Amtrak Coach is a Bargain

by Jim Mathews / President & CEO

One early finding as our November flash passenger survey continues is that there’s a lot of agita about fares. As in...A LOT. When we ask passengers who don’t ride Amtrak today what change would make them more likely to choose Amtrak, so far almost half of respondents (48.7%) are choosing “Lower fares.”

As anyone who has tried to book a walk-up ticket on Amtrak on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, it can be an expensive proposition. The Northeast Corridor is always pretty pricey, Acela fares are even more pricey, and outside the NEC sleeper fares are – in my view, anyway – completely disconnected from the actual value being supplied.

But Amtrak coach? I think that’s one of the biggest bargains anywhere in the United States. And with a couple of notable exceptions, it’s even comparable to the European services whose fares are often held up as more affordable than Amtrak.

Even though the survey is still happening (and you can participate by clicking here) this finding about fares popped out enough that I felt compelled to do a little digging to understand more. Here’s what I found.

On a passenger-mile basis, Amtrak coach is often cheaper than flying, and competitive with European rail once you compare like with like. For example, German Deutsche Bahn saver fares can get really cheap per mile if you buy early and hit the low buckets (especially Berlin–Hamburg and Munich–Berlin). But that’s exactly the same dynamic as “Flexible” on Amtrak — you’re not comparing full-fare Flexpreis to full-fare Amtrak here; you’re comparing promo bucket to promo bucket.

I looked at the 159-mile run between Berlin and Hamburg last week. At $1.16 to the Euro, that worked out to $8.50 one-way in second class, roughly the equivalent to Coach. That’s a huge undercut to what Amtrak can offer. To score that kind of fare on Amtrak, you’d have to look at equivalent low-fare promo buckets – think Night Owl fares, or midweek off-peak.

Amtrak’s new Mardi Gras between New Orleans and Mobile can be had for as little as 10 cents per mile, if you can get the $15 one-way fare. A lot of people report not getting that fare, but in some cases that’s because they’re trying to buy on the same day, and on a weekend when the New Orleans Saints football team is playing at home. The Borealis works out to about 12 cents per mile between Minneapolis/St. Paul and Chicago, with a $41 fare for a 347-mile ride.

Not too bad at all. Those fares are in the same ballpark as Italy’s Italo high-speed trains. When I looked last week at second-class fares on the 352-mile ride between Milan and Rome, it worked out to US$34.70 – 9.9 cents per mile. Rome to Florence is about 162 miles, and that came out at 10.7 cents per mile, or $17.30.

So, Chicago–St Paul (~12¢/mi) and New Orleans–Mobile (~10¢/mi) land right in the same range as Italian high-speed routes like Rome–Florence and Rome–Milan (~9–11¢/mi), and only a bit above a good Munich–Berlin deal (~7¢/mi). And that’s in spite of Amtrak’s far lower frequencies (there are 32 daily trains between Rome and Florence!), smaller markets, and higher fixed costs.

And then there’s whole “why not just fly” argument. Earlier this year I presented to the Global Business Travel Association’s annual conference where I pointed to a typical trip between Chicago and the Illinois capital, Springfield. Take a look at the slide I put up for those folks this spring. Their jaws dropped. A $340 flight versus an $18 train ride.

And yes, the flight itself is only an hour and ten minutes, but when you include the agony of getting through traffic to the airport, finding an expensive parking spot, stumbling through slow-moving TSA lines, then once you’re on the plane lining up as number 14 to take off on Runway Two-Seven Lima, and then waiting to open your laptop until you reach 10,000 feet...congratulations, you just paid $8.50 per minute for 40 minutes of productive work time. By contrast, the Lincoln Service gave you just under four hours of productive time for the miserly cost of about 10 cents per productive minute.

Overall, according to U.S. air-travel statistics, airline yields per passenger mile generally work out to between 17¢ and 20¢ per mile. The Borealis, the Mardi Gras, and the Lincoln Service all compare pretty favorably there.

The comparison becomes a little tougher, however, when you look at, say, New York Empire Service. NYC–Buffalo has been hammered by dynamic pricing and capacity constraints; recent Albany–NYC coverage shows coach in the $44–$105 range on a shorter segment, which drives the Empire corridor’s value buckets up too. That service is pricing out right now at around 21¢ per mile.

So, my little personal research project basically found that outside the NEC and sleepers, Amtrak coach fares are generally in the same ballpark as European high-speed 2nd class when you compare advance-purchase, discount buckets to each other. Germany and Italy can offer very cheap saver fares (5–8¢/mi) that Amtrak rarely matches, but that’s a reflection of scale, network maturity, and subsidy levels, not a simple “Amtrak is greedy” story. Some short or constrained U.S. routes (Chicago–Milwaukee, New York–Buffalo under today’s tunnel constraints and the recent sinkhole debacle) do come out as expensive per mile, and passenger sticker shock is real there. But overall, on a passenger-mile basis, Amtrak coach is often cheaper than flying, and competitive with European rail once you compare like with like.

Once the survey is closed we’ll try to do a deeper dive on what’s driving this perception that Amtrak is just uniformly expensive. But for now, let’s just agree that a trip through the ticket-booking sites shows that Amtrak coach fares are mostly a bargain.