July 2020 Amtrak Financial Report
June was about the same as May. Ridership in July was up slightly.
The report was dated August 27, 2020 and posted no later than September 1, 2020.
The NEC generated for the first ten months a cash operating surplus of $64.9 million and the remainder of the system had a fully allocated cash loss of $619.8 million. Combined the entire system had for the first nine months a cash operating deficit of $555.0 million. Because of their accounting system, Acela shows a profit and the Regionals now shows a deficit for the year to date.
For the fiscal year to date, the NEC made debt service payments totaling $189.9 million and capital expenditures of $912.7 million. Counting all capital sources, the NEC account has a balance of $755.2 million plus the cash reserves from FY2018 and FY2019.
For the rest of the National System, only $26.3 million was needed for debt service and $610.6 million was spent on Capital Expenditures. The National Network account balance is now $836.2 million. Keep in mind that a large surplus was built up in FY2018 and FY2019.
Amtrak had a cash balance of approximately $2,487,304,000 at the beginning of Fiscal 2020. At the end of July there was still approximately $1,591,388,000 in the combined accounts for the current fiscal year, which one assumes is mostly cash in the bank and short term money market investments which can be liquidated at any time. Amtrak's burn rate (that is operating revenue minus operating expense minus debt service minus capital expenditures) for April, May, June and July were $267,668,000; $320,599,000, $265,186,000 and $250,378,000 respectively. So assuming that the burn rate will not exceed $325 million per month, Amtrak should be able to function at the current rate of expenditures for the next 12.5 months, even without any further appropriations from Congress. This is not to say that there would not be considerable capital expenditure that Amtrak would want to capitalize on or which it has not already made a commitment.
Capital Spending so far has been Infrastructure $483.7 million, Stations & Real Estate: $89.7 million, Fleet Maintenance $240.1 million, Technology $84.1 million, ADA $75.1 million (for the second year in a row meeting a congressional requirement), System Support $10.5 million, Acela 21 (including Milestone Payments) $337.9 million, Fleet Acquisition $54.0 million, and Gateway $21.7 million ($1.4 million being spent in July).
Congressional legislation being considered is raising the amount to be minimally spent on ADA from $50 million a year to $75 million a year.
The GAAP Loss for the first ten months appears to be $1,284.2 million which is $564.2 million worse than the previous period for FY2019. The operating earnings for the first ten months was $520.0 million worse than October 2018-July 2019.
The number of product lines showing a measurable operating surplus for the period remained at 13 plus the Adirondack which broke even. The five with a surplus over $1 million were:
Acela $89.4 million
Washington-Lynchburg $ 1.5 million
Washington-Richmond $4.0 million
Washington-Norfolk $1.1 million
Pennsylvanian $ 4.9 million
Within the Northeast Corridor, it appears that the bulk of maintenance of the track and electric traction is assigned to the regionals despite the obvious fact that the high speed Acela create more wear and tear because of their higher speeds.
The four Virginia product lines generated a total of $3.8 million. The Virginia services being beneficiaries of the accounting system.
Ridership for the first nine months fell more than 11,282,800 from the comparable period in FY2019. For the year to date, it stands at 15,615,1XX (Amtrak rounds to the nearest 100). In fact the total number of riders in all of July was 560,4XX. The situation with the long distance trains shows a loss of riders for all of the product lines. The Southwest Chief was able to eke out the title of the greatest loser at -41.3% for the first tent months. Runner up was the Silver Star at -40.6%. The line with the least amount of loss in the Long Distance category was the Auto Train at -28.4%. The Auto Train may be the only long distance train where hot food is cooked to order, which may explain why it had the least loss among the long distance trains.
Amtrak has still not posted any individual station ridership statistics.
.The Senate has not taken up the House COVID Package, the Surface Transportation reauthorization or 2021 THUD Appropriations.
The Senate is expected to pass a CR to cover the period between October 1, 2020 and the first half of November.
Amtrak is still planning on reducing all long distance trains to tri-weekly operations. Worse, they are sheding 1,950 employees which will make restoration of the reduced services difficult when the virus pandemic is over. The House has included legislation in at least two bill that would mandate the continuation of daily service (where it existed), but that legislation was in the bills the Senate has not taken up.
Supposedly, Senator McConnell is following the same strategy that former Senator Reid used in 2010 which was to avoid hard votes by vulnerable Senators. The result in 2010 was a disaster for those vulnerable Senators who were left with little legislative achievements to justify their re-elections. The results in 2020 could produce the same results.
Steve Musen
Representative from the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations to NARP's Council of Representatives