(Bloomberg News circulated the following story by Angela Greiling Keane on April 26, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, paid freight railways 16 percent more last fiscal year to use their tracks, according to a report.
Amtrak paid carriers including Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., now owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., $115.4 million, or $4.44 per train mile, in the year ended in September, according to a report posted today on the U.S. Transportation Department inspector general’s Web site.
The payments, which give Amtrak right-of-way privileges, increased because more trains arrived on-time. Seventy percent of the miles Amtrak travels are on tracks owned by the largest U.S. and Canadian freight railroads, and payments to those carriers accounted for 3.3 percent of operating costs in fiscal 2009, according to the report by Inspector General Calvin Scovel.
Amtrak, which receives an appropriation from Congress, owns portions of the tracks its trains run on in the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston and moves its trains on tracks owned by freight carriers in most of the rest of the country. The company is based in Washington.