Illinois Amtrak Service

Thanks, Gilbert. I was going to ask the folks in the Prairie State to report the consists of the new trains.

Today I observed the inaugural run of the Carl Sandburg passing MP 18.00 at 829A (pretty much on-time); sorry to report, was nothing special. It was just a normal Midwest Corridor consist and not erxceptionally clean for that matter.

Consist; #381(30):

NPCU 90219
Horizon
Horizon
Horizon
Amfleet IFood Svc
P-42 31

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, an article on ridership for the new Illinois services:

More travelers are taking the trains on three Illinois routes since increased state funding allowed Amtrak to offer additional service beginning Oct. 30.

Ridership on those routes was significantly greater in November than in November 2005 — up 61 percent between Chicago and Carbondale, 49 percent between Chicago and St. Louis and 35 percent between Chicago and Quincy.

Assuming the Post-Dispatch got the numbers right, this is clearly a good start for the new service. It remains to be seen what the little mix-up a few weeks ago will do to ridership in the near term.

As has been noted elsewhere, frequency of service is the largest factor in the increase of ridership. Reliability is up there, too!

mkellerm wrote:From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, an article on ridership for the new Illinois services:

More travelers are taking the trains on three Illinois routes since increased state funding allowed Amtrak to offer additional service beginning Oct. 30.

Ridership on those routes was significantly greater in November than in November 2005 — up 61 percent between Chicago and Carbondale, 49 percent between Chicago and St. Louis and 35 percent between Chicago and Quincy.

Assuming the Post-Dispatch got the numbers right, this is clearly a good start for the new service. It remains to be seen what the little mix-up a few weeks ago will do to ridership in the near term.

Funny you should say that about getting the numbers right. Kevin Brubaker (I think of the Environmental Law and Policy Center, a big advocate of this train) posted slightly different numbers on the Yahoo Groups forum - 90 percent between Chgo and St. Louis. I wonder what the difference is. One of them may have gotten it wrong, but it's also possible that he discounted the Eagle's ridership between Chgo and St. Louis, calculating the change only against the smaller ridership of the previously state-sponsored trains. He and the P-D agree on the other routes. Hmmm.

You make a good point. Because of the 5 trains (in each direction) between STL - CHI, only 3 of them are Illinois supported. The other non-subsidized train is the Ann Rutledge. The absence of that & the Eagle probably make up the difference.

I checked availability on December 30 from CHI to STL, and 21/321 shows sold out. But from CHI to DAL, 21 is showing seats available.

I have no problem with Amtrak setting aside seats on #21 for those traveling to points beyond STL, but presumably, Amtrak's reservation system would be sophisticated enough to allow local sales between CHI and STL to the extent of boardings in STL. In other words, if 25 people are boarding #21 in STL to points south, then Amtrak should be able to sell 25 seats between CHI and STL.

Does anyone know what Amtrak is doing here?

Maybe a car or two on the consist is dedicated ONLY for passengers traveling beyond STL; maybe, in fact, this was part of the overall concept when Amtrak added the additional Illinois service.

There are two Lincoln Service trains (#'s 305 and 307), as I'm sure you know, that are designed specifically for the CHI-STL passenger leaving later that evening with plenty of seats left.


Ocala Mike

Rhinecliff, not to belabor this point, but maybe I didn't state my reply clearly enough. It's NOT about the number of people that are going to be boarding at STL for distant points, right? I mean, their seats will be made available when the many "local passengers" (CHI-STL) get off. In other words, Amtrak has already accomodated the number of CHI-STL passengers offset by those that will be occupying their seats the rest of the way from STL on.

THE PROBLEM FOR AMTRAK, THOUGH, IS KEEPING ENOUGH CHI-TEXAS SEATS AVAILABLE INSTEAD OF SELLING THE WHOLE TRAIN OUT CHI-STL A WEEK AHEAD OF TIME! THERE ARE OTHER OPTIONS FOR THE CHI-STL PASSENGERS.


Ocala Mike

One of the books in my library covers SP consists from 1955-58. Harry Stegmaier wrote it.

I found something quite interesting. Back in the day, certain SEATS and SPACES in certain cars was allocated for sale "Destination X to Destination Y." This was designed to guarantee a certain amount of space for local hauls on each major segment of the run.

I'm not so sure Amtrak does that with their yield management software, nor am I sure they can do it anymore.

Not only SP, Colonel, but also the Zephyr.

Thinking back to 1963 and the one time my Father 'acquiesced' to ride a train with my Mother and I (my Mother was not a fan, but she liked trains), there was simply no Pullman space available for a Denver Glenwood day trip. I learned that they would not book such - PERIOD -. during the peak season. OH...OH...what did their freinds from Aspen think...when we alighted from a Coach and THEY were standing back where the Pullmans were spotted...DREADFUL.

Continuing Westward a day later, the only space for my Mother and Father they would allot (this was with Res made about two months in advance) was "B" in a 6-5. I "lukked out' with '4' in a 10-6. No wonder my Father reconfirmed his "never again' in place since about 1946, abandoned ship at Third Street (I never rode 3rd St Oakland to Middle Harbor) and likewise abandoned ship for a 'Daylight/Super" ("Now Gil...Alice....I can't live with this...I have too many IMPORTANT...things to do...enjoy yourselves however you can') return to CHI.

Rhinecliff wrote:I checked availability on December 30 from CHI to STL, and 21/321 shows sold out. But from CHI to DAL, 21 is showing seats available.

Right now, all show at least 1 seat available, also STL - DAL. Cheaper trains are also available CHI - STL.

Here is the first article I've found on the Illinois service that offers hard numbers matched up to an exact listing of what trains they're talking about:

http://www.register-mail.com/stories/12 ... .GID.shtml

>Magliari said November ridership this year compared to November 2005 was 14,103, an increase of 3,634 from 10,469. That was for both the Illinois Zephyr and the Carl Sandburg. Including all service between Chicago and Galesburg, including the Southwest Chief, the California Zephyr and the state-subsidized trains, ridership was up this year from 12,885 to 16,597, an increase of 3,712.

From this, you can figure out in a given month that:
the Ill Zephyr was carrying 10,469
The Chief and Cal Zephyr - 2,316 [between Chgo & Galesburg]

The new service has increased Amtrak's portion of the market by 28% (whereas the figure touted in previous press releases, 37%, was artificially inflated by computing the increase only for 'state supported trains.')

28% is quite good, I think. I can understand why the proponents would muddy the water with the misleading figure, but I think the real figure is more impressive, if you understand it - adding 33% more service increased the ridership by almost that much. I was less impressed with the idea that adding 100% more service (ie, doubling the number of state-supported trains) brought in only 37% growth.

It's interesting that the two LD trains carry such a small portion of the traffic. I wonder whether the reason is primarily:
1) cost (does Amtrak charge significantly more in order to free up seats for passengers riding farther?);
2) schedule (are the departure times geared for the LD market, and therefore less suitable for the types of trips people are taking within Illinois?); or
3) time-keeping (do the LD trains have such a reputation for being off-schedule that people are aware, and hence book themselves on the local instead?).

or maybe something else I'm not thinking of.

It looks like Mr. ne plus ultra was correct; the discrepancies between the reported increases were due to the choice of baseline (state-supported vs. overall). Here are the results for the three Illinois routes from the November report: There are a couple of interesting things here. First, the ridership gains were healthy; I think that the increase on the Carbondale route is particularly impressive. It does not appear to have come at the expense of the City of New Orleans, either; ridership and revenue were up over FY06 and over budget. Second, the budget was extremely optimistic about potential ridership and revenue gains, assuming a 65% increase on CHI-STL and 80% increases on CHI-CDL and CHI-QCY in their first month of operation. I could see them getting their by the end of the first year, but in the first month? Finally, the increase in ridership was greater than the increase in revenue. My guess is that this reflects price-sensitive riders who are moving from the existing trains to the new trains in order to take advantage of tickets available at the lower buckets. It is too bad that they don't have a breakdown by train (at least they don't yet; we'll see if IDOT decides to make this available).

December's numbers are going to be harder to interpret because of the service interruptions and whatever the fallout may have been from the media coverage that followed; we should know soon enough.

And the December numbers are out. Here are the headlines:

CHI-STL: ridership up 42.1%, revenue up 25.1%
CHI-CDL: ridership up 75.2%, revenue up 45.2%
CHI-QCY: ridership up 37.5%, revenue up 22.0%

My impression is that these are pretty good results, considering the service disruptions. Two of the three routes had larger YoY increases than November, and the third (CHI-STL) nearly matched its November increase despite several train cancellations. Combined, the three routes carried approx. 22,500 more passengers in Dec 2006 than in Dec 2005. The biggest concern would have to be the lower than expected revenues, which could force IDOT to pony up more cash to keep the new trains running.