First, I'll point out that the August NNEPRA board meeting materials have been
posted on their website. (Link is to landing page, not the actual PDF.) Also, TRNE has
posted their summary of Monday's board meeting.
Executive Director Patricia Quinn reported that FY 2013 was "the best ridership year ever. Ridership again broke records, exceeding 556,000 riders, which was a 5% increase over last year's record of 528,000." She continued, "Increases in ticket revenue were even more significant, exceeding $8.1 million, and surpassing the FY12 record of $7.4 million by 9%."
Arlington wrote:Also, it is interesting to note that if the average transaction were $5 we'd still be saying only 1/5th of riders are using the Cafe. So if you don't like Cowdord's number, please do two things:
1) beat it with a *better* estimate
2) show how our/his conclusions should change
These are estimates. Sometimes estimates can be off and still not be wrong enough to undo their point.
Fair enough. I'll accept that $5.00 is likely to be a reasonable guess as to the median cafe purchase, which would lead to the conclusion that 20% of total pax headcount uses the cafe. I would then assert:
- For anyone running a business of any type, 20% of the customer base is not to be lightly ignored.
- All we have to base the percentages on is the total headcount; there is no correction possible with the numbers we have for actual individuals. Theoretically, if every person on the train rode every day, all they would have to do is make 2 purchases/week each and we have our 20% figure while 100% of the actual persons on the train have used the cafe that week. I'm not asserting that that is the case (NNEPRA's July stats said that 16% of riders that month used a multi-trip pass of some type), simply that we have no way to correct for repeat passengers.
- I'm not sure which original figures were used to calculate the "10% of riders" metric. Were they adjusted for round trips (safe assumption: the overwhelming majority of Downeaster passengers travel both ways via train)? If not, then our 20% of passengers just became somewhere near 40% of actual persons; one person may grab a coffee and/or breakfast sandwich on their way down, another may opt to settle in with a Bloody Mary on the way home.
- Arlington's assertion that the cafe car ought to be "replaced" with an additional coach is potentially belied by the statement earlier in this thread that all Downeaster trainsets are now running with 5 coaches, plus the cafe. ("Potentially" because I am not aware of any verification of this statement.) I also highly doubt that anyone at Amtrak is treating Diner/Lounges and Amfleet I's as being interchangable; they're not telling NNEPRA "you can have 5 cars, mix and match coaches and cafes, your choice." NNEPRA appears to be quite capable of matching space to demand; if some trips sell out (and without the cafe you've lost a good chunk of flex space for passholders), leaving that money on the table might be preferable to spending fuel dragging extraneous empty coaches around on other trips, coaches which don't contribute to the overall customer experience of the train.
- Purely personal observation: I ride Amtrak for the bling, particularly including the availability of the cafe car. I have plenty of other options; in fact, I'm going down tomorrow, but driving my own car. I've also taken Concord Coach many times (I haven't taken Greyhound since they closed the St. James St. terminal; CCL is just a lot better). But sometimes I choose to take Amtrak, and that's money that NNEPRA's getting that I could have used to get to Boston in any number of other ways, but I decided to spend on the premium service.
"...And then I thought, every time some company creates a more powerful locomotive does Superman become more powerful as well or is he stuck at 1938 locomotive power levels?" - A friend of mine elsewhere
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