schlimm According to Amtrak's 2009 Annual Report, expenses totaled ~$3.5 bil. Of that, $1.7 bil was from wages, salaries and benefits, which is 48.5%, by far the largest category. That report doesn't break that down any further, but the FY2011-2015 Appendix to Five Year Financial Plan does. For 2011 (in $ mil.): Salaries 273.6 Wages & Overtime 997.8 52.3% of the totalEmployee Benefits 605.3 Employee Related 30.1 Total Salaries, Wages and Benefits 1,906.9 I wonder how Amtrak's numbers compare with airlines, both union and non-union?
According to Amtrak's 2009 Annual Report, expenses totaled ~$3.5 bil. Of that, $1.7 bil was from wages, salaries and benefits, which is 48.5%, by far the largest category. That report doesn't break that down any further, but the FY2011-2015 Appendix to Five Year Financial Plan
does. For 2011 (in $ mil.):
Salaries 273.6 Wages & Overtime 997.8 52.3% of the totalEmployee Benefits 605.3 Employee Related 30.1 Total Salaries, Wages and Benefits 1,906.9
I wonder how Amtrak's numbers compare with airlines, both union and non-union?
First, one needs the numbers of salaried and hourly employees; and the latter includes more than train crew.
Second, employee benefits and related expenses probably a co-mingled for salaried and hourly.
I took a look at a Southwest 10K for 2008. Southwest is actually quite unionized. Total employees = 35,500. Total operating expenses were $10,574 mil., salaries, wages and benefits $3, 340 mil. That works out to 31.6% far less than that for Amtrak (48.5%). Per employee = $94,084.
In 2009, total Amtrak employee wages and benefits were $1.7 billion. The number of employees was 18,600. That works out to an average of $91,000 per employee in wages and benefits, less than Southwest.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Amtrak's problems center on two things; their service isn't good enough, and their fares for short distance trains are too low.
First, service. Consider Amtrak California. Self-opening doors on the cars, fairly short dwell times, and a minimum of security theater on the station, even on the platform. It's convenient. It's also obviously had some money spent on it. Now consider the Midwest. The old fashioned trap-style doors, train crews whose main goal is to make things easy for themselves instead of the customers, shoddy timekeeping, and tragicomic security theater. Why do they keep herding people for a particular destination to a particular car, thereby making for a crowded experience even on a lightly booked train? What's with only having 16 business class seats on a consist when they could sell four or five times that number? What's with the security arrangements, particularly at Chicago Union Station?
Second, the fares. A walkup fare from Chicago to St. Louis is $66. Advance purchase is $24. That's why Amtrak can't cover its costs. How about better service, performance-related pay for the staff, and helping to fund the improvements with higher fares? Obviously, we need the government to step up to the plate too given the extent to which both freight and passenger rail are shortchanged compared to highways. But how do you politically create more of a slam-dunk? Making what we already have better is a good start.
A thoughtful posting. Welcome!! I've never ridden Amtrak California. What a difference! I guess it goes to show what can be done, instead of archaic (even though not so old) equipment and platforms.
shorebreeze Amtrak's problems center on two things; their service isn't good enough, and their fares for short distance trains are too low. First, service. Consider Amtrak California. Self-opening doors on the cars, fairly short dwell times, and a minimum of security theater on the station, even on the platform. It's convenient. It's also obviously had some money spent on it. Now consider the Midwest. The old fashioned trap-style doors, train crews whose main goal is to make things easy for themselves instead of the customers, shoddy timekeeping, and tragicomic security theater. Why do they keep herding people for a particular destination to a particular car, thereby making for a crowded experience even on a lightly booked train? What's with only having 16 business class seats on a consist when they could sell four or five times that number? What's with the security arrangements, particularly at Chicago Union Station? Second, the fares. A walkup fare from Chicago to St. Louis is $66. Advance purchase is $24. That's why Amtrak can't cover its costs. How about better service, performance-related pay for the staff, and helping to fund the improvements with higher fares? Obviously, we need the government to step up to the plate too given the extent to which both freight and passenger rail are shortchanged compared to highways. But how do you politically create more of a slam-dunk? Making what we already have better is a good start.
Nobody at Amtrak gets rewarded for "better". That's half the battle. Good post!
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
oltmannd schlimm: Labor makes up the bulk of Amtrak's operating expenses. Out of curiosity, and at the risk of enraging some folks, how much does the typical engineer for Amtrak get paid annually? I realize the way pay is calculated is more complicated than dollars/hour X time worked. Conductor? Trainman? How about your "typical" engineer on any of the Big Six freight lines? Anyone able to provide info about this? I think you might be able to tease this out of the annual report or 10K. I'll have to check
schlimm: Labor makes up the bulk of Amtrak's operating expenses. Out of curiosity, and at the risk of enraging some folks, how much does the typical engineer for Amtrak get paid annually? I realize the way pay is calculated is more complicated than dollars/hour X time worked. Conductor? Trainman? How about your "typical" engineer on any of the Big Six freight lines? Anyone able to provide info about this?
Labor makes up the bulk of Amtrak's operating expenses. Out of curiosity, and at the risk of enraging some folks, how much does the typical engineer for Amtrak get paid annually? I realize the way pay is calculated is more complicated than dollars/hour X time worked. Conductor? Trainman? How about your "typical" engineer on any of the Big Six freight lines?
Anyone able to provide info about this?
I think you might be able to tease this out of the annual report or 10K. I'll have to check
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the annual wage for a locomotive engineer ranges from $33,430 (10% point) to $88,690. The median is $47,870, whilst the 75% point is $61,880. The BLS does not set out the data for Amtrak. I suspect the wage for Amtrak's experienced engineers is some where between the median and 75%.
The spread for conductors (combined with yardmasters) is $$33,100 to $81,200, with a median wage of $53,940 and 75% of $66,300. Again, Amtrak's experienced conductors probably fall some where between the median and 75%.
The wage range for airlines pilots is $56,620 to $166,400, with a median of $106,240. The 75% point is $144,010. Some commuter airline co-pilots with low seniority make about half of the bottom figure, which is the 10% point.
These are wage comparisons. They do not include benefits, which can increase the total compensation package by 25 to 35%.
I have never been able to find any information published by Amtrak regarding its pay schedules. However, in a sense, comparative findings, whilst interesting, are not terribly meaningful. Attempting to compare the productivity of an airline pilot with a railway engineer is a bit of a stretch. I am not sure at the end of the day that it tells us anything meaningful.
Once you get past the capital costs to get into business, the two biggies for transporting people are the productivity of the equipment and labor.
Airtran in 2009, per their latest 10K, has an operating cost per seat mile of 9.29 cents
Amtrak (after doing some simple math from their Sept 2010 report) has an operating cost per seat mile of 19.6 cents.
Ouch. Hard to compete when your costs are double....
Add to this that Amtrak had a load factor of 48% while Airtran had 80%
It would interesting to see if the problem mostly equipment or labor or a bit of both.
oltmannd Once you get past the capital costs to get into business, the two biggies for transporting people are the productivity of the equipment and labor. Airtran in 2009, per their latest 10K, has an operating cost per seat mile of 9.29 cents Amtrak (after doing some simple math from their Sept 2010 report) has an operating cost per seat mile of 19.6 cents. Ouch. Hard to compete when your costs are double.... Add to this that Amtrak had a load factor of 48% while Airtran had 80% It would interesting to see if the problem mostly equipment or labor or a bit of both.
I am getting really tired of this old rubric that Amtrak's costs are so much higher than that of competing airlines. Amtrak's expenses include the entire cost of providing rail passenger service including stations and other related infrastructure. Since Airtran relies on government owned and operated airports and air traffic control, the true costs of any given airline's service is not reflected on its balance sheets.
SRen oltmannd: Once you get past the capital costs to get into business, the two biggies for transporting people are the productivity of the equipment and labor. Airtran in 2009, per their latest 10K, has an operating cost per seat mile of 9.29 cents Amtrak (after doing some simple math from their Sept 2010 report) has an operating cost per seat mile of 19.6 cents. Ouch. Hard to compete when your costs are double.... Add to this that Amtrak had a load factor of 48% while Airtran had 80% It would interesting to see if the problem mostly equipment or labor or a bit of both. I am getting really tired of this old rubric that Amtrak's costs are so much higher than that of competing airlines. Amtrak's expenses include the entire cost of providing rail passenger service including stations and other related infrastructure. Since Airtran relies on government owned and operated airports and air traffic control, the true costs of any given airline's service is not reflected on its balance sheets.
oltmannd: Once you get past the capital costs to get into business, the two biggies for transporting people are the productivity of the equipment and labor. Airtran in 2009, per their latest 10K, has an operating cost per seat mile of 9.29 cents Amtrak (after doing some simple math from their Sept 2010 report) has an operating cost per seat mile of 19.6 cents. Ouch. Hard to compete when your costs are double.... Add to this that Amtrak had a load factor of 48% while Airtran had 80% It would interesting to see if the problem mostly equipment or labor or a bit of both.
Given that the anti- and pro-rail factions each have an agenda, it is perhaps hard to definitely establish that passenger rail is an expensive mode of transportation in a way that airlines are not.
But as a research engineer, my Peter Parker-esque "spider sense" tells me that airliners and intercity motor coaches are a particularly low cost way of providing passenger miles. Passenger trains along with automobiles are in contrast high-cost modes of transportation.
The high cost of driving is in having to own, maintain, and insure a car. Once car ownership is a given, the marginal costs of an additional trip are lower. The high costs of train operation, and there is a lot of data to suggest that the above-the-rail costs of trains are considerably higher than airliners and motor coach buses, is a bit of a mystery. Cannot a given on-board crew transport many more passengers than the driver of a bus on a crew-hour basis?
I am beginning to suspect it has something to do with the shock and vibration environment of a train of steel wheel on steel rail vehicles being much more severe than that of rubber pneumatic tire on concrete vehicles (buses). The lightweight experimental trains of the late 1950's -- Aerotrain, early generation Talgo, Train-X, RDC, Budd "tubular" train -- were the last gasp of the private railroads to hang on to providing passenger service, much as the Pennsy T-1's and NYC Niagras were the last major effort for steam to compete with Diesels. The driving factor behind these trains was to reduce cost by reducing weight and making them more bus-like: the Aerotrain coaches were in effect modified motorcoach bus bodies. The experiment didn't work because automotive structures and suspensions cannot withstand the shock and vibration of the railroad environment.
Hence passenger trains are both heavier per seat and more expensive per seat than motorcoach buses in order to deal with the vibration environment, and the maintenance cost per seat is much higher on account of the same. If it were strictly the on-train crew cost, trains would do OK because of the much greater number of seats per driver. If trains were that much more energy efficient than other modes, there would be costs savings at todays high fuel prices, but trains are heavy, driven, again, by the shock and vibration environment and you don't see trains pulling ahead cost-wise in times of high fuel cost.
We can sharpen the pencils and go over balance sheets and we can argue 'tist'aint all day long on whether the Amtrak subsidies are merely providing a level playing field or are going well beyond that. It is just that it seems that on an above the wheel-rail contact patch basis, there is a lot more to a train than operating a steel-wheeled motor coach, and I think there is some fundamental relationship why this is the case.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
SRen I am getting really tired of this old rubric that Amtrak's costs are so much higher than that of competing airlines. Amtrak's expenses include the entire cost of providing rail passenger service including stations and other related infrastructure. Since Airtran relies on government owned and operated airports and air traffic control, the true costs of any given airline's service is not reflected on its balance sheets.
Airlines are cheap because their equipment moves fast and they keep it moving and full.
Buses are cheap because... buses are cheap. They cost about $400,000 for a 50 seat coach. And they don't need dedicated facilities to operate. They are truly incremental traffic on highways were cars and trucks are the base load.
Amtrak's operating expenses (Total Cost of Operations) in FY09 were $3,507.3 million. It carried 27,167,014 passengers whilst recording 5,897,441,000 passenger miles and 11,909,350,000 seat miles. The operating cost was 59.47 cents per passenger mile and 29.45 cents per seat mile. Revenues covered approximately two thirds of the operating costs, leaving a revenue/cost gap of 19.6 cents per passenger mile and 9.7 cents per seat mile to be covered by federal and state subsidies. The subsidies are somewhat larger after accounting for interest and special charges. Total Cost of Operations is somewhat different than variable operating costs in that they include depreciation of capitalized items.
These figures are for the system as a whole. The figures for select segments of the system are much better, especially before taking into consideration depreciation and interest. The problem comes in determing how much depreciation is charge to each route. Amtrak reports total depreciation as a cost of operations, which is correct, but it has not developed a workable methodology to assign depreciation and interest to each route. It says that it is working on it. As a result, the route results understate the cost to operate them.
Most of the commercial airports in the United States were built by a municipal authority. And most were funded with tax free debt, which resulted in lower interest charges than would have been the case if they had been required to raise funds in the fully taxable capital markets. However, the interest spreads are not nearly as great as many people assume, depending on when the financing was arranged and the credit rating of the issuer. In addition, some of the airports have received federal support, either through the FAA Airport Improvement Program or the transfer of government owned facilities.
The cost of the nation's airports is paid for by the users, i.e. commercial airlines, general aviation, military users, etc. These airports issued revenue bonds to cover their construction costs. They have to earn sufficient revenues to meet the mortgage covenants or default on them. The revenues consist of payments from the airlines, general aviation users, parking fees, vendor rentals, etc. It is not just the airlines that support the airports.
Except for the nation's largest airports, e.g. DFW and Houston Intercontinental in Texas, the majority of flight operations are logged by general aviation and, in some instances, military operations, usually in the form of National Guard operations. At Dallas Love Field, for example, the airlines log approximately 35 per cent of operations. The remainder is recorded by general aviation. This per cent of operations is pretty close to those found at the state's other commercial airports.
The airlines pay for their share of airport facilities with landing fees, hangar fees, gate fees, etc. They capture these costs through their fares or ticket taxes. These costs, for the most part, are shown in their Income Statement, Cash Flow Statement, and Statement of Retained Earnings. They are period statements that show the results of operations. The Balance Sheet (Position Statement), which is a point in time glimpse of the financial status of the organization, shows the firms assets, liabilities, and shareholder's equity. Most financial analysts believe that the Cash Flow Statement is the most import financial statement for determining how well an organization is performing.
Paul Milenkovic The high costs of train operation, and there is a lot of data to suggest that the above-the-rail costs of trains are considerably higher than airliners and motor coach buses, is a bit of a mystery. Cannot a given on-board crew transport many more passengers than the driver of a bus on a crew-hour basis?
The high costs of train operation, and there is a lot of data to suggest that the above-the-rail costs of trains are considerably higher than airliners and motor coach buses, is a bit of a mystery. Cannot a given on-board crew transport many more passengers than the driver of a bus on a crew-hour basis?
The high operating costs for Amtrak are not a function of equipment. I refer back to the info I posted from the Amtral report. As you can see, it is personnel, i.e., passenger rail is labor-intensive:
While overall Amtrak trains may be labor-intensive, some corridor trains would be more comparable to bus were it not for the differences in wages.
I agree. Without really hard data, it is hard to come to any definitive conclusions, but it would seem the LD trains have a much larger crew to passenger ratio than the shorter, coach-only corridor services. Even so, Amtrak seems to have awfully high labor costs, some of which come from the service and repair shops.
HarveyK400 YoHo1975: This is exactly what happens in Southern California, The Pacific Surfliner Slots in between Metrolink trains and Coaster trains. In LA area, it's a combined ticket. Amtrak acts as an express with fewer stops. But metrolink ticked passengers can board. I don't think it's the same - aren't those separate trains (and comparatively short)? In this case, combined trains of up to ten cars with two separate classes of accommodation and amenities run as a rush hour express fleeted at minimal headways. Tickets may be transferable; but do the Coaster and Metrolink trains have similar accommodations as the Surfliners?
YoHo1975: This is exactly what happens in Southern California, The Pacific Surfliner Slots in between Metrolink trains and Coaster trains. In LA area, it's a combined ticket. Amtrak acts as an express with fewer stops. But metrolink ticked passengers can board.
This is exactly what happens in Southern California, The Pacific Surfliner Slots in between Metrolink trains and Coaster trains. In LA area, it's a combined ticket. Amtrak acts as an express with fewer stops. But metrolink ticked passengers can board.
I don't think it's the same - aren't those separate trains (and comparatively short)? In this case, combined trains of up to ten cars with two separate classes of accommodation and amenities run as a rush hour express fleeted at minimal headways.
Tickets may be transferable; but do the Coaster and Metrolink trains have similar accommodations as the Surfliners?
The Surfliners, Metrolink and Coaster trains are all separate trains. Surfliners user Superliner type equipment (the California version) operated in push-pull mode. They are essentially intercity cars. Metrolink and Coaster commuter trains use standard double deck comuter cars (also push pull), which are nearly identical to each other, but not operationally compatible with the Surfliner equipment. You might be able to physically run them in the same train with Surfliner equipment but it's impractical because passengers are unable to pass between the two types of cars (the passageway between cars on the Surfliner cars is on the upper deck while, on the Metrolink and Coaster cars, it's at standard floor level.
The accomodations on the two types of cars are also different. The Metrolink and Coaster trains are clearly commuter cars and the accomodations are pretty spartan. The Surfliner cars are more comfortable, befitting their intercity status.
All of this said, the point being made in the YoHo note is valid. The three services essentially complement each other, with the Surfliners providing express, through service and the Coasters and Metrolink trains providing the local services on the south and north segments of the route, respectively
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