Hoosier State tickets sales suspended for after June 30

[Anderson]

I think it is fair to say that while Amtrak doesn't entirely "make rates up as they go", there's a lot of questionable black box nature to the numbers regarding overhead allocations and the like. Amtrak has a lot of room to perform alchemy on some of the figures, and this has been a sore point for some time.

Probably the best-documented example of this can be found in the history of the expenses of the Pacific Surfliners, which IIRC saw its operating costs triple in the space of about three years in the 1990s due to an overhead shift (this was, not coincidentally, right as the Desert Wind/Pioneer were getting cut and so on).

 

[jis]

Both New York and Pennsylvania had extended arm wrestling with Amtrak with New York at one point going so far as to threaten to discontinue Empire Service completely. And this happened while New Yorker Boardman was at the helm of Amtrak AFAIR.

But by the time IP signed on the numbers were fixed. They did not change out from under IP's feet. There some question as to whether IP actually knew what it was signing on for, since they were apparently astounded when all of the incentive payment for OTP did not flow their way, or something like that.

 

[Thirdrail7]

I think it is fair to say that while Amtrak doesn't entirely "make rates up as they go", there's a lot of questionable black box nature to the numbers regarding overhead allocations and the like. Amtrak has a lot of room to perform alchemy on some of the figures, and this has been a sore point for some time.

Probably the best-documented example of this can be found in the history of the expenses of the Pacific Surfliners, which IIRC saw its operating costs triple in the space of about three years in the 1990s due to an overhead shift (this was, not coincidentally, right as the Desert Wind/Pioneer were getting cut and so on).

That was prior to PRIIA. Once of the purposes of PRIIA is to allow for uniformity. As JIS stated, it was in place by the time IP signed on.