Transit on Thursday: The 'Amtrak, Man' Edition
Hopefully, you didn't miss us too much last week. But it seems that we weren't the only transit columnists that got stuck on Amtrak during last weekend's travel.
WTOP's Adam Tuss writes a sadly typical tale about his Amtrak train to New York's Penn Station breaking down twice and eventually stopping permanently in Newark, New Jersey, due to multiple power failures.
This happened on Amtrak's National Train Day promotion, no less. Cute.
While Amtrak didn't manage to supply us with that sort of tailor-made irony, our train to Philadelphia last Thursday night was also halted for about 40 minutes outside of Baltimore - and again on the return trip Sunday near Aberdeen, Maryland - both caused by the ubiquitous "power failure." Tuss' delay time totaled two hours, while we spent about an hour and a half idly waiting on the tracks. Of course, we should likely be thanking our lucky stars - Tuss mentions his experiences in college sitting in the aisles and seven-hour trips between here and New York. We've got our own tales about 13-hour trips (that are eight-hour rides by car) between Pittsburgh and Connecticut. Chances are you've got your own horror stories, too.
So how can an organization have such an overwhelmingly negative reputation and still manage to sell tickets to 25 million people?
Well, it's not much of a secret: there's little choice when it comes to traveling between destinations on the Northeast Corridor, unless you'd like your trip to consist solely of travel. There's Greyhound, the many Chinatown buses, and their newer competitors. And then there's driving. That's pretty much it, as the City Paper cover boy Joshua Kucera's quasi-epic journey through MARC, senior buses, and Philadelphia regional rail proves.
So, how do we fix Amtrak? Or better put, how can Amtrak fix itself? Some ideas, after the jump.
Photo by rsplatpc
Here's a startling figure from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics: In 2006, Amtrak made 29.7 cents of revenue per passenger, per mile (PPPM). Inversely, commercial airlines (arguably Amtrak's toughest competition) made 13 cents PPPM. What's this tell us? Well, Amtrak makes a ton of revenue from passenger tickets. And it doesn't look as if this will change — that PPPM figure has been going up every year since 1994. For an organization who makes this much money from ticketing on top of the $1.332 billion it received in federal funding for fiscal year 2008, this seems more than a bit off. Amtrak needs to have external pressure placed on it to either improve service or reduce ticket prices. You can't halve your cake and eat it too.
Similarly, the price structure for Acela Express trains is so out-of-whack, it's almost like Amtrak makes the figures up out of thin air. If anyone wants to explain the logic in a ticket that's advertised as "the fastest way to get to New York," but is only about 25 minutes quicker (a gain that can easily be wiped out with any delay) and 76 percent more expensive - please do fill us in.
The Guest Rewards program could use an overhaul. Currently, you earn two points for every dollar you spend. But for a one-way coach ticket, you need 3,000 points (the equivalent of at least $1,500). Again: that's one-way. Amtrak should do its most loyal customers a favor and at least make it plausible to get a round-trip fare without subletting your apartment.
To increase customer satisfaction, other small efforts could be made. For example, on our Thursday night train to Philadelphia, before boarding, we had to show our ticket to an Amtrak employee before accessing the platform — except there was only one ticket-checker for a full train on the busiest route Amtrak has. One extra set of eyes for 15 minutes would have moved things quicker and made people happier.
The real question lies in the fact that no one knows what to do next. Privatizing Amtrak would likely lead to its demise, while the organization hasn't (obviously) done enough to garner support for more public subsidies (which is why the trains in Europe run so efficiently). Do leave any bright ideas you might have in the comments.
Less Money for Escalator Fixes (Cue "What Fixes?" Joke): Metro will delay some repairs to escalators and elevators in order to supply funding for urgent repairs which John Catoe identified a few months ago. This $157 million, of which two-thirds will be diverted from other projects, will be used partially to appease the FTA, which is closely monitoring WMATA's ability to fund $489 million in much-needed projects through non-federal funding. Lena Sun's report is a good roundup of the falling dominoes that seem to be Metro's funding these days - this divergence, which leads to Dulles Rail monies, which is a major part of WMATA's ability to get a large amount of funding from Virginia over the next ten years - transit: it's a very fluid business.
Yeah, The Traffic Sucks in Maryland, Too: We spend so much space lamenting the state of Northern Virginia's roads that similar traffic messes in Montgomery County are often overlooked - when in some cases, they're just as bad as their brethren to the south. This Post article sparks discussion with some interesting quotes like, "[The congestion] is a real, real disaster." Another interesting point? The county planners who reviewed said "disaster" find that there's there's some potential fixes - from adding bus lines to (shudder) widening intersections. Since the review committee didn't consider the proposed Purple Line in its report, we have to kind of agree with Montgomery County Council member Marc Erlich when he said, "Things are going to get worse before they get better."
Engines and Cabooses: Don't forget, Friday is Bike to Work Day, so do enjoy having an excuse to come into work sweaty - you can still register here...Old subway cars are recycled as artificial coral reefs on Maryland's Atlantic shore...Yup, that mess on the Green and Yellow lines is still happening this weekend...First bit of Dulles Rail funding begins to sift in...Got something to say about HOT lanes? Well, now's your chance...Metro plans to install ten CCTV cameras at Metro station entrances to assist in crime fighting.