I have a ticket for the Coast Starlight, Portland to Martinez, in June. I just received this e-mail:
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Dear Amtrak Sleeping Car Passenger,
In an effort to be good stewards of the federal funding received to operate our Amtrak service, a number of steps are being taken to eliminate losses in our Food and Beverage department over the next five years. Some of the changes being made to accomplish this include the discontinuation of select amenities on the Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, and Lake Shore Limited.
On or about March 31, 2014, the pre-departure refreshments and on-board wine and cheese tastings for Sleeping car passengers will no longer be offered on the Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, or Lake Shore Limited. Additionally, the complimentary sparkling wine, non-alcoholic cider, and chocolate squares will no longer be provided to Sleeping car passengers on the Empire Builder and the Coast Starlight. Sleeping car passengers will continue to receive all regular meals in the Dining car at no additional charge, and passengers may purchase cheese and cracker trays and other snacks, as well as liquor, wine and beer, in the Lounge car on all long- distance trains.
On approximately May 31, 2014, complimentary amenity kits will no longer be provided to sleeping car passengers on the Empire Builder and the Coast Starlight. Your Sleeping car attendant will continue to have select emergency toiletries on hand when needed.
While it is never easy to tell you, our valued customers, that we are eliminating some amenities, these changes are necessary in order to reduce costs, increase revenues and preserve passenger rail service across our country. If you have any questions or comments about these changes, feel free to contact me using the “contact us” link on the Amtrak.com home page.
Thank you for traveling with Amtrak. We appreciate your patronage.
Sincerely,
Mark Murphy
General Manager, Long -Distance Services
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No longer chocolate squares? I guess you have to bring your own.
Richard
Posted by smitty195 (Member # 5102) on :
I'm not a happy camper about this. They are cutting what I consider to be "little things"----albeit little things that make passengers happy. Why don't they get more aggressive with employee theft? Or too many managers? Or so many other things that they could do? I guess it's just easier to cut stuff out---it's the easy way out, from people who (IMHO) are not the best and the brightest.
Posted by yukon11 (Member # 2997) on :
You have another unhappy camper, Smitty.
I would rather have Amtrak upscale the dining car meals to fine restaurant or gourmet quality. Require all passengers to pay for their meals, including sleeping car passengers. Considering the cost of a roomette or bedroom, spending an additional, let's say, $30-$50 for a very nice meal and bottle of wine should not, in my opinion, be that "big a deal". You could also have a light meal menu, served at a nominal cost, as an option.
Then, return to complimentary wine and cheese in the parlor car. Possibly a complimentary chocolate square.
Richard
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Here's the 'root of the evil' that seems to have some around here 'all worked up'
Honestly, this is a 'much ado about nothing'; it is time to accept that Amtrak lives in a glass house - and a lot of different constituencies are throwing stones that way.
Posted by jp1822 (Member # 2596) on :
Amtrak again misses the boat on trying to create a "plus" or "add on" program. Instead they just seek to cut things out. For example, would people pay $5 each for the wine and cheese to continue in the Pacific Parlor Car? Or Empire Builder etc.
Often dining options at Chicago are limited in the late evening. Why not back the Lake Shore Limited Dining Car in and offer meals aboard for a fee. They still don't offer a simplified dinner program south of Albany heading eastbound on the Lake Shore Limited.
And with the Wine and Cheese or pre-boarding party eliminated from the Lake Shore Limited on the eastbound trip - why have on an onboard kitchen crew taking up revenue space in the Viewliner sleepers. Perhaps the crew should be forwarded east on the Capitol Limited to help in the dinner or sleep in the crew car and then "de-board" in Toledo for the morning breakfast serving on the eastbound Lake Shore Limited.
Creativity at Amtrak - especially for how to salvage the long distance trains (if that is even possible) is just non-existent.
The NEC has to lose a ton of money on F&B if labor is allocated into the equation. That corridor has the most LSA's. I can't even begin to explain how many LSA's are either inefficient, don't have enough stock on hand to sell to passengers, or are inadequately staffed to serve passengers.
Penny wise but a pound foolish.
Posted by smitty195 (Member # 5102) on :
So much in that report that GBN linked to that makes me scratch my head. Just some random samplings:
(NOTE: Apologies for how the Amtrak stuff copied onto here. For some reason, the "invisibles" are coming through. I have no idea why, or how to stop it. It's readable----it just makes it a bit more difficult)
So the cost of these complimentary items is according to "some guy" basically. Where's the study? Where are the facts? What do the balance sheets say? Just some guy in customer service said that's what they spend? I've had a customer service guy before tell me that he didn't know what a Pacific Parlour Car was. Gee, I'm SO happy that Amtrak and the Inspector General are being SO thorough in their "research".
So, Amtrak lost $260,000 ALONE on JUST the Auto Train from employee meals---employees who were OFF DUTY and just taking a little trip. Gee, here's a novel thought: How about if they stop allowing OFF DUTY employees from eating for free??? And the second part of that paragraph says that 32 employees on some random, unknown, undetermined trains also received some undetermined, unknown, guess on free food. And this is all according to "some guy" again. AGAIN, why are they shooting the passengers??? Why not just say "NO" to free employee meals when they are OFF DUTY????
Gosh, these Amtrak folks and the Inspector General are rocket scientists I tell ya. Rocket scientists!! Unbelievable.
Care to guess what the total amount of losses there were from long-distance trains in Fiscal Year 2012? A million dollars? Two million dollars? FIVE million dollars? Nope--you're not even close. The TOTAL loss on the Amtrak long-distance trains for FY 2012 is..........drumroll please.......$71,532. Yup. Not even a hundred grand. Yet look at how much was lost on free employee OFF DUTY meals!!!
Sorry, but this is f'ing ridiculous. Amtrak management has no clue what they're doing. They rarely do. I don't know squat about how to run a railroad, but I'll betcha I could do it better than them. This is so incredibly annoying.
Posted by RRRICH (Member # 1418) on :
Let me delete my thread, since the disucssion on this topic is now in this thread started by Yukon 11. To me, yes it is nice to have a wine & cheese party while traveling over Cuesta Pass on the Coast Starlight, but it's not really "essential" to me, but of course I will participate in it. I'm not "all worked up" about this, Gil! I still enjoy traveling by AMTRAK. Now, if they were to do away with the "complementary" meals for 1st class (which, as we all know, are not really "complementary......"), then there may be a slight issue with me.
I too think there are other ways to cut costs, but don't ask me what they are -- I am not an economist!!! I just can't imagine anyone, especially not one of us, who is going to say "Oh, they don't have wine and cheese parties in the Starlight any more, so I'm going to fly instead of go by train."
I like the idea that came up a few years ago of contracting out f & b service on AMTRAK, but I understand that would probably not have achieved desirable results either.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Smitty, you have clearly illustrated why these amenity cuts were made; Amtrak is in a glass house and the detractors like to throw stones its way.
Elimination of these amenities is simply one way to deflect a few of those stones. Anyone is aware that the savings are simply chump change to a company with $2B annual revenues, and that simply is not the thrust of this initiative.
Another factor to consider is how do the overwhelming majority of passengers traveling on Amtrak travel? in Coach!!!! How many amenities have been cut from a Coach passage? None; there weren't any to start with. Also the last time I checked, how many votes do I have? One. How many votes does Bill Gates have? one.
Let me leave this one by simply saying 'food for thought'.
Posted by palmland (Member # 4344) on :
An interesting report, GBN, thanks for posting.
A couple things caught my eye. First was their number one recommendation to have a pilot project of contracting out on board food services. The report acknowledges the failed Subway effort on Empire state service and talks about the additional costs for Railroad Retirement and other federal benefits, still average salary on the Rocky Mountaineer service is $32k vs $89k for Amtrak (and the Rocky Mountaineer staff receive like amount of safety training). I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't result in Amtrak contracting with PRJ for on board services on maybe the Cardinal, as a pilot project.
Also amazing to me was the comment that "when establishing the price of sleeper tickets, the Marketing department does not consider the cost of providing food and beverage services, according to Marketing officials...prices are based assessment of customer demand and price sensitivity." Don't be too surprised if we aren't soon charged for meals in sleeper, maybe when the cashless POS system is fully implemented that is discussed in the report.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
quote:Originally posted by palmland:
I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't result in Amtrak contracting with PRJ for on board services on maybe the Cardinal, as a pilot project.
With Non-Agreement employees???????? Posted by smitty195 (Member # 5102) on :
GBN: Actually, coach passengers did lose an amenity: pillows. (Seriously). They used to give out pillows (and I remember when they gave out blankets). But pillows have been something they've given out for years and years. It's almost laughable to call it a pillow, because it's just this tiny little disposable "thing" that's better than nothing. Amtrak probably buys them wholesale at 3 cents per. But they just HAD to cut out that amenity to save money, didn't they? The AmManager who came up with this one deserves a gold medal. PILLOWS!!! Geezus.....Amtrak, you amaze me.
Posted by Gilbert B Norman (Member # 1541) on :
Mighty self-centered thinking on my part, but can anyone accept my thought of 'Hey, Amtrak gored MY ox (AT), how 'bout they gore theirs?' - that being the Pacific Parlour.
How's that for a little East West rivalry? Honestly, should I have reason to travel 'out there' (just might want to see the LA Philharmonic perform), I'd likely just fly; no fun, but six or so hours, 'over and done'.
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