February 2016 Performance Report

[Acela150]

Wasn't sure if this was posted.. But in case it wasn't..

https://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/911/68/Amtrak-Monthly-Performance-Report-February-2016.pdf

If it was.. My apologies.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Some folks much better informed than I am will be along shortly with much to say.

Let me jump ahead to note a few things that impressed me.

On Time Performance. Wow. Up each of the past 5 months, and especially over last year's stormy February: Better than 80% on time this year, while February 2015 was miserable, less than 63%.

Americans continue to show a strong appetite for High Speed Trains, even if they only average 85 mph. LOL. The Acelas continue to thrive. February ridership up 13% and ticket revenues up 7% over 2015. The Northeast Regionals were off a shade.

The Keystones were up a solid 8% in ridership, credited to "the additional frequencies", with revenues up 4%. I think they added an earlier morning train, but not sure. I missed any press release or discussion hereabouts.

For February, the Palmetto doubled ridership and revenue, thanks to hooking up with a Regional a few months back. Guess this cut costs a bit, but it also gives a nice little transfusion to the anemic LD business line.

Ridership on the Cardinal is up 29% over February of last year, and revenue up 50%! That can't all be from the new Business Class car. Must have been another sleeper in the consist, or what?

This month they explained the robust improvement -- ridership up 18% and revenue up 11% -- on the California Zephyr. They added a sleeper and additional set-out cars at Reno. Wonder what took them so long? Oh, not to be too negative: Good on Amtrak for doing this!

O.K. that was quick and dirty. More analysis to come from real experts.

 

[afigg]

No need to apologize. The February 2016 monthly report must have been posted yesterday because this is on the early side for it in the monthly cycle.

Some quick comments from a skim read. Overall system ridership was up in February 2016 compared to February 2015, but this was a leap year with 29 days in February. So even if ridership were completely flat, that would bump the numbers up this year. NE Regional ridership and revenue pretty much cratered, that is not a good sign. But the Acela ridership and revenue was up.

State supported corridors are a mixed bag; have to look at the numbers more carefully.

On-time performance is doing much better than February 2015. Much better overall. A lot of HSIPR funded track improvement work coming this year; expect to see the normal summer work season dropped on OTP. But with many of the track projects slated to wrap up this year, combined with less freight traffic, could be headed into a period of improved OTP overall.

Note to the moderators: could the title be changed to February 2016 Monthly Performance Report to specify which February this thread is about in future searches.

 

[keelhauled]

Northeast Regional revenue down 16% from budget, 10% down from last year--that is just horrible. Even with the Acela increases total NEC revenue was still down 11% from the budget.

Hoosier State ridership still falling like a rock, down 12% from last year. But with revenue up by 17% apparently the business class is having an effect.

Silver Star sleeper ridership up from last year, more than the Meteor was down, so the lower prices are driving increased sleeper ridership overall? Both way down on ridership overall though.

Texas Eagle ridership ran off a cliff--I don't think it's a coincidence that while the other Western trains seem to be running on time the Eagle still frequently loses time in Texas.

Rolling stock acquisitions--projected to spend only slightly more than half of authorized. With ACS-64 deliveries winding down, that doesn't seem to bode well for the Viewliners.

All damaged Amfleet equipment from the Vermonter derailment now back in service.

"Structural cracks" found in an Acela trainset--oh wonderful. Luckily it seems to be repairable and was scheduled to be completed this month.

 

[Train2104]

Large increase in Acela FC - people using those upgrade coupons they gave out en masse?

 

[A Voice]

Like others, I've barely skimmed the document (and not in its entirety even) , but a couple things stood out.

I thought we'd been hearing about how Acela was hurting due to economic factors - business travelers taking cheaper regional trains and the like - yet it was up while the remainder of the corridor saw declines.

Second, and not surprising, the Silver Star saw increases in sleeper patronage but declines in revenue (lowered prices account an MIA diner). Given the boost to the Palmetto from New York to Washington passengers, wonder how practical it would be to try this with other trains (bragging rights for the LD services in the face of Congressional critics; Might come in handy if you want funding for expanded LD trains...).

 

[PRR 60]

Large increase in Acela FC - people using those upgrade coupons they gave out en masse?

At least part of the large Acela increase year-over-year due to the comparison with an awful February last year. February 2015 was a disaster for Acela due to snow and related equipment availability issues. In February 2015 there were 184 trips canceled (16%) and a 24% overall on-time rate.

 

[neroden]

On Time Performance. Wow. Up each of the past 5 months, and especially over last year's stormy February: Better than 80% on time this year, while February 2015 was miserable, less than 63%.

It shows that the Class I railroads can dispatch Amtrak on time, when they want to. They've just been scofflaws in the past.

Last February was being affected by Norfolk Southern's stupid self-induced Autorouter disaster, of course, which made it extra-bad.

I'm betting LSL sleeper ridership and overall revenue is down due to the severing of the Boston section.

 

[lo2e]

As noted by afigg, February is a tough month to do year-over-year comparisons since this year's February had more days than last year's, and the extra day being a Monday to boot, meaning that corridor routes are especially tough to get a grasp on (unless they went down in ridership - see Chicago Corridors below). Theoretically, with one extra day, most routes should see ridership growth year-over-year and we can cast the evil eye on any that didn't, but I'm not sure it's that easy. YTD comparisons will also be difficult from now to the end of the fiscal year, but I will try to be as fair as I can be.

Some random observations:

Downeaster had another good bounce back month from FY15, which they attribute to warm winter weather (which is true). But keeping in mind they also had a very dismal FY15, I bet a good portion of this is just a return to somewhat normal.

LSL had pretty bad OTP, but still managed a really solid gain in ridership.

I'm still perplexed on how they come up with their "Budget" ridership and revenue figures - take the Norfolk Regional for example, they expected a gain of 2,000+ riders from last February to this year, which makes the fact that it only gained 220 rather embarrassing. I'd love to know who concocts these figures and what they take into consideration.

Rinse and repeat for Chicago-based corridors, pretty mediocre there. Hiawatha did well, Blue Water seems to be on a good streak of gains, everything else was rather poor.

Continuing my recent tradition of looking at Long Distance Coach ridership, I will focus mainly on routes that lost coach ridership from Feb2015 to Feb2016, with one exception:

• Silver Star - still losing coach passengers, but better this month than the last several. Coach ridership down 1,029 Feb2015 to Feb2016, or a daily average of 35-37 lower (depending on whether you average it on a 28 day or a 29 day month). At least they didn't empty an entire coach this month!
  
• Texas Eagle - still not good, coach ridership down 4,560 Feb2015 to Feb2016, daily average of 157-163 lower. Second consecutive triple-digit loss.
  
• City of New Orleans had a bad month for both coach and sleeper, flooding and bridge fire are to blame here.
  
• Auto Train didn't have a good month on either the coach or sleeper side, and I'm trying to remember what may have happened. I noticed OTP was pretty bad, which most likely didn't help.
  
• Now the notable exception - California Zephyr has been absolutely outstanding across the board.

 

[neroden]

Additional cutoff coaches from Reno to Emeryville are huge for the California Zephyr. They're also in a position to add cutoff coaches from Denver to Chicago when demand calls for it. This really helps.

 

[jis]

I have heard that they have restored a fourth Coach on the Star at least on some days. It was down to only three Coaches for a while.

Have they run any Denver cutoff Coaches on the CZ in the recent past at all? I thought all of last year the extra Coach went all the way to EMY and back.

 

[Train2104]

Large increase in Acela FC - people using those upgrade coupons they gave out en masse?

At least part of the large Acela increase year-over-year due to the comparison with an awful February last year. February 2015 was a disaster for Acela due to snow and related equipment availability issues. In February 2015 there were 184 trips canceled (16%) and a 24% overall on-time rate.

But those factors would also impact Acela BC by similar percentages...

 

[trainviews]

Large increase in Acela FC - people using those upgrade coupons they gave out en masse?

At least part of the large Acela increase year-over-year due to the comparison with an awful February last year. February 2015 was a disaster for Acela due to snow and related equipment availability issues. In February 2015 there were 184 trips canceled (16%) and a 24% overall on-time rate.

Yeah that's what I thought. Weather related cancellations of the Acelas last year pushed passengers on to the Regionals, which were able to brave the weather. So the movement this year for both trains is largely a flow back to normal.

Overall the corridor lost riders though, in spite of the extra day.

 

[looshi]

Ridership on the Cardinal is up 29% over February of last year, and revenue up 50%! That can't all be from the new Business Class car. Must have been another sleeper in the consist, or what?

There was a major oil train derailment last year on CSX in West Virginia that suspended the Cardinal for a solid 2 weeks.

 

[Agent]

From the report:

California Zephyr ridership was up 18% versus last year, and ticket revenues were up 11% compared to the prior year. The increase was partially driven by the additional Reno cutoff cars and an added sleeper

Does "added sleeper" mean "we didn't repeat last year's experiment of running without the transition dorm"?

 

[A Voice]

I have heard that they have restored a fourth Coach on the Star at least on some days. It was down to only three Coaches for a while.

Have they run any Denver cutoff Coaches on the CZ in the recent past at all? I thought all of last year the extra Coach went all the way to EMY and back.

Is the Silver Star still running with a single locomotive? A lot of the savings from the shortened consist would come from that, but one engine is capable of handling the full ten car train on this route (I've seen it done).

 

[afigg]

At least part of the large Acela increase year-over-year due to the comparison with an awful February last year. February 2015 was a disaster for Acela due to snow and related equipment availability issues. In February 2015 there were 184 trips canceled (16%) and a 24% overall on-time rate.

Yeah that's what I thought. Weather related cancellations of the Acelas last year pushed passengers on to the Regionals, which were able to brave the weather. So the movement this year for both trains is largely a flow back to normal.
Overall the corridor lost riders though, in spite of the extra day.

Yep, comparing the NEC ridership numbers going back to February, 2014, shows that NE Regionals did not actually have a big dropoff in February of this year. February 2015 was the anomaly with the bad winter weather resulting in many Acela cancellations pushing people to take Regionals instead.The ridership numbers for the Acela, NE Regionals, and NEC totals for February 2014 to 2016.

Month Acela Regional Total
Feb 2014 260,178 550,004 810,447
Feb 2015 246,730 619,288 867,633
Feb 2016 278,780 591,419 871,229
Given the extra day in 2016, the average per NEC train was down compared to 2015.
The ridership and revenue numbers for most trains is falling well short of the budget projections. Whoever came with the numbers was overly optimistic for FY2016. OTOH, gasoline prices have gone up around 30+ cents a gallon in my area in the past few weeks. So maybe by summer the monthly budget projections won't be as far off.

 

[afigg]

Some random observations:

Downeaster had another good bounce back month from FY15, which they attribute to warm winter weather (which is true). But keeping in mind they also had a very dismal FY15, I bet a good portion of this is just a return to somewhat normal.

....

Continuing my recent tradition of looking at Long Distance Coach ridership, I will focus mainly on routes that lost coach ridership from Feb2015 to Feb2016, with one exception:

• Auto Train didn't have a good month on either the coach or sleeper side, and I'm trying to remember what may have happened. I noticed OTP was pretty bad, which most likely didn't help.

The Downeaster was clobbered by slow orders, track work, and mid-day cancellations for the track work for much of FY2015. So the ridership is just recovering back to around where it was in the same period in FY2014. If the MBTA ever completes the stimulus funded double tracking and other upgrades on the Haverhill line, (along with the completion of the service facility in Brunswick), the Downeaster should be able to trim its overall trip time and revamp its schedule which should grow ridership. But, from what I have followed in posts elsewhere on the Haverhill line work that to call it being done at a snail's pace would be insulting the speed of snails. Still, the Haverhill line improvements may get wrapped up in 2016.
The Autotrain numbers have been trending downward since, what?, late last summer. As long as the AT is not really late, I suspect that it is not that sensitive to OTP. The dropoff can likely be attributed to a combination of falling gas prices and the service changes to cut costs. Posters here can make their own estimates as how much weight to attribute between the two possible causes.

 

[neroden]

I have heard that they have restored a fourth Coach on the Star at least on some days. It was down to only three Coaches for a while.

Have they run any Denver cutoff Coaches on the CZ in the recent past at all? I thought all of last year the extra Coach went all the way to EMY and back.

Not recently. But they have room to cut coaches at Denver, which matters (in case they get a group booking, for instance) because for a while, they didn't.

 

[neroden]

OTOH, gasoline prices have gone up around 30+ cents a gallon in my area in the past few weeks. So maybe by summer the monthly budget projections won't be as far off.

Projecting gasoline prices in the short term is practically impossible. But every oil company is losing money below $40/bbl, which means gas prices can't stay much below $2/gal for long.

 

[afigg]

Some more random observations from the February 2016 report.

For the first 4 months of the fiscal year for a longer comparison baseline, the state supported corridor trains that are showing growth or hold their own (< +/- 1% change) are the Keystone, Empire NYP-ALB, Hiawatha, Pacific Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, Cascades, and the Blue Water. Setting aside the Downeaster which is rebounding from major track disruptions in 2015, all the rest are down in ridership. With the exception of the Blue Water, all of the corridor services that are holding or increasing in ridership are those with four or more daily frequencies. The ones that are down are primarily one or two daily frequency trains or have been affected by major track work disruptions. Makes a case that offering more daily frequencies helps to compete against cheap gas and bus services.

In February, the Empire Builder at 88.8% had the best all stations On-Time Performance among all the LD trains. Pretty dramatic change from several years ago. The BNSF double tracking and other upgrades have paid off combined with the presumed slowdown in total freight traffic on the route. The SWC, CS, and LSL are the other LD trains at around or above 70% all stations OTP for February.

The Silvers, AutoTrain, and Palmetto have all seen better OTP numbers in the past. My random status maps observations are that they are frequently getting delayed in Virginia on CSX. Don't know if the current 3rd track and Acca yard work is part of the cause. However, if the funded improvement projects are done on schedule, the OTP through VA should get much better come late 2017 and into 2018.