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The amount of subsidy an economic activity needs to help cover its costs may seem like a red herring, but it is not for those who have to add up the pesky numbers and pay the bills.  Nor is it for the taxpayer who has to write a check to cover the subsidy.The subsidies required by each mode of transport - air, highway, pipeline, rail, waterway - indicate its economic worth and financial viability.  Comparisons indicate the social value of each mode.  If people will not pay the full cost of an economic activity, its social value is presumed to be lower than the value of an activity that people will cover.  If all modes are subsidized, then the one that requires the greatest subsidy is presumed to have a lower social value than the competing modes.Gross numbers, especially for comparison purposes, can be misleading.  For example, many people hear that a corporation earned billions of dollars and may say that it has earned obscene profits.  But net profits are not a good indicator of profitability.  The key number is return on invested capital.The historical return for publicly held U.S. corporations has averaged approximately 9.5 per cent per year, as reflected in the S&P 500 over many decades.  During the same period an individual who bought AAA bonds would have had a return of approximately 6.5 per cent.   Understanding the profitability of a business requires a slicing and dicing of the numbers.  The same applies to the subsidies required by various forms of transport.  The gross amount of subsidy received by a transport mode is meaningless until it is understood on a unit basis.  The unit for passenger transport is the passengers or passenger seat miles.  To note, for example, that airlines received a subsidy of $5.5 billion and compare it to Amtrak's $1.3 billion subsidy doesn't tell the reader about how many people benefited from the subsidy or its social value.   Airlines carry many times more passengers than are carried by Amtrak; they create greater economic worth and social value.  Therefore, to get a meaningful comparison, the subsidy per passenger or passenger seat mile is the best way to do it.  Capacity utilization is a measure of operating efficiency and is an indicator of how well the mode is being managed.  If a unit of activity is operating below its optimum capacity, it is relatively inefficient.  One way to increase the efficiency is to increase capacity turnover.  That is to say, increase the number of users without expanding capacity.  The best way to do this is to reduce the price - Amtrak's current long distance sale - to a point where the variable costs are covered and something is left over for the fixed costs.  The key in the business world, of course, is to ensure that the fixed costs are covered and the shareholders receive a return on their investment.  If capacity has been optimized, adding more capacity may be warranted.  In Amtrak's case, with the exception of the NEC, the system is not anywhere near optimum capacity.  The airline vs. Amtrak subsidies that I showed were taken from figures presented by NARP.  They are preliminary.  I intended to dig into them when I have the time.  I am suspect of NARP's numbers.  They put a favorable spin on them to support their argument for more trains; they overlook numbers that detract from their position.I did not claim that NARP represents all railway interests.  The subsidies shown are per passenger averages.  I suspect that if they were calculated on passenger seat mile, the train would come off worse than it does by comparing the subsidy for passengers.  Airplanes run a lot more seat miles than trains.  So do personal vehicles, although the seat miles are difficult to calculate because no one knows for sure how many people occupy a private vehicle. Southwest Airlines is owned 100 per cent by its shareholders.  One can argue that it gets a subsidy in that the airports that it flies out of were built with tax free municipal bonds, but the amount of the subsidy is marginal, especially in the case of the older airports, which were paid for long ago.  One can also argue that Southwest, as well as the other commercial air carriers, doesn't pay its fair share of the air traffic control system, but the point is arguable.  A forceful argument has been made that in fact commercial air carriers pay more than their fare share and are in turn subsidizing the general aviation operators.  But Southwest is not owned by the government.
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