PRIIA Section 209 new developments (Feb 2022)

[jis]

Here is Jim Mathews CEO RPA's writeup on the subject of Section 209, starting with:

Amtrak’s top leadership agreed with nine specific recommendations from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) aimed at repairing broken and mistrustful relationships with state partners on state-supported regional routes, pledging to implement some reforms as soon as the end of next month and to complete all the recommendations by October 31 next year.

...

https://railpassengers.org/happenin...trak-state-relations-strained-by-section-209/
Here is the link to the OIG Report that this refers to:

https://amtrakoig.gov/audit-documen..._campaign=ssr2&utm_source=pr&utm_medium=email

 

[neroden]

The stupid accounting "allocations" strike again. I've said for over a decade that they need to strip out the allocations and look at the real, underlying fixed cost and variable costs numbers...

 

[jis]

I found some of the data in the report revealing and very useful, specially since it all comes from the proverbial horse's mouth and not from a rail advocacy group. At least Amtrak appears to have accepted the data and recommendations in that report, which is way more than we can say about what it does with stuff that we present to them.