prokowave wrote:- The Coast Starlight's avoidable revenue/expense ratio of 14 dwarfs any other route. I wonder if they are shifting an unfair portion of the expense to the corridors that overlap portions of the route.
Despite that, the Starlight has one of the worst cost recovery percentages, only recovering 35% of its costs from revenues. Only the Sunset Limited did worse. Throw in average ridership of just 130 - less than the capacity of two Superliner coaches...
I've been thinking for a long time that maybe the Starlight as a single overnight train is not the best model, and instead breaking it up into two daytime trains (a la the Coast and Shasta Daylights) would improve service, while slashing costs. Surely an overnight at a hotel in Sacramento, Emeryville, Oakland or San Jose can't be terribly bad.