… two things:
- better on-time performance, no disruptions
- longer consists
Longer consists are at least partially coming with the Viewliner IIs and the potential reallocation of the Horizons. ...
If anyone's curious, the direct-loss subsidy numbers from Boardman's March 2013 graph
are as follows, accurate to the decimal place (measured off a zoomed-in copy of the graph!)
-- parentheses indicate profit:
Silver Star 6.1
Cardinal 6.3
Silver Meteor (1.4)
Empire Builder 10.8
Capitol Ltd 5.8
California Zephyr 30.5
Southwest Chief 27.9
City of New Orleans 5.3
Texas Eagle 13.5
Sunset Ltd 23.9
Coast Starlight 16.9
Lake Shore Ltd 1.7
Palmetto (4.1)
Crescent 7.9
Auto Train 0.0
...
Across-the-board gains aren't what would happen. The Crescent, Silver Star, and City of New Orleans currently lag the others substantially. In fact, the trains which are already the best-performing would probably have larger gains, while the less-well-performing ones have lesser gains. Provided that extra cars can be found.
...
Anyway, an overall gain of 20% (above inflation) in revenue on the eastern long-distance network is well within the bounds of plausibility in the next decade:
- if-and-when OTP recovers, a return to stable 2%-4% yearly "secular" growth is plausible
- … a daily Cardinal should improve the train's bottom line ...
- the new Viewliners should improve the bottom line ...
- Pennsylvanian / Capitol Limited through cars ...
- Cutoff cars for the Crescent at Atlanta would probably help a great deal ...
- ... improvements on the Empire Corridor
- Miami station ...
- SunRail should ... help Silver Star & Silver Meteor
- ... the schedule change ... help the LSL
Instead of retrenching on the
Crescent, could we grow it? The once-a-day train arrives in New Orleans around 7:30 p.m. Three times a week the
Sunset Ltd departs the next morning at 9 a.m. Connecting with a
daily Sunset could attract more riders heading west. You'd have to spend the night in a hotel near the station; there's probably 20 within a mile of it. OR, if the ticketing allowed a one- or two-night break at New Orleans without a fare penalty, many transferring student and tourist types would enjoy a day or two stopover in the historic city.
Eastbound, it's similar. The
Sunset Ltd arrives at 9:40 p.m. three times a week, and the
Crescent leaves daily at 7 a.m. But a daily
Sunset would be better.
Similar overnight connections exist on the
City of New Orleans, and they'd be improved with a daily
Sunset. And having at least two daily trains into San Antonio could feed a little traffic onto the
Texas Eagle.
Of course, for those of us who went to Bourbon Street last night, it gives us a headache just to think about those early departures. LOL.
So down the way, could we work on the times? Houston-New Orleans takes 9 hours, at a pathetic 45 mph. Atlanta-NOLA at 12 hours and Birmingham NOLA over 8 hours are slow trips.
Connecting revenue can be a big thing. When the
Sunset's schedule was changed to allow good connections with the
Coast Starlight, iirc the added revenue was estimated to be in the $10 to $20 million range. When Oklahoma was working on plans to extend the
Heartland Flyer, a connection to the
Southwest Chief somewhere near Wichita was estimated to add some $10 to $20 million revenue to the
Chief. I have no idea how much of connecting revenue falls to the profit/loss line, but added revenue can't be bad.
Now, in a perfect world, Texas and Louisiana would step up to support the proposed
Sunset shuttle on the San Antonio-Houston-New Orleans corridor, with at least two daily trains. This might be a good place to put Horizons being evacuated from the wintery Midwest, freeing up a little Superliner equipment for use elsewhere. A shuttle Mobile-Biloxi-New Orleans would also feed traffic to a daily
Sunset, the
CONO, and even to the
Crescent.
But I know. We live in a a very imperfect world.