Amtrak loss comes to $32 per passenger

[MrEd]

U.S. taxpayers spent about $32 subsidizing the cost of the typical Amtrak passenger in 2008, about four times the rail operator's estimate, according to a private study.

Amtrak operates a nationwide rail network, serving more than 500 destinations in 46 states. Forty-one of Amtrak's 44 routes lost money in 2008, said the study by Subsidyscope, an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Stephen Van Beek, president of the Eno Transportation Foundation, a think tank, said the analysis could help guide decisions on how to spend $8 billion set aside for high-speed and intercity rail in a $787 billion economic stimulus bill. Rail planners may decide that spending the funds on high-speed rail makes more sense than slower intercity rail, which the Amtrak numbers show need higher subsidies.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../w001253D98.DTL

 

[transit54]

A rough, back of the envelope calculation results in a loss of $87.68 per passenger vehicle on the road for federal highway funding.

Taken from here (number of vehicles) and here (2008 funding). Just for comparison's sake...

 

[Mark]

A rough, back of the envelope calculation results in a loss of $87.68 per passenger vehicle on the road for federal highway funding.
Taken from here (number of vehicles) and here (2008 funding). Just for comparison's sake...

Is that considered annually?

 

[AlanB]

Amtrak officials said they're working with the Transportation Department to come up with a fair way to determine capital expenses but the method used in the report unfairly burden routes whose equipment was sold and then leased back.

And it wouldn't surprise me if they also used the total funding given to Amtrak last year, about a 1/3 of which went right into loan payments. Many of those loan payments wouldn't exist if Congress hadn't underfunded Amtrak for a number of years.

 

[transit54]

A rough, back of the envelope calculation results in a loss of $87.68 per passenger vehicle on the road for federal highway funding.
Taken from here (number of vehicles) and here (2008 funding). Just for comparison's sake...

Is that considered annually?

In the sense of, is that amount appropriated every year? Yes.

 

[WICT106]

I realize that I'm preaching to the choir here, but profit or loss should be measured in terms of Revenue Passenger Miles, not per passenger.

 

[saxman]

I realize that I'm preaching to the choir here, but profit or loss should be measured in terms of Revenue Passenger Miles, not per passenger.

Yeah, anytime someone touts loss/cost per passenger, that raises a red flag. You can take any sort of numbers and divide it any which way and come up with all kinds of figures. Yes, Cost or Revenue per passenger mile is the normal measure for transportation.

 

[volkris]

I've heard some contradictory reports about this report, but...

A rough, back of the envelope calculation results in a loss of $87.68 per passenger vehicle on the road for federal highway funding.

The numbers are hardly comparable. One is per passenger of a rather clearcut system (it's all on one Amtrak balance sheet, right?), while the other is per vehicle, not passenger, and based on a glance at an appropriation allocated pretty vaguely to the DOT.

And even so, the comparison is somewhat meaningless... those who say the public shouldn't fund transportation like this won't care so you're just preaching to the choir.

Amtrak officials said they're working with the Transportation Department to come up with a fair way to determine capital expenses but the method used in the report unfairly burden routes whose equipment was sold and then leased back.

And it wouldn't surprise me if they also used the total funding given to Amtrak last year, about a 1/3 of which went right into loan payments. Many of those loan payments wouldn't exist if Congress hadn't underfunded Amtrak for a number of years.

The report's authors say that the inclusion that makes the difference is not debt service, but rather things like legal services, secretarial work, and other such operational business expenses that are significant but not directly related to moving a train down the rail.

And even if it's due to debt service, one man's underfunding is another's proper allocation.

I realize that I'm preaching to the choir here, but profit or loss should be measured in terms of Revenue Passenger Miles, not per passenger.

The different numbers measure different things, and there are proper times to use each. In any case, from what I read the report showed that the longer routes were by far the biggest losses, so maybe it would even be worse.