Why not "Economy Minus" on Amtrak to draw bus passengers?

I see that now even the Crescent is getting business class seating. Why doesn't Amtrak further divide up coach class and add an "Economy Minus" section, at deeply discounted fares, to draw Greyhound passengers?

On long distance trains, this could be either Amfleet I cars with high density seating or New Jersey Transit/Metro-North or other commuter railroad-type cars, with 5-across seating and limited legroom.

On short-distance trains, this could be NJT/MNR or other commuter railroad-type cars, with 5-across seating and limited legroom.

Trains such as the Crescent have fewer than 10 cars, so Amtrak should have the excess power already to haul additional cars. Only some short-distance trains have excess locomotive power, so this would be limited in that instance to shorter trains such as Keystones/Piedmonts.

Thoughts?

Totally agree. There has to be some equipment available for this kind of service!

Also, here is a suggestion free of charge, NRPC: "GoTrain by Amtrak."

Edit to add: though I'm very willing to ride five-wide on short distance trains, I think such a service would be exceptional if it retained the wide seats even with short seat pitch.

It's something I've wondered. The NEC commission reported that the bus mode-share for a number of North East city pairs is nearly as high as the rail mode share, including 13% of Boston/Providence-NY trips (1.4 million), 24% of Baltimore/DC-NY trips (2.2 million), in addition to 9% of NY-Philadelphia trips (1.5 million).

The NY-DC/Baltimore bus traffic (2.2 million) would fill an average of 84 amfleet I coaches every day, or 46 MLVs.

The particular case of the Coast Starlight also comes to mind. the Starlight overlays with three separate corridor trains, and NARP reports that of the Starlight's top 9 2014 city pairs, three were corridor pairs (1.Seattle-Portland, 6. Los Angeles-San Louis Obispo, 8. Los Angeles-Santa Barbara) with 3. and 4. being LA-Bay Area trips. Overall, 38% of Starlight trips are under 300 miles. I would wonder if they could finagle a way to sell discounted seating in a corridor-type coach at an incremental gain to Amtrak?

http://www.nec-commission.com/wp-conten ... ebsite.pdf
https://www.narprail.org/site/assets/fi ... s_2014.pdf

Amtrak steerage ?? yeah right .....

DutchRailnut wrote:Amtrak steerage ?? yeah right .....

Why not? European state railroads (SNCF) and private operators are doing "budget" trains; American Airlines is introducing a "no frills" economy section, etc. Can't Amtrak at least follow somewhat closely behind others, rather than just not bothering to innovate at all?

For corridor and regional trains, I wouldn't object as long as enough cheaper tickets were sold to make up for the smaller fares.

For example and comparison purposes only (and keeping the fares simple)
Fact, Amfleet I coach has 21 rows of seats, with 4 abreast seating the capacity has 84 seats.
Therefore, 5 abreast seating would have a seating capacity of 105 seats.

Let's assume a unity fare of $50 per seat in the existing configuration, each car fare revenues would be $4200.
Taking that $4200 unity for revenues, Amtrak would have o charge $40 per seat to break even in the more crowded car.
Would a 20% decrease in fares increase ticket demand? Would a 20% decrease in fares compete against bus fares?

And taking this argument further, a Bombardier built "MultiLevel" car has 132 seats (non cab with restroom). Again using $4200 unity for revenues, they would have to charge $32 to break even in the different configured car.
Would a 36% decrease in fares increase ticket demand? Would a 36% decrease in fares compete against bus fares?

I'll admit I don't know what the average Amtrak fare is on the NEC. The $50 fare I chose for this example was arbitrary chosen by me.

This issue comes up every now and then. Is it really worth Amtrak's efforts to chase after bottom-feeder travelers? Seems like NEC trains are pretty well patronized without resorting to extremely low fares. Congressman Mica will probably complain about the "Soviet-style" Amtrak going after the brave private bus entreprenuers.

Yep, the brave little bus operators like Greyhound and Bolt Bus or Megabus. And if it's worth the time of those two companies, it's worth the time of an agency whose predecessors regularly operated 20 car trains packed with people in the past.

Dutch: It may seem outlandish, but the single biggest regional transportation complaint I've heard from my peers in the 20 to 35 range is, "...but the train tickets are way too expensive." There's a market between commuter rail and current Amtrak Regional service.

Well, looking ahead 1 month for NYP-WAS travel, we $49 regional fares and $5-$19 on the MegaBus, with another $1-7 in various upgrades available

Looking ahead a week, we get $69-$142 regional fares (only one $69 train), while the MegaBus is offering $25 fares

So it certainly wouldn't make sense to convert an amfleet into a discount seating arrangement unless you could project higher overall occupancy.

I don't necessarily know if Amtrak could make it work, but if they could, given that they are a public service, it would make sense for them to make an effort to serve everyone they can serve economically.

This is not a good idea. Amtrak is not a commuter railroad, discount carrier or a buss company (for the most part). They charge a premium fare for premium service that is generally better and far more comfortable than the commuter railroads. There are a lot of places in the NEC that one can ride by commuter train if they want to travel cheap. In addition it would affect proper utilization of existing equipment and really complicate things when the time comes that a premium fare passenger is forced to ride in a commuter coach. If you want to ride cheap then use a commuter train or bus, have a comfortable trip.
Noel Weaver

Amtrak is blocked by Congress from offering lowball fares on the NEC and LD trains. There has been a restriction inserted into the nnual appropriations bills for some years now; don't know how many years. I dug up the FY2015 appropriations bill to locate the text that was part of the subsection on the Operating Grant subsidy funding for Amtrak:

Provided further, That none of the funds provided in this Act may be used to support any route on which Amtrak offers a discounted fare of more than 50 percent off the normal peak fare: Provided further, That the preceding proviso does not apply to routes where the operating loss as a result of the discount is covered by a State and the State participates in the setting of fares.

So, if Amtrak offers a discount of more than 50% off of the "normal peak" fare, they can't use any of the operating subsidy for that route. At all. The exception are the state supported corridor services, so the states can go lowball if they are willing to do this with Amtrak.

For the discounts that Amtrak has offered on the NEC, "normal peak" fare is probably the bottom bucket fare. Why is this language in there? Beats me, but this is an example of Congressional micro-management of Amtrak at its worse.

But it wouldn't be a discount , it would be a lower price for a lower level of service.
Away from price , it would be a way for Amtrak to increase ridership without needing extra equipment. It would also improve Amtraks Co2 emissions per passenger ratings , which will become more important in the future.
There was a proposal to add 4 seats per superliner on LD services , I don't know what became of that .

afiggatt, that settles it, I'd guess.

So the way to make this work is to have a private operator buy up available coaches, couple them to Amtrak trains, pack them full of seats and sell budget tickets with lots of restrictions (e.g., non-refundable, maybe).

Iowa Pacific, where are you?

It should be noted that the lastest NJ Transit equipment acquired a few years ago, the multilevels, have 2x2 seating by popular demand of NJT passengers. In my experience, on the older equipment, the middle seat often went vacant with passengers preferring to stand.