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According to Quarterly Report on the Performance and Service Quality of Intercity Passenger Train Operations, Covering the Quarter Ended September, 2013 (Fourth Quarter of Fiscal Year 2013), which you referenced, Federal Railroad Administration, United States Department of Transportation, Table 1 (A/B): Short-Term Avoidable Operating Costs, and Table 3 (A/B): Long-Term Avoidable Operating Loss, Amtrak does not know the avoidable costs of its trains. As per Note 1, Data for tables 1 and 3 will not be available until the avoidable costing methodology for the Amtrak Performance Tracking (APT) System has been completed. Although it would be difficult for a government employee to understand, an aggressive, competitive business would be able to shed most of the costs associated with a discontinued product line, i.e. the long distance trains.  Been there, done that!  Politics, however, is a different matter. The long distance trains are a political statement.  They are used by less than one per cent of intercity travelers.  Amtrak has had more than 40 years to get them to just break even, and it has never come close. How anyone with any business sense believes that they are going to turn a dismissal failure around after 40 years escapes me. But lets take your un-audited avoidable cost numbers for a minute, noting that they have not been broken out by short and long term costs.  Invested at the current Treasury Note rate of return, the $58.3 million in avoidable costs, i.e. savings, would grown to $76.7 million in 10 years and $101 million in 20 years.  That's how competitive business people look at recouping the avoidable costs associated with a losing product line.   The numbers in the PRIIA reports are ancient history.  Moreover, they were cobbled together by Amtrak employees, who are hardly independent of the organization that employs them. There is no evidence that they were subjected to an independent audit. Without access to Amtrak's books, as per the aforementioned report, you don't have a clue as to how much cost associated with the long distance trains is avoidable. The cross subsidies from any road system and Medicaid costs associated with automobile accidents have nothing to do with any avoidable costs associated with discontinuance of the long distance trains, including the Texas Eagle, Sunset Limited, and Heartland Flyer. You continuously speak of the cost to Medicare and Medicaid resulting from automobile accidents. But you don't present any verifiable numbers, as far as I know, and you seem to think that there are no benefits associated with America's road systems, which at the end of the day are paid for by the nation's 211.9 million licensed motorists, although disproportionately.  That's approximately 92 per cent of the adult population of the United States.
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