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Whether Amtrak has the numbers in its business plan audited is unknown. Many large corporations, however, have the numbers in their business plans audited by their internal auditors or their external auditors. Most large organizations also have the essence of the plan stress tested by independent consultants, auditors, etc. This is especially true if they are a highly regulated business, and they plan to publish the plan. Amtrak does not own all of the NEC.  Nor does it wear all the revenues, costs, and expenses associated  with the NEC. Amtrak bills the commuter and freight operators for their use of its portion of the NEC. This would include use of Amtrak's owned stations, i.e. NY Penn Station and 30th Street Station. By the same token, Amtrak is billed for its use of the portions of the NEC (stations, facilities, etc.) that it does not own.   The DOT IG's report on Amtrak's APT and SAP systems did not say that Amtrak's allocations are wrong.  It's major criticism was that Amtrak had done a lousy job of implementing the two systems so that they could talk to each other. The most scathing criticism, in my view, is that the company did not evaluate and re-engineer its business processes before implementing SAP. It further highlighted two significant accounting issues.   "the company has not yet demonstrated that it can produce performance reports in a timely manner to meet statutory reporting requirements."  The ability to produce reports timely is different from saying that the reports that it does produce are wrong.   "In addition, Amtrak’s heavy reliance on cost allocation reduces the precision of its performance reporting." Reducing precision does not mean that the allocations are out of whack. It means that with more direct costing, i.e. an automated assignment of costs, the outcomes could be more precise.  The report noted that Amtrak relies on a formula to assign fuel costs per train route.  It did not say that the formula is wrong; it said that the results could be more precise if it had the actual costs for each locomotive. In the case of the the Texas Eagle, for example, Amtrak has the fuel costs. The Eagle is fueled in Chicago and Fort Worth. At Fort Worth the fuel is delivered by an independent contractor. He gets paid by presenting fuel tickets to Amtrak for payment. The fuel tickets contain the number of gallons delivered and the cost per gallon. Whether Amtrak uses these tickets to check its fuel use formula is unknown, but the tickets for the Eagle, as well as other contractor fueled trains, gives it the ability to do so. Again, without access to Amtrak's books, any conclusion about how it allocates shared costs (expenses) is speculative.  For the most part I don't go there.  I rely on what Amtrak shows in its published reports.
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