Quote:
Originally Posted by hammersklavier
That's excessive simplification. Amtrak's longest routes, such as the Empire Builder, end up being self-subsidizing, because the land cruisers pay a premium that covers (most of) the day-trippers' fares. (By this logic, adding more land-cruise berths to such trains would allow them to cover their own expenses.)
The real problem is the routes that are too long to be meaningful corridor services but too short/not scenic enough to start attracting land cruise attention. It's the Crescent, Silver Meteor, Cardinal, and similar trains that are Amtrak's biggest money pits, for this reason. The solution to which would obviously be to invest in more corridor service to cross-subsidize what we could term "essential intercity service" ... and there are plenty of unproven/underutilized potential rail corridors in the US.
For example, the Lincoln service sees nearly 600k rides a year, the Hiawatha and Michigan services each some 800k, with the best-developed medium-speed routes e.g. the Empire Corridor, Keystone Service, San Joaquin, and Capitol Corridor, seeing 1.2-1.5 million rides a year, and the Pacific Surfliner, at almost 3 million rides, is an extreme outlier ... keep in mind here these are sub-medium-speed corridors from a global standpoint, too.
But this has always been Amtrak's problem. To make money it essentially has to demonstrate a market for premium service (either via land cruises or HSR) to -- at minimum -- cross-subsidize underperforming essential rail services. But the only way to demonstrate (or create) such a market is by providing popular --- but breakeven -- corridor services adequate to spur further rail investment in the area. Unfortunately -- and in part because it only enjoys limited public support -- every time Amtrak has successfully done so, it gets met with a chorus of "It can't work in our part of the country!" (Actually, it usually can.)
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Amtrak, in comparison to other worldwide train services like in Europe and Asia pales greatly, and add the fact that America is so huge and gasoline is relatively cheap and highway subsidies from the federal gov't. What Amtrak needs to do is concentrate on it's heavily used lines like the Northeast Corridor and the Pennsylvanian, and maybe add some new lines, such as a line from Philadelphia to Scranton and Albany, NY, and even develop high speed lines from Detroit to Chicago and from Boston and NYC to Montreal.
As for the cross-country routes, it would make sense to run less trains if the lines aren't as heavily utilized. Florida has already started it's privately funded high speed service, the Brightline, which is expected to reach Orlando from Miami in 2022 and hopefully to Jacksonville and Tampa later on. I believe that Amtrak needs a new business model in order to survive because nowadays we could've had a Philadelphia - Pittsburgh Acela service but Amtrak doesn't really put it's money to where service is sorely needed.
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