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The Amtrak Fact Sheet, Fiscal Year 2009, State of Texas, appears to support the notion that Amtrak's station based customer service agents (agents) service ratio is relatively low whilst their compensation level is relatively high.  I only have time to analyze the Austin numbers, but they are insightful, I think.  Of course, as mentioned, I don't have all the data from Amtrak, but I have enough from other databases to make a reasonable estimate. At the end of FY09 Amtrak employed 207 Texas residents.  Total wages for the employees living in Texas were $14, 447,102.  It is unclear whether all of the Texans employed by Amtrak live in Texas, but let's assume that they do.  It is equally unclear whether the wages include payroll burdens.  If they do, the average compensation package per employee in 2009 was $69,793.  If they do not include the burdens, then they would have to be added to get the cost of the total compensation package.  My former employer (I am retired) was a large electric utility.  Its average payroll burden was 30 to 35 per cent for customer service employees.  The burden was in line with those for other large Texas employers.  Amtrak is not a large Texas employer, but it is a significant national employer that probably sets its compensation policies to be in line with the regions where it operates.  If we go with 30 per cent, then the average compensation package in Texas would be $90,731.  The Austin station has at least four full-time employees; it probably has six or more.  I don't know for sure.  It is open seven days a week from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.  Assuming that the normal workweek is eight hours, it probably has more than six employees, but let's assume five as a conservative number.  Moreover, let's assume that these folks are paid 93 per cent of the national average for customer service employees.  This percentage squares with some other comparisons that I have made between Texas average family and household income compared to the national data.  This means that their annual compensation package would be $37,433 before loadings and $48,662 after loadings based on the average national customer service data that I provided.  Thus, for five employees the compensation cost before loadings would be $187,165 and $243.315 after loadings. In FY2009 Amtrak boarded and detrained 25,404 passengers in Austin for an average of nearly 70 passengers per day.  The average customer service cost per passenger would have been $7.37 before loadings and $9.58 after loadings.  But wait a minute!  The bulk of the agent support services are performed for boarding passengers.  Little service is required to detraining passengers; they received the bulk any required assistance when the boarded the train up or down the line.  If we assume that 75 per cent of the agent services in Austin are directed toward boarding passengers and further assume that the boarding and detraining numbers are relatively even, then the cost of the services directed toward these passengers would have been an average of $11.05 per passenger before loadings and $14.37 after loadings. I don't have time to chase up the numbers for customer service agents at the airport and bus terminal in Austin, but I suspect that Amtrak's agent costs would not compare favorably with the airlines and bus companies.  Instead, they would show that Amtrak's customer service cost ratio per passenger is high, especially in those markets served by only one train per day.
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