Here is a article on the service:

 FrontRunner Trains Ready To Roll This Weekend, UTA Says

One of the first hurdles we need to overcome is the attitude of Amtrak’s management. Amtrak management despite having several different CEO’s over the last few years has done little to change the way their do business. There was been little attempts to better coordinate service although there has been some talks with Metrolink in Los Angeles and they do take some agencies monthly passes such as the program in the Los Angeles area.

In addition Amtrak ticketing services are largely still in the dark ages as they do not even provide E-ticketing options that most of their competitors do. In fact if I order tickets were I live they will charge me $12.00 to ship me tickets because I have a manned station near my. However, that manned station is only open from 10:00pm to 5:00am, do you really think, unless I am actually catching the California Zephyr that I am going to go and pick up tickets during those hours?

Local politics is another item keeping us in the dark ages when it comes to rail passenger service. Commuter railroads do not look at the big picture and do not see themselves as part of a bigger transportation system. Transit planners and politicians often have a hard time seeing beyond their service area and many times are too caught up in turf ward to care about effective transportation policy.

One good example is in Santa Barbara and San Diego in California. In both cases local politicians are calling for (or have talked about) cutting of Surfliner service so they can provide start up commuter train service between Santa Barbara and Oxnard or expanded service on the Coaster between Oceanside and San Diego. However you only have to look at the present situation in Oceanside to see how poorly service would be coordinated with other agencies. In Oceanside both Coaster and Metrolink trains terminate, however there is no coordination of schedules, no through fares, and no mention of services beyond their service area. In effect, they there is a commuter railroad from Los Angeles to Oceanside and then you cross an imaginary border at Oceanside and can travel from Oceanside to San Diego although you may have a wait an hour or three. If Pacific Surfliners were to be cut do you think Coaster and Metrolink would work better to provide coordinated service? Chances are just as slim that if there is new service from Santa Barbara to Oxnard that it would have coordinated and/or through service to Los Angeles on Metrolink: slim to none.

Another stumbling block is the unions and their adversarial relationships. If we were to create a more integrated rail passenger system, there would be MORE need for employees because of the increased demand for rail passenger service. However, the unions see any change as an attack on them and their establishment and are often not willing to look at ways to make rail service more efficient and effective.

The issues facing the creation of an effective rail passenger service are more complicated, but this gives some ideas of the issues keeping rail passenger service in the United States in the dark ages. If we are to have a world class rail passenger system we need to move the system into the 21^st Century and that is going to take both local and national attention to the issues.

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.

While it is kind of hard to classify how the Thruway network in California works, the best classification would be as a regional carrier. Even though they use buses instead of trains, the system works much the same. The buses are guaranteed revenue and provide the crew (driver) with the main carrier (Amtrak) selling the tickets and being responsible for marketing (OK, the people of California get the real credit for the marketing but that is another story).

The system works well for much the same reason as regional carriers work for the airlines. The rail system is expanded by creating new markets and opportunities for the parent organization, while the operators get guaranteed revenue and do not have to assume the overhead of their own reservations and marketing.

The opportunities for this kind of expansion are virtually unlimited. While there was been limited expansion of thruway service across the country, it is only the tip of the iceberg compared to what is possible. The best areas to start expansion would be in the Cascade Corridor, the Chicago network and the northeast were there are already enough trains to feed an extensive network of connecting buses.

One of the many downfalls of the current Amtrak system is the lack of feeders. There are not enough routes feeding into the lines to create a synergy of a network.

Then you could expand this to the rail network. You can create a network of regional services using the Flexliner or DMU’s connecting to the main train network. For example out of Chicago you could add regional routes on the old Black Hawk line to Dubuque, the existing line to Grand Rapids, Green Bay, Peoria, Indianapolis and others.

These types of routes would feed into your core long distance routes, your main short distance corridors and other regional routes. That will allow the rail system to serve enough markets to build a truly useful rail passenger network.

Next week will be the final part of this series dealing with the politics keeping us from achieving.

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.

Lets take a look at Southern California were you have the trains of Metrolink and Amtrak plus the Coaster in the San Diego area. While there has been some talk of integrating schedules, there has been little progress in this area.

Not only should schedules be coordinated when they operate on the same section of track but connections should be designed so that a person could move from a train that came from Lancaster to the Pacific Surfliner or Metrolink’s San Bernardino service with ease. Today if you arrived on a train from Lancaster at 1:20pm, you would have a 40-minute wait for the next Amtrak Surfliner and you would be required to go into the station, wait for the lines to open and head back to the platforms.

If you want to transfer to the San Bernardino line you would have to wait an hour because your train arrived at the same time as the San Bernardino train left so connections are difficult. If you were heading to Riverside via UP you would have a 3 hour wait because the train to Riverside left 5 minutes before you arrived. If you are traveling to Santa Barbara you are really left out since you can transfer Glendale but the train from Lancaster arrives in Glendale at 1:04pm and the train for Santa Barbara left at 12:42pm. Next train will be at 3:07pm.

It is clear that the schedules are not well coordinated and are not integrated into providing convenient transfers.

The Northeast Corridor is another area where schedules should be coordinated and integrated. For example NJ Transit, Connecticut, SEPTA and other lines schedules should be integrated to provide maximum number of schedules available to the customer. For example if you are traveling to Trenton from New York the customer should be able to know that a regional train would leave on the hour, an Acela train would be leaving at the half hour and a New Jersey local would leave at fifteen after the hour. The customer should just have to decide what level of service he wants to pay for.

Integrating and coordinating schedules will be the first step toward creating a world class rail passenger service. There is many obstacles before we can start changing things and I will discuss those issues in the final entry of this series.

In the next entry I will discuss the California Thruway network and how this works into the ideas presented.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.