David Benton wrote:I don't think you can totally infer that the low ridership segments are the nite ones. It would seem a reasonable assumption, but the NARP tables do not give ridership per segment, only per distance bracket.
Actually, you can infer that quite directly, particularly when you look at the low station-usage numbers for the stations the Star serves overnight
SilverStarRiderhip2014.gif
In grey (and from NARP) are the little markets that would have to have more passengers making short-and-overnight trips. In yellow are Columbia (the anchor of the "north half") and Jacksonville (the anchor of the "south quarter"). The small greyed markets (I include Savannah because it so underperforms the Meteor) are the "dogs that don't bark" that tip you off that there's no "action" in the "SC-GA quarter" between CLB and JAX. In fact, fewer than 20 per day (in all directions, boarding and alighting) at most stations.
You can basically divide the Star into the North Half of 750 miles, a South Quarter of 400 miles and an empty SC-GA Quarter of 300 miles in the middle. The SC-GA Quarter is empty in all senses: small towns, wee-hours stations, and in the sense of empty trains. The top 750 miles is very full of day trips, but has mostly emptied out by Columbia SC (CLB) with people who will be the only riders as far as JAX. Then at JAX a booming sub-400 mile market fills things up again.
Top 750 miles is full of busy day markets and whomever will be going overnight
The overnight has just the overnighters and nobody else, because basically nobody needs to get off or get on between CLB and JAX. You could almost seal the train Auto Train style and only lose 28,000 riders (out of 400,000 per year)
Florida 400 miles is full of busy day markets and whomever has come overnight
The Dividing line between Long&Nite and Short&Day is either at 800 or 900 miles. All trips over that length MUST BE long-and-night and
essentially all trips under that length are short-and-day
WAS - ORL = 942 Miles and is basically the shortest common overnight. Anything longer requires tacking on at either end
NYP - SAV = 828 Miles and is either the longest day trip or shortest night trip (and timed as such on the Palmetto and Meteor, but goes too late at night on the Star)
NYP - CLB = 743 Miles and is basically the longest common day trip (and timed as such)
Savannah gets 34k passengers from the Meteor but only 9.6 from the Star. You can see what a killer the wee-hours schedule is in killing demand for the Star between CLB and JAX.
So draw the threshold for night as low as 800 if you want to call NYP-SAV "night" and draw it at 900 if you want to call NYP-SAV "day" Either way, what you are looking at in this chart is that anything over 800/900 is the night stuff and anything under are day-timed segments where you don't need both dinner and breakfast:
No matter how you slice it the Star is selling lots of tickets (and a surprising number of rooms) "day" parts NYP-CLB and JAX - TPA/MIA (and selling rooms on those segments rules out selling them through) and therefore emptiest on its night parts (1am to 6am or CLB to JAX), coach or room (which you see in the small size of the orange bar segments over 800 miles). Again, this is unlike the Meteor, which has nice, big orange boxes over 800 miles:
I imagine he will be very happy: they've found a way of preserving all the parts of the Star that Florida uses, and perhaps cutting its losses (which, at $40m/year ($40m revs vs $80m costs) are $10m more than the Meteor's $30m loss ($44m revs vs $74m costs).