Amtrak Diner and Food Service Discussion

Rockingham Racer wrote:My question was about the Crescent, but thanks anyway!

You may be correct with the Crescent.
The train schedule I'm reading states the Crescent leaves New York City at 2:15 pm and arrives in New Orleans at 7:32 pm, 30.25 hours later. Does Amtrak serve dinner before arriving in New Orleans?? Do they have the time to serve everybody before closing the diner and taking inventory?
In the opposite direction, the schedule I'm reading states the Crescent departs New Orleans at 7:00 am and arrives in New York City at 1:48 pm , 29.75 hours later.
But the average of 30 hours the Crescent takes to travel between New York City and New Orleans is much closer to the 32 hours it takes the Texas Eagle.

And to put it on the record, here's the departure and arrival times for the Texas Eagle.
It departs Chicago at 1:45 pm and arrives in San Antonio at 9:55 pm, 32.25 hours later.
It departs San Antonio at 7:00 am and arrives in Chicago at 1L52 pm, 31 hours later.

I would suggest there is plenty of time to served that second dinner and take inventory before 9:55 pm.

gokeefe wrote:Talk about an opportunity for cost savings. Speed up the train and reduce labor and meal costs while still receiving the same or better revenues?!? Wow. I never thought of the losses on the Long Distance services as being proportional to the average speed of the train. I wonder what the coefficient/correlation looks like.

Average speed and distances travel do effect labor costs. Every time a long distance train runs hours late, Amtrak surely pays more overtime.

I used to see these losses as a simple function of distance. Obviously if the trains run faster the labor costs are lower, but what I didn't realize was that in some cases the average speed of these trains is substantially slower than comparable routes. The comparison with the Texas Eagle and City of New Orleans brought this into much clearer focus for me.

This is a ridiculous situation for Amtrak to have to live with. Investments in this area provide a nearly immediate return on taxpayer investment dollars simply through reduction of losses by Amtrak.

gokeefe wrote:I used to see these losses as a simple function of distance. Obviously if the trains run faster the labor costs are lower, but what I didn't realize was that in some cases the average speed of these trains is substantially slower than comparable routes. The comparison with the Texas Eagle and City of New Orleans brought this into much clearer focus for me.

This is a ridiculous situation for Amtrak to have to live with. Investments in this area provide a nearly immediate return on taxpayer investment dollars simply through reduction of losses by Amtrak.

The old saying time is money is true!

But let's compare the average speeds. You might be surprised.

Texas Eagle takes approximately 32 hours to travel 1305 miles, averaging 43.5 mph.
City of New Orleans takes approximately 19.5 hours to travel 934 miles, averaging 47.9 mph.
Crescent takes approximately 30 hours to travel 1377 miles, averaging 45.9 mph.

And that's when they are running on time. I believe the City has the best on time performance of the three.
City of New Orleans #59 81% on time, #58 71% on time
Texas Eagle #21 53% on time, #22 39% on time
Crescent #20 50% on time, #19 23% on time

Surely Amtrak could cater its routes that go through NYC via an airline caterer at EWR (or even LGA, since it's so close to Sunnyside Yard).

I could deal with a café car only as long as the food was healthy and high quality. On my Amtrak trips, though, the café menu is just microwaved junk food. Unacceptable.

Remarkable to notice that not only is the Texas Eagle longer and slower but its on time performance is abysmal. One never really thinks of the Long Distance services as having variables that contribute or take away from losses. More often than not I think the perception for policy makers is that the losses are simply an unavoidable consequence of operating long distance services through thinly populated areas. This is very true but apparently not to the degree that they lose money right now. Some of the losses could be avoided if the following were true 1) OTP was better and 2) routes were faster. An interesting and surprising lesson.

The Crescent possibly has the benefit of more shared stations on its route. Or conversely, less major exclusive stations.

It just goes to show that the absolute worst case fiscal scenario for Amtrak are the routes where they run a single Long Distance train "once a day each way". I can't even begin to imagine what the metrics look like for the segments of the Cardinal where they only run three times a week.

electricron wrote:Average speed and distances travel do effect[sic] labor costs. Every time a long distance train runs hours late, Amtrak surely pays more overtime.

Surely overall, but maybe not to a great extent in the diner. The diner quit serving at the appointed time when I traveled on the Lake Shore even though it had become several hours late. An extra dinner was served, in first class, from an emergency stock of timeless airplane dinners. It was good enough to prevent the herd from dying off, but individual travelers had gripes. (Vegetarian? Sorry, it's beef in soy sauce. Don't eat beef? Sorry, it's beef in soy sauce. Allergic to soybeans? Sorry, it's beef in soy sauce.)

Must say I'm surprised the emergency Dinty Moore rations are still beef (since for all too many of the Vegan Gluten crowd find beef to be as fish is to me). Are they not available in Chicken?. After all, back when I had to attend 40 hours of seminars each year to maintain my CPA license, it seemed like chicken was all the sponsors ever offered for Lunch.

electricron wrote:Average speed and distances travel do effect[sic] labor costs. Every time a long distance train runs hours late, Amtrak surely pays more overtime.

dumpster.penguin wrote:Surely overall, but maybe not to a great extent in the diner. The diner quit serving at the appointed time when I traveled on the Lake Shore even though it had become several hours late.

I agree that the food service employees (and maybe even the sleeping car crews) stop working at the appointed time (or if running early, at the appointed geographic point), but I think that they still get paid for that idle time. (If the train is running late, and they are the crew for a return trip with different equipment, they may quit geographically early so they can get off and rest before boarding the other train. I've experienced this on the City of New Orleans and the Texas Eagle.)
Now, there may be short runs where an employee is still guaranteed a full day's pay, so the train has to be very late for any overtime to be earned. Such an employee may not want to perform actual work during the "arbitrary time", when he is normally free of duties. Aren't labor agreements complex?

JimBoylan wrote:(If the train is running late, and they are the crew for a return trip with different equipment, they may quit geographically early so they can get off and rest before boarding the other train. I've experienced this on the City of New Orleans and the Texas Eagle.)

I've seen this happen as well. Crew got off at BAL instead of riding all the way to NYP because they were going to miss their outbound (southbound) turn.

We recently came north on the Silver Meteor and ran about an hour early out of DC and into NYP. The dining car crew made an announcement without warning at about 8:25 AM that the diner was closed. Several coach passengers came into the diner after 8:25 wanting breakfast and were turned away. I knew we were coming in early but I assume that Amtrak's crew still get paid to a certain point (say 11:30 AM for a scheduled 11:00 AM arrival) and they should have been able to provide meals for those people. Those were paying coach customers. Just because a train is running early shouldn't allow the crew to pack up early.

From Amtrak's website:
Meal Service & Reservation Hours ---------- Latest Boarding Time to Receive Dining Service
Breakfast 6:30 am - 10 am ------------------- 9:30 am
Lunch 11:30 am - 3 pm ----------------------- 2:30 pm
Dinner 5 pm - 9:30 pm------------------------ 8:30 pm

Buried in Amtrak's FY '16 Budget, Business Plan, and FY '17 Budget Justification and Five Year Plan is a nice discussion of the current plans to reduce food and beverage losses to 0 by 2020. (See PDF Page 63 of 164)

Notable in the discussion:

In addition to the specific test on the Silver Star, the following elements continue to be reconsidered on other Long Distance services:
 On-board Logistics – Reduce spoilage; evaluate amenities offered; optimize on-board stock; and redefine and standardize service levels.
 Product Development and Supply Chain – Optimize product portfolio, menu development and supply chain activities.
 Training – Engage labor in revenue enhancement and cost control initiatives, and enforce loss prevention measures.
 Ticket Revenue – Align the perceived value of F&B services with revenue collected.
Labor optimization – Align staffing with ridership and customer demand.
 Technology Enhancements and Policy Improvements – Continue implementation of point of sale system and evaluate ways to leverage new technology in decision support.
 Price Actions and Revenue Options – Continue to evaluate the menu prices and marketplace pricing. In addition, work with Finance to evaluate the feasibility of allocating a portion of ticket revenue attributable to F&B service to offset the cost of providing that service.
 Request for Information (RFI) – Pursue an RFI process to explore options for new ideas and business practices for delivery of F&B service.
 In accord with FAST, Amtrak is developing a plan, due in March, to eliminate the operating loss from food service by the end of 2020.

The discussion of ticket revenue allocation is particularly interesting as this seems to imply some internal shifting and commitment of revenues.

Obviously those willing to pay for it should have diner service. But I like the idea of the ability to get a room without paying for the meals too.

I'd want to make it roomettes come without meals and bedrooms with meals. Roomette passengers can still use (and pay for) the diner car but can also choose the lounge car for cheaper meals. I'd probably at least consider getting a roomette if the prices were similar to the SS prices I saw. I'd have a feeling though the bedrooms would skyrocket in price in this case to make up for it. You can say the normal approach works but you've priced a lot of people out of roomettes/bedrooms and they're stuck going coach.