Intercity Passenger Rail: Amtrak Will Continue to Have Difficulty Controlling Its Costs and Meeting Capital Needs

In May 2004, the President of Amtrak indicated that shortly after his arrival at Amtrak in May 2002, he established methods to measure labor performance and instituted benchmarks for such performance. However, there is no evidence that Amtrak has established measures of labor productivity for its different lines of business or benchmarks against which such measures can be assessed. Amtrak's Monthly Performance Reports include information on the financial and workforce status of each department (such as Mechanical) as well as the status of departmental goals and objectives. But there is no evidence of labor productivity measures or benchmarks. Similarly, Amtrak's strategic plans identify the need for workforce and work rule improvements but there is no discussion or identification of productivity measures or benchmarks that directly measure resource inputs for Amtrak's different lines of business (or departments as the case may be) with corresponding outputs. Finally, GAO has had repeated discussions with Amtrak over the last 4 years about development of labor productivity measures and benchmarks. Although Amtrak has said they would develop these, they have taken no steps to do so. Instead, in recent years Amtrak has decided to focus on financial and headcount information, not productivity, to measure its performance. Consequently, the intent of this recommendation has not been achieved.