With trains running at 50% of capacity, how to improve?

OK; let's note that those around here who "do this stuff for a living" have stated that it is simply unfeasable to drop and add cars along a route. From having been "over there" this past summer, I realize "they do it all the time".

But Europe "ain't the States".

The best Amtrak can do is to aggressively use their demand pricing systems to maximize revenue for segments in the Corridor such as Wilmington-Washington, New Haven-Boston, and, on LD routes such as Atlanta-New Orleans and Orlando - Miami, as aggressively as possible.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:OK; let's note that those around here who "do this stuff for a living" have stated that it is simply unfeasable to drop and add cars along a route. From having been "over there" this past summer, I realize "they do it all the time".

But Europe "ain't the States".

The best Amtrak can do is to aggressively use their demand pricing systems to maximize revenue for segments in the Corridor such as Wilmington-Washington, New Haven-Boston, and, on LD routes such as Atlanta-New Orleans and Orlando - Miami, as aggressively as possible.

I'm not sure who exactly is saying that, but as I've seen them do that in what I'd call a semi-routine manner lately at ALB for I believe the Ethan Allen and a few other trains, I'd say it's far from infeasible. There's certainly some locations where its more practical than others though.

I read in another thread that Amtrak was moving to ECP type braking for the future. This could speed up brake testing upon dropping/ picking up cars. Each car could send the information to the head end instantly.

Feasibility depends partly on how many times in a work shift you perform the operation. You're going to pay at least one person for 8 hours, whether you run one train a day or one train an hour. Additionally, as has been pointed out above, you need a track to put the car on when you set it off, and store it until some other train picks it up; this preferably requires an interlocked switch. A lot of Amtrak stations are what in Europe would be called "unstaffed halts" and simply have no facilities for adding and dropping cars.

Arlington wrote:Which also brings up another seat-filler: letting the LDs on the NEC carry "local" traffic. Right now most (all?) operate southbound as "receive only" and northbound as "discharge only" and so cannot fill empty seats with locals. I forget what the reason was for this (although obviously deigned to keep dwell times reasonable)

I'm pretty sure another reason is to keep people from taking up space on those trains that is needed for long distance passengers. People can't ride the train from Newark to Charleston if it's full of people riding Newark to Philadelphia.

ryanov wrote:

Arlington wrote:Which also brings up another seat-filler: letting the LDs on the NEC carry "local" traffic. Right now most (all?) operate southbound as "receive only" and northbound as "discharge only" and so cannot fill empty seats with locals. I forget what the reason was for this (although obviously deigned to keep dwell times reasonable)

I'm pretty sure another reason is to keep people from taking up space on those trains that is needed for long distance passengers. People can't ride the train from Newark to Charleston if it's full of people riding Newark to Philadelphia.

More likely it's because the schedule from WAS to NYP isn't fixed. i.e. with discharge only, if the train is ahead of schedule and it drops off its passengers, it can leave immediately. This makes it hard for passengers to tickets to know when to arrive.

I've seen the Crescent make up a great deal of time from WAS to NYP this way.

That said, having some sort of "unreserved, use at your best discretion" type ticket might be a viable option to fill some of those seats.

Greg Moore wrote:More likely it's because the schedule from WAS to NYP isn't fixed. i.e. with discharge only, if the train is ahead of schedule and it drops off its passengers, it can leave immediately. This makes it hard for passengers to tickets to know when to arrive.

I've seen the Crescent make up a great deal of time from WAS to NYP this way.

That said, having some sort of "unreserved, use at your best discretion" type ticket might be a viable option to fill some of those seats.

Bingo. Imagine a group of passengers booking the Silver Star from WAS to NYP and the train is running 3 hours late.

Also, a passenger buying a ticket from WAS-NYP takes a seat from someone who might want to go from Richmond to NYP.

That said, I think that if your at the station, and the train is there or very close, they should sell you a ticket.

Two words: Yield Management. Another two words: Diversified Marketing. Add two and two, and i think it might at least be a start?

For southbound, it should be perfectly feasible to take no reservations for destinations Alexandria and north until a short period (12 hours, or even less?) before scheduled departure from New York; this would avoid shutting out long-haul passengers. For northbound, as pointed out above, it just isn't practical, with reservations or without, to plan on using one of the long-haul trains. From a passenger-comfort standpoint, someone who has just spent the night in a coach seat and is lucky enough to find the seat next to him unoccupied in the morning and is looking forward to getting off at his destination is not going to be happy if someone whose day is just beginning plunks himself down at Wilmington or somewhere (I know, he only paid for one seat, but still ...).