Intermountain Rail

Yesterday I posted videos about rail passenger service. Today is a couple of videos from the late Dr. Adrian Herzog and his marketing matrix. Very interesting videos showing by added additional segments to the existing long distance train network, you can greatly increase your ridership potential.

Here is part one of the video. The video was originally from 1985 and not great quality but you get a good idea on the concept.

Here is part two of the video.

Part II talks about the current route of the California Zephyr, plus the trains that died in 1997 the Desert Wind and the Pioneer.

This presentation was during the 1985 RailPAC Convention.

Last March RailPAC held its a meeting in conjunction with NARP in Los Angeles. Among the speakers was Amtrak President Alex Kummant and Andrew Selden. The first to speak was Alex Kummant.

Another speaker that day was Andrew Selden of MinnARP and URPA.

In previous editions of integrating our rail services, I talked about the history plus went over how the airlines are doing things this year. Today, I am going to fantasize a little to show you my ideas on how the system should be working.

Let’s start off by saying I want to travel from Palmdale, California where my sister lives to Plymouth, Massachusetts. Today I would look at the Amtrak website would say I could take a bus from Palmdale to Los Angeles then take trains to Boston and then I would have to find my own way to Plymouth.

While I guess the bus would work and it is a dedicated Amtrak bus, how about the computer showing train number 10000 from Palmdale to Los Angeles (strange think the train would actually say Metrolink), then train 4 to Chicago, train 49 and 449 to Boston and finally train number 50000 from Boston to Plymouth. Once again I would be boarding a train that says “T” on it instead of Amtrak but it gets me to my destination.

Here is another example with the help of Paul Dyson President of RailPAC, say a person is traveling from Montauk, New York to Escondido, California next summer. The computer would tell me I would board train number 60000 from Montauk to Penn Station, then whatever Amtrak trains to Oceanside California, and finally Amtrak train number 70000 from Oceanside to Escondido but in actuality train 60000 would be Long Island/MTA colors and the route form Oceanside to Escondido would have North County colors however, to the customer, they just have to catch their connecting trains, they don’t care what the trains looks like so long as it would get them to their destinations.

There is things keeping us from this dream but I will discuss that in Part 7. Next week I will go over the integration of schedules.

Part 1: Poor Integration History

Part 2: The Airlines-Code Sharing

Part 3: The Airlines-The Regional Carriers

Part 4: How it can be applied to rail passenger service

Part 5: Integration of Schedules

Part 6: The California Thruway: It Can Work

Part 7: The Politics that holds us back

John Dornoff is a principal in the Dornoff Consulting Group.

In part one in our series I talked about the historical aspects of integration of rail passenger services and part two I went over how code sharing works at the airlines. Today I will discuss the regional airlines and how they work.

With the onslaught of low fare carriers the so called “legacy” carriers started feel pressure to become more efficient and lower their operating cost. One of the ways that the carriers become more efficient is by spinning off marginal lines to regional carriers that had a lower cost structure and could fly smaller more efficient planes.

Actually regional carriers are nothing new. SkyWest one of the larger regional carriers first started flying flights for Delta predecessor Western Airlines in 1985 as Western Express.

So how does the agreement work? Let’s look at the way the arrangement works between Delta and SkyWest Airlines since SkyWest is based in the Intermountain West. SkyWest flies hundred of flights with its planes carrying the colors of the Delta Connection. Delta handles all the route planning, scheduling, marketing and ticketing while SkyWest operates the actual planes. Delta then guarantees to SkyWest a certain amount of revenue (seats) will be sold on that plane.

Delta benefits from this agreement by spinning off marginal routes that it cannot provide economically. In addition instead of loosing a market that provides connecting passengers, Delta stays in those markets and still benefits from the connecting passengers and is able to reduce its cost.

SkyWest benefits from the agreement by having a major guaranteed revenue source but does not have to provide the high overhead for a reservation center, marketing, ticket sales, and planning.

I have simplified the actual agreements to keep it simple. However, you can clearly see how both carriers have benefited from the agreements.

Next week I will discuss what our rail system should look like.

Part 1: Poor Integration History

Part 2: The Airlines-Code Sharing

Part 3: The Airlines-The Regional Carriers

Part 4: How it can be applied to rail passenger service

Part 5: Integration of Schedules

Part 6: The California Thruway: It Can Work

Part 7: The Politics that holds us back

John Dornoff is a principal in the Dornoff Consulting Group.

Integrating Rail Service Part II

By John Dornoff

In part one I talked about how there is a poor history of integration when it comes down to rail passenger service and that started with the private railroads. Today I will discuss code sharing by airlines which is one system that should be a part of today’s rail passenger system.

Since deregulation and especially in the last couple of years the airlines have gotten really good at code sharing. By code sharing a flight may be operated by one airline but a second airline will also book tickets on that flight and have its own flight number. So even though you booked your ticket on airline number two, you will actually use the gates and fly the plane of airline number one.

Here is one example of code sharing. My wife and I will be celebrating our 10^th anniversary in May. Since we have other obligations that month, we are thinking of taking a trip next October on the Canadian. Our plan is to fly into Toronto and then catch the Canadian from there. Well if you try to book a trip from Salt Lake City to Toronto you will find a Air Canada trip requires you to change planes in Denver or San Francisco. In actuality these are both United Airline flights not Air Canada. However, Air Canada and United Code share so Air Canada can book tickets onto that flight using their flight numbers.

Another example of this is the flight I took from Los Angeles to Orlando on October 30/31^st when I was flying from a conference in Reno to Railvolution in Miami. While I was on a Delta 737-800 the plane was ¾ full with people who had flown China Airlines into Los Angeles and this was the continuation of their trip. Their tickets said this was China Airlines flight 4000 or something but in reality it was a Delta flight.

Not only does this fill seats on planes but it also opens up greater marketing opportunities since the airlines are able to promote service to more markets with more flights.

Next in Part 3 we will discuss the Regional Airline Business.

Part 1: Poor Integration History

Part 2: The Airlines-Code Sharing

Part 3: The Airlines-The Regional Carriers

Part 4: How it can be applied to rail passenger service

Part 5: Integration of Schedules

Part 6: The California Thruway: It Can Work

Part 7: The Politics that holds us back

John Dornoff is a principal in the Dornoff Consulting Group.

By John Dornoff

This is the first of a seven part series on integrating rail passenger service.

When it comes to rail passenger service in the United States, the last thing you will say about the service is that it is well integrated. You have one major carrier nationwide and that is Amtrak, but you also have commuter carriers and transit lines that operate totally independently of Amtrak and for the most part don’t even realize it exists. A major problem is Amtrak itself which still has a hard time with the concept of building a customer friendly system.

However, the problems did not start with Amtrak; they actually started with the private railroads that Amtrak took over. When the private railroads operated passenger trains, trains of the same carrier were often poorly integrated to say nothing about trains from other carriers. Except in very few cases (such as the California Zephyr, City trains, Empire Builder, North Coast, etc) there was very little integration between the different lines. Just look at Chicago were the railroads were spread over several different stations.

Today despite 36 years of progress with computers and other technology, our rail systems are still poorly integrated. A perfect example is in Southern California were the trains of Metrolink and Amtrak run throughout the region. While there has been some progress such as the rail 2 rail passes, for the most part there is very little integration between the two. While there has been talk of integrating schedules and services between the two, little has been accomplished so far. Metrolink ticket machines were even designed to sell Amtrak tickets but a couple of years after they were put in, they still do not dispense any tickets for Amtrak.

So how would we integrate rail services? Over the next few weeks I will show how we could better integrate rail passenger service and make the service more convenient for the most important people: the customers.

Part 1: Poor Integration History

Part 2: The Airlines-Code Sharing

Part 3: The Airlines-The Regional Carriers

Part 4: How it can be applied to rail passenger service

Part 5: Integration of Schedules

Part 6: The California Thruway: It Can Work

Part 7: The Politics that holds us back

John Dornoff is a principal in the Dornoff Consulting Group.