PV Storage Costs

[John_Perkowski]

Ping Mr Jack Deasy,

Mr Marc Kostolich, former VP of high dollar commodities transport at Union Pacific, reports he was informed Amtrak has published a 15% reduction in coach yard storage fees if PV owner operators will increase their trips.

Is it possible the front office realizes the revenue stream of PVs suddenly?

[Tadman]

I've said this repeatedly and nobody seems to listen. We're still stuck on "Mean ol Richard Anderson hates PVs", which is part of the bigger "mean ol Richard Anderson hates trains and Amtrak" malarky.

PV's have a revenue value at Amtrak. The value was not correctly reflected in the schedule of fees and reality of 1971-2019. Mr. Anderson sought to fix that because Amtrak is primarily for a social good of moving people, which does not include joyrides on PV's mostly for big money.

This is reflected in the specific evidence.
1. PV's are no longer set off at as many places, because it was costly and time consuming to switch them out. We all know that Amtrak has a timeliness problem so bad that it's started a legal rift with the Freghts.
2. PV's have plenty of "not in the three ring binder" issues such as needing turned, brake shoes, radio batteries, all kinds of little problems that cascade and lead to delays at initial terminals, the scourge of Amtrak. These events have been communicated to me by Amtrak managers in the past. They are real.

Nobody "hates" a business line for the heck of it. But it is possible to hate it when the published fee schedule and offerings don't make money. It is very possible to hate a business line when it screws up the primary offering. It seems the offer to alter storage rates in concert with frequent service are a good first step to making sense of this operation rather than scuttle it. It would have been just as easy for Mr. Anderson to say "we don't do PV ever" or "we do one PV trip per year" or "we only do PV on a specific route". But that wasn't the case. They're still running, and they're making active steps to improve.

Let's be honest, if PV's were really dead or Mr. Anderson really hated them, would Webb Rail really be actively rebuilding an entire group of ex-NP cars? No, they wouldn't.

[exvalley]

Very well said.

[Tadman]

Thanks. I see Mr. Anderson trying to bring a "Passenger Train Precision Scheduled Railroading" idea to Amtrak.

Given that passenger trains already have a timetable, the efforts mostly include:

1. Get stuff moving out of the originating station on time, always.
2. Significantly reduce equipment failures en route.
3. Standardize processes in order to make things more predictable.
4. Better match costs to revenues.

The railroad is never really a predictable place - weather, accidents, equipment failures, mother nature, floods, etc - but a good manager can manage some of that stuff to a more predictable or manageable state. That's why they keep protect engines in certain places. They're not really needed, but you don't want a failure tying up the Hudson tunnels or major station lead tracks. The cost to keep such protect engine is less than the cost to tie up important trackage, so it's now considered necessary.

[STrRedWolf]

Thanks. I see Mr. Anderson trying to bring a "Passenger Train Precision Scheduled Railroading" idea to Amtrak.

Given that passenger trains already have a timetable, the efforts mostly include:

1. Get stuff moving out of the originating station on time, always.
2. Significantly reduce equipment failures en route.
3. Standardize processes in order to make things more predictable.
4. Better match costs to revenues.

The railroad is never really a predictable place - weather, accidents, equipment failures, mother nature, floods, etc - but a good manager can manage some of that stuff to a more predictable or manageable state. That's why they keep protect engines in certain places. They're not really needed, but you don't want a failure tying up the Hudson tunnels or major station lead tracks. The cost to keep such protect engine is less than the cost to tie up important trackage, so it's now considered necessary.

Agreed. When the MARC 2010 overheat incident hit, the only protect engines on the NEC in Maryland was DC and Baltimore. Now there's a protect in Odenton, half way between the two cities, at a nearby maintenance of way yard. Needless to say, it's gotten a fair bit of use over the years -- last time I saw it out and about was in 2017 and it had to rescue a freight.

[east point]

Agreed. When the MARC 2010 overheat incident hit, the only protect engines on the NEC in Maryland was DC and Baltimore. Now there's a protect in Odenton, half way between the two cities, at a nearby maintenance of way yard. Needless to say, it's gotten a fair bit of use over the years -- last time I saw it out and about was in 2017 and it had to rescue a freight.

Question is an engineer assigned to this protect loco ? A full time assignment or just some hours ?

[STrRedWolf]

Agreed. When the MARC 2010 overheat incident hit, the only protect engines on the NEC in Maryland was DC and Baltimore. Now there's a protect in Odenton, half way between the two cities, at a nearby maintenance of way yard. Needless to say, it's gotten a fair bit of use over the years -- last time I saw it out and about was in 2017 and it had to rescue a freight.

Question is an engineer assigned to this protect loco ? A full time assignment or just some hours ?

Full time crew is on call nearby at the MoW facility.

[jhdeasy]

Ping Mr Jack Deasy,

Mr Marc Kostolich, former VP of high dollar commodities transport at Union Pacific, reports he was informed Amtrak has published a 15% reduction in coach yard storage fees if PV owner operators will increase their trips.

Is it possible the front office realizes the revenue stream of PVs suddenly?

Amtrak private car long term parking (defined as greater than six months) rate is $1836 per month.

Amtrak private car short term parking (defined as greater than three months not to exceed six months) rate is $2754 per month.

Amtrak private car monthly parking (defined as a period of 30 days) rate is $3586 per month.

At AAPRCO's most recent convention (September 2019 at Albuquerque), Amtrak representatives from operations and commercial acknowledged that the private car parking rates may have been set too high, as the number of cars using Amtrak monthly, short term and long term parking have declined and thus revenue from parking has declined.

Since that time, Amtrak has not informed AAPRCO or RPCA of any changes to private car parking rates, nor published any incentives targeted to restoring this stream of revenue. Frankly, any offer to link discounted parking rates to increased mileage would probably prove overly challenging for Amtrak's accounting system. The status quo remains intact.

[Suburban Station]

Frankly, any offer to link discounted parking rates to increased mileage would probably prove overly challenging for Amtrak's accounting system.

assuming they have excel, this is not so. there's no indication that Amtrak can't offer discounts, it offers plenty of discounts (https://www.amtrak.com/promotions/deals.html) which means the lack of discounts is by choice.

[Tadman]

Mr. Deasy might be on to something just the same, especially given his experience dealing with the railroad.

In the last decade, I had direct dealing with the railroad on a ground-based offering and (this is straight from a manager's mouth) they could not tie the cost of the personnel in that service to that offering's revenue to understand the profitability. Ergo the math for that service, the revenues and costs, were just rolled into whatever bigger operation it would fit under in the accounting system, and they could never really tell if the operation was making money.

I'm not sure if this is the particular problem facing private cars for storage or operation, but it is clear their accounting system is a bit different than we expect it to be. It is further clear, using the above example, why private cars are frustrating. Let's say one gets to LA and need brake shoes. Can they even track that cost to the PV operator and send them a bill? It seems challenging perhaps.

[ExCon90]

Along that line, I wonder whether if a Surfliner or a Superliner needs new brake shoes, is there any way of keeping track in order to know what costs should be charged against LD vs. Surfliners? Or do they just whack up the entire shop costs according to the number of LD vs. Surfliner trains (or cars) using LAUS? If that's how their costing is generally set up, they don't really know the costs of anything. (And what proportion of snow-removal costs should be charged against LAUS because it's served by the Southwest Chief?)

I was involved in costing on Conrail, and it can be difficult to pin some of these things down, but you have to figure out how to do it if you want to know what a particular segment of traffic is costing you as opposed to knowing what a specific activity is costing at a specific location.