Amtrak Success Stories

afiggatt wrote:

Arlington wrote:The August MPR has been posted: http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/525/92/Amtr ... t-2015.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not a good report for August ridership and revenue. Multiple track work projects, poorer OTP, and low gasoline prices are cutting into ridership. Surprised that the NE Regionals and Acelas were down by that much.

Cost news, however, looks too good to be true: For the last 3 months, the total YTD cost of ALL LD routes were:
Aug 960.5 (67.5 for the month)
Jul 893.0 (91.4 for the month)
Jun 801.6 (101.9 for the month)
May 699.5

How can it be that LD costs fell 30% from July in to August? (across basically all LDs) Did some kind of crazy old fuel contract expire? It is hard to believe that they didn't talk about this somewhere.

Arlington wrote:

afiggatt wrote:

Arlington wrote:The August MPR has been posted: http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/525/92/Amtr ... t-2015.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not a good report for August ridership and revenue. Multiple track work projects, poorer OTP, and low gasoline prices are cutting into ridership. Surprised that the NE Regionals and Acelas were down by that much.

Cost news, however, looks too good to be true: For the last 3 months, the total YTD cost of ALL LD routes were:
Aug 960.5 (67.5 for the month)
Jul 893.0 (91.4 for the month)
Jun 801.6 (101.9 for the month)
May 699.5

How can it be that LD costs fell 30% from July in to August? (across basically all LDs) Did some kind of crazy old fuel contract expire? It is hard to believe that they didn't talk about this somewhere.

Perhaps the baggage costs really were costing that much.

Greg Moore wrote:

Arlington wrote:How can it be that LD costs fell 30% from July in to August? (across basically all LDs) Did some kind of crazy old fuel contract expire? It is hard to believe that they didn't talk about this somewhere.

Perhaps the baggage costs really were costing that much.

Worth thinking about, but I discarded that pretty quickly. If the diner amounts to ~5% to ~15% of LD costs (which some others think is already too big), that really only leaves fuel and labor, and we don't think labor has changed. That leaves fuel (replacing an old locked-in price with a new low one) or accounting/reporting glitch AFAICT.

Arlington wrote:

Greg Moore wrote:

Arlington wrote:How can it be that LD costs fell 30% from July in to August? (across basically all LDs) Did some kind of crazy old fuel contract expire? It is hard to believe that they didn't talk about this somewhere.

Perhaps the baggage costs really were costing that much.

Worth thinking about, but I discarded that pretty quickly. If the diner amounts to ~5% to ~15% of LD costs (which some others think is already too big), that really only leaves fuel and labor, and we don't think labor has changed. That leaves fuel (replacing an old locked-in price with a new low one) or accounting/reporting glitch AFAICT.

I paid $1.97 for regular unleaded last week for the first time since 2008, and that more or less tracks with how crude in general has performed over the same span. Unless bulk diesel prices behave inherently differently, last month in particular and this year in general have seen decade price lows.

For a 50% drop in fuel costs to power a 30% drop in total LD costs, that implies that fuel made up 60% of LD costs, which seems too high.

It also would say that Amtrak does not charge the LDs a sustainable lease cost on equipment (LD costs assume free equipment, which while kinda true on A-day, would be hiding the true cost of LD ops today, since the bill for new (replacement) equipment eventually comes due and State service rates now reflect this)

I agree with F-line. This strongly points towards a fuel price decrease. Nothing else even comes close to making sense, unless there has been a major shift in labor practices. The only alternative I can think of is some kind of change related to staffing and somehow avoid overtime and penalty claims. Combine that kind of change with cheaper fuel and I think that could be the explanation.

gokeefe wrote:I agree with F-line. This strongly points towards a fuel price decrease. Nothing else even comes close to making sense, unless there has been a major shift in labor practices. The only alternative I can think of is some kind of change related to staffing and somehow avoid overtime and penalty claims. Combine that kind of change with cheaper fuel and I think that could be the explanation.

We had an additional look at these numbers in the Silver Star Downgrade thread. There, where Woody provided this, showing fuel as <5% of the Cardinal's costs

Woody wrote:...page 24 of the PRIIA Performance Improvement Plan of the Cardinal itemized the 2010 costs of that train.
http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/536/878/PRI ... al-PIP.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
At the time, fuel was $0.9 million out of $21.9 million Total Direct and Shared Costs, so it seems diesel fuel was 4% of the Cardinal's total costs that year. (Plus $0.2 million for electric traction on the NEC portion of the route. Does that make any comparison too wacky? O.K. For the Hoosier State, fuel was $0.2 million out of $4.9 million Total Direct and Shared Costs, with $0.0 for electric traction, so it seems diesel fuel was 4% of the Hoosier State's costs that year.)

With fuel on these trains at <5%, its hard to say that it'd ever be more than 10% of LD system costs, and it'd have needed to be 60% to show the crazy-good improvement in costs that we saw in August. I say it is still mysterious.

I was going to propose a cost accounting shift but that would take place all at once.

gokeefe wrote:I was going to propose a cost accounting shift but that would take place all at once.

That 30% thing is so huge and so wacky, I won't be surprised to see corrections appear in the gloom of night. LOL.

Is the September Monthly Performance report usually this late because of the Annual Report? (the monthlies are "due" 6 weeks after the month's close. We usually get them at 5 weeks. We're now at 9 weeks since Sep 30)

Interestingly, the latest (2015-4) issue of Passenger Train Journal contains a July-September ridership report (p.8). The source for the numbers is not cited, but I think we can assume that they came from Amtrak. For the quarter, PTJ lists ridership for the segments as:

NEC 2,891,545
State-supported 3,891,060
LD 1,243,971

If we assume those numbers are correct and then back out the numbers from the July and August monthly reports, the September totals for the segments would be:

NEC 969,836 (Sept. '14 = 999,446)
State-supported 1,157,763 (1,174,575)
LD 344,452 (345,570)

You can do the same exercise for individual routes, but I'm too lazy. We can compare my derived numbers to Amtrak's when they post the September reports, and then see whether PTJ's numbers are correct.

Lordy, it's practically time for the October Performance Report and we still don't have a September.

If the numbers are right and Amtrak is holding their own in the face of exceptionally cheap gas I would say that's a pretty big success story.

This just leaves them in a position to retrench and further improve services.

Arlington wrote:Lordy, it's practically time for the October Performance Report and we still don't have a September.

We have a press release, and Murdoch propaganda machine stories, with year-end totals.

It could be described as Amtrak's second best year in forever, but the Murdoch haters only speak of the increased losses, largely due to the unfortunate crash in Philly last May.

http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/593/119/FY1 ... 15-066.pdf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;