(Dow Jones news service circulated the following story on August 6.)
NEW YORK — Amtrak wants to simplify and stabilize its train fares and plans to put fares back in its timetables, Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal reported.
Amtrak dropped fares from its timetables a little more than two decades ago when the company started to implement new pricing strategies similar to those of the airlines. Fares fluctuated according to market conditions.
The national passenger railroad said it is returning to printing sample ticket prices between major cities in its fall-winter 2003-2004 timetable effective Oct. 27.
“It’s just going back to basics,” David Gunn, who became Amtrak president in May 2002, said of the changes. Mr. Gunn believes Amtrak has been derailed in in the past by promising to do too much, rather than staying on track by focusing on basic maintenance and operations.
For example, Mr. Gunn recently scrapped plans to install a complex revenue-management system in Amtrak’s busy Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston. The proposed system would have created different fares depending on the popularity of individual trains and when tickets were purchased. Instead, Mr. Gunn is sticking with a pricing structure of peak, off-peak and a third category of so-called shoulder fares — with all prices based simply on time of departure.
(Wall Street Journal Staff Reporter Daniel Machalaba contributed to this report.)