August 2019 Amtrak Financial Report

These are the   items that I noticed in the report that were interesting to me:

• The report was dated September 26, 2019 and posted until September 30, 2019

• The NEC generated for the first eleven months a cash operating surplus of $506.8 million (at least by their idea of a fully allocated accounting system) and the remainder of the system had a fully allocated cash loss of $528.5 million. Combined the entire system has a cash operating loss of $21.7 million. That combined loss is $13.3 million less than that at the end of July, so it looks like August was profitable. For the fiscal year to date, the NEC made debt service payments of $173.4 million and capital expenditures of $704.7 million. Having received Federal Grants of $672 million it has a remaining carryover balance of $485.2 million (plus the money from FY2018). The National Network Account made debt service of $30.7 million and capital investments of $724.3 million and have received from the Federal Government $1,541.1 million and retains $385 million plus the carryover balance from FY2018. With only one more month left in FY2019, it is safe to say that there are sufficient funds to continue to run the system at its current burn rate through December 2019 and probably beyond.

• Capital Spending so far has been infrastructure $584.0 million, Stations & Real Estate $106.6 million, Fleet Maintenance $294.6 million, Fleet Acquisition $157.9 million, Information Technology $98.7 million, ADA $70.2 million (running $27.7 million ahead of last year’s record pace and for the first time actually meeting the Congressional Mandate of expending at least $50 million on ADA), Support of $12.7 million, Gateway $35.3 million ($0.2 million in August alone) and Avila (Acela 21) $49.6 million ($8.2 million in August) for total capital expenditures of $1,235.6 million ($193.4 million more than the comparable period for FY2018). The Fleet Acquisition would include the down payments for the new locomotives plus the purchase of some more Viewliner Equipment from CAF.

• The GAAP loss for the first eleven months appears to be $787.5 million. The adjusted operating earnings were $133.7 million better than the first eleven months of FY2018 .

• The number of product lines showing a measurable operating surplus for the period is back to 9 with the loss of Chicago to St. Louis:

  • Acela $304.6 million

  • Northeast Regionals $216.0 million

  • Washington-Newport News $5.1 million

  • Washington-Lynchburg $3.8 million

  • Carolinian $3.0 million

  • Washington-Norfolk $1.6 million

  • Washington-Richmond $1.3 million

  • Vermonter $0.8 million

  • Illini $0.6 million    

  • The four Virginia product lines generated a total of $11.8 million in operating surpluses.

• Ridership for the first five months was more than 634,000 greater than the comparable period in FY2018. So far for the year, Amtrak has carried 29,828,1XX (Amtrak rounds to the nearest hundred). On the long distance trains, the Palmetto is still the biggest loser with a drop-off of 12.2%, followed by the Texas Eagle at -4.9%, and Capitol Ltd with -4.8% (Nothing like late trains and lousy food to drive away customers). The biggest winner was (believe it or not) the Cardinal at 10.5%, followed by the Lake Shore Ltd up 6.2%, Silver Starvation which is up 5.7%, and the Crescent at 5.5% .

• Congress sent to the President (which he signed) a Continuing Resolution funding the Government through November 21, 2019. There are hints that some of the budget bills may be agreed upon and passed before the 21st of November.

• Amtrak has restored checked baggage to the Pennsylvanian

Steve Musen

Representative to NARP’s Council of Representatives from the state of Rhode Island