Facts On Occasion of Amtrak’s 35th Anniversary

Release #06-04—April 29, 2006

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Washington, D.C.—Amtrak’s 35th birthday is Monday, May 1.  In observing this anniversary for a resource whose importance the public increasingly recognizes, reporters are urged to consider the following facts.

• Ridership increased in eight of the last nine years.  The Fiscal 2005 level of 25.4 million is up 29% from 1996.
• Similarly, the yield (average revenue per passenger mile) rose in ten of the last eleven years, with the FY 2005 level up 65% from the 1994 level.  Amtrak is not “buying” ridership with cheap fares.
• Northeast Corridor “endpoint” on-time performance was 90% in March and a similar level in April.  The premium Acela service is largely recovered from last year’s technical problems that sidelined the train-sets from April to September.
• Long distance trains are well-used.  They accounted for 47% of Amtrak’s passenger-miles last year (a passenger-mile is one passenger carried one mile).  The average long distance train carried 356 passengers per trip.
• Long distance trains are the only intercity passenger trains in 25 states.
• It is misleading to say “buying everyone a plane ticket is cheaper than running an Amtrak train.”  Many Amtrak cities have no air service and many more have no discount air service.  Also, many Americans cannot or chose not to fly.
• Amtrak is controlling food and beverage costs.  On most long-distance trains, Amtrak is revising dining car processes and reducing on-board staff; reductions began before Christmas on two routes and are scheduled to be complete before the end of May.
• Carriers worldwide consider on-board food and beverage service as necessary to attract business, not as profit centers.  They measure food losses as a percentage of ticket revenues.  In a November 2005 speech, Jonathan Metcalf, Chief Operating Officer of Britain’s Great Northeastern Railway, said that food service on his trains, “probably loses [$3.5-$5.4 million US] a year.  If we didn’t do food, we’d lose passengers…it’s a key reason why they travel with us…we probably would have lost [$35-$54 million US] in ticket revenue [without food service].”
• Amtrak is doing more with fewer employees—the headcount was 24,877 at the end of September, 2001, and 18,944 at the end of February, 2006.  On an “apples-to-apples” basis (excluding about 1,630 employees transferred to MBTA in 2003 and Metrolink in 2005), the headcount declined about 4,300 or 18.5%.
• Amtrak has taken on no new debt since June 2002.  From September 2002 to December 2005, Amtrak reduced its outstanding debt by $300 million.
• The recent rise in gasoline prices reinforces Harris Poll released February 8 showing strong public support for more intercity and commuter passenger rail. Harris’s release began: “As personal travel and freight transportation grows in the future, the American public would like to see an increasing proportion of that traffic going by rail. Commuter and long-distance trains top the list of nine modes of transportation that adults would like to see ‘have an increasing share of passenger transportation.’”  The poll is available online.

NARP is a non-profit, non-partisan membership organization that works for more and better passenger train service in the U.S.