A Wondover Productions video on Amtrak and its future.
Bloviation at its finest.
O! What a load! This guy must have a crush on Anderson or something.
It did discuss some negatives about what Anderson and Amtrak are doing, such as attribution of costs and planning to not serve many rural areas. Apparently your remarks are classic examples of confirmation bias.
And AWAY we go.
The narrator should have said operating profit. None of Amtrak’s routes have generated a profit on a fully allocated cost basis. Some of the other numbers presented by the narrator are suspect.
According to Amtrak’s September 2018 Monthly Performance Report, the Heartland Flyer had an operating loss of $800,000. It carried 68,100 passengers. The operating loss per passenger was $11.75. It was made up by the federal taxpayers. But this does consider the state payments.
In 2017 the Heartland Flyer generated $1,800,000 in ticket revenues. It had operating expenses of $7,500,000, which resulted in an operating loss on ticket sales of $5,700,000. Of this amount $800,000 was absorbed by Amtrak, with the remainder being covered by Texas and Oklahoma taxpayers. The state loss per passenger was $69.01. The total loss per passenger $80.7.
There is no evidence that the narrator had access to Amtrak’s accounting policies, procedures, and practices. He is parroting the Rail Passengers Association line regarding Amtrak’s accounting. There is no evidence that the narrator or RPA has access to Amtrak’s accounting books, which is to say that they don’t know how Amtrak allocates its costs among its three service lines. Even a government managed for profit company would not be stupid enough to allocate snow removal costs in Miami.
Many people would miss the long-distance trains. Really? In FY19 the long-distance trains had 4.5 million riders. However, when adjusted for round trips, the number of people actually
Well, at least there was some really nice video footage in that piece.
Really, some of Amtrak’s cost allocation schemes are pretty shady.
I hope the part about getting close to breaking even on operations is actually true.
That is a major feat for a public transit agency.
[quote user=“PJS1”]
The narrator should have said operating profit. None of Amtrak’s routes have generated a profit on a fully allocated cost basis. Some of the other numbers presented by the narrator are suspect.
According to Amtrak’s September 2018 Monthly Performance Report, the Heartland Flyer had an operating loss of $800,000. It carried 68,100 passengers. The operating loss per passenger was $11.75. It was made up by the federal taxpayers. But this does consider the state payments.
In 2017 the Heartland Flyer generated $1,800,000 in ticket revenues. It had operating expenses of $7,500,000, which resulted in an operating loss on ticket sales of $5,700,000. Of this amount $800,000 was absorbed by Amtrak, with the remainder being covered by Texas and Oklahoma taxpayers. The state loss per passenger was $69.01. The total loss per passenger $80.7.
There is no evidence that the narrator had access to Amtrak’s accounting policies, procedures, and practices. He is parroting the Rail Passengers Association line regarding Amtrak’s accounting. There is no evidence that the narrator or RPA has access to Amtrak’s accounting books, which is to say that they don’t know how Amtrak allocates its costs among its three service lines. Even a government managed for profit company would not be stupid enough to allocate snow removal costs in Miami.
Many people would miss the long-distance trains. Really? In FY19 the long-distance trains had 4.5 million riders. However, when adjusted for round
But they do cover the cost. They are taxpayers. They pay for it with gas taxes, excise taxes, tolls and taxes from the general fund. And the thing is, they generally support a good highway system because it’s useful to them and a great majority of the rest of the country. Amtrak…not so much.
The video, although it contains some inaccuracies, is a pretty good general overview.
To know whether Amtrak’s cost allocation schemes are shady, you would need to have access to Amtrak’s books. No one has been able to show that they have access to the company’s books.
I am a Texas CPA (retired). If I made a claim about the accounting practices of an entity that did not give me access to its books, I would lose my license.
Only cover road costs by making taxpayers pony up, which is fine, since no one has the guts to raise the federal gasoline tax. In any case, you are wrong if you think those fees and taxes cover environmental costs.
Amtrak could have broken even on operations in 2019 by raising ticket prices an average of $.916 or 92 cents per rider.
As the video makes clear, however, the problem lies with the long-distance trains. Ticket prices for the long-distance riders would have had to been an average of $104 higher per rider to cover the operating loss.
The segment operating results for 2019 were a profit of $569 million for the NEC, offset by a loss of $58 million for the state supported trains and $475 million for the long-distance trains.
I hear you.
But that video alluded to sketchy practices, as did at least one article and one column in Trains.
And snow removal in Miami … ?
But no, I have not seen their books, so your point is valid. Even if I do tend to believe they are cooking the books, to reflect poorly on the LD tra
If you tell a tale enough times in an echo chamber, people tend to believe it’s true, even with no evidence presented.
There are plenty of state gasoline taxes, also. How do you determine “environmental” costs and does anyone really care?
The ‘real’ action is in the state taxes, which might be thought of as an analogue to state-based finance or subsidy of their ‘share’ of rail operations in corridors that involve them. The catch, of course, is that adjacent states can predatorily or opportunistically take advantage – as is the case now between northwest Pennsylvania and Ohio, and in the olden days around the turn of this century between southwest Tennessee and Arkansas, in the days of less-than-a-dollar diesel.
Then you have the fun of explaining to your electorate why taxes are so high statewide when a certain, ahem, likely comparatively small region gets most of the resulting money for ‘environmental costs’ or infrastructure reconstruction or new building priority. This in no small part makes ubiquitous RFID-enabled touchless tolling a much more equitable solution – and a fixed-income one that does not suffer from the lethal problem faced by the Highway Trust Fund and similar gas-tax related things that become leveraged into relative poverty as fuel consumption goes down, driven miles decrease with usage and preference changes, and BEVs and plugins become more popular (these contribute just as much to congestion and infrastructure wear, but presently pay little if anything toward construction or upkeep).
We could go to a system which would measure miles run per year and calculate a tax based on that. With only slight additions to present law (for instance, at renewal time incorporating a mandatory code in license plate stickers, or a mandatory transponder tied to the registration or plate number, as part of the required process, and then tracking this via a network of road sensors) you could implement this in a fairly comprehensive and low-cost fashion – one that might actually b
Backshop: Are you joking?
Nope. The great majority of people don’t even think about it. If they did, SUVs and full size pickups wouldn’t be as popular as they are.
I suggest you look at some polls. Even with one party in denial because they are in the pocket of Big Carbon, a large and growing number of Americans are very concerned.