The Pacific Surfliner continues to impress

LOSSAN's marketing folks are tooting their horn, and quite deservedly so. While they've managed a quite nice 3.2% year over year increase in ridership for the first half of 2016, in an overall relatively gloomy period for Amtrak, where they really stand out is is the double digit increase in ridership for special events. The Del Mar races posted a 12.3% increase over last year with 33,674 passengers in the opening weekend; Comic-Con had a 15.7% increase to 47,319 total passengers over its four days of operation.

While those numbers are for all trains and passengers, not merely those going to the Del Mar races and Comic-Con, they also show the major impact on the service that those events have. From the daily average of 7,983 riders, Del Mar's opening weekend boosted that to 11,225 and Comic-Con 11,830. It's no wonder that the Surfliners, despite their large individual capacity (specially increased as well for these events), have crowding problems during these events when overall ridership is 50% higher! Thanks to the delays with Nippon-Sharyo's new bilevel cars, the Surfliner stands a strong chance of being hit with the same curse as the recent Expo Line extension: Too many riders and not enough cars for them.

Of course, there's also the cynical view: The Surfliner is only getting 8,000 riders a day along a 351 mile corridor with substantial sections of automobile traffic seeing 300,000 AADT and only 16,000 riders out of a 130,000 attendee event. Granted, many of those trips aren't really replaceable by intercity rail and many of the attendees are either too local or out of state for Amtrak to be useful, but as the double-digit growth shows, there is still room to snag more of them. For that, increased frequencies and speed are necessary: Traffic is bad, but the Surfliner is usually worse, especially with consideration of time delay from when the train leaves to when you'd prefer to leave, and increased speed also broadens the market itself by enlarging the catchment area and enticing riders who would not have made the trip, even by car, but would take a train that is car-competitive or faster.

Luckily, it looks like we will have an additional Surfliner frequency later this year thanks to more efficient use of existing equipment. Given the cost reductions already evident against what was budgeted for this year, this run will be cost neutral even if it didn't pick up a single passenger. Obviously we wouldn't run such a train and based both on LOSSAN's estimates and my own, it should be marginally profitable and help contribute to reducing the need for state subsidy. As the Fullerton triple track project, new equipment, and other capacity increasing projects come online, the potential of the Surfliner posting a net profit for the state of California, which may then be invested back into the local infrastructure for a virtuous cycle, grows ever closer.

Pacific Surfliner budget breakdown

LOSSAN has released a budget presentation from Amtrak which, for the first time that I’m aware of, publicly shows a breakdown of the Surfliner’s budgeted revenues and expenses. For us transit geeks, this is a welcome insight into the busiest corridor service outside of the NEC.

Using the provided Train Fuel and Power figures for the previous fiscal year (FY15) and the approximate number of train miles ran by the Surfliner (1.56 million), we have a fuel expense of $7.55 per train mile, which divides by Amtrak’s budgeted $3.23/gallon (September 2015 Monthly Performance Report) to give us an average fuel consumption of 2.34 gallons per train mile. That’s right where we’d expect it to be based on Metrolink/Coaster performance (which is a bit higher consumption level) and Amtrak’s own reported fleet average fuel consumption of 2.3 gallons per train mile. This does, of course, assume that Amtrak’s average fuel price is what the Surfliner’s fuel is bought at.

While there’s nothing too major about a confirmation of average figures, it’s nice to have because it validates all calculations and critiques based upon those figures. There's always the worry in the back of one’s mind that things are actually quite off from the average figures and that the Surfliner actually has a significantly higher fuel consumption (if single level sets dropped the average down) or significantly lower (if long distance trains brought it up). As it is, we can say with confidence that the Surfliner would, for example, trim a significant amount of time from the schedule while also burning nearly half a million gallons less diesel by using modern rolling stock like the Class 222 Meridian (though I believe EMD and Siemens both claim that they will have similar fuel consumption with the F125 and Charger).

The host railroad fees are a bit interesting. At an average of $6.62 per train mile, I’m wondering who is overcharging Amtrak. The overall system average is somewhere just south of $5 per train mile and Metrolink is receiving $4.33 per train mile. Or rather, they would be if we ignored revenues from the long distance trains, though only the Coast Starlight should contribute much of anything. That means that we’re looking at an average of $8.72 for the remaining miles. My suspicion is that NCTD is responsible for the high charges; per the NCTD budget they receive approximately $9.5 million a year in revenue on the Coastal Rail right of way while expending $4.3 million to maintain it. Some of this money comes from Metrolink, some from BNSF, and a probably minuscule amount from Waco’s Pacific Sun Railway, but a decent chunk will be coming from Amtrak.

Based on the motor coach figures presented in this budget, and comparing with the connecting bus schedules in the Pacific Surfliner timetable, we get an average cost of $3.19 per scheduled bus mile. Since that seemed a bit low at first, and I thought possibly due to some cost-sharing between the Capitol Corridor and Surfliner that I was unaware of for the Santa Barbara to Oakland buses, I also looked at the Capitol Corridor’s budget and scheduled bus connections: $3.23 per mile and a combined average expense of $3.21 per scheduled bus mile. Some additional research shows that I needn’t have fretted: It’s quite comparable to the figures reported by Rimrock, Capital Trailways, and Greyhound.

As I have said repeatedly, bus connections are the best and most cost-effective ways of feeding additional riders into the system and demonstrating support for expansion. After all, how much more cost-effective can you get than completely profitable? Yet there is a dearth of bus routes outside of California and it is rare to see a route study which includes any bus connection, much less a wealth of them such as California has. That being said, while I doubt anyone at Amtrak is reading my blog or twitter feed, there have been a number of new bus routes added over the past year, including one announced the other week connecting the Empire Builder to Rochester, MN, which may indicate that they’re beginning to understand just how useful, and profitable, bus connections are.

Pacific Surfliner Ridership Update

At the upcoming 7/9/2015 Technical Advisory Committee meeting, LOSSAN is providing an update on the Pacific Surfliner's ridership and for those of us with an interest in some of the nuts and bolts of the data, it's like Christmas in July. Unfortunately it doesn't have all the information one might want; the station-pair information is vague rather than specific as LOSSAN used to receive a decade ago and as the Capitol Corridor is currently releasing, but it does continue great information nonetheless; in particular, the average monthly ridership per train, broken down into coach and business, is quite possibly unprecedented.

It's a bit unfortunate that the ridership doesn't show the values, but luckily it's possible to extract it. I've also included a daily ridership figure in order to better show off 761/1761 and 790/1790 which are the only two frequencies which receive separate numbers for running on weekdays and weekends.  I'm a bit mystified, honestly, by that, since there are other trains which have separate weekend timings, but don't receive a different number for it. For the purpose of this, I've assumed an average month has 30 days, 8 of which are weekends.

Train	Total ridership	Business class	Coach	Business %	Daily ridership
562	6,474	433	6,041	6.7%	216
564	5,491	642	4,849	11.7%	183
565	6,439	749	5,690	11.6%	215
566	5,807	784	5,023	13.5%	194
567	7,177	749	6,428	10.4%	239
572	6,088	853	5,235	14.0%	203
573	6,826	783	6,043	11.5%	228
579	5,666	819	4,847	14.5%	189
580	9,423	1,346	8,077	14.3%	314
582	10,268	1,065	9,202	10.4%	342
583	6,896	1,065	5,831	15.4%	230
591	8,547	995	7,552	11.6%	285
595	4,718	328	4,390	6.9%	157
761	3,383	256	3,128	7.6%	154
763	14,342	1,908	12,434	13.3%	478
768	12,797	1,768	11,029	13.8%	427
769	12,761	2,049	10,713	16.1%	425
774	14,483	2,505	11,977	17.3%	483
777	13,218	2,154	11,064	16.3%	441
784	19,751	2,189	17,562	11.1%	658
785	16,274	2,152	14,121	13.2%	542
790	9,987	1,276	8,711	12.8%	454
796	8,090	714	7,376	8.8%	270
1761	1,452	152	1,300	10.5%	181
1790	4,894	609	4,285	12.4%	612
761/1761	4,835	408	4,427	8.4%	161
790/1790	14,880	1,885	12,996	12.7%	496

I've also redone the chart to join the weekday and weekend trains, making it quite apparent that the 790/1790 pair performs significantly better than the original chart makes it appear.

From the passenger miles per train, we can also determine how far the typical journey is per train and how productive each train is in terms of passenger miles per train mile.

And, of course, here's the information for that in spreadsheet form:

Train	Total ridership	Passenger miles (000s)	Average trip length	Passenger miles/train mile
562	6,474	363.1	56.1	95
564	5,491	386.2	70.3	101
565	6,439	461.2	71.6	120
566	5,807	438.1	75.4	114
567	7,177	458.3	63.9	119
572	6,088	472.8	77.7	123
573	6,826	481.4	70.5	125
579	5,666	424.9	75.0	111
580	9,423	694.9	73.7	181
582	10,268	657.4	64.0	171
583	6,896	539.1	78.2	140
591	8,547	720.9	84.3	188
595	4,718	317.0	67.2	83
761	3,383	293.9	86.9	60
763	14,342	1,176.7	82.0	163
768	12,797	1,119.0	87.4	155
769	12,761	1,292.1	101.3	179
774	14,483	1,759.5	121.5	168
777	13,218	1,574.9	119.1	150
784	19,751	1,603.7	81.2	222
785	16,274	1,537.2	94.5	213
790	9,987	1,009.1	101.0	131
796	8,090	665.9	82.3	92
1761	1,452	152.5	105.1	86
1790	4,894	536.2	109.6	192
761/1761	4,835	446	92.3	67
790/1790	14,880	1,545	103.8	147

So what are some conclusions we can draw from this?

First and foremost, 761 (and the weekend 1761) are absolutely abysmal. This is the current northbound Coast Daylight slot and one hopes that there would be a significant increase in traffic when it is actually extended to San Jose or San Francisco as the Coast Daylight (eventually, one day, quite possibly just a few minutes before the universe dies of heat death). That's not necessarily an unreasonable proposition, 790/1790 is the southbound counterpart and is an above average performer. It's probably a case of leaving Los Angeles too early in the morning without a correspondingly significant destination to arrive at.

Amtrak has been suggesting the past year that the Coast Daylight would be better off running from San Diego to San Jose rather than Los Angeles to San Francisco. At the same time, LOSSAN has been looking at an early morning from San Diego using existing equipment. It seems pretty obvious that 761/1761 should be extended to be an early morning (approximately 5:00 AM) departure from San Diego, picking up commuter traffic and possibly some early morning business and theme park travelers, before continuing on its current low performing route. I honestly don't expect it to pick up too much additional Amtrak traffic, the Surfliner's primary market being leisure travel, though Metrolink monthly pass holders would likely be quite pleased with it, but it's worth the experiment: As it is, with the current Surfliner average yield of 28¢ per passenger-mile, and an estimated $35 per train-mile in marginal operating expenses, 761/1761 currently covers about half of its running costs, possibly less as it is significantly below the average for business class use as well. The first three departures from San Diego are above or close to break even and the first departure, which also heads continues north of Los Angeles, is the best performing of them. If it averages the same as the current 500-series trains (which run only between San Diego and Los Angeles), which is just over break-even under the above assumptions, it would mean an additional 82,900 annual riders and $1.67 million in revenue for the Surfliner.

There's also good reason to believe that continuing to extend the current 500-series trains north of Los Angeles will result in improved ridership and revenue. These full (or "fuller," depending on how you wish to consider San Luis Obispo as part of the Surfliner) length runs are 29% more productive, in terms of passenger-miles per train-mile, than are the 500-series trains, and have average trip lengths 25% longer, something that shouldn't be too surprising since the corridor is nearly doubled by the extension to Santa Barbara. LOSSAN should continue to improve the locally owned portions of the line north of Los Angeles, terminating at Chatsworth with a new layover facility for as many trains as possible if need be, while pushing for improvements by Union Pacific to the Santa Barbara Subdivision.

Lastly, I have a chart created on a bit of a whimsy that I'm not sure actually shows anything terribly significant except that the first and last trains of a day underperform (which may undercut the rationale for a 5:00 AM San Diego departure) and possibly that people want to take a train around meal times. With Los Angeles as the top station for the Surfliner, and being the origin or destination for 21% of passengers, I looked at the productivity (in terms of passenger-miles per train-mile) for trains according to when the train arrived or departed Los Angeles. It would be better, of course, to have the information as to how many passengers are actually on board a train during any given hour of the day, but I'm not sure even Amtrak has that information, at least not without a rather laborious process of collection.