Passenger Trains > Amtrak's Thanksgiving records--well, not completely

After reviewing the Thanksgiving ridership/revenue records; there are two items that raise a big red flag for me:

1. Even though Amtrak had fully recovered from Hurricane Sandy in time for the Holiday; Amtrak "...served the same number of Northeast Corridor holiday passengers as last year". Ouch! This means no records were set on the NEC. With all the "sell outs" I observed, there was probably no capacity to do any better.

2. Long Distance trains had an increase of less than 1% (0.8%). Not much to crow about here. But, you can't pull more Superliners out of the sky.

The above tells me that the NEC and Long Distance trains are in the same boat. Without new equipment, neither service will do much record setting in the future. Even in off-holiday travel, these trains are probably "bumping the ceiling" of their capacity, and thus unable to grow much in the future.

I wonder if viewing the "record setting" figures in this fasion will lose me my title of "Amtrak Cheerleader".

Joe


http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/1012/191/Another-Thanksgiving-Another-Amtrak-Record-ATK-12-130.pdf



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/12 11:36 by floridajoe2001.

I think to match last years totals with this year in the face of the widespread damage from the Superstorm is saying a lot for both Amtrak and the people that live in the Northeast. I would find it difficult to find fault with Amtrak for anything in the Northeast after that event.

If ridership is bumping against cielings at least on LD service, perhaps AMTRAK can let private car owners can sell an "extra fair" service during sell-out periods. This would let AMTRAK have more seats available then have information available, like "we sold ___% more seats and could have pocketed that if it were our cars".

I am not trying to start anything here, just trying to think outside the guage...

JimBo

How was overall Thanksgiving travel (all modes) in the northeast this year?

With many people in the core area suffering storm damage, etc, it's possible that fewer people traveled down south, out to PA etc for the holidays. And, vice versa.

Yes, Amtrak has capacity issues and cannot sell more seats than all of them.

P Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yes, Amtrak has capacity issues and cannot sell
> more seats than all of them.


Well, they could if they didn't require reservations!

I seem to recall reading that auto travel over Thanksgiving was down in the NEC, I-95, Jersey TPK. I believe Sandy had an impact.