January 2022 Amtrak Financial Report

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

• The report was dated February 28, 2022, but not posted on their web page until March 1, 2022.  

• The NEC generated for the three months a cash operating loss of $40.4 million (as determined by their accounting system) and the remainder of the system had an operating cash loss of $231.5 million. Combined the entire system had for the period a cash operating deficit of $272.9 million.

• Year to date, the NEC made debt service payments totaling $21.5 million and capital expenditures of $339.7 million. Counting all capital sources, the NEC Account has a negative balance of $288.0 million plus the cash reserves from previous years.

• For the rest of the National System, $0.8 million was needed for Debt service and $291.5 million was spent on Capital Expenditures. The National Network Account Balance is now a negative $198.0 million plus the accumulated surplus from previous years. 

• The amount of appropriated money for the combined NEC and National Network received for the year to date was $308.3 million. Amtrak has also received from other capital sources $131.1 million for the entire system.

• The combined accumulated reserves at the beginning of the 2022 fiscal year totaled $491.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, $390.2 million in short term investments and $3.3 billion in available for sale securities. This brings total cash reserves as of October 1, 2021 to $4.1 billion. The current ratio (Current Assets divided by Current Liabilities) was 2.383 which would make Amtrak quite credit worthy for any fresh borrowings.

• In October 2021 Amtrak's burn rate (Operating Revenues-Minus Operating Expense-Minus Debt Service-Capital Expenditures) was $446.1 million. However, this included the $217.6 million for debt service. In November, the burn rate was $155.0 million, in December, the burn rate was a mere $29.7 million because of the retraction of money spent on debt service. In January, the burn rate was $294.6 million.

• Capital Spending for the year to date was: Engineering $165.1 million, Mechanical $95.2 million, Operations $7.3 million, Information Technology $36.1 million, Commercial and Marketing $0.1 million, ADA $29.3 million, Real Estate Stations & Facilities $51.4 million, Amtrak Police & Emergency Management $2.6 million, Safety $1.8 million, Environmental $3.0 million, Procurement $0.5 million, Acela 21 $47.5 million ($6.5 million in January), Gateway $11.1 million, Planning & Strategy $25.0 million (A $2.9 million increase in January alone), B&P Tunnel $9.9 million, and intercity Trainsets $144.1 million (an increase of $53.7 million in January).

• The GAAP Loss for the first four months appears to be $578.3 million which is $104.5 million better than the same period in FY2021.  The cash operating earnings for the year to date was $953 million better than in FY2021.

• Naturally in the interests of transparency, Amtrak has changed once again how it calculates results against its plan. The new figures are to compare this to the December Forecast rather than the initial one.  For cash operating earnings, the corporation is $5.2 million behind the December Forecast. The GAAP figure is $8.0 million behind the December Forecast. In December it was already running behind its initial plan so the revamp reduces the size of the deficit.

• The number of product lines showing a measurable operating surplus for the period shrunk to 5. The four with a surplus over $1 million were:

  • Auto Train $7.9 million

  • Empire Service $1.8 million

  • Illini $1.5 million

  • Illinois Zephyr $1.5 million

  • The four Virginia product lines generated a total loss of $6.4 million.

• Ridership for the three months rose more than 4,366,100 from the comparable period in FY2021. For the year to date, it stands at 6,642.900 (Amtrak reports ridership to the nearest 100). In fact, the total number of riders in all of January was 1,112,900. The situation with the long-distance trains shows a gain of riders across the product lines. The biggest losers in FY2021 were the ones with the highest percentage gains. The Palmetto was the biggest winner at a 217.1% gain for the new fiscal year so far. The Crescent. was second at 215.9% gain. The lines that showed smallest ridership gains were the Cardinal with a positive percent of 59.6%, The Sunset at +61.6% and the Silver Meteor at +71.4. The Acela gained 445.2%.

• More likely because of illness at the maintenance facilities than sickness of the on-board crews, Amtrak had to cut back frequencies on nine of its routes and cut temporarily all of the Meteor runs. Supposedly, all of the cuts will be reversed no later than the last week of March 2022. However, due to the incompetence of senior management at Amtrak, only enough equipment was made available to restore the Texas Eagle, Capitol Ltd, and Coast Starlight. Worse though these trains run daily now, the Eagle and Capitol are running with a single sleeper each. In both cases, this means that sleeping car space sells out fast, and remains at exorbitant rates. Still the trains are supposed to be losing money at a high rate.

• Congress passed (finally) the 2022 appropriations “only” 5 months late. The NEC gets a haircut below the authorized levels with only $874,501,000 of which up to $1,000,000 is designated for the NEC Commission. Secretary can retain ½ of 1% for oversight. The National Network gets $1,456,870,000 (with no apparent deduction for oversight) of which at least $50 million is to be spent on Safety Items which would include installation of PTC on lines not required to have PTC. (That would include the Downeaster). The FRA Safety and operations would be $240,737,000 and Rail Research $43,000,000. The Federal State Partnership would get $100 million less up to 2% for oversight. CRISI (Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Initiatives)  gets a total of $625 million of which at least $150 million to be spent on projects that support the development of new services or realignment. $120,860,000 is designated for congressional earmarks and up to $5 million can be wasted on MAGLEV.

• The Amtrak IG gets $26,248,000 in a separate appropriation.

• The FTA gets: Formula Grants $13,355,000,000, Transit Infrastructure Grants $504,263,267, Technical Assistance $7,500,000, Capital Investment Grants (formally known to us as New Starts) $2,248,000,000, and Washington Metro $150,000,000.

• I was able to travel to New York City the weekend of March 4-7. Both Northeast Regionals had healthy ridership. However, many of the riders were using Amtrak’s bargain discount fares, as was I. So profitability may not be occurring despite selling out the train.

Steve Musen

Rhode Island Representative to NARP’s Council of Representatives