Silver Service Test Period Fares

Perhaps a logical argument for why the sleeper fares ought to be the same before and after the test period (1 July 2015 through 31 January 2016) is so comparisons could be made of equal fare changes (down, then up the same amount) at both ends of the period. If fares at the end of the period were different than at the start, comparison could be compromised in the sense that the amount of data would be halved. Kinda. Maybe. Sort of.

No contact with my Sons yet.

Got the info from my Sons: Roomette on the Silver Star (92) from Orlando to Washington DC on 13 May 2015 was $219. Amsnag showed post-test roomette fares of $227, $304, $387, $470 and $553 between those same two points, so they paid $8 less than the post-test low bucket fare.

What does that mean? Beats me!

niemi24s said:

Got the info from my Sons: Roomette on the Silver Star (92) from Orlando to Washington DC on 13 May 2015 was $219. Amsnag showed post-test roomette fares of $227, $304, $387, $470 and $553 between those same two points, so they paid $8 less than the post-test low bucket fare.

What does that mean? Beats me!

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I think he's saying that he paid $219 in May. After July 1, after the test began, the lowest Star roomette was $227, or $8 more than in May.

Making your work more difficult, it seems that probably all fares went up in the summer peak season That all might shake out if you get prices for the Meteor for May and July.

Still a very interesting project, but not getting any easier.

WoodyinNYC said:

I think he's saying that he paid $219 in May. After July 1, after the test began, the lowest Star roomette was $227, or $8 more than in May.

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No. He did pay $219 for the May roomette, but presently (and through the end of the test on 31 January 2016) the lowest of the three Star roomette offerings is $170 - not $227. After the test is over, the lowest of the five Star roomette offerings is $227 meaning (because there's five of them) that's low bucket. As a recap, the pre-test / test / post-test roomette fare sequence is $219 / $170 / $227. All these for travel between ORL and WAS. To me, this begs the question...

...Is $219 sufficiently close to $227 to consider pre-test and post-test roomette fares between ORL and WAS as (essentially) the same? If so, could it also be said that pre-test and post-test roomette fares between MIA and NYP were (essentially) the same? If so, then does this previously posted chart (showing NYP<>MIA fares)...



...remain essentially valid - even though there may be relatively minor discrepancies (say, $10) in the exact dollar figures? In other words:

• When the sleeper fares offered on the Star were cut (green), the sleeper fares offered on the Meteor were hiked (red).

• It appears the test was rigged to also repel customers away from the Meteor with its higher sleeper fares (in addition to attracting them to the Star by its lower fares) - the playing field was tilted, so to speak.

This is an updated version of the previous chart:



• The pre-test ORL to WAS roomette fare of $219 on the Silver Star for May 2015 was used to scale down each of the five post-test roomette fares to find estimates of pre-test levels.

• These five pre-test fares for ORL to WAS were then scaled up to MIA to NYP levels before the test.

• These were then averaged with the known post-test fare levels for a roomette on the Star from MIA to NYP and entered in the charts second column.

• All figures were then rounded to the nearest $10 to ease visual comparison.

These are all quite minor changes and don't affect my previous conclusion that the playing field was tilted in favor of the Star. Tilted because the no-diner experiment involved not just one change (as I think most believer) but a pair of most significant changes:

• Silver Star sleeper reductions from $60 to $160 as compensation for the lack of a diner

• Silver Meteor sleeper increases from $60 to $160 (as punishment for having the audacity to want to eat in a diner? :blink: )

I don't recall hearing about any Meteor increases for the test period, although I may have missed them. I only stumbled upon them when trying to include the Silvers in a fare bucket study.

Ryan said:

So a nice theory, but it would be nice to have someone that has travelled the route before the changes corroborate the bucket prices.

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Here's corroboration right from the horse's mouth:



How 'bout them apples?

ABQFloridian said:

niemi24s said:

With no other sleeper fares found on Amsnag or reported here, I made the decision to post the fares that had been found based on the assumption that no other fares had been or will be offered. While there may have been a lower fare or two assigned by Amtrak, if that fare was never offered to the customer it's the same as if that fare had never existed. The green and red borders indicate fares that either decreased or increased from their normal (Norm.) values during the "no diner on the Star" test (Test) period which began 1 July 2015.

StarMeteorCompareb.jpg

This picture of the only fares presently known to have been offered just before and so far during the "No Diner Experiment" on the Silver Star seems to indicate that:

customers may have been attracted to the Silver Star by the decrease in its sleeper fares and...

customers may have been simultaneously discouraged from riding the Silver Meteor by the increase in its sleeper fares!

Note with caution that I have refrained from using the "B-Word" here. This chart will be re-accomplished should any additional fares show up on Amsnag or be reported here. Once again, please report any additional sleeper fares you know of.

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Wow! I did not notice that they had raised prices on the Meteor like that! What could that mean? Were they planning on raising them anyway? Or is this "experiment" rigged to get people onto the Star? Thanks neimi24ss, this provides lots of food for thought.

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There are alternatives to raising the fares anyway which could create the outcome they wanted.

How many rooms on the Meteor were low bucket before they "ran out" of low bucket rooms? For example, if they had 10 available at low bucket on the Meteor and 20 on the Star, then the Meteor would more quickly go to higher buckets. Not only could they do that at low bucket but for all the intermediate ones. This would cause people to more likely pick the Star with its lower bucket prices lasting longer. There is no way by looking at the amsnag numbers to see if they did that.

Not saying they did that but there are lots of ways to "cook the menus".

niemi24s said:

How 'bout them apples?

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Not very tasty, since we've empirically proven that to be untrue.

Ryan said:

niemi24s said:

How 'bout them apples?

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Not very tasty, since we've empirically proven that to be untrue.

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Yeah, I guess that $8 difference for the Silver Star roomette from ORL to WAS reported by my Sons might make a big difference to some folks. But I'm a mathematician and a difference of 8 in about 220 doesn't amount to much in a comparison such as this. As a f'rinstance, It would take a difference of $60 to wipe out the lowest increase for the Meteor. Beside, what's untrue? Amtrak's response to my question or the response I got from my Sons?

So - why don't you use Amsnag and tell us whether the sleeper fares on the Meteor go up, go down or stay the same at the end of the test period on 31 Jan 2015? And if there is a change, please provide it dollar value. Maybe I don't know how to use Amsnag correctly.

Friend of mine rode the Star northbound and Meteor southbound between Florida and Newark this week. He said his roomette on the Star was $179 , northbound, and $300 for the Meteor.

WoodyinNYC said:

Train2104 said:

WoodyinNYC said:

tricia said:

FWIW, VIA Rail now offers only Coach and Sleeper Plus on the Ocean.

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Not sure what Sleeper Plus means. So now no diners on this LD route? Is it a seasonal change or permanent?

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Quite the opposite. Previously there was Sleeper (unbundled dining car meals) and Sleeper Plus (included dining car meals). They decided to do the opposite of Amtrak and eliminate the unbundled option.

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The opposite of what I was wanting. Riders are forced to choose: pay for the dining car or snore in coach.

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I like the Sleeper/Sleeper Plus options. Maybe just have the Roomettes not include the dining car and the Bedrooms include it. I'll bet that $260 goes through the roof though with fewer passengers supporting the diners. Or they could raise prices for the coach/roomette passengers wanting diner meals so that $26 steak becomes $36.

Your mission should you choose to accept it:

1) Save the diner car.

2) Make it affordable for passengers to pay for the meals whether a la carte or as part of sleeper fares.

3) Have an option where passengers can have a bedroom or roomette without paying the diner charge.

Good point. Taking an example to the extreme, if only one Sleeper passenger buys meals in the dining car, then that one passenger would need to be charged enough to cover 100% of the dining car costs. $5,000 burger? Would you like a $700 pickle with that?

me_little_me said:

There is no way by looking at the amsnag numbers to see if they did that.

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Of course there isn't. But the Amsnag numbers tell me the only thing I want to know - the dollar values of the fares that are actually offered. Facts. I could care less why they were or weren't offered. That's all a matter of speculation. I don't speculate. I deal in facts. And the facts that I get from Amsnag are nothing more than those that Amsnag gets from Amtrak. Personally, I don't care whether or not the Silver Star gets its diner back - I forsee no reason to ever travel on it.

Q#1: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, including the Amtrak information in Post #31) that Meteor sleeper fares did NOT go up at the start of the test?

Q#2: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, such as fare searches on Amsnag)) that Meteor sleeper fares will NOT go down at the end of the test?

Q#3: Was it previously known that Meteor sleeper fares had gone up just as much as those of the Star had gone down?

niemi24s said:

Yeah, I guess that $8 difference for the Silver Star roomette from ORL to WAS reported by my Sons might make a big difference to some folks. But I'm a mathematician and a difference of 8 in about 220 doesn't amount to much in a comparison such as this. As a f'rinstance, It would take a difference of $60 to wipe out the lowest increase for the Meteor. Beside, what's untrue? Amtrak's response to my question or the response I got from my Sons?

So - why don't you use Amsnag and tell us whether the sleeper fares on the Meteor go up, go down or stay the same at the end of the test period on 31 Jan 2015? And if there is a change, please provide it dollar value. Maybe I don't know how to use Amsnag correctly.

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I'm not really worried about the magnitude of the difference - I was merely point to the fact that the "apples" you so proudly provided from Amtrak were clearly incorrect, since we know for sure that the prices are different before and after the test. An $8 increase sounds reasonable over the course of a year.

I'm not going to do a bunch of legwork because I'm not trying to prove anything. As me_little_me mentions, we're never going to know enough to make any definitive statements about what happened, because we can't know how many rooms were assigned to each of the buckets. So you can continue to mine Amsnag for fares, and compare them to what you can find out that people have paid in the past, but at the end of the day, there isn't going to be enough information to make any sort of grand conclusion.

The only new conclusion (grand or not) was that Meteor sleeper fares offered rose at the start of or during the test period. And their rise was not insignificant. One need not know anything about how many rooms were assigned to each bucket - that gets into the "why" aspect which is immaterial here. Forget the "why?" I'm only talking about the fares that were actually offered. My previous questions remain, no matter how diligently you attempt to brush them aside:

Q#1: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, including the Amtrak information in Post #31) that Meteor sleeper fares did NOT go up at the start of the test?

Q#2: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, such as fare searches on Amsnag)) that Meteor sleeper fares will NOT go down at the end of the test?

Q#3: Was it previously known that Meteor sleeper fares had gone up just as much as those of the Star had gone down?

Your signature claims you are a fact checker. Why not check some instead of trying to obfuscate the ones I've presented?

Sure, the number of rooms assigned to each bucket matters. By way of example, assume 10 rooms are available.

Pre-test: Even distribution, two rooms at each of the five buckets.

During test: 6 rooms at the lowest bucket, then each of the last 4 rooms at each of the 4 upper buckets.

On the surface, it looks like prices got jacked up, but in terms of what people paid the rooms overall got significantly cheaper.

I'm not trying to brush them aside, they're just not knowable without access to data we don't have.

But if you insist, the answers to your questions are:

Q#1: No, we have no way of knowing that, due to the fact that we don't know how many rooms were sold with each bucket.

Q#2: No, we have no way of knowing that, due to the fact that we don't know how many rooms were sold with each bucket.

Q#3: We didn't know that before, and we still don't know that they did, due to the fact that we don't know how many rooms were sold with each bucket.

The monthly reports make it quite clear that the dinerless Star is doing worse financially than the diner-provided Meteor. Even with the now-higher prices on the Meteor!

Which I think really says all Amtrak needs to know.

The cafe food should be improved *regardless*. The national cafe menu is a disgrace and ought to be upgraded at least to the Regional cafe menu.

niemi24s said:

With no other sleeper fares found on Amsnag or reported here, I made the decision to post the fares that had been found based on the assumption that no other fares had been or will be offered. While there may have been a lower fare or two assigned by Amtrak, if that fare was never offered to the customer it's the same as if that fare had never existed. The green and red borders indicate fares that either decreased or increased from their normal (Norm.) values during the "no diner on the Star" test (Test) period which began 1 July 2015.

StarMeteorCompareb.jpg

This picture of the only fares presently known to have been offered just before and so far during the "No Diner Experiment" on the Silver Star seems to indicate that:

• customers may have been attracted to the Silver Star by the decrease in its sleeper fares and...

• customers may have been simultaneously discouraged from riding the Silver Meteor by the increase in its sleeper fares!

Note with caution that I have refrained from using the "B-Word" here. This chart will be re-accomplished should any additional fares show up on Amsnag or be reported here. Once again, please report any additional sleeper fares you know of.

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I am in awe of your hand-rendered spreadsheet, really. Although Excel, (Google Sheets), make everything so easy to manipulate, the hand-rendered sheet is so frickin' easy to read. Wonder if there is a hack, or .exe, that display electronic spreadsheets in a similar manner?\

niemi24s said:

The only new conclusion (grand or not) was that Meteor sleeper fares offered rose at the start of or during the test period. And their rise was not insignificant. One need not know anything about how many rooms were assigned to each bucket - that gets into the "why" aspect which is immaterial here. Forget the "why?" I'm only talking about the fares that were actually offered. My previous questions remain, no matter how diligently you attempt to brush them aside:

Q#1: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, including the Amtrak information in Post #31) that Meteor sleeper fares did NOT go up at the start of the test?

Q#2: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, such as fare searches on Amsnag)) that Meteor sleeper fares will NOT go down at the end of the test?

Q#3: Was it previously known that Meteor sleeper fares had gone up just as much as those of the Star had gone down?

Your signature claims you are a fact checker. Why not check some instead of trying to obfuscate the ones I've presented?

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Maybe I'm missing something hear, I'm a "Skimmer" and DEF not a fact-checker, but isn't it OBVIOUS that the Meteor fares WOULD go up, simply by the SHIFT of pax who will NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RIDE AN LD TRAIN WITHOUT A DINER? (Like me) So that the higher demand, caused almost INSTANTLY by the fact that the diner as of X date, is no longer available, eats up the rooms at a much faster rate on the Meteor, causing the buckets to rise ?

Or, are you trying to compare the PRE-Test fares of each, to see if then, they were relatively comparable, and determine if AMTRAK "artificially" rose the LOW bucket starting point on the Meteor, thereby making the test results difficult to measure?

Once again, Ryan, you have utterly failed to comprehend the subject matter of this thread. The subject matter of this thread is the sleeper fares actually offered for sale on these two trains. WHY those fares are offered or HOW those fares come to be offered is NOT the subject of this thread. All that stuff is both unknown and unknowable to us outsiders. All that can be said here about that stuff is mere speculation. And I don't speculate. I deal in facts.

I'll make it simple: Amtrak tells me a roomette on the Meteor from NYP to MIA next Wednesday will cost me $XYX. All i'm interested in is that $XYZ figure. A piece of hard, factual data. I am not interested in WHY it's $XYZ or how many roomettes are available at that price. My only interest is that a roomette is indeed available for $XYZ next Wednesday. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any bearing on the subject matter of this thread. Nothing. Nothing at all. Honest.

You may be interested in and perhaps even fascinated with speculation about WHY a certain fare is offered. That's nice. But that has no bearing on this matter. As your previous answers to my question were either attempts at further obfuscation or a result of misunderstanding my intent in this thread, I'll repeat them:

Q#1: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, including the Amtrak information in Post #31) that Meteor sleeper fares did NOT go up at the start of the test?

Q#2: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, such as fare searches on Amsnag)) that Meteor sleeper fares will NOT go down at the end of the test?

Q#3: Was it previously known that Meteor sleeper fares had gone up just as much as those of the Star had gone down?

Break...Break...I Say Again...Just The Facts Please (fares from Amtrak as reported in my chart)...No Speculation Please (rooms available in each bucket, etc.)

This is very interesting. Thanks to niemi24s it would appear that there may be additional experiments going on here, like in a two train corridor whether you can increase overall revenue by offering a larger spread of fares based on reduced service for reduced fare for some inventory.

Another way to spread this over two trains would be to simply offer Diner service on both but give the customers a chice of either buying a full service package or not with their transportation and basic sleeper package. Personally my preference would be the latter. However when you are short of serviceable Diners (maybe by choice as in not wanting to spend the money for major overhaul at this point) one way to handle it is the way they did I suppose. All speculation here on my part. So niemi24s please ignore this message since there is no fact here. . Just speculation based on facts.

Thanks for the kind words. Guess it's the result of an Engineering Sketching course taken back in the 1950's. No Leroy lettering sets for us! No idea about the computer related stuff you mentioned. I'm a real Neanderthal when it comes to those things.

niemi24s said:

Once again, you have utterly failed to comprehend the subject matter of this thread. The subject matter of this thread is the sleeper fares actually offered for sale on these two trains. WHY those fares are offered or HOW those fares come to be offered is NOT the subject of this thread. All that stuff is both unknown and unknowable to us outsiders. All that can be said here about that stuff is mere speculation. And I don't speculate. I deal in facts.

I'll make it simple: Amtrak tells me a roomette on the Meteor from NYP to MIA next Wednesday will cost me $XYX. All i'm interested in is that $XYZ figure. A piece of hard, factual data. I am not interested in WHY it's $XYZ or how many roomettes are available at that price. My only interest is that a roomette is indeed available for $XYZ next Wednesday. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any bearing on the subject matter of this thread. Nothing. Nothing at all. Honest.

You may be interested in and perhaps even fascinated with speculation about WHY a certain fare is offered. That's nice. But that has no bearing on this matter. As your previous answers to my question were either attempts at further obfuscation or a result of misunderstanding my intent in this thread, I'll repeat them:

Q#1: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, including the Amtrak information in Post #31) that Meteor sleeper fares did NOT go up at the start of the test?

Q#2: Can anyone tell me (based on fact, such as fare searches on Amsnag)) that Meteor sleeper fares will NOT go down at the end of the test?

Q#3: Was it previously known that Meteor sleeper fares had gone up just as much as those of the Star had gone down?

Break...Break...I Say Again...Just The Facts Please (fares from Amtrak as reported in my chart)...No Speculation Please (rooms available in each bucket, etc.)

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Haha, well color me the Dumb-A s s of the day then. Sorry for being such an idiot, blame my parents, or maybe blame the Ann Arbor Public School system, or Western Michigan University, or the University of Texas. How could I be so stupid? I'll go kill myself now.

rrdude said:

Haha, well color me the Dumb-A s s of the day then. Sorry for being such an idiot, blame my parents, or maybe blame the Ann Arbor Public School system, or Western Michigan University, or the University of Texas. How could I be so stupid? I'll go kill myself now.

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Sorry. That post was meant for Ryan, so I just edited it to reflect that. I get flustered at the keyboard trying to delete unnecessary posts from a quote and neglected to specify who it was directed to. My apologies.

niemi24s said:

Once again, Ryan, you have utterly failed to comprehend the subject matter of this thread. The subject matter of this thread is the sleeper fares actually offered for sale on these two trains. WHY those fares are offered or HOW those fares come to be offered is NOT the subject of this thread. All that stuff is both unknown and unknowable to us outsiders. All that can be said here about that stuff is mere speculation. And I don't speculate. I deal in facts.

I'll make it simple: Amtrak tells me a roomette on the Meteor from NYP to MIA next Wednesday will cost me $XYX. All i'm interested in is that $XYZ figure. A piece of hard, factual data. I am not interested in WHY it's $XYZ or how many roomettes are available at that price. My only interest is that a roomette is indeed available for $XYZ next Wednesday. Nothing else matters. Nothing else has any bearing on the subject matter of this thread. Nothing. Nothing at all. Honest.

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I understand what you're trying to say perfectly well. I'm sure that you're really, really pissed at me because I called you out for being insulting (so much so that you had the entire thread removed), but maybe you can put that aside and actually read what I'm writing to try and comprehend what I'm saying.

Do you not understand that both the number of rooms in each bucket and the number of rooms that have been sold will drive what prices you're being presented to for next Wednesday's train? If there are a lot of cheap buckets, and/or few rooms have been sold, you'll see a lower price.

You're trying to solve a multivariable equation (bucket price, number of rooms in each bucket [which can dynamically be changed], and number of rooms sold/available [which also changes]) by looking at only one variable. Any conclusions you attempt to draw about what price is going to be impacted by all three, and you're steadfastly refusing to consider two of them.