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According to testimony entitled "The Highway Trust Fund and Paying for Highways, delivered by CBO staffer Joseph Kile, Assistant Director for Microeconomic Studies, before the Committee on Finance, United States Senate, May 17, 2011, the total annual spend on highways (federal, state, county, and local) is approximately $160 billion.  The federal spend is approximately $40 billion.   As per Table 1-35, National Transportation Statistics, the estimated vehicle miles traveled in 2010 was 2,966,494 million. As per Table 1-40, National Transportation Statistics, the estimated passenger miles in 2010 was 4,244,157 million.   An Amtrak passenger receives an indirect subsidy from the federal government. The same is true for a commercial airline passenger and a commercial bus rider. But in the case of a vehicle, theoretically at least, the subsidy flows to the owner of the vehicle and not the passengers. Accordingly, for my analysis, I have used passenger miles for rail, air, and bus subsidies, but vehicle miles for highway subsidies. This is following the conservative principle associated with normally accepted accounting procedures. In the spreadsheet that I have compiled for each of the last five years, the average federal subsidy per passenger mile for Amtrak was calculated on the basis of the federal operating subsidies received by it. The calculation is straight forward. For the commercial air and highway subsidies considerably more work is involved. I don't believe anyone is really interested in plowing through the complete accounting exercise. It is time consuming, and it involves a substantial number of allocations. To get an idea of the allocations process, outlined below is how I derived part of the federal subsidy for FAA operations. Historically the FAA has covered approximately 86 per cent of its operating costs through a variety of fees (includes fuel taxes) collected directly or indirectly from airline passengers, pilots, FBOs, etc. The difference or shortfall is covered by a transfer from the general fund. Some folks, including NARP, assume that the entire transfer flows to the commercial airlines.  This is incorrect. Only a portion of it supports commercial airline passengers, but the FAA does not make this information public. So how should it be allocated?   I have based my calculation on the percentage of air traffic control operations devoted to controlling commercial air flights as opposed to general aviation operations and military operations in civilian air space. Drawing from the information presented in the FAA's annual performance report, as well as FAA statistics, over the past five years approximately 32 per cent of the flights controlled by the FAA (tower, enroute control centers, etc.) are commercial airline flights. The remainder are general aviation, which includes business airplanes, and military flights in civilian air space. Thus, I multiplied the transfer for FAA operations by 32 per cent to come up with the amount of the federal operating subsidy flowing to airline passengers. From here it is relatively easy to calculate the average amount per passenger and per passenger mile, although this is not the only federal subsidy received by the airlines. I offer this at the risk of being tedious to point out that most of the notions about federal subsidies, not to mention state and local subsidies, have been over simplified and are not correct.   Based on my analysis, which is supported by similar data found in the Federal Transportation Statistics, in FY10 the federal subsidy for Amtrak was 19.12 cents per passenger mile, down from 21.44 cents in FY09. The corresponding average FY10 subsidies for commercial air and highway were .36 cents per passenger mile and .99 cents per vehicle mile traveled. This is the basis that I used to claim that the federal subsidy for Amtrak is nearly 20 times the subsidy for commercial air and vehicles. I am not addressing other subsidies, and I have only dealt with direct cash transfers. I have not, for example, attempted to calculate the value of the tax exemptions received by Amtrak and the other modes of transport. To determine them one would have to go through every tax jurisdiction where Amtrak could attract a tax liability, if it were not exempt from paying all taxes, to determine the value of the exemptions.
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