Hi,
I am not sure what you mean by Amtrak not being "nimble in it's marketing"?
One has to remember that these "new" bus services do cherry pick.. They don't offer services to places off the beaten track, they concentrate on popular 4 to 6 hour city to city trips and also commuter runs.
Amtrak isn't it's own boss, it can't put down rails, can't buy train equipment, can't do much by itself, as it is squeezed between public funding and cost cutting pressures. It seems like chalk and cheese to me.
Eddie
All good points. But remember these bus companies have built new patronage on existing routes, routes long served by Greyhound and others which became sclerotic and moribund and failed to develop new traffic. The potential demand was there but had fallen way off until these quick-thinking operators began to imagine possibilities.
Amtrak could simplify its reservation schemes, develop an easy reservation app for mobile phones, have an active Facebook page, allow their best employees to suggest experimentation, come up with various ridership offers--all to attract a new generation of riders, and doing so without having to buy capital equipment or fight with railroads over rights-of-way use.
It would require Amtrak marketers to change their mindset from that of a large, gov-backed corporation to that of clawing entrepreneurs believing they have to fight for every dollar and go above and beyond usual customer service requirements, in order to survive.
In a small way, that's what the guy in charge of the CS did several years back when the train had gotten its then-nickname of Coast Starlate and on-board service complaints had risen precipitously.
I just think Amtrak could do a lot more along these lines without having to spend an arm and a leg.