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Amtrak's FY 2008 Key Performance Numbers

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[quote user="blue streak 1"] Sam: It appears to me that the long distance routes suffer from having to allocate a lot to station upkeep, agents, etc. The sunset route comes to mind as allocating these costs to only 6 trains a week really pushes up the costs. Also the New Orleans station also has Greyhound ( what do they pay?) Maybe NARP needs to campaign to either get various citys (like they do airports) to cover these costs or costs be allocated out of a different non operating pie. Samantha: any figures? Does AMTRAK break out these costs?. I think we all need to know the direct operating costs alone for any routes to give an unbiased look at costs. This method probably would show NEC operating profits. Also the additional operating costs due to RR caused delays should also be broken out. (again UP's delays expecially the Sunset.) [/quote] Only end point to end point costs for each route are made available to the public by Amtrak. Segment information is not published, but I am sure that Amtrak has it because it would be the basis of the fare structure. The financial and operating information that Amtrak makes public is more than most companies make available to their shareholders.  I don't know whether Amtrak would make the segment information available to the general public.  It is a quasi governmental agency, so invoking the Freedom of Information Act might turn it loose.  However, having it would not change the key financial data or conclusions that can be drawn from it.   The NEC covers its operating costs.  The other corridor operations and long distance trains do not.      Even if segment data, e.g. revenue, direct labor, other direct costs, shared costs, and attributed costs was available to the public, it would produce more data than most people are prepared to digest.  For example, if each station from NO to LA is paired as a segment, there are 231 combinations for the Sunset route alone.  For Amtrak it would be thousands.     As of July 2007 Amtrak owned 46 of the 525 stations that it served.  In addition, it maintained 181 other stations for which it was paid a fee by the owner.  The costs of the wholly owned station are included in other direct costs.  The costs of the shared stations are embedded in shared costs.  Amtrak does not break these costs out, although I am sure that they have them.  Many of the stations are owned by cities or transit authorities, and Amtrak pays rent for its portion of the space occupied in them.  For example, it shares the Fort Worth Intermodal Transit Center (ITC) with Greyhound and the local transit authority.  How much rent Amtrak pays compared to the other occupants is probably available through the city of Fort Worth, which owns the property, as would be the case in New Orleans.  Interestingly, the ITC was built with tax free municipal financing, just like most of the nation's airports, which some rail advocates bewail.     The cost of the stations is fixed.  The cost of staffing them could be variable, but if my observations are accurate, Amtrak staffs many of them so that the costs behave like they are fixed.  To its credit Amtrak has eliminated the staffing at many of the smaller stations that it serves.  For example, of the 22 stations on the Sunset route, only six are staffed.  Clearly, if a station is only served by one train a day, not to mention six a week, all its costs get dumped on that train.  It is inherently inefficient to support a low volume activity (one train a day) with a facility that was intended for higher volumes of activity (two, three, or more trains a day).  It is one of the reasons why long distance trains will never cover their costs.  Amtrak's trains were delayed a total of 5,610,000 minutes (93,500 hours) during FY 2008.  Although the causes are not given for the year, the numbers for September show that hoist railroads were responsible for roughly 75 per cent of the delays, whilst Amtrak and thirds parties were responsible for 18 and 7 per cent.  These numbers probably reflect those for the year.  The cost of the delays is not shown.  Delays on the hoist railroads could actually result in a positive cash flow for Amtrak.  If a hoist railroad fails to get Amtrak's trains across its property according to the terms of the performance contract, it forfeits the on-time performance incentive payment, which is money in Amtrak's pocket.  But if Amtrak has to put passengers in a motel or on alternate modes of transport because of failed connections, it could easily eat up the saved incentive payment plus more. My observation regarding the Raleigh Amtrak Station was as much about newspaper stories that don't drill very deep as the adequacy of the station.  The story implied that the station was chockers, but the numbers don't support the conclusion.  Building a new Intermodal facility in Raleigh may be a good option, but the story did not make a compelling argument for it.
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