Less Risky, Less Costly: Amtrak’s New LD Strategy

by Jim Mathews / President & CEO

The online commentariat erupted this week when Amtrak revealed that it’s abandoning its previous Superliner bi-level replacement strategy and will instead soon re-issue a Request for Proposals to industry in order to speed new-car deliveries while broadening the field of potential carbuilders and reducing risk.

The news lit up all the online hangouts, from younger transportation and rail enthusiasts on Reddit to older train riders on Facebook and everywhere in-between. Some people were relieved and praised the decision. Others said it was the worst decision ever. Still others declared, with great certainty, that they already disliked elements of the car designs that will roll out.

The trouble, of course, is that there aren’t yet any car designs for them to like or dislike.

The bi-level procurement launched in 2022 was officially suspended. The Federal Railroad Administration earlier this year also asked Amtrak to pause the single-level procurement that kicked off last August so that program managers could conduct a thorough alternatives review...a review that wound up looking at nine different alternatives.

Where everyone landed was that despite suggestions during the initial request-for-information phase that industry could handle the ideas that were being floated, the carbuilders who actually responded to the eventual RFP warned that the desired designs -- based on a bi-level semi-permanently coupled trainset -- would be expensive, complicated, risky, and tough to deliver in a timely way.

So, FRA and Amtrak looked to do a re-set. Assuming FRA and Amtrak’s top leadership don’t run into any last-minute issues, we can probably expect an RFP to come out pretty shortly; the objective is to be under contract by the end of 2027.

Only then will there be car designs to like or dislike.

These Superliners have carried the country for more than 40 years. It’s long-past time to replace them. Reissuing the Request for Proposals is about not only reliability for passengers but about continuing the steady rebuilding of America’s passenger-rail manufacturing base that we’ve seen with the Airo fleet and the NextGen Acela.

When we maintain that momentum, we don’t just buy trains: we rebuild capability and set the stage for creating the world-class service all of us want and that American passengers deserve. Current schedule projections assume first revenue service entry around 2031, with coach and café fleet replacement extending to about 2034.

Now look, that’s late. It’s later than it should be, and it’s later than even the originally delayed schedule with 2030 in-service dates contemplated. But the hope is that by adopting a simpler, more interoperable design, and something closer to service-proven and not bespoke, Amtrak and the carbuilders will be able to get new cars built more quickly and as a result recover some -- but not all -- of the lost time.

Amtrak is also continuing to look hard at service-life extension programs for the fleet that it has, with the idea that while a lot of cars are already past their useful lives, others might have enough left in them to justify some extension investment, or at least enough to bridge the gap until enough new cars are on the road to retire the existing fleet. The deployment strategy is phased: first replacing Amfleet II coaches and cafés (roughly 120 cars), then shifting production to western routes, and ultimately replacing sleepers and diners later. Sleepers and diners are deliberately not on the critical path.

Another significant shift is from fixed trainsets to loose cars, which preserves capacity roughly equivalent to prior assumptions but increases operational flexibility.

We recognize that the Superliners have a lot of advantages, not least of which is more revenue-generating capacity per car. A typical Superliner long-distance coach can offer 25 percent more seats than a typical single-level long-distance coach -- 74 seats versus 59. For a typical sleeper arrangement, the gap is even bigger: today’s Viewliner sleepers accommodate 30 passengers while the bi-level Superliners can handle 44. That’s 47 percent more premium-priced space to sell.

Those kinds of numbers are among the reasons why in 2022 Amtrak was all-in on bi-levels. Plus let's face it, bigger rooms and better views. But when the carbuilders tell you they can’t build them, or can’t build and deliver them reliably on a reasonable schedule and at a reasonable cost per car, you have to take a breath.

The proposed bi-level design concepts had a lot of great things for passengers, including a much wider range of sleeping accommodations -- including a more affordable single-sleeper type of room akin to the old Slumbercoach intermediate sleeper product. There were also beautiful overnight coach designs, with “cradle” seats designed to recline deeply and be comfortable for someone sleeping one or two nights in their seat.

When we asked Amtrak about how much of that we’ll have to give up, designers told us that the intent is to retain the same range of sleeping accommodations and key product features that were outlined in the previous Superliner replacement effort. The trade-off is loss of upper-level viewing experience, but with savings and risk reduction from elimination of elevator complexity and accessibility constraints.

Conceptually, those premium coach seats and differentiated sleeper products remain possible within the specification, though final outcomes will obviously depend on bidder proposals and how creatively they can work those features into the single-level car’s smaller physical footprint. Even so, the direction to the carbuilders will be to try to incorporate as much of that as is possible.

One bitter reality: the passenger-car market in the U.S. has been unreliable and problematic for carbuilders for decades. And this has limited the investments and capacity for new cars in this country for a long time. Every Amtrak decision gets second-, third-, and fourth-guessed by members of Congress, FRA, stakeholder communities, and the randomness of Administration whims every four years.

And then, of course, there's the funding. We only JUST started having enough money for Amtrak to have serious conversations with carbuilders five years ago. And before they could respond they have had to re-build a supply chain and industrial base to make what Amtrak needed, mostly from scratch.

Today’s railcar manufacturing base lacks the depth of the historic Budd era and Amtrak begins any procurement with constrained industrial capacity, regardless of vendor selection.

We’ve seen great strides in recent years, with both Siemens and Alstom making enormous high-tech investments in New York, North Carolina, and California...investments that ripple out throughout the country. The new Siemens Airo trainsets, for example, come from components made in 31 states. But that’s a supply chain that didn’t exist before there was an Airo procurement to spur on that investment. And it’s a supply chain that will fade away unless there’s more work coming down the pipeline to keep those plants humming. And it’s the same story for Alstom, which just commissioned what it says is the most sophisticated carbuilding plant in North America, in Hornell, New York.

We just can’t wait any longer to start designing and building new long-distance railcars in the U.S. I testified before a House committee that America’s passengers were being asked to pay premium prices to travel in a “rolling museum” while carrying their own impromptu repair kits for their sleeper rooms. That was seven years ago, and those cars have only gotten older.

Passengers need, want, and deserve modern, safe, reliable railcars. The recovering U.S. passenger-rail industrial base needs, wants, and deserves a reliable and predictable market that can produce acceptable and reasonable returns. Amtrak, state-supported services, and even potential new entrants all need the ability to turn to a robust U.S. carbuilder to fulfill their business needs...without waiting a decade or more for new trains.

That’s why I welcomed Amtrak’s announcement that it was re-setting its long-distance procurement. The time to start is long overdue.