Mainstream media: "hi we need a 30 second soundbyte to fill in between the 24/7 Trump impeachment stuff with a really impressive-sounding soundbyte".
Code: Select allAmtrak announced a smallest-ever “adjusted operating loss” of $29.8 million in the 2019 fiscal year,...
Amtrak’s net loss according to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles was $874.8 million, up from $817.2 million in FY 2018.
Me: This is the biggest non-story of the day. Operating profit is ticket sales dollars minus expenses to run the trains. GAAP profit includes amortized capital needs, which on a railroad are quite large. Essentially, as we've been saying all along, the total ticket sales are probably bigger than the total fuel, trackage rights, and salaries. Total ticket sales are not bigger than the above operating costs plus 1/30th of the cost of 300+ locomotives, NEC trackage, 1500 coaches, 20 HST's, and 10 giant stations like CUS and LAUPT.
On a side note, this is why Indiana got fed up with the Hoosier state and why NCDOT supplied their own coaches for the Piedmont. Neither party wanted to pay full freight rates for new coaches, because the Horizons were not new. Neither party wants their operations to support a fraction of the big stations, or Beech Grove, or any other capital costs that give little benefit to local operations like Indiana or North Carolina.
The new Acela: It's not Aveliable.