Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
Information regarding Amtrak's ridership and revenues can be found in the Monthly Operating Reports.  For 2012 and 2011 the keying page is A.3.0.  Tables containing ridership and revenues by route begin on Page A3.4 or thereabouts. Be sure not to confuse the monthly statistics with the YTD stats, which in September represent the numbers for Amtrak's fiscal year. Amtrak counts passengers by the number of tickets that it lifts. If a person buys a ticket and subsequently cancels the trip, he is not counted as a passenger.  Amtrak has probably increased the accuracy of its passenger count recently because of the use of bar code scanners, which are less susceptible to error.   Amtrak's fact sheets report the number of passengers getting on and off its trains at its stations. Also, the number of passengers is not the number of customers.  Accordingly, it is not possible from the numbers Amtrak gives us to know if the increase in riders was an increase in customers, or if existing customers took more trains trips, or a combination thereof.  Month to month increases in ridership are not helpful.  As is the case with financial analysts, who use a variety of metrics to evaluate the financial health of a business, one should look for rider and revenue trends over at least one or two years.  Five years is preferable.  That is what financial analysts do.  Amtrak's total ridership increased 3.54 per cent in FY12 compared to FY11 and 5.1 per cent in FY11 compared to FY10. Revenues increased 6.8 per cent in FY12 compared to FY11 and 8.5 per cent in FY11 compared to FY10. One possibility for the variance may be that Amtrak's ticket price yields are higher, i.e. passengers are pay more for transport than was the case in prior years.   In FY12 ridersiip on the NEC increased by 4.8 per cent, compared to 3.8 per cent for the state supported trains and 5.1 per cent for the long distance trains. In FY11 the increases were 5.1, 6.5, and 1.1. According to the Brookings Institute's study A New Alignment.........the bulk of growth in Amtrak's ridership has occurred in the NEC and state support corridors. The growth rates can vary significantly from reporting period to reporting period. A key factor in evaluating growth rates is to understand the starting or base point.  If Amtrak, with roughly 31 million passengers, increases its ridership by 3 million passengers, it has realized a 9.7 per cent increase in ridership.  If the airlines, which enplaned 731,124,287 passengers in FY12 (BTS Domestic Airport Boardings for Commercial......), had an increase of three million passengers, the increase would be .41 or 41/100s of one per cent.  The commercial airline boardings increased by approximately 6 million in FY12 compared to FY11, but it was only an .86 per cent increase. So, a reader of the Brookings Institute Report, which claims that Amtrak has been growing at a faster rate than the nation's other commercial carriers, should keep the base line in mind.  If a person invested in a security because the company's sales and revenues had increased dramatically over the last decade, without looking at the other key indicators, he might be in for an ugly surprise.  The company could be buying market share and be on the verge of bankruptcy. It is important to look at all of Amtrak's key metrics. Increases in riders and revenues is only a very small part of its operating and financial performance.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag