Amtrak has issued its Feb 2010 operating stats and they are very encouraging. Comparsions are for month 2009 or for FY 2010 vs FY 2009
All these figures need to be looked at with one eye on the bad weather in FEB and the various cancellations on routes around WASHINGTON.
Revenue up 6% over 2009 with ridership up 88,000 this year for a total of 23M.
Load factor up 1% to 47.7% with this figure up every month this FY except OCT.
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No, just 2 every day. Might be trackwork schedule. I think they killed the train at Atlanta on weekdays in Feb last year. They did it in Jan this year.
Amtrak’s February 2010 financials, which are an important part of the picture, don’t look so good. The FY2010 net loss through February 2010 was $580.7 million compared to $491.7 million for the same period last year.
Part of the ridership increase in the NEC can be attributed to pricing incentives, i.e. year to year ridership increased 2.3 per cent whilst revenues declined .7 per cent. The State Supported and Other Short Distance Corridor Trains (SDCT) saw the increase in revenues outpace the increase in ridership, but the long distance trains increase in ridership was offset by a decline in revenues, again indicating that pricing incentives, as well as differentiated space demands, contributed to the increase in ridership.
The NEC turned in a FY10 YTD loss of 1.5 cents per passenger mile compared to a contribution of 3.7 cents for the corresponding FY09 period. The loss for the SDCT increased from 14.3 cents to 14.9 cents per passenger mile, whilst the loss for the long distance trains increased from 23.4 cents to 25.7 cents for the same metric. These losses are before the allocation of depreciation and interest, which would make the numbers look even worse.
The Acela contributed 12.1 cents per passenger mile before depreciation and interest, but the other NEC trains caused the corridor to turn in a negative operating performance. Of the SDCT trains, only the Lynchburg and Piedmont trains covered their operating costs. None of the long distance trains covered their operating expenses. The Sunset Limited continued to show the biggest loss per passenger mile of the long distance trains (59.2 cents compared to 60.1 cents in FY09).
Amtrak’s financial performance is deteriorating, due in part to the recession, as well as a series of internal financial drivers. In FY09 its federal and state subsidies averaged $64.87 per passenger
Professor, I’m confused!
The LD trains show a loss of 25.7 cents/passenger mile, yet the Amtrak system subsidy is at 29.88 cents/passenger mile?
One distinction that I would like to make is between the above and below the wheel-rail contact patch subsidies and expenses. Don Oltmann might back me up on that one but Sam1 I suppose has little use for that distinction.
Why do I want to make that distinction? Whenever the subject of transportation subsidy comes up, the response that is inevitable as the spring rains is, “Oh yeah, Amtrak gets subsidy? What about the subsidy going to (autos/buses/airlines)? Boy, you better believe it that those other modes get subsidy! Why, the gas tax only covers (insert some small fraction) of the cost of highways!” And so on.
I guess another reason for making this distinction is to impose a level of accountability on the advocacy community. Fine, let’s have a level playing field between the different transportation modes. Let’s subsidize them, but in the same manner and at the same rates. Amtrak was supposed to be that level playing field, but dontcha know it, it was just a thinly disguised plan to rid the railroads of passenger trains – yes I have been told that many times, but I mention this talking point so it doesn’t have to be restated. Again. Yes, let’s appeal equal subsidy treatment to the different modes, yeah, even throw in a subsidy supplement for the social goodness of trains, and then don’t complain when trains don’t have the market share we think they ought to have.
And with respect to above-the-rails operating cost, I would even allow for the train stations to be a municipal rather than an Amtrak cost, that the costs of airports are recovered by various fees notwithstanding. If you want the train to stop in Wisconsin rather than just breeze through to Minesota,