Comparison Of Fare Costs Per Mile & Per Hour

Got curious (well, bored actually) and decided to see what the least and most expensive trains were based on the length of the routes. Here's what was found:



Each increase in bucket is an increase of about 25 to 26% as an average. I'll leave it to others to provide the reasons for the differences.

The sleeper numbers match up with my expectations. Obviously the higher-priced trains have higher demand.

You'll also notice that when we've tried to work out which trains are profitable before overhead, it's typically the ones which are charging higher prices... although the CL and CONO underperform financially compared to what you'd expect from the prices, and the Silvers overperform (probably because 2/day), and the three-a-weeks underperform badly (which is unsurprising).

Thought perhaps those who take the train just for the thrill (?) of it might also be interested in the costs per hour:

Route times are the average of each direction of travel.

Have I mentioned before that adding more roomettes to the LSL would be highly profitable? Why, yes, yes, I have....

Paulus even worked out some time ago that sleepers were probably slightly more revenue-generating than coaches on the LSL, slightly less on the Cardinal, significantly less on the Silver Meteor or Crescent, and massively less on the Silver Star.

I just redid his spreadsheet with 2016 numbers. Sleepers are now *massively* more revenue-generating than coaches on the Cardinal, much more revenue-generating on the LSL, slightly worse on the Crescent and Meteor, significantly worse on the Star.

For reference, I'm expecting each Viewliner II sleeper added to a train service to be worth about $1.3 million in revenue per year.

Anyway, if Amtrak is wondering where to allocate the new Viewliner II Sleepers, the answer is obvious. LSL & (daily) Cardinal. Probably also the Capitol Limited-Pennsylvanian through cars.

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I have a suspicion about the CZ. Have you tried looking at the buckets for Denver-Chicago? I'd like to see that separately.

I've been very suspicious that the CZ is expensive Denver-Chicago and cheap Salt Lake - Reno.

neroden said:

I have a suspicion about the CZ. Have you tried looking at the buckets for Denver-Chicago? I'd like to see that separately.

I've been very suspicious that the CZ is expensive Denver-Chicago and cheap Salt Lake - Reno.

Click to expand...

No I haven't, at least not yet.

[Edit] It's now "yet" and for the California Zephyr on its entire route and selected portions of its route:

CHI - EMY (2438 miles, 51.9 hours) Low Bucket Coach ($167) = 6.8¢ per mile or $3.22 per hour and Low Bucket Roomette ($167 + $311) = 19.6¢ per mile or $9.21 per hour.

DEN - CHI (1038 miles, 18.47 hours) Low Bucket Coach ($120) = 11.6¢ per mile or $6.50 per hour and Low Bucket Roomette ($120 + $202) = 31.0¢ per mile or $17.43 per hour.

SLC - RNO (594 miles, 9.95 hours) Low Bucket Coach ($58) = 9.8¢ per mile or $5.83 per hour and Low Bucket Roomette ($58 + $94) = 25.6¢ per mile or $15.28 per hour.

GRI - EMY (1021miles, 22.52 hours) Low Bucket Coach ($123) = 12.0¢ per mile or $5.46 per hour and Low Bucket Roomette ($123 + $162) = 27.9¢ per mile or $12.66 per hour.

The GRI-EMY portion was thrown in for comparison as its route length is within 2% of the DEN-CHI portion. I'm guessing the main reason why the DEN-CHI rates are greater than the SLC-RNO rates is at least partly due to the difference in their route lengths, 1038 miles and 594 miles respectively.

[Edit] But doing these rates per hour and per mile should even things out for the comparison, shouldn't it? If so the DEN-CHI leg is 18% more per mile and 21% more per hour than the SLC-RNO leg and your suspicion is correct.

Interesting. One wonders what sort of pricing formula Amtrak uses? You'd think they'd advertise, "For low fares, ride the Eagle." if there's such a difference.

The really odd thing is the massive discount for riding all the way through. CHI-DEN + DEN-EMY is much more expensive than CHI-EMY. I can see having some discount, but I don't think it's profit-maximizing to offer a discount as large as Amtrak does for riding end to end. Particularly since this discourages stopovers for no-good-reason.

As a frequent rider of the CZ, I can confirm that it has significantly lower ridership between SLC and RNO than probably every other segment. So, in my mind, that would explain why Amtrak charges so much less for the SLC-RNO leg.

neroden said:

The really odd thing is the massive discount for riding all the way through. CHI-DEN + DEN-EMY is much more expensive than CHI-EMY. I can see having some discount, but I don't think it's profit-maximizing to offer a discount as large as Amtrak does for riding end to end. Particularly since this discourages stopovers for no-good-reason.

Click to expand...

Are the discounts such that there would be a "hidden city" like situation? So if you want to go Chicago-Reno, it would be cheaper to buy a ticket all the way through to Emreyville and just get off at Reno?

I have never experienced a hidden city discount myself on Amtrak, but I believe others can report purchasing two tickets with an intermediate "non-stopping" point to acquire a lower fare than buying one ticket for the entire journey on a dingle train.

chakk said:

I have never experienced a hidden city discount myself on Amtrak, but I believe others can report purchasing two tickets with an intermediate "non-stopping" point to acquire a lower fare than buying one ticket for the entire journey on a dingle train.

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FWIW, today there were no Hidden City discounts for Coach on the CZ for a travel date of 15 Feb 2017. There are some pairs of consecutive stops having the same fare, however, when the starting point is CHI. But there were no "reversals" of fares. GSC is essentially the half-way point with a low bucket coach fare of $133 and the fare to EMY is $167.

Not sure what you mean by a "non-stopping" point, but suspect anyone reporting a savings by buying two tickets was probably seeing a very high bucket for the whole trip and much lower buckets for the segments.

Don Newcomb said:

neroden said:

The really odd thing is the massive discount for riding all the way through. CHI-DEN + DEN-EMY is much more expensive than CHI-EMY. I can see having some discount, but I don't think it's profit-maximizing to offer a discount as large as Amtrak does for riding end to end. Particularly since this discourages stopovers for no-good-reason.

Click to expand...

Are the discounts such that there would be a "hidden city" like situation? So if you want to go Chicago-Reno, it would be cheaper to buy a ticket all the way through to Emreyville and just get off at Reno?

Click to expand...

This has happened on certain trains (notably the Crescent). Not sure whether there's one on the Zephyr.

Which segment of the Crescent? I know the Cardinal sleeper has some non stopping point cities. Nota ally dyer.

On the Silver Star tickets are often cheaper if you book one ticket on each side of RGH, for example TPA-RGH and RGH-WAS rather than TPA-WAS. I believe the Saver fare is only $62 from TPA-RGH.

brianpmcdonnell17 said:

On the Silver Star tickets are often cheaper if you book one ticket on each side of RGH, for example TPA-RGH and RGH-WAS rather than TPA-WAS. I believe the Saver fare is only $62 from TPA-RGH.

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Well I'll be a monkey's uncle!! It's $14 or 10.7% cheaper doing that on these dates (and probably others):

• TPA-RGH = $62 on 3 Feb 2017

• RGH-WAS = $55 on 4 Feb 2017

Total = $117

• TPA-WAS = $131 on 3 Feb 2017

$14 More!!!

AmSnag makes it easy to find stuff like this: just make three searches; pin all three to your browser; keeping the different dates in mind just click back & forth until you find one where the parts are less than the total.

Here's a graphic representation of CZ Coach fares vs. distance:



There's probably a better way to illustrate this "discount for going the whole distance" or "penalty for NOT going the whole distance" but this one works for me.

Cheers

Just realized I'd neglected to include the Palmetto on the chart in Post #1. Here's the revised chart showing that the Palmetto now has the most expensive low bucket coach fare when figured per mile or per hour:

So, at no point is the cost of the next stop less than the cost of the proceeding stop. This is what would be necessary for a "hidden city" fare situation.

BTW, I find this a very interesting topic. I'm always interested in ways to save money.

Don Newcomb said:

So, at no point is the cost of the next stop less than the cost of the proceeding stop. This is what would be necessary for a "hidden city" fare.

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Not that I've noticed, but I've only really looked at a tiny fraction of all the search possibilities. With 17 different LD routes, each having (as a wild guess) 25 stops, I think the combinations are in the vicinity of 17 X 25! which works out to about 2.6 E 25 or 26,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. But it's been 55 years since I had Probability & Statistics, so take that number with a grain or three of salt.

Got a hidden city for you. Try the northbound Vermonter on a random September day, WAS-PHL. That's $89. Now book to the next station of Trenton (TRE) for $49.

What's going on is that the northbound Vermonter is locked at high bucket for "local" travelers between WAS and PHL. Travel beyond PHL and regular bucket pricing applies.

I've seen this sort of thing between NYP and Richmond, VA on the Silvers. Amtrak wants local travelers on the Regional trains, saving seats on the longer runs for through passengers.

gatelouse said:

Got a hidden city for you. Try the northbound Vermonter on a random September day, WAS-PHL. That's $89. Now book to the next station of Trenton (TRE) for $49.

What's going on is that the northbound Vermonter is locked at high bucket for "local" travelers between WAS and PHL. Travel beyond PHL and regular bucket pricing applies.

I've seen this sort of thing between NYP and Richmond, VA on the Silvers. Amtrak wants local travelers on the Regional trains, saving seats on the longer runs for through passengers.

Click to expand...

That's cool. Thanks for finding that but how does this compare to other WAS-PHL trains? The Vermonter is spendy on this route but the Notheast Regional costs less than even the "hidden city" fare above and takes about the same time. In fact the Acela does not save much time on this stretch but costs more than either the Vermonter or NE Regional.

Don Newcomb said:

gatelouse said:

Got a hidden city for you. Try the northbound Vermonter on a random September day, WAS-PHL. That's $89. Now book to the next station of Trenton (TRE) for $49.

What's going on is that the northbound Vermonter is locked at high bucket for "local" travelers between WAS and PHL. Travel beyond PHL and regular bucket pricing applies.

I've seen this sort of thing between NYP and Richmond, VA on the Silvers. Amtrak wants local travelers on the Regional trains, saving seats on the longer runs for through passengers.

Click to expand...

That's cool. Thanks for finding that but how does this compare to other WAS-PHL trains? The Vermonter is spendy on this route but the Notheast Regional costs less than even the "hidden city" fare above and takes about the same time. In fact the Acela does not save much time on this stretch but costs more than either the Vermonter or NE Regional.

Click to expand...

Other NER trains are priced normally. The only reasons to use the hidden city trick on the Vermonter are if no other departure times will do...or you really want those 2-1 biz class seats.