Silver Star sleeper update

[Anderson]

That's interesting in many ways. If nothing else, though, I suspect that a lot of the "win" came from the fact that when combined with the unreliable timing, there were likely a lot of passengers who wound up either being able to have a meal in spite of a late departure time (i.e. not missing out on dinner because the train leaves a station at 9:05 PM instead of 8:35 PM (been there, done that)) or being able to have breakfast even if the train is running early (i.e. the Meteor into WAS...been there, done that as well!). Un-squeezing some endpoint meals (i.e. the Chief into LAX) would also help. I suspect you can move quite a few meals with those adjustments...especially on trains with dubious reliability but also in cases of slightly clumsy schedules, effectively making a meal available to pax immediately pre-arrival/post-departure, such as on the Meteor out of Richmond NB or the Star out of Jacksonville NB would kick quite a bit of revenue into the diner.

The other thing this would do is severely limit "freeze-outs" from the diner (since pax who "couldn't be accommodated" during the normal meal time could spill over outside of that timeframe more or less at will.

Edit: One other relevant thought here is that even if you didn't go to a full 24 hours, operating on the cafe's hours (say, 0600-0000) for the whole period would at least ensure that the car wasn't automatically sitting idle/without revenue generation for close to half of that period (i.e. 0900-1200, 1430-1700, and 2100-0000).

 

[jis]

If Amrtak Diners could simply do what say the Senate Cafeteria can do, which is serve the food either for consumption in the cafe as a tray meal or in a box to take away, that flexibility alone will allow people to get food with lesser time constraints and also lesser venue of consumption constraints. Both of those remove unnecessary points of congestion in the flow and thus is likely to improve sales I think. And yes, if it proves to be popular there will be some amount of lines to contend with. I don't see any way around it specially around popular meal times. happens even in the Diner, which is partly mitigated by reservations and sittings. no reason a similar thing would not work even in a buffet situation.

 

[Anderson]

If Amrtak Diners could simply do what say the Senate Cafeteria can do, which is serve the food either for consumption in the cafe as a tray meal or in a box to take away, that flexibility alone will allow people to get food with lesser time constraints and also lesser venue of consumption constraints. Both of those remove unnecessary points of congestion in the flow and thus is likely to improve sales I think. And yes, if it proves to be popular there will be some amount of lines to contend with. I don;t see any way around it specially around popular meal times. happens even in the Diner, which is partly mitigated by reservations and sittings. nor easons a similar thing would not work even in a buffet situation.

Well, and that's how it plays out in the House Cafeteria as well: The place will be swamped at noon but not so much at, say, 3:00 in the afternoon. I do like the idea of allowing either take-away (which is an option on Amtrak, though you have to know to ask for it...did that a few times when trying to get my steak on the way back to Richmond from DC) or a place-your-order-and-we-call-you-when-it-is-ready system (very common).

 

[VentureForth]

I thought anyone can get take out during any regular dining time.

Perhaps a non-sitting, take out only time? Full menu, but it'll be packed to go between 1430-1700 and, say, 2100-2300.

In fact, this would have been a good time to "redo" the experiment from 1999 - on the Meteor! Run the Star without a Diner and run the Meteor with 24 hour diner.

The report said that they only needed an additional crew of two that would help spread out the workload and increase breaktimes between shifts. You could work 8 on, 8 off alternating - 0600-1400-2200-0600. The next day the coverage would switch so both crews could have the same workload and tips. So where would that crew come from? Oh yeah, the Star.

On another note, here is an interesting Congressional report on the mismanagement of F&B service, really hitting against Amtrak personnel.

 

[PRR 60]

Frankly listening to presentations day before yesterday at NARP from Amtrak I got a distinct impression that they would not be unhappy if the experiment fails so that they have a real world data point to use in their arguments against Congressional micromanagement to show what is known experimentally not to work. This is my impression. Maybe others that were present can chime in and confirm or refute.

Can you point to any law passed by Congress that specifically said for Amtrak to cut diners and only have cafe food for sleeper passengers? As far as I know, the requirement passed by Congress (and signed by the President) requires Amtrak to eliminate food service losses - losses that make up a disproportionally large share of the total operating loss of Amtrak. Congress did not require any specific way to for Amtrak to meet that goal. Amtrak chose this way to experiment toward reaching that goal. Specifying the goal for an organization, and then having that organization decide how to implement changes to meet that goal, is not micromanaging, at least by any definition I've heard of the word.

 

[Ryan]

It all depends on what level that goal is set.

If Congress wants Amtrak to minimize their operational losses, specify that and let Amtrak decide on hope best to execute.

Singling out a single area to reduce losses in is excessive (and ridiculous in an area that has always been a loss leader).

 

[jis]

Frankly listening to presentations day before yesterday at NARP from Amtrak I got a distinct impression that they would not be unhappy if the experiment fails so that they have a real world data point to use in their arguments against Congressional micromanagement to show what is known experimentally not to work. This is my impression. Maybe others that were present can chime in and confirm or refute.

Can you point to any law passed by Congress that specifically said for Amtrak to cut diners and only have cafe food for sleeper passengers? As far as I know, the requirement passed by Congress (and signed by the President) requires Amtrak to eliminate food service losses - losses that make up a disproportionally large share of the total operating loss of Amtrak. Congress did not require any specific way to for Amtrak to meet that goal. Amtrak chose this way to experiment toward reaching that goal. Specifying the goal for an organization, and then having that organization decide how to implement changes to meet that goal, is not micromanaging, at least by any definition I've heard of the word.

No there is no law as such. however, if you wish to learn what impression I got listening to folks talk, answer questions and their body language, the sense I got is that this exercise is to inoculate one self from the criticism that you have not tried to do anything to address Congress' admittedly misplaced emphasis, and are sitting on your thumbs doing nothing.

Frankly, Amtrak management has relatively little leverage on this matter with Congress. It is for us the citizens to collectively go and bend Congress' ears again just IMHO. I cannot point to any law that says Congress cannot be lobbied by Amtrak on this or any other matter either. Some of us did our part this week and continue to do so. it is time that others stepped upto the plate and wrote to their Congressman and Senators on this specific issue, though the situation at present on this is not terribly encouraging at least from what I heard and saw.

Where I specifically disagree with you is in your claim that demanding that food service be a profitable concern by itself is not micromanaging. in my books that precisely is what is micromanaging. Congress should be stating broad goals like reducing losses in running trains overall, and not talking about whether the food service or the toilet service should by themselves be profit centers. So if you disagree on that, so be it. We shall never come to agree with each other on that point. Sorry,.

 

[Guest]

I wonder what fraction of one percent of the national debt can be attributed directly to Amtrak's food service losses?

Considering the many big problems we face in this country, is it really worth the amount of time Congress spends on the issue?

 

[Bob Dylan]

I think John Mica should be the next President/CEO of Amtrak since he has so much experience Mica Managing Amtrak, especially the Food and Beverage Services!

Bill, I'm surprised that you, of all people, would stand up for these Congressional Clowns when the important things they need to be taking care of are ignored so they can put on Dog and Pony Shows such as the $25 AmburgerGate Investigation and pass idiotic amendments requiring Amtrak to make a profit on food and beverage operations within 5 years!!!

 

[Palmetto]

I like the perspective in your first sentence, Jim. Nothing like trying to run something [like a school, in my case] to get a very different perspective on the whole operation.

 

[SilverStar]

That's my read. I think they are expecting it to fail; the experiment is likely only planned to run as long as it is because of bid issues. There's also the fact that by sacking and un-sacking the diner staff they can turn over X union positions from high-seniority workers to low-seniority workers, which seems to be one of those beneath-the-surface considerations.

There won't be any change in seniority workers, other than the lowest seniority, ie newest and usually most enthusiastic and customer service oriented, will be furloughed for 6 months, during which time many will find another job and when Amtrak resumes diner service in 6 months, they will find themselves desperately short of help any will be scrambling to hire....I have seen same scenario many times...

There are no furloughs involved with this test/experiment/market evaluation, but as OBS said the lowest seniority people would go. The schedules have been reworked and expanded. Currently, Miami OBS crews works 4 days on and 4 days off. Now it is going to 4 days on and either five or six days off (I've heard it both ways) thus increasing the number of crew sets required and giving the displaced diner employees a place to go. Hopefully, this means when the experiment ends it will be much easier to return the diner to service having the necessary staffing available by putting the schedules back.

 

[Bob Dylan]

So Silver Train OBS will have more days off which means LESS Pay and Tips! Guess that's better than Layoffs, but not good for workers or passengers!

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

I find this hard to believe. The top of the staffing board willing to cut there pay for six months, just so the bottom of the board keeps working. I hope it true, but I really doubt it.

Sounds like a mangers plan. Not yet approve by the labour union.

So what happens at the end of the six months, what if the union members like the extra day(s) off and now wants to keep them?

Ok that just made up, but cutting your pay for your fellow union worker is a front page story.

 

[jis]

An interesting discussion on airliners.net on the tension between ticket price and level of provided service and how people feel about it, triggered by an article claiming that the airline management is wrong in going the direction they have, and several participants in the article actually disagreeing with the article!

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/6386213/

 

[Chaz]

Like so many links posted on this board the outside discussion on airline pricing won't work on my IPad app even if I try webview.

Usually I think it's because folks post a Twitter link rather than the actual link.

 

[jis]

The airliners.net link is an actual link to a forum thread and has nothing to do with Twitter. Indeed, I have never posted anything from twitter here since I seldom use twitter.

 

[cirdan]

An interesting discussion on airliners.net on the tension between ticket price and level of provided service and how people feel about it, triggered by an article claiming that the airline management is wrong in going the direction they have, and several participants in the article actually disagreeing with the article!

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/6386213/

I've been flying on Easyjet a lot lately, but recently had to fly on a legacy carrier (Swiss).

There are many things that struck me on flying on this legacy carrier, being in the Easyjet mindset. Some points that come to mind

1) check in procedures are much more efficient on Easyjet. Swiss only open the chek in 24 hour before the flight. If you're travelling you don't always have access to a computer or WiFi so have to check in at the airport. Physically. At a desk. If feels like 1954. Or if you don't like the desk, at a machine whose interface was designed by somebody who must rabidly hate customers. This shows how the small things we take for granted on Easyjet are not being copied by other airlines.

2) Boarding is way more efficient on Easyjet. The plane has two doors and some people don't mind walking over the tarmac to climb the stairs to the rear door. Leave the tube to those who really need it because of disabilities, travelling with children etc. This means you board faster and have less turnaround time. Boarding on Swiss felt like a painful stab from years long past. Maybe one day airports may even be able to provide gates with two tubes.

3) Order of boarding. On Swiss, business class board first, and then the cattle class are marched through the business class to get to their seats. Whoever thought that one out? Oh yes, its because we've always done things that way and change is bad.

4) The interior. This is where Swiss wins over Easyjet, but only because they don't manage to sell all the seats so you can spread out your stuff on the empty seat next to you.

5) Food service. Here Easyjet wins totally. If people can chose and pay for their food this drives innovation and it shows.

6) Complaints. People say that Easyjet is a cheap airline and you get what you pay for and shouldn't expect any service. But I have nevertheless always experienced their customer service to be no frills but to be ready to do what it takes when there's a delay or cancellation. My return flight on Swiss was cancelled and we're now four months down the road and I'm still arguing with them to get a refund. Avoid them like the plague.

 

[jis]

Not to stray off into an airline discussion, my motivation for posting that pointer was to bring to attention that the whole discussion about what to unbundle and what to bundle has been an ongoing discussion in other parts of the transport industry and the results of such are very broadly biased towards unbundling, and that is what a vast majority of customers are willing to put up with. However, Those that like bundling always have the choice of buying the whole bundle, but those tend to be not the majority of travelers, specially among those that are traveling on their own dime, apparently. I don't see any evidence that it is any different on Amtrak, except for the few who pine for the golden days of yore and are hoping to make Amtrak a suitable substitute. Frankly that should not be the primary goal of a state subsidized/contracted service provider. The primary goal should be to provide good quality transport with bundles of adequate/good services that the customer is able to buy in addition to the basic transportation, should they so choose.

 

[andersone]

I am old enough to remember places (I think the Greenbrier still might have this model) with "European Plan" and "American Plan." the former being similar to Amtrak LD (meals included) and the latter pay as you go. Mother always preferred European as she contended you have to eat anyway. Mother never liked carrying a purse, and hence another reason for her preference.

I am not so sure that paying as you go wouldn't satisfy the majority, and the method I use to calculate the costs of my trips always includes food I find Amtrak food to be reasonable, if not often cost effective. Now if value could be gained by offering both, perhaps both sides could win.

 

[jis]

I am OK with Amtrak food in general. My problem is three meals a day. I normally do not eat that much, and I find it irksome to pay for something that I know I will not use.

 

[Anderson]

I am OK with Amtrak food in general. My problem is three meals a day. I normally do not eat that much, and I find it irksome to pay for something that I know I will not use.

I generally sit at two meals per day (by technicality, I'm almost always fasting according to current Roman Catholic Church guidance...which is amusing in so many ways); breakfast is the weakest link and gets dropped since I'm not a morning person.

Of course, this reminds me of how irksome I find a "free breakfast" to be at most hotels (for both this reason and, frankly, tax/expense reasons since if the hotel includes breakfast you're supposed to take that as your breakfast meal expense even if you either didn't eat breakfast or opted to eat elsewhere...if nothing else, the "free breakfast" comes across as a way for the hotel to get around expensing limits).

On the train (as with the hotel) I often look at the whole charge as going to the cost of the room (since the breakfast portion is arguably at most 5-10% in both cases) and there are enough other odds and ends that I get out of the deal.

===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Three obvious thoughts emerge with respect to the airline passenger satisfaction discussion:

-One is that passengers are just getting used to (and arguably numb to) lousy service, not to mention generational turnover (i.e. a non-trivial share of the market likely had very limited experience traveling pre-9/11 and a very large share has no experience with pre-deregulation travel).

-The second is the idea that passengers are, broadly leaning towards being price-conscious instead of amenity-conscious (at least on shorter flights) and that if the FAA would allow it you've got a lot of pax who would accept a "standing seat" with some sort of harness to keep you from flying around in turbulence to save $20 (and probably kvetch about it afterwards). RyanAir trial-ballooned such a concept IIRC and from what I recall the reception was more "Good luck with the authorities" than "Horrible idea".

--Adjunct to this is that one of the biggest complaints (legroom cutting) has been a non-trivial part of why fares have come down. If a passenger has a choice between a $250 ticket with 31" of pitch or a $300 ticket with 34" of pitch, how many will pick the cheaper one? Quite a few, if market trends have been any indication.

-The third is that you're likely to get an increasing division in the domestic market on the basis of the quality-vs-price debate. If you want quality, you've got Virgin. If you want cheap, you've got Spirit. And so on.

--Adjunct to this is the fact that Sabre is, in fact, working with Virgin. This came up on the VX forum over on FlyerTalk: Sabre is under contract with them for a dynamic pricing product for upgrades.

--And adjunct to that is this quote: "As airlines make the investment and travelers become accustomed to end-to-end personalization, high-margin ancillary sales and cost-saving service opportunities will become vital to optimizing the financial health of airlines." The bold is mine. I read that as "You'll be able to buy more/better food options in advance if you want to" as an easy example (guess which airline has been working an aggressive buy-on-board angle for a while, albeit emphasizing making it decent food that is for sale). Frankly, I'm going to try and read the report, but it sounds like the author of the Forbes article took a headline on a report and didn't bother reading the contents.

Link to FT: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/virgin-america-elevate/1673935-vx-quietly-increases-cost-mcs-f-upgrades-short-med-haul-routes.html

 

[Bob Dylan]

When I'm riding in Coach on Amtrak ( ie paying for the trip!) during meal times, I generally eat Breakfast ( best overall value ) or Lunch in the Dinner and skip Dinner which I consider overpriced for the choices and quality now offered!

When riding in a Sleeping Car ( always AGR Awards unless an extremely good Low Bucket Roomette comes up) I generally skip Lunch since, as jis says, I don't normally eat that much food!

I like the idea of bundling and paying for upgrades like the airlines offer.

I'm a big fan of the slumber Coach concept since I actually got to ride in them many times in the old days!

Breakfast in the Diner into Atlanta, Chicago or Washington was great after sleeping overnight in my room!!

 

[neroden]

Unless we have evidence to the contrary, one has to start with the assumption that the demographics of those that take the train is substantially similar to those that fly,

I don't have hard evidence for this, but I'm almost certain this is wrong. Everything I've ever seen suggests that demographics of those that take the train is substantially similar to those that *drive*.
(I'm not sure how that differs from those that fly, but I think it does.)

The vast majority of people I've met on a train or in a station consider driving to be the alternative. They have often been deliberately avoiding flying -- and at the very least, they do not consider the speed of a flight to be an advantage.

I'm not sure how that affects your thinking on this....

which means that lower fare will indeed trump all else for a majority of travelers. However, that does not mean the a higher level of service should be denied to those that are willing to pay for such.

This came up in the Q&A with Joe McHugh the other day, and he did mention the possibility of providing purchasable service packages over and above the base fare, so a traveler can choose such, In a sidebar conversation the thought that such packages could be made available to not just Sleeper but even to Coach passengers was mentioned too. This would of course also be an incentive to actually provide the specific service promised as part of package much more carefully, than the cavalier fashion in which Sleeper fare included "service" is handled these days.

Well, one thing about driving is that every cost is very, very unbundled! Different restaurant each meal, different gas station each fill-up, etc...
Driving also has the "stopover privilege" -- and I've realized that a lot of people do ask whether they can get tickets with "stopover privilege", where they can just decide to get off, spend a day in a town, and get back on the train the next day. Which on Amtrak you usually can't get. (I think this is confirming my theory that the main competition is driving, not flying.)

Of course with these things you can never tell what might or might not happen until the proverbial "fat lady sings", so take everything with a dollop of salt.

But one thing that seemed to keep coming out of the conversations is that almost everyone expects the Diner to be back on the Star after this test period. But it is possible that the Diner/Cafe idea that has been mentioned in a few PIPs might come to pass to enhance the revenue stream of the Diner, and other possible innovative ideas will be tried in course of time.

Think about Amtrak as competing with long-distance driving, not with flying. I'm not sure what ideas that gives you in terms of innovative amenity structures, but it might inspire you to come up with something clever...

 

[jis]

Except on the NEC? Or do you believe that all those that stopped flying reducing the demand on air traffic on the NEC are not taking trains? But anyway that is not LD so irrelevant here.

In general I still believe unbundling is a good thing. Bundling of the food with Sleeper was originally done hoping to force more people to use the Diner and to charge them for food that they do not necessarily consume and then to use that to gussy up the revenue picture instead of transferring it all to support the Diner. Which is just plain dishonest IMHO.

I have no idea why Amtrak does not consider giving stopover privileges at least for a limited number of them, perhaps even charging a small premium per stopover.

 

[John Bobinyec]

The diner is back online now if you start booking trips in February 2016. Fares have been adjusted accordingly.

jb