Maybe Amtrak can mark down the price while oil price is high?

Question

As we are aware that electric is cheaper (in comparison here) than fossil fuel, it seems to make sense for Amtrak to step in and participate energy problem solving. Most of the trains run on electric tracks.

In New York City 1997, the metro transportation authority made a drastic change: allowing customers to transfer free from bus to subway, subway to bus, or bus to bus. This action has motivated more people taking the buses even when they are not taking the subways, which civillans rarely did. This change has lasted more than 10 years now, and each single ride (again, trasferrable) has only raised from $1.50 to $2.00.

I believe the notion that "low price sells more." Is Amtrak able to believe that and do so?

Answer 1

diesel coast more

Answer 2

Amtrak is now run by the Federal Government.  As we all know, Uncle Sam is not a supply-sider.  Amtrak is losing money, therefore the only answer they will look at is raising prices.

Goodbye, Amtrak.

Answer 3

I hope so, you should direct that question directly to then and site your above example. Kudos to NYC by the way for changing the city's cabs to hybrids. Very good move.

Amtrak is currently doing a lot to improve the rail lines, and expand them. It is also hurrying to meet the demands for trains by literally making more, and hiring more people. Improvement is on the way, but it costs, a rate change now might kill the railroads, down the line, it will probably become much more cost effective as more people ride.

Answer 4

The problem with this idea is that we already subsidize Amtrak's fares to the tune of over $1billion a year on average. On many routes it would be cheaper to pull everyone off the trains and buy them first-class airline tickets instead of running that route. The infrastructure and maintenance costs of a rail system as big as Amtrak is huge and even if they only charged 10cents a fare, they wouldn't be full. But if you want to pay for someone else to ride for free, go ahead and lobby Congress on this, I'm sure they wouldn't mind tripling the subsidy they give Amtrak but it's your money they're spending as well as mine.

If they could find a way to actually power these trains with electricity as you state, this could change since fuel is a major part of the costs. But they'd still have to have tens of thousands of miles of rail lines to maintain and rebuild as needed, cars that run nearly empty at times and the incompetence that comes from being a quasi-governmental entity that can run to Uncle Sam if they run out of money.

It's a complicated issue since air and highway travel are also subsidized and to an even greater extent than Amtrak. But with low demand for rail travel and equipment that is far from the luxurious state it once provided, rail travel still isn't succeeding even though gas prices have skyrocketed. If they came out with a separate rail line so you never had to follow behind a slow freight train, something as fast as they offer in Japan and parts of Europe, and that provided more luxury than airlines do (getting easier every day as airlines cut costs at our expense), then they could take over as the people-mover rail travel used to be. But it's not likely since they're now dependent on government funding and they have the same inefficiency of any governmental entity.

The only way I'd support this would require Amtrak to stop sharing rails with freight lines, switch to electric cars and adopt a high-speed limited-stop model.

Answer 5

The problem is that much of Amtrak runs on diesel.  Metro systems like NY are electric, but amtrak runs all over the country, and it is less economical to run wires/third rails for all their tracks.