October MPR

[Acela150]

Folks they're back and with a new look. I haven't gone into detail yet. But this paragraph now appears on Amtrak.com

Going forward, Amtrak will report Adjusted Operating Earnings as the key financial measure to evaluate results, Net Income/(Loss) will continue to be reported for reference. Adjusted Operating earnings represents Amtrak’s cash funding needs and is a reasonable proxy for Federal Operating Support needed in line with the appropriation. Please email [email protected] for additional financial reporting requests. Requests will be responded to within two business days with an estimated time for delivery of requested information.

 

[daybeers]

Folks they're back and with a new look. I haven't gone into detail yet. But this paragraph now appears on Amtrak.com

Going forward, Amtrak will report Adjusted Operating Earnings as the key financial measure to evaluate results, Net Income/(Loss) will continue to be reported for reference. Adjusted Operating earnings represents Amtrak’s cash funding needs and is a reasonable proxy for Federal Operating Support needed in line with the appropriation. Please email [email protected] for additional financial reporting requests. Requests will be responded to within two business days with an estimated time for delivery of requested information.

So what does this mean?

 

[niemi24s]

October MPR? I haven't been able to find the one for September!

 

[Acela150]

I honestly think that they didn’t post one for September. Trust me. I’m just as annoyed.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum

 

[WoodyinNYC]

I honestly think that they didn’t post one for September. Trust me. I’m just as annoyed.

The changes in the information provided and how it is displayed are considerable. So we're likely getting a work in progress, while they figure out how many changes to make in the presentation of the full-year figures. We may get a September Report after New Years. LOL.

 

[neroden]

So have they actually posted the October one, and is there a link to it?

 

[afigg]

So have they actually posted the October one, and is there a link to it?

Yes, the October monthly report is at the bottom of the Reports & Documents webpage. It is a much shorter report at 7 pages and there is a ton of information that used to be in the earlier monthly reports that is not provided. Such as the mechanical production/repair tables for starters. The Route Level Results table rounds ridership stats off to the nearest thousand, no percentage increase/decrease comparisons by route, but provides Seat & Passenger Miles, Average Load Factor which was not broken out previously from what I can see.

My take is that the new management (ie post Boardman), with both of the current dual CEOs coming from the private sector, is not inclined to provide much information in the monthly reports beyond what Amtrak is required to produce.

 

[Thirdrail7]

I prefer the inclusion of the host railroad report and the mechanical report.

 

[Acela150]

I’ll ditto TR. Especially the Mechanical report. That was a interesting thing to go over.

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[niemi24s]

I might be wrong, but I'd always thought a trains Load Factor was found by dividing its Passenger Miles by its Seat Miles. If so, there appears to be something amiss with over half of the reported load factors in the Oct 2017 MPR. The image below was snipped from Page 7 of that report and it shows the Load Factors I calculated from the data given that differ by more than 2 percentage points (to generously account for rounding). My additions in red:



Is there something I don't understand, or is this just some creative accounting by Amtrak?

 

[afigg]

BTW, I posted about the FY2017 ridership numbers in a thread, but I suspect the Amtrak FY2017 Ridership fact sheet that was linked to in their November 16 news release "Amtrak Sets Ridership, Revenue and Earnings Records" was overlooked. I figure the September 2017 monthly report will never be posted since all the FY2017 monthly reports in the "old" format were removed from the website. So the fact sheet with the FY2017 ridership numbers by route rounded off to the nearest thousand may be the best total data we are going to get for FY2017 unless RPA (formerly NARP) posts them in a statistic data set.

For the October, 2017 report, will have to pull up to October, 2016 MPR to compare and see what the trend was for increase or decrease in riidership and revenue by route.Advances in data analysis this is not.

 

[niemi24s]

If it matters, of the 6 Load Factors with differences of less than 3 percentage points, 3 had a 1 pp difference and 3 had no difference. And the totals as well as the composite LF are OK.

Maybe a revised one will be published after this one gets audited - if it gets audited.

 

[WoodyinNYC]

For the October, 2017 report, will have to pull up to October, 2016 MPR to compare and see what the trend was for increase or decrease in ridership and revenue by route. Advances in data analysis this is not.

I was not foresighted enuff to have stashed the previous monthly reports off line. So for me, they are simply gone.

Where could we "pull up October 2016 MPR to compare"?

 

[niemi24s]

Let Google be your friend: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/monthlyperformancereports/2016/Amtrak-Monthly-Performance-Report-October-2016.pdf

 

[WoodyinNYC]

Let Google be your friend: https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/monthlyperformancereports/2016/Amtrak-Monthly-Performance-Report-October-2016.pdf

Well, OK then! Thanks for the quick link.

 

[neroden]

My take is that the new management (ie post Boardman), with both of the current dual CEOs coming from the private sector, is not inclined to provide much information in the monthly reports beyond what Amtrak is required to produce.

The fact is that for about 9 years they haven't been producing the reports which they *are* required (by PRIIA) to produce. (The one-year avoidable costs report and IIRC the five-year avoidable costs report for each route.) So I guess what they produce is more driven by what specific Congressmen ask for this week.

This is definitely a step backwards, though. The "core costs" by route were already a meaningless pile of allocations, but it's clear that the accounting rejiggering has dumped more meaningless allocations into them. Makes all the routes look worse than they actually are, and actually worse than they looked in the previous accounting, which also made them look worse than they are; it's sandbagging accounting.

Allocated-cost accounting is a good way to make poor business decisions so let's hope this isn't what they're using internally.

It would be just as legitimate to claim that the long-distance trains are making a profit by reallocating the shared overhead expenses to the NEC, but really for business decision-making the inextricable overhead expenses should have their own line items, which they don't.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

The truth of the matter is that detailed financial reporting is often a detriment to good business procedure, the reason being that the world compares things in units of months, quarters, half years, and years... and fair financial cycling of capital intensive businesses and businesses with long cycle lives really arent reasonably observable in such ways.

 

[jis]

The bottom line is - decision making based on models of the system that are inappropriate for the purpose of the sort of decisions being made, will eventually sink the system. And yet no one pays too much attention to the appropriateness of the models being used. What GML and neroden point out above are specific egregious cases of this general principle.

 

[neroden]

Good summary, jis.

 

[niemi24s]

FWIW, the totals at the bottom for Seat Miles and Passenger Miles are both OK, within the limits of rounding. Same for the Average Load Factor.

Wonder how many in Congress will look at the 39% Load Factor for the Cardinal and call for a reduction in train size - or worse!

 

[KnightRail]

What was the last/final month that the classic MPR was posted?

Was anyone smart enough to download and save those .PDFs over the years?

 

[neroden]

Several of us have some of them (I have most of the last year), I don't think anyone has all of them.

 

[afigg]

What was the last/final month that the classic MPR was posted?

Was anyone smart enough to download and save those .PDFs over the years?

The last "classic" monthly performance report released and posted was August, 2017 which was 65 pages long. From September, 2017 onward, Amtrak has posted the new much shorter 7 page MPRs and 18 page long host railroad reports. I believe I have all or almost all the monthly reports going back to 2009.

BTW, the November and December 2018 MPRs are on the website, so there are ridership and revenue numbers covering the 1st quarter of the fiscal year to discuss if anyone wants to start a thread on it. For all the challenges, total system ridership for the 1st 3 months of the FY was up 3.3% over FY2017 and exceeded the "plan" projections (ie budget) by 1.1%. Comparing or reviewing the year to year ridership & revenue numbers by train service or corridor is more difficult with the new MPRs but it can be done if one has the prior year MPR.

Edit: Also, the fiscal year 2017 financial report is on the website. Was that posted recently? Anyway, info on debt and project costs in the financial report for anyone who wants to review or discuss it.