Well - there are a few factors relating to trains vs. planes that are harder to quantify. Travel by train yields more productive time on short trips (anyone taking Amtrak between DC and NY knows this well). The per person carbon footprint is probably lower as well.

However - I don't see how Amtrak could expect to compete with air travel for long distance routes like those noted. Surely we should be able to make high speed rail service profitable in the NE corridor and on other intercity routes around the country? Does the study show this?

Bottom line, are you confident that this study is trying to present a full & fair picture?

While the state of Amtrak is of course horrendous, the conclusion that buying plane tickets would be cheaper is incorrect. Amtrak cost structure is mostly fixed costs with low marginal costs, making average costs high. The marginal cost of transporting a rider is likely less than the figures quoted, so there's no reason to believe buying a plane ticket would be cheaper.

I'm not sure how useful a New Orleans to Los Angeles route is, but your comparison isn't especially illuminating. The fact that an airline is advertising a seat on a plane for a certain price tells us nothing about what everyone else on that flight is paying, only that the marginal cost of each passenger is considerably lower than the average cost of all of them. (For comparison's sake, if you want to fly from New Orleans to LA *today*, and return in a week, it will cost you $500-600, and that depending on how flexible you are wrt the return date.)

I would like to know whom the SEC has jailed in the past, especially for misleading statements about accounting practices. Most commentators seem to think the SEC has not enforced the regulations they have. Does the SEC, or another party, have a website showing whom the SEC has prosecuted or convicted?

This anti-Amtrak meme has been around for many years, but totally misses the real problem, which is Congress and the Constitution. Amtrak is of course a nit in the grand scheme of things but the issue affects anything where spending is highly concentrated in big cities (like mass transit and big city education problems).
Rail spending only makes sense in a narrow set of high-density markets. But if something involves Congressional funding, spending is massively distorted to spread the largess to most of the 50 states. Thus the retention of the nostalgic longhaul sleeper trains in the West--its the only way to get funding for the Northeast Corridor, California, etc. The example picks the absolute worst case in the Amtrak system--The Sunset Limited goes through more Congressional districts than any other train.
The argument, as stated, is irresponsible. It is not an attack on "wasteful" spending, it is an attack on any spending that is important to big cities but unimportant to rural/exurban areas. The solution involves greater pooling of transportation programs, and greater decentralization of spending choices (let local areas pick the projects that are most important). But this is blocked because it would undermine the power of big lobbying groups (highway interests) and the rent-extraction potential of Congress.

All dissenting comments thus far? Mr. Bartlett has to get his readers in line!

A couple more thoughts:

If you're concerned (as I am) about our nation's lack of foresight with respect to peak oil and global warming, then you will gladly pay some price to retain this infrastructure for a different future.

Secondly, how would our roads and highways stack up using the same rubric? Surely Amtrak could make a pretty profit if its trains were privatized but the tracks were socialized!

It seems to me the best thing would be to disband Amtrak and auction off the routes/rights of way. The rational thing would be to scale back passenger rail to higher density areas but as long as Congress is funding Amtrak it will not be able to help itself. If you auctioned off the routes I would suspect at the very least that routes on the east coast and west coast would continue to be served. I suspect a lot of the infrastructure dedicated to the interior is also used to move freight rail which, in the absence of passenger rail impeding its movement, might also benefit on cross country routes.

It's all about the automobile and oil lobby wanting to keep us addicted to our cars. They control the purse strings in congress, elections and the formation of public policy. its sad...

Not being an accountant, I wonder how much of a fudge-factor there is on public-entity accounting for depreciation. Yes, there should be some -- but wouldn't it look different than for a for-profit corporation, for which depreciation plays a different role?

Do you amortize the Northeast Corridor real estate? Why would this make sense.

How does the Post Office calculate its over head and depreciation?

It's clear that Amtrak's long-distance routes lose lots of money on a per-passenger basis, and are kept operating only because of political pressure. But other routes are profitable or break-even, and given the public utility elements of rail service, breakeven sounds good to me!