Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
We welcome our Bloomberg television and radio audiences worldwide. I'm Matt Miller alongside Danny Berger. Joining us now is Amtrak President Roger Harris. As the company posts record twenty twenty five, talk to us first off about the year that was and our more people. Roger choosing the train because of the reliability problem of planes.
Hi, Matt, good to be here today. Thank you. Yeah, So let's talk about twenty twenty five. This is a great time to be here at Amtrak. I'm certainly very excited about it. We just had our record year in terms of ridership. We carried thirty four and a half million customers, and I think we did that by running a good railroad fos things like on time, performance, cleanliness, customer service that in turn generates really strong revenue record
ticket revenue of two point seven billion dollars. That allows us to invest in new product like the new trains, the new Assella trains that we launched in August of this year. Also, we have a new train coming out next year, the Aerrow trains that we'll be seen first in the Pacific Northwest and then later in the Northeast Corridor. We're also investing in new routes like the new Marti
Gross service between New Orleans and Mobile. Last year we launched the Borealis service between the Twin Cities in Chicago. And we're also doing a ton of capital investment in infrastructure things like bridges, tunnels, new maintenance facilities. In fact, we're spending half a billion dollars a month on new capital investments.
Hey, Roger, if I can just jump in, because I am someone who who rides the AM track all the time that Northeast Corridor. I go from New York down to my home of where I grew up in DC, where my family is very frequently and I can say without a doubt that the experience on the amtrack is way better than flying. The issue is is that very very frequently, riding on the AM track and not even
the SELA is much more expensive. The experience has gotten more expensive with the introduction of dynamic pricing that I myself over the past couple weekends have opted instead to fly because it's been significantly cheaper. Where is the tipping point goes, if your pick goes, That's a very important part.
Thank you, Matt, a very important part to say. But okay, what is the tipping point for you where you see you can no longer continue to raise prices because people will opt for a cheaper option, be it driving themselves or a plane.
Yeah, well, this is a very good question, Danny. So, I mean, part of the question, part of the dilemma we have, is that there's so much interest in passenger rail these days across the country. We're seeing ridership surges in all areas, and it's supply and demand. Right. If we lower the prices too much, then the plane the trains fill up too soon and there isn't a seat
available for that last minute customer. But we see help on the way in terms of more capacity, because that's really the answer when you have a ton of demand like we do today. So the new Ascella trains which we're rolling out have twenty seven percent more seats than the old generation Ofssellas. We are focusing very hard on rolling out those new Asselas. So we have five, we have seven in service at the moment, and we're going to have twenty four by the end of this coming year.
And then the new fleet that rolls in as well will be additional capacity. So I think that's really the right at the end of the tunnel.
I say, and I told you about this before, Roger. I have a fantastic time on the Amtrak. I reach rode down to Richmond, and it was an incredibly refreshing and relaxing experience compared to the hustle and bustle of the airport, with you know, my flights often getting canceled when I get there. However, it was incredibly slow, like I had all day, so it was no big deal. But I feel like I could have at some points
walked faster. And I've lived a lot of my life in Germany, where the trains do a solid two hundred miles an hour. Why are our trains, Why is our technology so much slower than that of the rest of the developed world. Why don't we have high speed rail?
Yeah? So, you know, many of the trains we have can go faster than the infrastructure allows. And it's really about not only the rails, but also things like the electrical systems, the wires overhead that supply the electricity for the trains.
Right, But the Germans have figured this out, the French have figured this out. The Spanish have figured this out. Why can't Americans make fast trains?
Right? Well, we have to replace all that infrastructure in order to make the trains go faster, because that infrastructure I was telling you about is basically one hundred years old, and trains didn't go that fast one hundred years ago. So that's what we're working on. It takes a long time to do that. Unfortunately, Well, during.
The government shutdown, Roger, I'm sure this doesn't help President Trump, so that he had terminated sixteen billion dollars in federal funding for a new tunnel on the Northeast Corridor. Would you like to see more aid, more funding coming from this Trump administration, Roger.
We've in general, we've seen the funding come through every month the big projects that we're working on. So I think that the challenge at hand is really to kind of buckle down and get the projects done that we're already working on.
So I wonder about especially around here, Roger. We care so much about the New York area, and the Hudson Tunnel project is going to be scrapped under the Trump administration, to canceling funding for that, how does that affect the Northeast corridor and its most congested area.
So we're still working through that, and I think that, you know, work goes on every day while there's money available. So I think the most important thing is to not have these projects get interrupted, because that's when things start to cost a lot more money. On the east side of Manhattan, we're working on rehabilitating East River Tunnels. We're going to have the first one back in service next July. So those are the things that we're focusing on right now.
Roger. When it comes to leadership, obviously you are there at the helm of Amtrak, but Stephen Gardner was asked to resign as CEO just two months into the Trump administration. Are there any plans to replace him? And how is your relationship currently with the White House given some of that back and forth to start his term.
What's the question I get frequently. You know, I come to work every day knowing that there could be further changes, But so far, I think we've been working very well with the administration doing the things that we have in common. We want to run a great railroad, we want to
get this infrastructure built. And if you've traveled west out of Manhattan recently, you've seen the Portal North Bridge that's grown up out of the marsh almost and we're going to have the first trains operating on that span with our partners New Jersey Transit shortly after the new year. So there's real tangible evidence of this investment in infrastructure.
I got to ask about New Jersey Transit. It's the bane of many people's existence, right, I think intelligently chose Westchester as a place to live, and Metro North is awesome and always working and very often on time, whereas New Jersey Transit, like we write stories on a weekly basis about how bad it is delays, you know, stoppage and tunnels. Why is that such a problem compared to
riding up and down from Westchester. Why is crossing over the river into New Jersey so much more painful for commuters?
Well, I think that I think one of the problems is that going west, we only have two tubes under the Hudson, whereas there's a lot more capacity coming into Grand Central station for Metro North, and even from the east there are four tunnels under the East River. But I would say this that all railroads have a really hard time every day facing just the reality of old infrastructure and the reality of the operation, and I think there's plenty of challenges to go around.
Got to invest in infrastructure, Got to invest in infrastructure.
Roger, thank you so much for joining us. That's Roger Harris of Amtrak.