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After achieving records in both ridership and revenue, Amtrak is ready to invest four and a half billion dollars in.
Some major upgrades.
The problem is the Trump administration has a proposed major cuts to subsidies for the Northeast Corridor. So how is that going to affect really Bloomberg clients and viewers who use this product so regularly.
Joining us now to talk about that.
As Amtrak President Roger Harris, Roger, great to have you on. I know everybody in this office and certainly many of our terminal users and Bloomberg television viewers and Bloomberg Radio listeners uses your product a ton because we're always going back and forth between Boston and New York and Washington, DC.
It's really important.
How will the Trump administration affect what you're able to invest?
Well, thank you, Matt, and first of all, thank you for having us on today to talk about what's going on in Amtrak. As you said, we've had a record ridership and revenue in the past year, in fact in the last few years, and we've really seen that all across the country, not only in the Northeast Corridor, but also in places like Washington State.
Oregon, North Carolina, Virginia.
Even our news service in Midwest between Chicago and the Twin Cities carried almost a quarter.
Of a million cust Elian's first year.
But specifically about the Northeast Corridor, our capital spending has increased between twenty nineteen and this year from eight hundred million to four point five billion. And really this is not so much a question of less money for the NEEC. It's a change in the sources and fundings of the projects that we're building.
So traditionally.
A lot of the Northeast Corridor investment was funded from the operating earnings on the service, and during COVID, Congress appropriated more money for the Northeast card or to help underwrite the operating losses of the curd bed. And what we're seeing now in the f y twenty six budget is really kind of a return to what the normal balance is between operating earnings funding some of the work on the Northeast carridor right versus our annual appropriation.
We'll talk to us a little bit more about how you're going to make up for that. I hear what you're saying that we're just going back to maybe pre COVID levels when it comes to, you know, the subsidies for the Northeast Corridor. But even still, where do you plan to find the funding sources to make up for that going away?
Basically, well, I.
Think there are two ways to think about this. One is what I said, which is the increase in operating earnings, so that's you know, hundreds of millions dollars a year that goes towards these projects. But the other thing to think about is that the the split in our appropriation from Congress it talks about the Northeast cardor versus the National Network isn't about where the assets are exist so much as it is the types of trains.
So there are trains in.
The National Network that come from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia that operate on the Northeast Corridor, and the operation of those trains can contribute the funding, and that appropriation contributes to their reinvestments on these assets. So it's not quite a perfect alignment between which account, which account the assets are funded from, and where the trains are operated.
There seem to be a lot of projects that Bloomberg's reporters here are focused on We've got some brilliant questions from Ted Man, so shout out and thank you to him. The Frederick Douglass Tunnel in Baltimore is one that the Republicans are making a lot of noise about potentially changing that project. Is is that going to go through The Susquehanna Bridge in Maryland needs to be replaced, the Connecticut River Bridge. Are all of these projects that we're so focused on.
Going to continue to be funded.
Yes, you know, one of the things that's going on is we're working with the administration and trying to understand where there's a lot of common ground on these projects, because it's been made really clear to me and to the you know, the other members of Amtrak management that the administration is really interested in us running an efficient, reliable service and building great infrastructure.
So you mentioned the Conneticut.
River Bridge where which we're building up near Old Saybrook in Connecticut. Just a few weeks ago we got the grant for funding that project obligated by the administration when they were very clear on the fact that they want to get that bill. We continue to talk to them about the Federick Douglas tunnel, and we're working on ways to produced the total project fasts and we've come up with a lot of good ideas and we're working through
them with them. We also had a project in Newark, New Jersey to Dockbridge where we came up with some great ideas on how to reduce the total couse of the project and we got a good shout out from the administration. So I would say that the challenge here is finding out where the common ground is which and there's a lot of that, there really is, and getting the projects built.
You know, last month I made the mistake of trying to take a plane when I needed to travel to Virginia. It ended in tears and pretty much a lost weekend, And the next week I was smart enough to take the train instead. It's a far better way to travel when you don't want to sit in the airport for nine hours and then find out that your flight is
finally canceled. Are you able to take advantage of the chaos that US airlines caused in travel because it's just so much easier and more reliable to take the train.
Yeah, absolutely, Matt. You know, we we look at the amount of traffic that we compete with the airlines on and that's not really our primary focus.
We want to get people out of their cars.
But you know, what we want to make sure we do is that we have a reliable service and that we communicate with our customers.
We have great new Asseller trains. I don't know if you want to talk about that.
Right this min it, but we have brand new asselog that we are, you know, in the final steps of getting approved. I think you've heard that from us before, but we are extremely close now. The file approvals from the Federal Road Administration earlier this week, and you know that's one more step in improving the reliability and the comfort of the product for the end customers. So I really see us stepping up our competitiveness of the airlines.
Roger, we have less than a minute here, but I want to talk about that a little bit more because you compare Amtrak to the airlines. For airlines, I mean, you think about a fully booked first class in many cases that would subsidize the rest of the plane. Have you considered going ultra high end when it comes to what Amtrak offers on the higher end, have you considered, you know, modeling luxury train travel in Europe.
Well, we've looked at it briefly, but really we see that our core mission is to deliver transportation to the American people. We're probably not the best people to be delivering that kind of very bespoke, very sort of limited product. We want to make sure that we focus the benefits and see money that the government invested us in touching as many technical customers as possibles.
All right, Roger, really appreciate your time. That is Amtrak President Roger Harris