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Joe Boardman at the Midwest HSR Association

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[quote user="oltmannd"] [quote user="Sam1"] [quote user="oltmannd"] [quote user="Sam1"]Unless he means 12 cents is the amount that most be recovered from the taxpayers.[/quote] That is exactly it.  The 88% is the operating costs recovered from all sources of revenue including payment from states. [/quote] One of the problems that I have with Boardman, as well as some other advocates of passenger rail, is his tendency to cherry pick numbers. He consistently ignores depreciation, interest, and miscellaneous items, as if somehow they don't count.  Yet Amtrak's financial statements include these items in its Consolidated Statement of Operation.   The 12.8 cents for the long distance trains is per seat mile.  But the seats don't pay the fares and, therefore, don't represent the gap between what the customer pays and what it costs to transport him or her on a long distance train.  That number for 2012 was 20.5 cents per passenger mile.  And that is before depreciation, interest, and miscellaneous items. [/quote] The 88% cost recovery overall for Amtrak is all revenue/operating costs.  It's a "cherry pick" because it feels like farebox recovery, but it includes state subsidies, so it really isn't. It's important because it provides the "right" message at the Federal level.  That is, if Amtrak focuses on corridor development, the Feds will only have to fork over capital money and won't be on the hook for an operating subsidy - or a fairly small one, at worst.  It's coupled with the LD train message to Congress "You are the ones directing us to do this, so you need to pay for it.  We're not taking any operating "surplus" from corridors to cover the LD trains" It's probably the political message that he thinks he can sell.  He can't tell Congress the LD trains are their "baby" and then turn around and tell them their baby is "ugly". [/quote] In FY12 Amtrak lost 18.21 cents per passenger mile. That's after state payments as well as depreciation, interest, etc.  It is the amount the federal taxpayers had to chip in to cover Amtrak's system losses. If Amtrak were a competitive business managed like Apple, the CEO might just tell Congress that its baby is ugly.  Apparently that is what Tim Cook did this week when he testified regarding Apple's tax avoidance and tax deferral strategies.  He reminded the Congress that Apple was only taking advantage of the tax laws and treaties that Congress had passed or ratified. The implication was that the tax laws are ugly. According to the news reports that I read he got high praise from the Congress persons for being so forthright.
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