Study says Amtrak loses $32 per passenger
SubsidyScope, a government-tracking effort of the Pew Charitable Trusts, has trained its lens on Amtrak, and it says the railroad is losing a lot more money than it admits. After adding in depreciation and overhead, which an airline or any other commercial business would include in operating results, Pew comes up with a loss of $32 per passenger. That’s four times the $8 figure that Amtrak reported for last year.
SubsidyScope has an interactive map and a table that let you see the profit or loss of individual routes. The Chicago-St. Louis route, which Amtrak lists as being profitable, loses $16.32 per passenger under Pew’s formula. Kansas City to St. Louis is a bigger money pit, with a subsidy of $50.66 per rider. And a passenger riding the Texas Eagle, which runs from Chicago to San Antonio by way of St. Louis and Dallas, costs taxpayers $141. But those Midwestern routes are pikers next to the Sunset Limited, which runs between Los Angeles and New Orleans at a loss of $462 per person.
The Acela, a high-speed service in the Northeast, is a brght spot, with a profit of $40.50 per rider. But on many of these routes, Bruce Bartlett notes,
it would have been cheaper for Amtrak to buy its passengers free airplane tickets than transport them.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
of course this study doesn’t show that auto passengers are subsidized at $87 per person.
arthur, is this 87 a day, week, year, what? I haven’t seen my check yet. Since I pay a lot of income tax and pay taxes on fuel I’m probably covering my $87.
My study shows that 89% of all studies are flawed, and that 45% of all studies are made up.
Probably no worse than what the area loses per Rams or Cardinals fan by publicly supporting pro-sports teams. At least we know we helped get someone where they were going.
Transit losing money? Imagine that!
The amount of money Amtrak receives and operates on is literally chicken feed compared to other government spending and the subsidies and losses of the federal highway system. Amtrak wasn’t designed as a money-maker; it was designed to keep rail passenger service alive and available as a necessary means to those living in small towns. Without Amtrak, many in small towns who can’t drive have no other option to travel or even reach a major airport, so Amtrak is necessary to supplement other transportation modes.
“Amtrak loses $32 per passenger.” What exactly does that mean? It sure SOUNDS real bad doesn’t it? Now I’m a regular user of Amtrak, both for business and for leisure. Could it be better? Sure but it is a complicated animal, meaning you have to take a look at passenger rail history to understand why Amtrak is what it is.
My question is how much do we really pay for other modes of transportation? Our beloved cars cost us every time we hit the pumps. Where does the money come from for our roads? Taxes. How about our planes? The FAA’s budget request is right around 9 Billion for FY10. That’s the Federal Aviation Administration and that means our taxes. Let’s not forget the Air Traffic Controllers who are also federal employees. How much do they cost? What about the municipal taxes for the airports and runways?
The fact is that NO form of transportation can survive without some form of hidden or open subsidy from the government and I don’t have a problem with that I fly, drive and take Amtrak. Those things cost money. To single one mode out over another is really only telling part of the story.
In fact the vast high-speed rail system in Europe is mostly funded by government in one way shape or form. Heck the record-breaking, super-fast French TGV is run by SNCF, the French NATIONAL Railways. Tell the whole story. $32 dollars per person lost, comes out to about $4.59 for every tax paying citizen in the US, check my ballpark math: $32.00 x 28.7 million riders/200 million taxpayers,(and I believe I low-balled the number of taxpayers). Putting this in perspective and considering the amount of taxes I/we pay every year. Amtrak’s funding costs less to any of us than a trip to McDonald’s.
Airplanes run on refined petroleum (like Amtrack trains). Refined petroleum is affordable in great part due to our tax payer-funded military being heavily involved in maintaining the middle eastern oil supply. Any study that does not account for this refined petroleum subsidy is being dishonest.
All this proves is that the Amtrak model of 40 years ago (i.e, long cross country routes)does not work, nor has it worked in decades. However, high speed routes between moderately close cities has a very promising future. Let’s stop subsidizing the few people that want to take 36 hour train rides across the country and instead put in the infrastructure that will allow for 3.5 hour ride from downtown STL to downtown Chicago.
John, how can you not realize how breathtakingly RIDICULOUS your argument is? You said, “The fact is that NO form of transportation can survive without some form of hidden or open subsidy from the government.” Where do you think that money comes from, John?
If we didn’t have the government handing out subsidies, that money would remain in taxpayers’ pockets, available to be spent on their preferred mode of transportation. You wouldn’t hear me complain about spending an extra $5 per plane ticket (your quoted $9 billion FAA budget divided by roughly 64 million commercial flights per year, assuming 40-50 passengers per flight), in order to avoid filtering that same money - and much more! - through the government.
There are two reasons our government subsidizes certain industries: 1) someone in the government thinks their understanding of what you and I want or need is far superior to our own; and/or 2) someone in the government is trying to pay off special interests that they think will keep them in office. Both of these reasons are junk.