Re: Commission meeting, Oct 2017 (upon further review)

I want to again thank Steve Forney, Sam Seiber and the rest of their crew for producing the Commission videos. While there is much to be proud of in the current operations of the C&TS I would still like to see more transparency/ clarification in what we see presented and discussed at these meetings.

Here are some of my observations from reviewing the current video from October 28, 2017. First off, I am wondering why when financials or other data is being presented why this couldn’t be shown as a PowerPoint slide that then appears on the video. The marketing report from Launch was easy to read and follow, why can’t the other regular presenters i.e. Friends, CTO, Finance etc. also use projected reports in front of the Commission/ camera?

I also heard in the video that a new Historic Preservation Coordinating Committee (HPCC?) was formed to coordinate between the Friends and Commission and I would assume also the RR CTO? to coordinate various projects/ activities. This is good and long overdue, but again I would like to see an accounting of the Historic Preservation Fund and a regular (at minimum annually) presentation of what monies have been collected and what they have been allocated toward while also having some understanding what projects are in the queue or under consideration in the future. There was a vote taken on applying for grant funding from El Pomar for the 168 project which I would assume is something less than the El Pomar $100,000 maximum grant?

And lastly we heard that C&TS ridership and net income was up from last year . But as Commissioner Lucy Kay resigned I wondered what happened to the marketing plan that she and the Commission launched 5 years ago that is detailed in the Commission meeting of March 18, 2013 (see video Agenda item 6 for the Marketing report)? That was a 3-5 year plan to achieve 50,000 riders. Now in the latest Commission report (at the conclusion of 5 years) the ridership stands at 38,000? I also heard in the video several mentions of a 10 year plan for self-sufficiency? Is this a new or different plan or did the 5 year plan morph into 10 years and when did the 10 year plan begin?

I guess I am beating a dead horse (once again) as the short fall in filling the seats of the train (56% capacity for coach class 2017) really hurts. At $100 per seat that is going buttless every day, with a four coach capacity in each direction; my math conservatively equates this to $1.3 million dollars in revenue MIA. While there was discussion about building more premium first class cars (which are running at near capacity) the focus back in 2013 with the 5 year marketing plan per Lucy was to price the rides “to fill the train”. Unfortunately IMHO pricing may not be the only issue, as the coach class (middle class) passenger has been priced out of the vacation market by economic forces over the past 30 some years. Maybe part of the answer is to continue with more first class services, sadly like many other premium priced tourist attractions it just isn’t in the cards for many in the lower + middle of the economic scale to be able to fit this type of vacation /activity into their budget. My 2.5 cents.

Rod Jensen



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2017 10:23PM by rod.