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[quote user="Mr. Railman"]   <blockquote> <div><img src="/TRCCS/Themes/trc/images/icon-quote.gif" /> henry6:</div> <div>   Let's see....what else doesn't make money in Washington....about the only thing I think does make money is the printing presses!  The Defense Department doesn't, Nor the Highway Adminsitration nor the FAA or FCC...I don't think there is a government agency or department that does except the Treasury Department!  So why pick on Amtrak?  It is too much socialism for the Tea Party to bear? <div style="clear:both;"></div>   </div> </blockquote>   I think Amtrak loses the MOST money out of all of them, and that's why privatization is put on the table as ideas. That's how it was before 1972, but the RPOs went out of business in the sixties with the creation of the zip code, and train lines lost much of their revenue from it. [/quote] It depends on what is meant by loses money. Amtrak is a federally sponsored commercial enterprise.  It is in the business of transporting people from one point to another.  Its operations are accounted for in an enterprise fund, which emulates the accounting for a private business.  It generates an income statement (operations statement), statement of cash flows, balance sheet, and statement of retained earnings. The federal government sponsors several commercial like enterprises, i.e. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), etc.  These organizations are expected to cover their costs from fees, rates, etc., and therefore be run like a competitive business, although in most instances they don't have any direct competition.   In FY10, as examples, the FDIC earned $13.5 billion as compared to a loss of $38.1 billion in 2009, due largely to an increase in bank closures sparked by the recession; the PBGC had a loss of $1.084 billion, and the TVA earned $972 million.  By comparison Amtrak had a net operating loss of $1.3 billion in FY10 and FY09.  The loss in FY09 was slightly larger, but after rounding they both come in at $1.3 billion.  The FDIC generates most of its revenues from deposit fees, which are imposed by the nation's banks on their depositors.  If you have a bank account, you are paying the fee, although you may not know it. The PBGC is an insurance company.  It levies a fee on the employers that offer a legacy retirement program to their employees.  It is designed to cover retirement benefits if the employer's plan fails, i.e. the employer goes out of business.  The TVA charges electric and water rates to its customers just like any utility. Some folks appear to confuse these enterprise funds with trust funds, i.e. the Highway Trust Fund, Aviation Trust Fund, etc.  They are not the same animal.  The trust funds were set up to collect monies to support the activity usually embodied in their name.  They are not expected to earn a profit, whereas some of the federal enterprise funds are expected to earn a profit, e.g. the TVA. Amtrak has lost money from day one.  The amount of the loss, however, which has averaged $643 million per year since the beginning, is peanuts compared to the federal budget.  However, if one looks at the loss per passenger mile, which is covered by federal and state supplemental payments (subsidies), Amtrak receives a higher subsidy per passenger and seat mile than other forms of transport, i.e. commercial airlines, bus companies, personal vehicles, etc.   In FY10 Amtrak's average loss or subsidy per passenger mile was 21.13 cents compared to .0099 cents per mile for the airlines and .0049 cents for highway users.  The subsidies are in the numbers. For example, whilst Amtrak racked up 6.3 billion passenger miles in FY10, airline passengers chalked up 509.2 billion passenger miles and motorists came in with approximately 3 trillion vehicle miles traveled. All transport subsidies should be eliminated.  And the full cost of driving should be reflected at the pump, i.e. county and city road costs should be baked into the price of gasoline as opposed to being embedded in property taxes, as an example, and the subsidies for the airlines, buses, etc. should be eliminated.  If this happened, there could be a viable market for intercity rail, at least in relatively short, high density corridors.  The train could stand on its own.  And Amtrak could be privatized or other operators could be enticed to enter the market.  At the end of the day, the competitive, smartly regulated markets are a better way to allocate limited economic resources.
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