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If Amtrak were to buy or build more rail lines to run corridor service, then it would be maintaining those lines themselves... and I bet that's cheaper than paying the host railroads.
You're kidding, right?... There's no way Amtrak is paying anything remotely close to the full cost of ownership for the lines it traverses outside the NEC.
The last number I heard was Amtrak paying around $150M per year to host railroads (prior to COVID), which comes out to around $6.50 per mile regardless of train length or weight. As Prof. Norman said, that's going to vary depending on the expenses incurred by the host road and the prorated miles/operations for Amtrak. Running on Metro North where it's electrified won't be as cheap as running the BNSF transcon.
If you think that Amtrak could possibly maintain a nationwide network for less than $150M a year, I'd love to see that cost analysis....
I'm fully prepared to lose that bet.
But I wouldn't go nationwide. Corridor service only. And I'd have to see how much per mile Amtrak spends on track & signal maintenance on the NEC.
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Amtrak runs over 21,400 miles route miles, and owns just 623 route miles outright.
I believe it is safe to assume Amtrak runs at least two trains a day on most of those track miles, for a total of at least 42,800 train miles. The miles where they do not is probably off set by the route miles of tracks where Amtrak runs far more than two trains a day.
$150 million per year / 42,800 train miles = $3,504.67 per train mile per year.
For each day 3504.67 / 365 = $9.60 per train mile.
How many passenger would you suggest is approriate on average for each train? I recommend 200 for this what if exercise.
$9.60 per train mile / 200 passengers = $0.048 per passenger mile.
Yes, less than a nickel per passenger mile.
On a cross country trip, 2500 or so rail miles across the country, Amtrak pays the railroad's around $128 for each passenger.
But most Amtrak passengers on average ride for just 200 miles.
https://www.statista.com/statistics
6,420 million passenger miles / 32 million passengers = 200.625 miles
https://www.statista.com/statistics/553 ... ca-amtrak/
So, on average, Amtrak pays the railroads $10 per passenger trip.
That's assuming every passenger rides 200 miles on a freight railroad owned tracks. Which is not close to being true. I wish I had better data to actually state a more truthful number.