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[quote user="schlimm"] Since the purpose of any means of passenger transportation is to provide an efficient method that people use to get from one place to another, a useful metric would be the revenue, expenses and net loss or surplus per passenger (not per passenger mile, since the mileage is largely irrelevant in examining the way people are being served)  on long distance, the NEC, and other corridor services of Amtrak and compare.  One advantage is it examines the issue within Amtrak alone and thus avoids the endless and fruitless arguments about subsidies for road, air and rail.  Unfortunately, that is still (over one year and counting!!) not available b/c Amtrak is changing accounting methods.  However, someone might have that data from the past. [/quote] In FY10 the average losses per Amtrak passenger were $48.67 for the NEC, $21.68 for the short corridor trains, and $144.15 for the long distance trains.  Amtrak does not publish this figure.  To get there I assigned 80 per cent of the depreciation, interest, and management overheads to the NEC, with the remaining 20 per cent accuring equally to the short corridor and long distance trains.  Using revenue, cost, and gains or losses per passenger mile, seat mile, vehicle mile traveled, etc. has been the basis for normalizing cross mode cost comparisons since I minored in transportation economics as an undergraduate student. No matter how one slices and dices the numbers, Amtrak's long distance trains are the biggest drag on its financial results.
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