Edit post

Edit your reply below.

Post Body
Enter your post below.
[quote user="blue streak 1"] Amtrak announced Eagle, Crescent, +15% City of NO, Lakeshoree had over 10% increase in revenue per seat mile.  <a href="http://www.news-journal.com/mineola/news/texas-eagle-ridership-shows-double-digit-gains/article_3810b220-3632-5e2e-80f7-bfbe8f188d03.html">http://www.news-journal.com/mineola/news/texas-eagle-ridership-shows-double-digit-gains/article_3810b220-3632-5e2e-80f7-bfbe8f188d03.html</a> [/quote] According to the monthly performance report for September 2011, which is also the FY11 report, the ridership on the Sunset Limited increased 8.8% for the year.  The Silver Star was second with an increased of 7.8%.  The increase for the Texas Eagle was 4.3%, whilst that for the City of New Orleans was 1.8%  and the Lakeshore Limited was 6.2%.  Ridership for the long distance trains in FY11 was 1.1%.   The Auto Train had the largest gain in ticket revenues at 12.5%.  The Sunset Limited was second at 11.8% and the Lakeshore Limited was third at 11.5%.   How the seat mile revenues were determined is a mystery.  Amtrak's monthly reports through October, which is the latest monthly report to be posted to the website, states that route performance data, which contains the data for seat mile and passenger mile analysis, is not available due to accounting system changes.   Comparative numbers for a month or two are relatively meaningless.  A year is a minimum period to detect trends.  By the same token, for performance purposes, as opposed to planning purposes, performance in relationship to a budget is meaningless.  Most people who have worked with budgets, especially in a large organization, knows that budgeting contains a degree of gamesmanship.  Based on my experience with one of the largest business organizations in America, making the budgets look good is a requirement for anyone who wants to be part of senior management.  That is not to say that cooking the numbers is required.  But baking the most optimistic scenarios into the budget as opposed to the worst case scenarios, based on legitimate differences in perspective, is one of the keys to budgeting.
Tags (Optional)
Tags are keywords that get attached to your post. They are used to categorize your submission and make it easier to search for. To add tags to your post type a tag into the box below and click the "Add Tag" button.
Add Tag