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[quote user="daveklepper"] The bottom line is that the Acela Service reduces and does not increase the overall subsidy of the NEC.   Any accounting analysis will prove this.   The Acela service either reduces the ticket price you and I pay for NE Regional service or reduces the subsidy we require when we use that service or a bit of both.    This has been repeated and repeated and repeated. [/quote] It depends on the amount of capital baked into the NEC for the Acela service.  The line was upgraded at significant cost for the Acela service, i.e. electrification of the line from New Haven to Boston, etc.   The Acela fares are not sufficient to off-set the capital costs of the upgrade.  Until the Acela covers its proportional share of the capital costs (it is not), it is incorrect to say that it is subsidizing the NEC regional fares. Or at least this is the conclusion that most cost accountants would draw.  Unless Amtrak opened its books to public analysis, which it has not done, a valid accounting analysis cannot be performed.   A bigger factor in reducing NEC regional train fares, I suspect, is the competition, especially from buses and cars.  Wannabe travelers from Philadelphia to New York, for example, can take a Bolt Bus for about half of what it costs to go by train.  Train devotees may not take a bus, but apparently plenty of people are doing so.  Bolt is probably making money; it is adding services throughout the Northeast. Unlike Amtrak, it is an investor owned business.  It covers its costs or goes out of business.  What a novel idea.
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