Tag Archives: Amtrak

Three-and-one-half years ago, the first Amtrak train over a new, shorter route between Seattle and Portland crashed and killed three passengers. Now Steven Brown, the engineer who went 80 miles per hour around a 30-mph curve, wants to be reinstated, saying the accident was Amtrak’s fault, not his.

It was Amtrak’s fault because, he admits, he was inexperienced with the route (having made “only” three practice runs and seven to ten observational runs) and had never run that model of locomotive before. Given this lack of experience, he says, Amtrak never should have assigned him the train. Of course, as it was a brand-new route, all of Amtrak’s engineers were equally inexperienced with the terrain, and he was given the job because he had scored 100 percent on a written exam for the route. Continue reading →

CNN says that, with Biden’s proposal to give Amtrak $80 billion, “Amtrak’s moment may finally have arrived.” But what would it mean for Amtrak to have a “moment”? Would it mean that passenger trains return to once again become an important source of transportation, as they were in the 1920s? Or does it mean that Amtrak will get a lot more money for continuing to carry a trivial share of the nation’s passenger travel?

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

Since 1971, Congress has given Amtrak about $54 billion in subsidies, which in today’s dollars is about $85 billion. Biden’s plan would nearly double that in one fell swoop. But this is not going to double Amtrak ridership. For one thing, eleven years ago Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor had a $52 billion maintenance backlog, and it is undoubtedly larger now if only due to inflation. More than half of the $80 billion Biden proposes to give it will be spent rehabilitating existing infrastructure, not making improvements that are likely to increase ridership. Continue reading →

Amtrak’s CEO, William Flynn, agrees with the Antiplanner on at least one thing: the proposed Baltimore-Washington maglev is a bad idea. The maglev, he told a Congressional subcommittee last week, “would only serve a small number of affluent travelers.”

Of course, that’s the pot calling the kettle black. Flynn probably thinks 0.1 percent of passenger travel (which is what Amtrak carries) is a large number, but it’s not. Amtrak fares in the Northeast Corridor are much higher than bus fares, so Amtrak itself is only serving a small number of affluent travelers.

Flynn also pointed out that the maglev will use a lot more energy than the cars, trains, and buses it would replace. I made the same point in my comments on the maglev, which I submitted last week. Based on the amount of greenhouse gases generated by Maryland’s current electric power plants, the maglev would add more than 300,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year. Wayne Rogers, CEO of the maglev project, told the subcommittee that the maglev would divert “up to 16 million car trips,” but the power required to do so would generate far more tons of carbon dioxide than it would save. Continue reading →

Fifty years ago today, Amtrak operated its first passenger trains, a fact that President Biden celebrated a day early yesterday. Biden wants people to think that Amtrak is enough of a success that it deserves $80 billion in additional funding. But the reality is it is just a big loser.

Rail fans remember May 1, 1971, as the day America lost more than half of its passenger trains. On April 30, ten trains left the Midwest for the West Coast: the Empire Builder, Western Star, North Coast Limited, and Mainstreeter (all of which went to Seattle with sections to Portland), City of Portland, Portland Rose, City of San Francisco, San Francisco Chief, City of Los Angeles, and Super Chief. The next day, Amtrak killed all of them except the Empire Builder (and it killed the leg to Portland), Super Chief, and City of San Francisco (which was cut to three days a week). That’s a loss that’s hard to forgive.

Business analysts remember that the idea of a national passenger railroad was sold to Congress as a profitable enterprise. Rather than a normal government agency, Amtrak was created as a for-profit corporation with stockholders and, potentially, investors. The railroads were supposed to give it seed money based on the amount of money they claimed they had lost in the previous three years. After spending that to get started, as I noted six months ago, Amtrak was supposed to make money. Continue reading →

Amtrak will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the start of its operations in May. There’s not much to celebrate, however, as an audited financial statement recently posted on the company’s web site reveals that it lost $1.7 billion in 2020, up from $0.9 billion in 2019. Even that is deceptive, however, as the auditors bought into Amtrak’s claim that subsidies from the states are “revenues” and don’t distinguish such subsidies from ticket sales and food and beverage income.

Amtrak’s unaudited year-end results indicate that the company received $342 million from the states in fiscal year 2020 (which ended September 30). If these are counted as subsidies from the states, rather than passenger revenues, then the real losses were almost $2.3 billion in 2020, up from $1.1 billion in 2019.

Actually, the audited statement reveals in notes on page 10, most of that $342 million didn’t come from the states but was funded by Congress “to support the Company’s state partners in making their State Supported route subsidy payments due to Amtrak.” This means even the auditors admit that it is a subsidy, but they don’t disclose even in the notes that this subsidy was included in the revenues in the statement of operations on page 5. Continue reading →