I was surprised to hear Boardman say that the Auto Train is getting very close to making an operating surplus, but is not there yet. That seemed to back away from our favorite chart in one of Boardman's Congressional Committee presentations showing the Auto Train and the Palmetto above the line already, with other Eastern LD trains showing only modest losses.
All depends on how much overhead you allocate to the train. Boardman is probably referring to "fully allocated" nonsense mandated by Congress.
Based on direct costs, in FY 2015 the following trains are probably ahead (i.e. it would worsen Amtrak's losses to cancel them):
Completing the massive IT project from hell (replacing ARROW) is the only thing which I see in the next few years which could reduce ongoing overhead significantly.
The cure for what ails Amtrak is more Amtrak.
If Amtrak had 2 times the rail miles as now, much of the overhead would increase by less than 2 times.
Take the yearly interest and debt amortization as the simple one. If Amtrak pays $100 million in interest and principle reduction, it is divided by, wild guess from memory, 17,500 rail miles. If we add two new runs of the
Cascades, a
Coast Daylight round trip, a daily
Eagle/Sunset and daily
Cardinal, another frequency on the
Lincoln service, bust thru South of the Lake and get 4 or 5 more short runs to Michigan, etc.
Then we could divide that $100 million by, say wild guess, 20,000 rail miles instead of 17,500. In that case the debt service per train mile would decline from $5,714 to $5,000 even.
I've been massaging this notion in my fading mind, even hoping to work up estimates of how much total train miles will increase from the Stimulus expansions (not enuff to matter, alas) and which routes would make more of a difference, daily
Cardinal and
Eagle-Sunset.
I have NOT done any such calculations. The preceding figures are rough for showing the concept. I put them here, perhaps prematurely, because if we're talking allocated overhead, here's a simple part of it to understand. And to emphasize my claim that the cure to what ails Amtrak is more Amtrak. Lots more.