February MPR

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I'm diving into the numbers as we speak, but a word of caution: keep in mind when digesting the ridership numbers that February 2016 was a leap month, so a lot of ridership/revenue numbers are going to be in the negative year-over-year because there was one less day in February this year (and the extra day was a weekday last year to boot). Since each day in February is roughly 3.5% of the month, if a train line shows a decrease in ridership or revenue of around 3.5%, then it actually means they are roughly flat year-over-year.
 
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February was "meh" in my view: It wasn't good but wasn't terrible, either. Some thoughts:
-The IP Hoosier State ending on a very high note is bitterly ironic. I know that there were probably a few dozen, if not few hundred, "ride it while you can" riders. Not having the FY15 numbers handy, I'd be curious to check back in and see how this compared to the last February when IP wasn't running it.
-The Auto Train, Crescent, and California Zephyr all had a particularly lousy month. The Auto Train seems to still be reeling from those amenity cuts, but the others...I'm not quite sure what's up there unless there were major disruptions. Gee, it would sure be nice if their commentary still mentioned these things. Sigh.

-I'm wondering where the Sleeper reports went.
 
Crescent had NS trackwork cancellations, IIRC. (That happens every year, right? But I think they were more in January last year and more in February this year? Am I remembering correctly?)

I really don't know what happened to the CZ! Were there cancellations? I wasn't paying attention. That's a huge drop.

....or is that mostly people who switched from taking the CZ to taking the Winter Park Express? "Non-NEC Special Trains" had 6659 in February this year -- probably Winter Park Express. (I don't know what the Non-NEC specials were in 2015.) And the CZ was down by 6591. If so, it was a bad tradeoff on revenue, because the CZ is down by $529343 and the Non-NEC Specials total $299196.

Oh, but there were CZ cancellations in Utah and Nevada -- circa February 7th through February 19th. Due to flooding. I don't remember how many days there were cancellations, but it was possibly more than a week. That actually probably accounts for nearly all the CZ loss in ridership, so Winter Park probably isn't cannibalizing the CZ. Should be back to normal in March.

Almost everything else seems to be slightly up on a per-day basis.

The obvious:

Hartford line is down, due to trackwork obviously, and passengers were taking the Vermonter instead.

Michigan is down, probably due to Michigan's economic woes.

Texas Eagle is way up (was it disrupted last year?)
 
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Other things noted:

-- nothing interesting in the mechanical report, except that ACS-64 pantographs are not getting done on schedule

-- CP is currently the awesomest host railroad by a *very* large margin, and the first Class I freight host ever to be in full compliance with the federal law about delays (PRIIA 2008).

-- NS is deteriorating rapidly. Again. There are signal issues on the Star, trackwork on the Carolinian and Piedmont, but most of the delays are freight train interference between Porter and Chicago. We need South of the Lake and we need it yesterday.

-- CN is actively sabotaging the Adirondack in Canada, where unfortunately it's legal for them to do so (unlike the illegal shenanigans they've been engaging in on the US lines). If the revival of the Montrealer is going to happen, I think it's going to be essential for Quebec to buy the tracks from CN... .or shift the train over to the CP route.
 
What went wrong with the San Joaquins? I mean, they added a 7th frequency in late June.

Yet total ridership has been down from the previous period every month since then! ***! Does not compute.

It's undermining my religious convictions about such stuff. :(
 
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While it is true that going from 3-a-week to daily, from daily to twice daily, from twice daily to 3 times daily, and from 3 times daily to 4 times daily always increases ridership, it's not *always* true once you're already up to 6 frequencies.
 
Ok, finally getting to posting some reactions here.

I've noticed the budget numbers for ridership and revenue are much closer to realistic than they used to be. Not sure if this was by accident or on purpose, but I'm glad to see many lines come within about 5% +/- of budget projections, and quite a few within about 3% +/-. I'd call that a (small) victory.

The clear exceptions to this are ones that had a terrible month (such as the CZ and its flooding problems) or ones that had a bounce for a certain reason (such as the speculation of a big bounce for the end of the IP-run Hoosier State).

I've also noticed a trend with a few of the host railroads (specifically, NS, CN, and CSX) : Looking at the OTP charts, all of those hosts seem to have a spike up in FTI (freight train interference) around the beginning of the calendar year, then it seems to settle down for the rest of the calendar year with any month-over-month increases being minimal in comparison. I don't know what to make of this nor do I know why it seems that way, but all three of those hosts are fairly regularly gumming up the works in the first couple months of the year. I'll be very curious to see how they each do in the March report, since either March or April is when they start to snap out of it each year. So maybe it's weather issues? No idea...

The Illini/Saluki went back in the tank after a few months of being pretty solid.

All the west coast corridor routes were off a bit (though if you account for the roughly 3.5% buffer for the extra day last year, Cascades was pretty flat).

The Heartland Flyer had an interesting anomaly - a pretty solid month ridership-wise, but took a huge hit in revenue. Did they lower fares? Run some sort of special deals?

System-wide ridership was flat to slightly higher year-over-year when you factor in one less day in the month. Year to date, all categories (NEC, State-supported, and Long Distance) are up in ridership and revenue (long distance revenue is only up about $55,000, so the margin is razor-thin, but an increase nonetheless).
 
Surfliner took a decent sized hit even with the adjustment, though there was a weekend closure which may have been responsible
 
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