According to the Trains Newswire:
“It’s the long-distance trains,” Boardman told Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, when she questioned why losses are growing while passenger counts are rising. “They’re all unprofitable.” Boardman noted the Northeast Corridor is operating at a profit, but said the high costs of operating long-distance trains offset that. Federal subsidies cover about 16 percent of Amtrak’s losses. Amtrak spokesman Steve Kulm said the country needs to choose its priorities. “The Congress and this country need to make a policy decision: Do they want intercity long-distance trains or do they not?” Cuts to long-distance trains would likely draw the ire of representatives in the affected area.
So does this mean Amtrak would rather discontinue all LD trains and concentrate on the corridors?
This is a Wall St. Journal story thus has the Conservative-Business slant. Boardman spoke before Congress but Kulm spoke to the Journal. But to answer your question, Amtrak wants to, has to, please Congress. It is not whether Amtrak wants to run LD or not, but rather if Congress wants Amtrak to run LD. Then the question is "is Congress willing to fund LD?" And if not, "how does Amtrak pay for LD?"
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Something to remember is that Amtrak is a political entity, whether we admit it or not. Most of us will agree that the long-distance trains are a drag on Amtrak's finances and serve little real purpose but discontinuance is virtually a political impossibility, despite the pronouncements from Capitol Hill.
We need both LD and Short train services. If we can find 40 plus billion for Highways and 15 billion for Airlines. We can find money for Amtrak.
conrailman We need both LD and Short train services. If we can find 40 plus billion for Highways and 15 billion for Airlines. We can find money for Amtrak.
Tell your Congressman. Write letters to your newspaper.
Maybe Amtrak could charge 5 dollars each way or 10 roundtrip tickets into a Trust Fund, level the playing field for LD train. I would be willing to pay 10 extra for my tickets to save the LD trains.
Providing passenger service is a business venture...running and watching trains is a railfan game. While we as railfains would love to see more passenger trains, preserve long distance trains, we must step aside and allow business...not political, but business...decsions be made concerning them.
Politics IS a business decision. It's just not about profit or loss. It's about the business of getting re-elected. You will never get a politician of either party to look at it in any other light.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
Hopefully Boardman was misquoted. Presumably he was referring to operating profit.
As of the end of March 2011 the NEC trains had an operating profit of $4.3 million. The Acela trains turned in an operating profit that was slightly greater than the operating losses generated by the regional trains. However, the operating results were before interest, depreciation, and ancillary charges. After these items are allocated, the NEC lost money through March 2011.
For FY10 the NEC had an operating profit of $51.5 million. Again, after accounting for interest, depreciation, and ancillary charges, the NEC as well as all of Amtrak's operations lost money. Heaps of it! FY10 interest and depreciation were $659.2 million. Assuming 75 per cent of it is allocable to the NEC, which appears to be reasonable based on the company's financial statements, the NEC lost $469.9 million in FY10. If one assumes that only half of the interest and depreciation is allocable to the NEC, it lost $209.2 million.
Technically a business has to cover all of its costs before it can be said to be profitable. As the auditors point out each year, Amtrak has never covered its costs, except with an infusion of federal government and state government support, and it is unlikely that it ever will to so.
henry6 conrailman: We need both LD and Short train services. If we can find 40 plus billion for Highways and 15 billion for Airlines. We can find money for Amtrak. Tell your Congressman. Write letters to your newspaper.
conrailman: We need both LD and Short train services. If we can find 40 plus billion for Highways and 15 billion for Airlines. We can find money for Amtrak.
I agree. Each year I write to my congressman, as well as my senators, telling them to provide federal support for high density, relatively short passenger rail corridors, which is the only place where passenger trains make sense. I also tell them that the long distance trains are a waste of resources that the country can ill afford and, therefore, I urge them to stop funding them.
My support for high density corridors is qualified by asking my political representatives to require passenger trains to cover their operating costs and, ideally, the capital costs, although I realize that they are unlikely to cover the capital costs. Also, I urge them to require all modes of transport to cover their full cost at the price points, i.e. ticket counter, pump, etc., pointing out that the U.S. would have a more rational transport system if all subsidies were dropped.
Let's leave out the fuel-tax-as-a-user-fee argument.
If we can find 40 plus billion Federal dollars for highways supporting 4 trillion auto passenger miles (1 cent per passenger mile), and 15 billion Federal dollars for airways supporting 400 billion airline passenger miles (4 cents per passenger mile), surely we can round up and spend, say, 10 cents per passenger mile to support about 5 billion Amtrak passenger miles, that is, fund Amtrak at the generous level of 500 million/year?
Is that what you are supporting, the President George W Bush proposal to cut Amtrak funding to half a billion per year? Yes, but if your two cents are that we should support Amtrak in proportion to work product of those other two modes, Amtrak will require deep cuts.
There are reasons for supporting Amtrak funding, but the argument that "those other guys are getting all kinds of Federal money and trains should get that share" is simply not one of those arguments.
Amtrak is underfunded you say, surely if we spent 40 billion/year Federal money on rail as we do 40 billion/year on highways, Amtrak would be more efficient. Europe, collectively, spends about that amount of state money on passenger rail, carrying 5 percent of the passenger miles by train as they do by car. In other words, we could have the European experience, that wonderful Swiss network, the French and German TGV and ICE trains, by spending the same as the Federal highway budget on trains and end up carrying one twentieth the passenger miles as our cars.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Back in 1997 Congress was going to give 1 cent of the gas taxes to Amtrak, the bill was ever voting on. It should have pass and sign in law,and we would solve all of Amtrak problems in 2011?
conrailman Back in 1997 Congress was going to give 1 cent of the gas taxes to Amtrak, the bill was ever voting on. It should have pass and sign in law,and we would solve all of Amtrak problems in 2011?
How much is the Gas Tax -- about 50 cents per gallon, 25 cents Federal?
OK, here is how you figure it, 42 gallons/barrel of oil, US oil use of 20 million barrels per day, 40 percent of oil goes into gasoline (mostly for cars), 365 days per year, your tax raises about 1.3 billion dollars per year to go to Amtrak, about what we manage to give to Amtrak now.
OK, if Amtrak was funded with 1 cent of gas tax, maybe its funding would not be subject to the Perils of Pauline of the general revenue funding that is subject to being cut and then rescued at the last minute. Or maybe not.
But if you really want to fund trains on the scale that we fund highways, we would have to double the gas tax -- a simple 1 cent increase would not do the trick.
Back then in 1997 thing was alot cheaper then now, maybe give Amtrak 5 or 10 cent of the gas taxes?
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