posted
When I was in LA last week I noticed signs in the subway bragging that the Blue Line serves 22,000,000 riders a year. Wow! Now Amtrak claims 25 million a year including the NEC. I doubt if the Blue Line sucks up a billion dollars in addition to the fares to render its service. Can someone enlarge the picture for me?
Posts: 326 | From: San Antonio Texas USA | Registered: Dec 2003
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Remember, too, that comparing an urban rapid transit system to Amtrak is like comparing apples and oranges.
The majority of Blue Line riders use it to travel to and from work - which translates into 10 one way trips weekly (inbound and outbound), 50 weeks per year. Each time they board, one more "rider" is added to the total tally. So in the above example, a single worker is counted as 500 "riders" over the course of a year.
In contrast, few travelers use Amtrak on a daily basis. Amtrak fills a completely different need (i.e. intercity travel), covers much longer distances, and is an infinitely bigger, more complex, and hence more expensive system to run.
Then again, every mode of transportation in America -- air, rail, and road -- is heavily subsidized by taxpayer dollars. The only thing wrong with the overall picture is that the highway and airline lobbies (which are among the heaviest contributors to election campaigns) have a perpetual lock on most of available funding, so Amtrak and urban rail (whose supporters don't have the means to pay off Washington decision makers) get whatever crumbs are left.
Posts: 793 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
I went back and looked at the signs twice; I'm pretty certain that's what it said. It seems to me the data on that site supports the figure originally mentioned of 22 million. I thought most of the users of the NEC, as well as the Empire service, were commuters and that they accounted for a large percentage of Amtrak's 25 million (and that they would also be 10/week and so on). Since Amtrak owns and maintains so little of the infrastructure it uses, maybe it's not so clearly apples vs. oranges; maybe more like apples vis a vis crabapples. Posts: 326 | From: San Antonio Texas USA | Registered: Dec 2003
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The unit you need is passenger miles. That will change the picture drastically. A transit rider usually makes a trip of under 10 miles, a lot under 5 miles. A lot of these will be the daily guys making 400 to 500 trips a year. Compare that with the average Amtrak trip of 500 to 2000 miles on Amtrak. The "short" haul on Amtrak is the 90 miles New York to Philadelphia or the Sacramento to Oakland, whatever that distance is. In it only in this range that you are lkely to get some riders that show up more frequently that one round trip a week. Most of the truly long trips represent something between once a year and once a lifetime.
In urban transit, it is probably semi-legitimate to count ridership by the passneger count. On long distnace trains it is definitely not legitimate to do so.
Posts: 2808 | From: Olive Branch MS | Registered: Nov 2002
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posted
Amen, George. That needs to be repeated time and again: The unit to concentrate on is the Revenue Passenger Mile.
-------------------- "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one corner of the Earth all one's life." Posts: 506 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: Compare that with the average Amtrak trip of 500 to 2000 miles on Amtrak.
Can you document that statement, George?
quote: The unit to concentrate on is the Revenue Passenger Mile.
Why? Other than the fact that it might lessen the apparent blackeye of Amtrak? What's misleading about the raw statistic that to move 25 million passengers a subsidy of 1.2 billion is required; apparently $480 per each above and beyond the fare.
I am an Amtrak fan. I strongly feel that if we don't look at the situation realistically - at the very least admit what is real for others - there is no hope. Enlighten me please.
Posts: 326 | From: San Antonio Texas USA | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Miami, don't forget that most of that that 1.2 billion goes into the NEC infrastructure, not operations.
The average long-distance trip is in the 700-1,100 mile range, and varies with the route.
Regarding the original inquiry, I'd like to make an analogy to road trips. An urban rail line is like city streets. People make short, frequent, routine trips. Intercity rail lines are like interstate highways. People make infrequent but long trips. A four lane boulevard in your city may carry as many or more cars per day than a four lane freeway between two cities. That does not make one a better investment than the other, or any less useful, but you can be sure that 50 or 500 miles of freeway costs more to maintain than a 5 miles of city street.
posted
Please excuse me. I don't mean to be contentious, but....
quote: The average long-distance trip is in the 700-1,100 mile range
You change the parameters slightly, Mr. Toy, by the addition of the words "long-distance." No arguement there; but that's far from the average Amtrak trip isn't it?
quote: 50 or 500 miles of freeway costs more to maintain than a 5 miles of city street.
My understanding is that Amtrak doesn't take on the maintenance of the comparable infrastructure and apparently some of the so-called class 1 RRs sneer at the sum they are forced to accept from Amtrak for its use. I can't see that the analogy is helpful to us.
At risk of being obnoxious by repeating myself, I think the situation is serious and we are going to have to GET REAL to salvage anything. I don't know what is real, just trying to get an understanding. Thanks.
Posts: 326 | From: San Antonio Texas USA | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Mr. City of Miami, as the professor said, I leave the documentation as an exercise for the student. I have seen figures on the average trip lengths for the various services, so I am reasonable sure of my numbers, but not so much so as give you something like "423.5" miles. However, I have neither the time nor the inclination to try to prove something to someone who apparently has no intention of accepting anything that disagrees with opinions already formed. If you honestly want to know, I think it can be found in the various information published by Amtrak itself or the US DOT.
George
Posts: 2808 | From: Olive Branch MS | Registered: Nov 2002
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posted
One reason that we should concentrate upon expressing as profit or loss in terms of revenue passenger milage is because that unit is the indutry standard. Frieght is measured in ton miles, passenger volume is measured by the travel and transport industry is revenue passenger-miles. Why not use the industry standard?
-------------------- "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one corner of the Earth all one's life." Posts: 506 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
Forget all that! Just do your best tho make sure that Bush and the Republicans in congress don't get their way and finally KILL Amtrak! Make sure that you write your congressmen, senators, governors and Pres. Bush at least 4 times each to make YOUR voice heard! Otherwise, you will not have an Amtrak to discuss and pontificate about, let alone an Amtrak to ride!
Posts: 287 | From: Palatka, FL, USA | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote: someone who apparently has no intention of accepting anything that disagrees with opinions already formed
I'm sorry you hold that view, Mr. Harris. I tried not to earn that characterization. In the meantime , I'll ride the trains in CA and as much of the LDs as I can - The Crescent, The Capital, The Zephyr, the Chief in the next 5 months bought and paid for - while they're still there for us. What exactly is a passenger revenue mile. It seems like it would be quite different in the NEC from LDs. If my trip from WAS to EMY were at the same per mile rate (just the rail rate, not the accommodation charges) as my trip from NYP to WAS it would be outrageously expensive wouldn't it?
Posts: 326 | From: San Antonio Texas USA | Registered: Dec 2003
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The Bureau of Transportation Statistics defines a "Revenue Passenger Mile" as "One revenue passenger transported one mile in revenue service. Revenue passenger miles are computed by summation of the products of revenue vehicle miles on each interstation segment multiplied by the number of revenue passengers carried on said segment."
-------------------- "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one corner of the Earth all one's life." Posts: 506 | From: Wisconsin | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
"revenue passenger mile" is a paying passenger carried one mile. Revenue PER passenger mile is the total income divided by the number of passenger miles. As noted, the revenue per passenger mile is higher on something like the Acela than on a long distance train, but the COST of providing the service is also higher per passenger mile. Even with the higher fares, the subsidy for the Acela is probably higher per passenger MILE than that for the long distance trains because of the high cost of the northeast corridor infrastructure the high cost both fixed and operating for the equipment, and high terminal costs inherent in short distance runs.
Part of the problem with the Amtrak loss figures, other than just being applied to the wrong type of unit has been pure accounting dishonesty in that a lot of the expenses which are actually solely Northeast Corridor realted are assigned as systemwide expenses and thereby divided amongst all trains. It may be legitimate to apply some NEC expenses to the Crescent and Florida service, but no way to the Western trains.
The question for subsidy should be based on the amount per passenger MILE, not per passenger, absolute.
********
Generally the cost of any transportation is based on a fixed terminal cost plus some distance related unit cost. This is true for all forms of transportation, even your car. Think of your car payment, insurance cost, tag, etc., as the fixed costs that occure whether you drive the car 1,000 miles per year or 100,000 miles per year. Gasoline, oil changes, tires, and repairs are generally milage based. If people did the numbers properly and realized the true cost of keeping an automobile, there would be a lot less 2nd and 3rd cars.
Airlines tend to analyze a lot of things on the basis of cycles, where one cycle is a takeoff and landing. This is why short flights are so expensive. The fare for a flight across the Pacific is about half the rate PER MILE of all but the cheapest domestic fares, but yet an Airline like Northwest considers that most of thier profit comes from their trans-Pacific flights.
This is also true for rail. This is a large part of why jammed to the walls commuter service costs more to provide than any rational revenue potential. It is a necessity for urban mobility issues. For those that think commuter service does not reduce traffic congestions, see what happens to the traffic where these systems exist if there is a commuter system shut down.
Posts: 2808 | From: Olive Branch MS | Registered: Nov 2002
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posted
Hi everyone, I have been out of touch recently and have just come across this thread. Everything is very interesting and please continue with all of your expert knowledge. I have noted a touch of, let's just say, heat developing among the commentators. On the forum page it lists this thread as "Numbers Game." Might I suggest that each of you actually put some "numbers" (actual numbers of miles, passengers and revenue)into all these formulas of passenger miles, whatever, and actually see how each person's formulas deal with a real numbers situation. Right now there is good theory, but no actual numbers to help many of us cary through with real life travel on Amtrak.
Posts: 39 | From: Detroit, MI, USA | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I'm not sure the 10 trips a week assumption is right. At least, on the Empire Line, the number of 10-trips-a-week commuters to NYC is not as high as you think. The majority of daily commuters use Metro North, not Amtrak--they will drive to Poughkeepsie if feasible to save on costs, because Metro North--heavily subsidized by the state--is much cheaper. The same goes for Connecticut to NYC, there are Metro North lines there too. And daily commuters from NJ to NYC use PATH trains, NJ transit trains and express buses--again, very heavily subsidized and much cheaper.
In Pennsylvania, OTOH, there does seem to me to be a real lot of daily commuting to Philadelphia on Amtrak--but then, there is also more of a state subsidy to Amtrak to keep fares lower. The fare for the 80 or so miles from Lancaster PA to Philadelphia, for instance, is $13, less than half the $29 fare for the 90 or so miles from Rhinecliff to New York City.
A more expensive commute that I believe quite a few people do make daily on Amtrak is between NYC to Philadelphia. Though I think one can also do that using NJ Transit, I think it involves changing trains or something cumbersome.
There also may be a fair amount of daily commuting from Boston to Portland, Maine, on Amtrak, and between Baltimore and DC and from certain areas in Virginia to DC; I don't know about those so much.
Posts: 2642 | From: upstate New York | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
From looking at the schedule of many AMTRAK trains the trains are not geared for commuting. the AMTRAK Pennsylvania arrives in Pittsburgh at 10:35 pm, there used to be an earlier train that arrived at 4 pm but it was discontinued. the Capitol Limit arrives after Midnite. I wanted to take the train from NYC to see a Pirates game. But arriving at such a late hour why would I take the train? outside the NE corridor the schedules are just not convienient or practical.
Posts: 516 | From: New Haven, CT USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Sojuner, Most commuters will use Metro-North trains because they are less expensive. New Haven to Grand Central on Metro is Peak $37 without discounts. AMTRAK from NH to Penn Station is $70 round trip 122 for Acela. 105min off peak 94 min exp Amtrak 84 min. because these systems share tracks the trains run around the same speeds. Unless they have lots of extra cash I can't see many commuters using Amtrak in the NY NJ area
Posts: 516 | From: New Haven, CT USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
In response to City of Miami's February 21 11:23 a.m. request to "[e]nlighten me please", and also in response to Robert L's March 5 request for some actual numbers, let me try here to shed light on some points that may not have been adequately dealt with yet.
First, according to figures provided by the National Association of Railroad Passengers on its website (go to www.narprail.org, then click on "Resources", then click on "Service", then click on "Basic Amtrak Statistics"), in 2004 Amtrak generated approximately 5.557 billion revenue passenger-miles, and approximately 25.0 million revenue passenger boardings. Dividing the former by the latter, we get an average revenue passenger trip length of approximately 222 miles.
Second, City of Miami makes a serious arithmetical error, which apparently no one has picked up on yet, in his February 21, 11:23 a.m. posting when he claims that 1.2 billion dollars in federal subsidies for 2004 divided by 25.0 million passengers comes out to $480 per passenger. No: it's $48 per passenger. People like City of Miami who claim to be "Amtrak fan[s]" need to be careful about the accuracy of the information they post on the Web: it's bad enough that there's so much derogatory misinformation about Amtrak circulating already, we can't afford to be adding to it. It's also worth noting that 1.2 billion dollars divided by 5.557 billion passenger miles comes out to a federal subsidy of approximately 21.6 cents per passenger-mile. If the various state and local subsidies were added, the number would of course be higher. Chances are, however, that the per-passenger-mile subsidy for commercial air travelers would come out to be about the same as that or higher if someone were to calculate, in a businesslike way, the REAL costs to the various levels of government of supporting commercial air service, net of all user fees, and divide them by annual passenger-miles. (To my knowledge, such a calculation has never actually been done.)
I should also point out something that will be obvious to most readers of this post but perhaps not to all: When you or I take a trip on Amtrak, it doesn't cause the federal government to chip in an additional $48 to subsidize that trip. On the contrary, buying a ticket both helps defray Amtrak's costs, and causes Amtrak's now-slightly-more-defrayed costs to be spread among a larger number of users. So traveling on Amtrak doesn't cost the federal government money: in fact, it saves it money, plus it contributes to the reduction of the per-passenger subsidy amount.
I have to say I'm stunned by City of Miami's belief that a typical trip of a few miles on the Los Angeles Blue Line is equivalent in all significant respects to a typical trip of more than 222 miles on Amtrak, and that there's no reason that the subsidy for the Amtrak trip should be any higher. So is he oblivious to the fact that the energy consumed to provide the Amtrak trip is greater? And that the time spent by various employees to provide the trip is greater? And that the passengers' utilization of rolling stock is greater? (Let's also not forget that Amtrak's rolling stock is more spacious and elaborately built than that of the Blue Line.) In short, government subsidies are payments made to help the trains run, and it costs more to make a train run a longer distance than to run a shorter distance; so obviously the per-passenger subsidies are going to be higher on trains where passengers typically travel longer distances than on trains where passengers typically travel shorter distances--more transportation is being provided. I recognize that other posters have said substantially the same things previously, but I wanted to say them once again in my own way, just in case City of Miami doesn't get the point.
Finally, the last few posts are mostly devoted to confused, unnecessary arguments that are brought about by the habitual modern-day abuse of the terms "commute" and "commuter". As many of us know, to "commute" originally meant to get reduced train fare by buying a monthly or annual ticket for daily travel from home to work and back, rather than buying a separate ticket every day. The verb "commute" conveyed the idea of substituting a lower payment for a higher one by purchasing in bulk, similar to the way we still say that a prison sentence is "commuted" from a longer to a shorter one. Later on, "commute" came to mean simply "to travel to work by train on a daily basis"; then it came to mean "to travel to work by any means on a daily basis". Unfortunately, the word has now come to acquire an abusive, asinine meaning that is something like "to travel 3000 miles or less for work purposes". We therefore have the idiocy of certain airline flights being referred to as "commuter flights", even though no one, or virtually no one, is using them to get from home to work and back on a daily basis; and we have the phenomenon of virtually any train whose run is under 700 miles being referred to as a "commuter train", even though very few people are using them to get from home to work on a daily basis. The "commuter train" misnomer is so widely repeated, even by people who are sympathetic to and/or knowledgeable about passenger trains and should want to circulate accurate information about them, that the general public, and even some people with a special interest in trains, have become significantly misled about what functions these trains perform for their ridership. I would urge readers of this post to restrict their use of the term "commuter train" to ACTUAL commuter trains such as those of the MBTA, Metro-North, New Jersey Transit, SEPTA, MARC, and the other services of that type around the country. The quality of dialogue about the role of trains in modern America can only be improved by our doing this.
Posts: 86 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
Thank you ds555 for your reasoned and interesting contribution. I'm happy to have my arithmetic error pointed out, i.e. $48 sounds a lot better than 10X that! I have read a figure of $400 subsidy/trip somewhere though. I wonder what that refers to? Maybe the Sunset Limited, haha! If the bulk of the riders on the NEC are not commuters, I wonder, just out of curiosity, who they are? Business travelers who are not commuters? Just regular folks with places to go?
Posts: 326 | From: San Antonio Texas USA | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:Originally posted by City of Miami: Thank you ds555 for your reasoned and interesting contribution. I'm happy to have my arithmetic error pointed out, i.e. $48 sounds a lot better than 10X that! I have read a figure of $400 subsidy/trip somewhere though. I wonder what that refers to? Maybe the Sunset Limited, haha! If the bulk of the riders on the NEC are not commuters, I wonder, just out of curiosity, who they are? Business travelers who are not commuters? Just regular folks with places to go?
Regular folks who would rather not risk their lives driving I-95 or who would prefer not having to make their way downtown from the airport....some business folks.....lots of students.
There are just so many people living within the NEC area.....and they have places to go.
David Pressley
Posts: 4203 | From: Western North Carolina | Registered: Feb 2004
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