As of this week with its return to daily departures from New York and New Orleans, the schedule for Amtrak’s Crescent has been lengthened. This is “to improve customer satisfaction and on-time reliability,” according to a service change advistory.It's the same old dodge: where it's no longer possible to make time, whether thanks to sloppy dispatching or freight train congestion or main lines singled, turn "late" into "on time" by adding running time.
But the adjustments, especially for the northbound train, threaten historically strong patronage on the Atlanta-Northeast Corridor market. New city-pair opportunities could be created with the new departure times, but only if properly promoted.
As with most long-distance trains, the Crescent developed strong, overlapping markets. Northeast Corridor-Atlanta overnight schedules in both directions delivered passengers the next morning, with time for dinner and breakfast onboard, and still allowed a full day’s activity.There's not much of an Atlanta "terminal" to speak of in the first place.
Business was so heavy that some coaches and sleepers were switched out southbound and added northbound at Atlanta to accommodate demand. When Amtrak managers tried to institute the practice in 2012 to improve the train’s revenue and efficiency following a directive from Congress, Norfolk Southern refused to allow en route switching in the increasingly congested Atlanta terminal.
Early reports from the Southeast suggest that the loosened schedules have simply provided more margin for sloppiness. "With the additional leeway given dispatchers to mesh Norfolk Southern’s version of Precision Scheduled Railroading with the newly-minted Crescent schedules, there should be an extra effort to run the passenger train on time, or at least minimize serious delays. Though the lengthened schedule has masked some of the problems, that hasn’t initially been the case." It's Norfolk Southern. Is anybody surprised?
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