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I rode the Empire Builder from Milwaukee to Portland in December 2006.  It was one of my better trips on Amtrak.  The winter scenery was spectacular.  I had a roomette, which was OK.  The Superliner roomettes are not the most comfortable accommodation in the world, but they are passable.  The service was good.  The wine tasting for first class passengers was very enjoyable.  The only real downer was that approximately half of the toilets on the train froze up and the crew could not free them. In FY08 the Empire Builder lost 9.9 cents per passenger mile before interest, depreciation, and other charges.  For the first six months of FY09 it lost 17.8 cents per passenger mile before interest and depreciation.  Part of the increase in the loss in FY09 is due to an accounting change. A passenger traveling from Chicago to Seattle during the first six months of FY09 received a federal subsidy payment of $392.67 before interest and depreciation or approximately $491.93 including all allocated items.  In FY08 the subsidy would have been $218.39 and $240.23. The financial performance of the Empire Builder is better than any of Amtrak's long distance trains save the Auto Train.  Taxpayers should ride the train; they are paying for it irrespective of whether they use it.  If Amtrak was a real business, it would fly each passenger from Chicago to Seattle for an average fare of $164, thereby saving the federal treasury $327.93 for each passenger carried end point to end point.  Long distance trains are a 1950s anachronism.  They should be discontinued and the funds wasted on them should be re-directed toward the enhancement or development of moderate speed corridors where they make sense.
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