January 2020 Amtrak Financial Report

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

• The report was date February 28, 2020 and posted February 28, 2020.

• The NEC generated for the first three months a cash operating surplus of $212.5 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 $192.9 million. Combined the entire system had for the first quarter a cash operating surplus of $19.6 million. This cash flow was needed since the Trump Administration has not yet paid a single penny of FY2020 appropriations to Amtrak. The $30.8 million it has received is from previous years. 

• For the fiscal year to date, the NEC made debt service payments totaling $97.5 million and capital expenditures of $214.2 million, counting all capital sources, the NEC Account has a negative balance of $30.3 million plus the cash reserves from FY2018 and FY2019. 

• For the rest of the National System only $10.9 million was needed for Debt service and $220.8 million was spent on Capital Expenditures. The Negative Carryover balance increased to $361.5 million. Keep in mind that large surpluses were built up in FY2018 and FY2019.

• Capital Spending so far has been: Infrastructure $179.6 million, Stations & Real Estate $27.9 million, Fleet Maintenance $94.1 million, Technology $35.5 million, ADA $29.8 million, System Support $4.5 million, Acela 21 (including Milestone Payments) $16.0 million, Fleet Acquisition $29.6 million, and Gateway $8.2 million ($2.9 million being spent in December). 

• The GAAP Loss for the first four months appears to be $233.5 million, which is $65.9 million better than the previous period for FY2019.  The operating earnings for the first four months were $50.4 million better than October 2018-January 2019. 

• The number of product lines showing a measurable operating surplus for the period shrunk to 10 with 1 others breaking even. The five with surplus over $1 million were:

  • Acela $124.2 million

  • Northeast Regionals $92.2 million

  • Washington-Lynchburg $1.5 million

  • Washington-Norfolk $1.3 million

  • Washington-Newport News $1.0 million

  • The four Virginia product lines generated a total of $3.7 million

• Ridership for the first three months was more than 254,100 over the comparable period in FY2019. For the year to date, it stands at 10,898,8XX (Amtrak rounds to the nearest 100). The situation with the long distance trains still show loss of riders for all but two of the product lines: Cardinal +6.6% and the Lake Shore +5.8% . The Silver Star is now the biggest loser at -8.4%, followed by the City of New Orleans, and Texas Eagle at -8.0%.

• Amtrak has still not posted any individual station ridership statistics. However, Great American Stations has posted them. Amtrak has published some of its annual report, principally the financial figures.  

• The Trump Administration issued its usual bad proposals for Amtrak’s Long Distance Trains. It did reverse itself on funding for the North Portal Bridge. However, it still rates the financial plan for the new Hudson River Tunnels as unacceptable.

• Amtrak has issued its own financial request with small increases in both the Northeast Corridor and National Network. For the Corridor it wants $14 million more than what it received in FY2020 (assuming the Trump Administration agrees to follow through on the Congressional Mandated Program) and $26 million more for the National System. In addition it wants an additional $300 million for development of new corridors.

• Amtrak has announced increased Northeast Regional Service to both Westerly, RI and Mystic, CT. 

• It has also committed to spending almost 1 billion dollars to aid Virginia in its $3.9 billion passenger rail program.

Steve Musen

Representative from the State of Rhode Island