AMTRAK June 2010 Performance

June 2010 Amtrak Stats are now available

As usual most comparisons will be FY 2010 first vs. FY 2009. Several errors were found in May report and have tried to fix same. Have mostly rounded figures to nearest million

Operations only Revenues up $15M over budget, ticket revenue up $17M. Expenses $12M over budget however $7M of those expenses were for early equipment terminations and better on time by RRs YTD Rev $80.3M up over budget. Exp $20M over budget including $13M for better OT. Month net loss $2.3M. Net loss for FY $60M. Forecast FY loss $5.1M compared to May’s forecast of42.5M projects are ahead of spending. FY 2010 forecast is $98M more vs. April’s $122.3M less than budget. The reason may be increases in reprogramming ( ? not explained). Train miles up 1% from 2009 (Lynchburg ?). Available seat miles were up 3% from 2009 so there were some longer trains again this month. Revenue Pass miles up 10.3%.(great - May up 10%) Load factor 57.5% up 4% from 2009 ( This gets load factor at 50% for year. Locos out of service 16.8% - 6.3% better than 09. Pass fleet 10.7 vs May’s 10.4% OOS 2.1% better than 09. ( reliability starting to trend but will look for trends later this year also same as Apr)(Note overhauls costing more than budget see below).

Again Diesel Gallons per mile 2.3 vs. 2.3 budget and 2.3 in 2009. Note By table below average train is longer. Seat miles = SM, Train miles = TM, Average seats per train SM/TM = TRS, Gallons per mile = GM, SM/G = seat miles p

Some of the trends give an idea of where AMTRAK is going.

  1. The higher revenue over expenses allowed AMTRAK to make their $29.8M downpayment on the order for the 130 low level cars from internal funds and I expect we may see another order probably for electric motors before September 30th again using internal funds. Maybe even an order for high level cars. Has anyone seen a Request for Proposal (RFP) issued for either?

  2. Using projections (always iffy) from the 1st three quarters vs. 2008 (AMTRAK’s record year) here are some trends.

A. Number of passengers should exceed 2008 by 438K.

B. RPM should exceed 2008 by 171,214K.

C. Ticket revenue should exceed 2008 by $518.5M. Note YTD Jun 10 ($1,781.8B) already exceeds Sep 2008 YTD revenue ( $1734.1B).

D. Forecast net loss for FY 2010 is $5.1m OVER BUDGET. May be reason no additional rolling stock orders yet.

Another item I discovered in the depths of the performance report and confirmed elsewhere is some money is being spent on modifying Auto Train car carriers. Something to do with trucks and other items??

The mods will allow 90MPH operation of the carriers however it is anticipated for the near future they will be operated at 79MPH until and if CSX will allow 90 MPH operation as PTC is implemented.