Comparison of public funding for Amtrak vs. public funding for European passenger rail - Amtrak OIG analysis

MARC Rider · Feb 14, 2024

Here's a gem from 2008 form the Amtrak OIG site:

https://amtrakoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/E-08-02-042208.PDF

Overall Conclusions

After examining a representative sample of European Passenger Train
Operations over a multi-year period, we found that:

a) When all revenues and expenses for the entire passenger train system are
taken into consideration, European Passenger Train Operations operate at a
financial loss and consequently require significant Public Subsidies, and

b) The average annual subsidies for European Passenger Train Operations are
much higher than those for comparable Amtrak services.

More deails can be found in the text of the report. Should be good for some discussion. I wonder if they ever did a similar analysis of Asian passenger rail systems.

slasher-fun · Feb 14, 2024

Amazing how not once the authors did mention the number of passengers in each system, let alone give the amount of subsidies per passenger...

jis · Feb 14, 2024

Though not European, but still a somewhat relevant major rail system in the world (the third largest after US and China in terms of route miles to be precise). Most European systems are much smaller in comparison. In the next eight years Indian Railways will be adding more route miles than all of DB (German Railway) has today. And it is over 90% electrified today to boot. One interesting thing is that India and US have comparable density of rail infrastructure in terms of sq km of land per km of rail route.

Indian Railway annually subsidizes all passenger service, including Commuter in the amount of $35.8 Billion (carrying a tad over 8 Billion passengers, so per passenger subsidy is under $5). 60% of the subsidy goes to Suburban (i.e. Commuter Service which enables people to go to their place of work and be productive). Of the remaining 40% a major portion is for subsidizing lower class fares. The funding for Suburban subsidy does not apparently come out of the Railway's till. Similarly there is significant subsidy for operations that are characterized as strategic. So purely within the Railway Budget, freight, which is wildly profitable subsidizes the Railway Budget portion of passenger subsidy and still the Railways come out marginally profitable. The rest is funded out of general accounts for meeting social and strategic goals. The theory is that the economic activity that is enabled by the availability of means for fluid flow of people to where they need to be, to be productive makes the subsidy worthwhile.