the changes, so is hard to tell how much saving is attributed to each component.

jis said:

OlympianHiawatha said:

Amtrak claims to have saved $111 million dollars from the Long Distance Train cost cutting measures! They must have been paying a King's Ransom for Flowers, Cranberry Juice and Chocolate Squares!

Click to expand...

I suspect the changes made in the LD BU include, but are not limited to just those changes. I have not seen a comprehensive list of all the changes, so is hard to tell how much saving is attributed to each component.

Click to expand...

And of course numbers can be creatively manipulated and adjusted to get them to show eaxactly what you want them to show.

That is why numbers are audited by an appropriate body like the Office of the Inspector General or such. If ones position is that one won't believe any numbers that do not line up with ones pre-conceived expectations, then there is no conversation to be had, right?

There's three kinds of lies: 1)lies 2)damn lies and 3)statistics!!!

OlympianHiawatha said:

jis said:

OlympianHiawatha said:

Amtrak claims to have saved $111 million dollars from the Long Distance Train cost cutting measures! They must have been paying a King's Ransom for Flowers, Cranberry Juice and Chocolate Squares!

Click to expand...

I suspect the changes made in the LD BU include, but are not limited to just those changes. I have not seen a comprehensive list of all the changes, so is hard to tell how much saving is attributed to each component.

Click to expand...

And of course numbers can be creatively manipulated and adjusted to get them to show eaxactly what you want them to show.

Click to expand...

Where's the claim of $111 million? I see just under $110 million in the year-over-year route performance report, but...

(1) $23m of that was in the OPEB/IG column (so no direct cuts to the trains there as far as I know).

(2) Another $5m net of reduced revenue came from the Empire Builder not running.

(3) Another $23m came from a drop in Auto Train expenses...but that was, if I am not mistaken, a side-effect of the station overhauls being simply expensed over about two fiscal years.

(4) Outside of the Empire Builder (and the Texas Eagle, which was disrupted by trackwork for quite a while), there was also an increase in revenue that played into the picture to the tune of about $10m.

So of that $110m, about $60m was down to accounting artifacts, increased revenue, and funky disruptions. I'm not quite sure where some of the other reductions in costs come from...I'm thinking yet more might have been cost allocation issues in some form (those route performance reports have, sadly, been the least stable part of the monthly reports...I once tried to line figures up for a few years in a row and there were so many things that got changed that I actually gave up trying). However, I'm thinking that another $20-25m might well be accounting artifacts as well...from a casual glance, I get the distinct feeling that a lot of costs were effectively moved from the LD trains into the NEC: If you look at which trains saw expenses increase, the only places you saw a consistent increase were on the extended NEC: The NE Regionals, Virginia Regionals (net of accounting artifacts), Pennsylvanian, Keystone, and Shuttle all saw noticeable increases. Off-NEC in the state corridors category, only the Surfliner took a major increase (the River Runner also got a bump, as did the Pere Marquette and, negligibly, the Downeaster).

Edit:

I just realized something about that loss figure: The last time that passenger rail as a whole was losing less than this was the late 60s (passenger rail net losses in 1970 came to something like $200m/yr; Amtrak was "supposed" to cut that in half, and there might have been a drop in nominal losses for 1972 on account of cutting half of the trains out there, but that would've been a one-time blip).

If we have another year of improvement on the NEC, it'll probably be the best year since the late 50s in terms of operating losses.

The $111.5 Million Long Distance Savings was mentioned in the link provided by the OP just below the second elongated chart showing route performance in descending order.

jis said:

That is why numbers are audited by an appropriate body like the Office of the Inspector General or such. If ones position is that one won't believe any numbers that do not line up with ones pre-conceived expectations, then there is no conversation to be had, right?

Click to expand...

Sir Humphrey: It's clear that the Committee has agreed that your new policy is really an excellent plan. But in view of some of the doubts being expressed, may I propose that I recall that after careful consideration, the considered view of the Committee was that, while they considered that the proposal met with broad approval in principle, that some of the principles were sufficiently fundamental in principle, and some of the considerations so complex and finely balanced in practice that in principle it was proposed that the sensible and prudent practice would be to submit the proposal for more detailed consideration, laying stress on the essential continuity of the new proposal with existing principles, the principle of the principal arguments which the proposal proposes and propounds for their approval. In principle.

From the great British sit-com Yes Minister

Yeah. Funny. But contributes zero to understanding what the actual costs and deficits are.

Paulus said:

$91.3 million in expenses have been trimmed from the long distance trains this year.

Click to expand...

Any way to tell whether this is

(a) cuts in variable expenses

(b) reallocation of overhead to expanded state services / expanded NEC services

© cuts in the total size of overhead expenses?

I'm betting it's mostly (b) and ©.

jis said:

That is why numbers are audited by an appropriate body like the Office of the Inspector General or such. If ones position is that one won't believe any numbers that do not line up with ones pre-conceived expectations, then there is no conversation to be had, right?

Click to expand...

Amtrak has to submit requests for payments of the operating subsidy for each train route to the US DOT, so the accountants at US DOT have to sign off on the costs numbers. To back this claim up:

Quoting the FY2014 appropriations bill: " Provided, That the amounts available under this paragraph shall be available for the Secretary to approve funding to cover operating losses for the Corporation only after receiving and reviewing a grant request for each specific train route: Provided further, That each such grant request shall be accompanied by a detailed financial analysis, revenue projection, and capital expenditure projection justifying the Federal support to the Secretary’s satisfaction:" The Secretary in the paragraph is the Transportation Secretary and the Corporation is Amtrak. Was not about to paste and quote the whole damn thing.

Now that the state DOTs are all providing subsidy payments, I expect most states are asking for detailed data and will unlease the auditors on Amtrak on a regular basis. Amtrak can't do what they want with the cost allocation numbers nor make things up, despite what some may believe because they read it in an internet forum.

Anderson has posted a good summary of the reasons for the change in total costs for the LD trains. I suspect we can attribute some of it to changes in overhead allocation with the division into 3 product lines. I listed this before; another contributor may be the management and support staff layoffs from several years ago. The cost of the termination packages could have been embedded in the FY12 and FY13 overhead, but were paid off, so the staff overhead costs dropped in FY14. Another item could be reduction in equipment leasing costs with the exercise of the early-buy options of the Warrington era leases over the past few years. Amtrak now owns most of the LD fleet outright with no lease payments, so that may have adjusted the total equipment maintenance overhead downward.

Anderson said:

Edit:

I just realized something about that loss figure: The last time that passenger rail as a whole was losing less than this was the late 60s (passenger rail net losses in 1970 came to something like $200m/yr;

Click to expand...

I'm not sure that's apples-to-apples because accounting for the cost of commuter services has been really inconsistent over the years. Was the 1970 number *just* the so-called "intercity rail" routes, the ones transferred to Amtrak? Do you have a citation?
If you include the subsidies to the myriad commuter services, which are quite large these days and were much smaller in the 1960s, passenger rail overall probably still has worse farebox recovery than in the 1960s.

On the other hand, if I'm right about that, the Amtrak situation is even more impressive.

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By the way, I finally did millimeter-level measurements of Boardman's chart from March 2013 showing losses on a "direct costs" basis for the so-called "long-distance" services (http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/778/373/Amtrak-Covers-88-Percent-of-Operating-Costs-ATK-13-022.pdf), to extract figures within 0.1 million. I compared to the September 2012 report, then attempted to extract an overhead allocation amount for each train. The resulting numbers are... plausible for overhead allocation, is all I can say; there seems to be a rough correlation with train-miles operated.

If you assume roughly the same overhead allocation amount in the present day (an unwise assumption), you find that the trains' performances are in nearly the same order but all of them are doing better. If you use reasonable but conservative projections for the improved profits from Viewliner IIs, you would expect all the Florida services and the LSL to be contributing something towards overhead in 2016. It looks like the Cardinal could be made to contribute towards overhead if it were daily, but not if it isn't. The other "long distance" trains... need more help.

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There's some oddities going on with the Empire Builder. It looks like BNSF is pretty nearly fully compensating Amtrak for the lost ticket revenue in the form of lower payments to BNSF -- so we aren't seeing the sharply worse financial results on the Builder which one would expect from the OTP situation. This does not seem to be happening on other trains which have had serious delays (LSL, CL, etc.)

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afigg said:

Quoting the FY2014 appropriations bill: " Provided, That the amounts available under this paragraph shall be available for the Secretary to approve funding to cover operating losses for the Corporation only after receiving and reviewing a grant request for each specific train route: Provided further, That each such grant request shall be accompanied by a detailed financial analysis, revenue projection, and capital expenditure projection justifying the Federal support to the Secretary’s satisfaction:" The Secretary in the paragraph is the Transportation Secretary and the Corporation is Amtrak. Was not about to paste and quote the whole damn thing.

Click to expand...

It would be interesting to read those. If I'm not mistaken, the requests for the Auto Train, Palmetto, and Silver Meteor will say "Running this train makes money for Amtrak, but we need a grant to cover its allocated share of the overhead. If this grant is not received, the overhead will simply be allocated to other trains, which will need larger grants."

Alright, onto the LD trains!

The first thing to bear in mind is that the Empire Builder had a disastrous year, accounting for many of the troubles of the LD system. A lot of the remainder can be found in the OTP difficulties, with a few stray service disruptions thrown in for good measure. On a month-by-month basis, here's ridership, change in ridership, revenue, and change in revenue in millions for the month. I've also noted the biggest percentage loser in each category:

Ok, what's the point of the exercise above? Well, in terms of ridership the Empire Builder was NOT the worst performer four months out of the year. That honor went to the Texas Eagle three months and the Palmetto one month, I believe all due to disruptions. For revenue, that was five months it didn't do worst (four Eagle, one Palmetto). Which trains had massive drops varied, but many months had a lot of trains posting double-digit drops in both ridership and revenue. Granted, this is coach plus sleeper, but the scale and scope of the wreck that was FY14 is hard to comprehend...

Basically, November through March was absolutely horrendous. December was saved in part by a calendar accident (Thanksgiving Sunday was in December and Christmas was midweek, maximizing the number of busier travel days for the month) but November, January, February, and March were all absolutely horrible (I believe March/April had a bit of the same effect that hit November/December, with Easter moving around). The summer, which would have been awful in about any of the last ten years, was actually something of a bright spot. OTP was a mess all over the place, and a number of trains were hit with more disruptions than usual, not to mention knock-on effects from missed/unworkable connections. (1)

While the Builder had the worst year in many respects, the Texas Eagle, Lake Shore Limited, and Silver Meteor had bad ones as well. The Capitol Limited seems headed to one as well with all of the bustitutions and whatnot.

The one good spot in all of this has been the Auto Train (the Sunset's bump in ridership being down to the Texas Eagle situation "splitting" a bunch of through tickets that would normally all go to the Eagle), which was able to add a decent amount of ridership through the addition of the extra coach. There's actually a decent chance that the Auto Train will pop into the black over the next few years, which will be nice to see if it happens.

(1) In my case I actually F*** to the annual NARP meeting, forgoing a massive block of Double Days points, because I could not rely on Amtrak to connect in Chicago.

I ran a spreadsheet in an attempt to remove overhead, by subtracting the 2012 levels of overhead from each line (clearly wrong, but I have no other reasonable measure of overhead).

It remains clear that most of the eastern "long-distance" trains are within striking distance of contributing towards overhead, despite extremely bad years in *both* 2013 and 2014. All they really need is a few years of solid revenue growth.

This means two things:

- better on-time performance, no disruptions

- longer consists

Longer consists are at least partially coming with the Viewliner IIs and the potential reallocation of the Horizons. Proper dispatching by the Class Is, of course, is the long-standing problem Amtrak has had for its entire history. :-(

If anyone's curious, the direct-loss subsidy numbers from Boardman's March 2013 graph are as follows, accurate to the decimal place (measured off a zoomed-in copy of the graph!) -- parentheses indicate profit:

Silver Star 6.1

Cardinal 6.3

Silver Meteor (1.4)

Empire Builder 10.8

Capitol Ltd 5.8

California Zephyr 30.5

Southwest Chief 27.9

City of New Orleans 5.3

Texas Eagle 13.5

Sunset Ltd 23.9

Coast Starlight 16.9

Lake Shore Ltd 1.7

Palmetto (4.1)

Crescent 7.9

Auto Train 0.0

From this I derive the following numbers for 2012 allocated overhead:

Silver Star 39.0

Cardinal 10.9

Silver Meteor 39.3

Empire Builder 46.8

Capitol Ltd 18.2

California Zephyr 39.8

Southwest Chief 38.8

City of New Orleans 15.9

Texas Eagle 20.5

Sunset Ltd 17.8

Coast Starlight 38.2

Lake Shore Ltd 30.9

Palmetto 15.3

Crescent 33.7

Auto Train 34.5

To me, these numbers pass the "eyeball test" for plausible allocations.

Anyway, assuming constant overhead (again, probably wrong -- but I can't tell whether overhead went down or up), an across-the-board revenue gain of 20% (ahead of cost inflation) would cause the eastern network as a whole to start contributing to overhead.

Across-the-board gains aren't what would happen. The Crescent, Silver Star, and City of New Orleans currently lag the others substantially. In fact, the trains which are already the best-performing would probably have larger gains, while the less-well-performing ones have lesser gains. Provided that extra cars can be found.

The Lake Shore Limited from New York was announced as "sold out" when I travelled last Sunday (though really there were about 15 seats free). This is despite the recent OTP disaster. It will probably demand a seventh coach soon.

Anyway, an overall gain of 20% (above inflation) in revenue on the eastern long-distance network is well within the bounds of plausibility in the next decade:

- if-and-when OTP recovers, a return to stable 2%-4% yearly "secular" growth is plausible

- every way I have tried to calculate it, a daily Cardinal should improve the train's bottom line at this point -- even disregarding the Hoosier State.

- the new Viewliners should improve the bottom line whereever they are deployed

- Pennsylvanian / Capitol Limited through cars should improve the bottom line there

- Cutoff cars for the Crescent at Atlanta would probably help a great deal, though there seems to be no way to arrange that at this time

- station & track improvements on the Empire Corridor should help the LSL

- Miami station should help the Silver Star & Silver Meteor a little

- SunRail should create greater rider awareness in the Orlando area and thus help Silver Star & Silver Meteor a little

- implementation of the schedule change recommended in the PIP would help the LSL

This is a slight aside, but...

I don't have the connections to ask the right people since my connections focus on VA and the DC area, so does anyone know whether Amtrak has considered reinstating a stop at Sanford, FL (or at any of the other SunRail stops in lieu of Sanford)? Amtrak kept stopping there until the old station building more or less died on them; adding a stop at a pre-built commuter station would have minimal to no costs beyond a few minutes on the timetable, and would presumably toss a couple of thousand passengers per year onto the train.

As to the LSL, I'd need a lot more detailed info than I have, but I cannot help but wonder if some cutoff coaches at Buffalo might not be merited. The train generates about as much traffic in New York State as the other Buffalo Empire trains do, which to me implies at least some net discharging of passengers in the western part of the state.

Turning to those schedule changes, my instinct is actually against the LSL's schedule change for a host of reasons. In an ideal world Amtrak would look to "flip" the LSL's schedule for a second frequency (late departure from NYP, early departure from CHI) to actually allow solid connections with the Silvers as well as offering passable daylight times to Cleveland, Toledo, etc. both ways. Such a train would also, incidentally, be well-timed to connect through to Toronto somehow (assuming that VIA still has the ability to restore the discontinued train on that line, a connection would be viable which would run overnight to New York).

I agree that the train is likely primed to add a coach on the basis of those numbers; the train frankly seems increasingly primed to smack into platforming problems at NYP.

Anderson said:

The one good spot in all of this has been the Auto Train (the Sunset's bump in ridership being down to the Texas Eagle situation "splitting" a bunch of through tickets that would normally all go to the Eagle), which was able to add a decent amount of ridership through the addition of the extra coach. There's actually a decent chance that the Auto Train will pop into the black over the next few years, which will be nice to see if it happens.

Click to expand...

Based on the monthly reports, the AutoTrain may run in the black in FY15. If not for the fully allocated costs, then for the Total Costs excl. OPEBs, APT Asset allocation & IG. From February to August, the fully allocated loss dropped from $6.3 million to $2.1 million, meaning the AT ran at a net surplus over those months. In September, the loss increased to $4.3 million, but my guess is that the $2.2 million difference is due to end of year roll-up of cost items. The AT could get hit with staffing cost increases, but the drop in oil prices will cut fuel costs. We'll see.

neroden said:

… two things:

- better on-time performance, no disruptions

- longer consists

Longer consists are at least partially coming with the Viewliner IIs and the potential reallocation of the Horizons. ...

If anyone's curious, the direct-loss subsidy numbers from Boardman's March 2013 graph

are as follows, accurate to the decimal place (measured off a zoomed-in copy of the graph!)

-- parentheses indicate profit:

Silver Star 6.1

Cardinal 6.3

Silver Meteor (1.4)

Empire Builder 10.8

Capitol Ltd 5.8

California Zephyr 30.5

Southwest Chief 27.9

City of New Orleans 5.3

Texas Eagle 13.5

Sunset Ltd 23.9

Coast Starlight 16.9

Lake Shore Ltd 1.7

Palmetto (4.1)

Crescent 7.9

Auto Train 0.0

...

Across-the-board gains aren't what would happen. The Crescent, Silver Star, and City of New Orleans currently lag the others substantially. In fact, the trains which are already the best-performing would probably have larger gains, while the less-well-performing ones have lesser gains. Provided that extra cars can be found.

...

Anyway, an overall gain of 20% (above inflation) in revenue on the eastern long-distance network is well within the bounds of plausibility in the next decade:

- if-and-when OTP recovers, a return to stable 2%-4% yearly "secular" growth is plausible

- … a daily Cardinal should improve the train's bottom line ...

- the new Viewliners should improve the bottom line ...

- Pennsylvanian / Capitol Limited through cars ...

- Cutoff cars for the Crescent at Atlanta would probably help a great deal ...

- ... improvements on the Empire Corridor

- Miami station ...

- SunRail should ... help Silver Star & Silver Meteor

- ... the schedule change ... help the LSL

Click to expand...

Instead of retrenching on the Crescent, could we grow it? The once-a-day train arrives in New Orleans around 7:30 p.m. Three times a week the Sunset Ltd departs the next morning at 9 a.m. Connecting with a daily Sunset could attract more riders heading west. You'd have to spend the night in a hotel near the station; there's probably 20 within a mile of it. OR, if the ticketing allowed a one- or two-night break at New Orleans without a fare penalty, many transferring student and tourist types would enjoy a day or two stopover in the historic city.

Eastbound, it's similar. The Sunset Ltd arrives at 9:40 p.m. three times a week, and the Crescent leaves daily at 7 a.m. But a daily Sunset would be better.

Similar overnight connections exist on the City of New Orleans, and they'd be improved with a daily Sunset. And having at least two daily trains into San Antonio could feed a little traffic onto the Texas Eagle.

Of course, for those of us who went to Bourbon Street last night, it gives us a headache just to think about those early departures. LOL.

So down the way, could we work on the times? Houston-New Orleans takes 9 hours, at a pathetic 45 mph. Atlanta-NOLA at 12 hours and Birmingham NOLA over 8 hours are slow trips.

Connecting revenue can be a big thing. When the Sunset's schedule was changed to allow good connections with the Coast Starlight, iirc the added revenue was estimated to be in the $10 to $20 million range. When Oklahoma was working on plans to extend the Heartland Flyer, a connection to the Southwest Chief somewhere near Wichita was estimated to add some $10 to $20 million revenue to the Chief. I have no idea how much of connecting revenue falls to the profit/loss line, but added revenue can't be bad.

Now, in a perfect world, Texas and Louisiana would step up to support the proposed Sunset shuttle on the San Antonio-Houston-New Orleans corridor, with at least two daily trains. This might be a good place to put Horizons being evacuated from the wintery Midwest, freeing up a little Superliner equipment for use elsewhere. A shuttle Mobile-Biloxi-New Orleans would also feed traffic to a daily Sunset, the CONO, and even to the Crescent.

But I know. We live in a a very imperfect world.