Recently in the news we have been reading about Amtrak subsidies of about $45 per passenger and how that is too much to pay for Amtrak. Since security for airlines has been upgraded because of the terrorists attacks on 9/11 I wondered about the costs of this new security. This is what I found:
The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reports that in 2007 838,200.000 people traveled on our airlines and in 2008 809,000,000. I averaged this to estimate there are about 823,000.000 flyers per year, over 800 million.
The "Economist" on 09-18-11 published an article based on a research paper which shows that since 9/11 the United states has spent $1,107,000,000,000 on security. That is over one trillion dollars.
Dividing this out and dividing the result by 10 because the study covered 10 years shows that we spend $134.50 per passenger on airline security. Of this amount an airline security fee was required beginning with the terrorists attacks. It is $2.50 per passenger.
I don't argue against the new security expenditures. However, I do think the Amtrak comparison is not totally unfavorable.
The total TSA budget for 2011 is $8.1B. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Administration)
There are about 60M passengers a month. (http://www.bts.gov/)
That works out to $11 per passenger. Some of this pays for things other than air security. Ticket fee is $2.50 per air leg, so subsidy is around $7-8 per passenger.
Also, remember if you parse the $45 per passenger out by route type, "your mileage may vary"
From Amtrak's July report (route performance - excludes capital allocation)
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Oltmannd,
I clicked on your BTS link. It shows 790 million passengers in 2010 and 803 million in 2011, different years than I used. Your figure of 60,000 a month multiplies out to 72 million a year which is not the same but not a hugh discrepancy either. These figures tend to very from year to year. The main point is that the fewer passengers there are the greater the subsidy for each one. I suspect if we can get historical data going back to 2001 we will find a significant drop off right after the terrorist attack and a slow recovery. This again would increase the subside per airline passenger.
I've seen the $11 per passenger figure based on the TSA budget. In fact, I have been criticized for referring to the TSA budget. I don't quarrel with your figure as far as it goes.
However, the study reported in "The Economist" includes a lot of expenditures that are not in the TSA budget. The writers were trying to find the true costs of all expenditures from whatever source. That is the figure I used for subsidy although it is all not necessarily government subsidy. And of course, were it not for the terrorist attacks it would not be happening at all. That is why I do not criticize it. It is just that if we are going to look at subsidies for Amtrak we ought also to look at subsidies for other forms of transportation.
So perhaps we are not as far apart as it may seem from first glance,
John
Getting a handle on the true cost of the airport screening program is difficult. For example, as pointed out in a 2011 GAO report, the TSA's numbers do not include the cost of private screeners, which have been put in place at some airports.
According to a query that I ran against the Airline Transportation Statistics database, the number of passengers carried by U.S. domestic airlines in 2011 was 730.8 million. And they flew 814.4 billion passenger miles. The 2007 and 2008 numbers are getting long in the tooth.
The security spend you reference is unclear. To say that the U.S. has spend $1.1 trillion on security does not break it down. Security is more than just airline passenger screening.
In 2011 the TSA actual numbers as opposed to budgeted numbers, were $5.4 billion. This covers all of the TSA's activities, which includes airport screening, bagage screening, cargo screening (UPS, Fedex, DHL) as well as bus terminal security and Amtrak security.
Passenger fees and airline contributions cover approximately 40 per cent of the TSA's annual spend. This means that in 2011 the taxpayers were on the hook for $3.24 billion. This works out to $4.43 per passenger or approximately 40/100s of one cent per revenue passenger mile. And keep in mind that I am attributing the whole unfunded TSA spend to the screening program, which probably is not accurate, but I don't have time to dig out the numbers.
Sam,
Here is a link to the paper by John Mueller and Mark C. Stewart which presents the data on the total expenditure for airline security from 9/11 to 2011: http://politicalscience.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller//MID11TSM.PDF
As I said, I rely on the Bureau of Transportation Statistics for my data on the number of people flying. However, if fewer people fly than the subsidy for each one is more.
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