Recently, a "study" done by the Pew Charitable Trust-funded Subsidyscope did some long division and, ignoring the way Amtrak accounts for depreciation and overhead, came up with a loss-per-passenger figure on each of Amtrak's routes.
In this scenario, long distance trains (exactly the types of trains which serve Florida) came out on the short end of the stick. Corridors in which trains run frequently come out looking pretty efficient. Why?
The answer is simple. The more trains Amtrak operates on a given route, the more passengers who share the burden of the fixed costs on a given route.
The greater the number of trains, the greater number of passengers; the higher the passenger count, the less subsidy per passenger.
And that depreciation thing? Well, Subsidyscope decided to account for depreciation on equipment. Never mind the fact that depreciation at Amtrak, a government entity, really shouldn't be accounted for in that way.
Further, according to Amtrak, Subsidyscope failed to accurately take into account some sale/leaseback equipment transactions it has participated in during recent years.
As we all know, most of Amtrak's equipment is over 15-20 years old. The dining cars on the Silver Meteor and the Silver Star are even older (they date to the 1950s, in fact). Those dining cars, like most in the Amtrak fleet, were really fully depreciated out a long time ago.
Despite these flaws, the Subsidyscope arguments were picked up and reported as gospel in publications ranging from The Washington Post to the New York Daily News.
We found one publication that gets it, though. It's down in Texas, the Longview News-Journal. We like their style.
http://www.news-journal.com/opin/content/news/opinion/stories/2009/10/28/10282009_amtrak_edit.html
--Jackson McQuigg