Performance Anxiety
Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit magazine editor
What’s a railroad got to do to get a little respect these days? It seems like every time I see an Amtrak story it’s followed by (or includes) a snarky comment about on-time performance. The problem is that most of these comments tend to be uninformed and based on mystique rather than facts.
This week I read this story about Amtrak adding wireless Internet service to some of its routes. Great, right? Not so much. The piece continues to skewer Amtrak for its “frequent delays†and “more delays.†This seems to be the public sentiment these days — Amtrak = delays.
Of course, that’s not always the case. Ask the folks traveling from Kansas City to St. Louis. Not only is the Missouri River Runner service getting higher ridership due to its increased on-time performance, it’s 90 percent on-time performance in the last 12 months is pretty impressive. Of course, the route is only 283 miles long.
Here’s the secret that those making the snarky comments about Amtrak miss out on. Amtrak on-time performance doesn’t suck when you’re looking at routes less than 400 miles long. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) the on-time performance for airlines between 2003 and 2007 is 77 percent for Amtrak during the same period it’s 70 percent, but if you only consider routes 400 miles long or less that increases to 74 percent.
And while airline delays are a constant complaint by travelers, it hasn’t seeped into the fabric of air travel as it seemingly has with rail travel. Of course, the delays are one thing. The causes of those delays are another.
Take a look at those charts one more time. Of the delays the airlines themselves were responsible for 54 percent. For Amtrak, the host railroads were responsible for 68 percent of the delays. Amtrak itself was responsible for 26 percent of delays — less than half what the airlines were directly responsible for.
Now digging into these numbers isn’t something the average person is going to take the time to do. And really, most of your rail opponents won’t do it either. It’s much easier to say Amtrak is slow than to qualify it as Amtrak is slow over its long-distance routes. Interestingly enough, if you pull out your handy high-speed rail map you’ll see that these routes fall into that less than 400 miles sweet spot.
I wonder why that is?
Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,
Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
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January 15th, 2010 at 11:51 am
got’a love the numbers, Fred. good post.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
It should be pointed out that there is quite a difference between what airlines consider “on time”, what Amtrak considers “on time”, and what transit considers “on time”.
Most transit routes become difficult for the customers to use if they are off by more than 5 minutes or so. Some rail transit routes will have significant congestion problems if a train gets that late, as the ones behind start to stack up.
Airlines don’t seem to register most delays less than 15 minutes, and the margin of error seems to be routinely in the 1/2 hour range.
Amtrak has an option on its web site that says “Historical On-Time Performance”. If you select that link, you can see specific causes and on-time performance. For example, for the Amtrak Cascades service:
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer/AM_Route_C/1241245667297/1237405732511/OTPPageVerticalRouteOverview/perf
38% is interferance from other trains
22.5% is track and signals
12.1% is non-railroad
You can then break this down by train number using a pull-down menu, and the specific on time performance of that particular train is also displayed.
Granted, this informatin is a little harder to find than it used to be on Amtrak’s old web site design, but it isn’t as if with a little research people can’t find out for themselves what trains have the worse on-time performance, and what the likelyhood of a delay is, and even who the likely culprit is.
Oh, and you’ll find that in recent months some of the Cascades trains are in the 90% on time performance range.
January 16th, 2010 at 9:47 am
After reading these numbers, my thought is – so what? As with air travel and transit, most people do not care why a train is late. All they know is that it is late and they then look at how this will affect their plans. The numbers are for those running the service to use in figuring out how to improve it, not in justifying the delays to the traveller.
Roberto
January 18th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
On the contrary, as a regular Amtrak user, I find the % on time ratio of particular trains very helpful. Since the private corporations that handle Amtrak’s dispatching don’t really care if Amtrak is on time or not, and there really doesn’t seem to be any hope on the horizon of changing that particular problem, the best option a passenger has is research ahead of time and determine which servies usually get delayed.
January 19th, 2010 at 7:29 am
It is Amtrak’s job to toot Amtrak’s horn. If you don’t define your own image, others will be happy to define it for you. We tend to forget that Amtrak’s image doesn’t just impact ticket sales. Amtrak must mind its image among anyone who can impact Amtrak and, since it’s Amtrak, that’s pretty much everyone, isn’t it?
January 19th, 2010 at 1:29 pm
The only reason anyone notices that an airplane is late is because of a totally missed connection. And the airlines do NOT like that to happen, so they will hold a plane at the gate to let transferring passengers make it. I have been a half-hour late and still made a scheduled 15 minute connection when the gates were at opposite ends of the state (or so it felt). When you get to the end of an airline flight, first of all, you’re thankful you made it at all, and then there are all sorts of things that make it feel like you’ve “gotten there.” Plane on the ground, plane at the gate, finally OFF the plane, then got your luggage, and so on to the transit bus on the way home. (WHAT? You DROVE to the airport???) Exactly when did you “arrive?”
Contrast to the train. The approach to the station is slow so you have lots of time to look at your watch and think about whether the train’s on time or not. And there is no doubt that when the conductor opens the traps and you alight, that is when you got there.