Junta de Directores de la National Railroad Passenger Corporation

Jim Cook: Good afternoon, everyone. We're going to start today with a uh quick safety briefing. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Jim Cook. I'm the assistant chief of police here. We are at the American College Assurgence Building located at 20 F Street Northwest, Sweet 1000. In the event of an emergency today, we have uh three Amtrak uh police personnel out in the hallway. They'll notify 911. Uh one of them is actually a part-time fire chief, so he'll be handling all of our medical issues today if we have any. There's an AED located at the front desk as well as a medical bag. In the event we need to evacuate, I'd ask you to do a favor. Look to your left and your right. If we evacuate, make sure that individual is accounted for once we go. The primary exit will be out the front of the building. Please be very cautious if we have to do so. As you all know, it's very slippery outside. In the event that we can't get that direction, it'll also be out this door here. Again, follow the police personnel you saw on your way in. Uh for safety, there are numerous tripping hazards in here. And again, be very cautious when walking in the streets around here in DC today. For health and well-being, it is cold and flu season. Again, take proper precautions as you're going in and outside. Uh very cold. Uh make sure you're staying up to date with preventative services. In the event of a security issue, again, we'll take care of that for you today with APD. Uh in the event of an active shooter, we will be handling that issue, but if you could hide here first, uh run as a second resort and as a last resort fight. And last but not least, uh, for cyber, there's a lot of scams going on right now, fishing, smishing, and anything involving your Amtrak devices. If you suspect anything at all, please contact it immediately to the Amtrak service desk at Amtrak.com. And one last piece of housekeeping, if possible, if you're able to, please silence your phones during this meeting. I'll turn over to Bill.

William Herman: Okay, good afternoon everyone. Uh we have completed a safety briefing already uh for those of us in the room. So I would like to call this meeting of the Amtrak board of directors to order. My name is William Herman and I am the Amtrak corporate secretary. Today is Wednesday, January 28th, 2026 and this is a duly notice meeting of the Amtrak board of directors. First I will take a roll call of the directors who are present. Tony Coscia, chair.

Tony Coscia: Here.

William Herman: Joel Szabat, vice chair.

Joel Szabat: Here.

William Herman: Uh the FRA designee for the Department of Secretary Paul Nissenbomb.

Paul Nissenbomb: Here.

William Herman: Elaine Klegg.

Elaine Klegg: Here.

William Herman: Ron Batory.

Ron Batory: Here.

William Herman: Robert Gleason.

Robert Gleason: Here.

William Herman: And on behalf of those directors who are joining us remotely, we have Mayor Chris Koos, David Capozzi, and Lanhee Chen. Thank you. I confirm we have a quorum present for today's meeting. Mr. Chair, you may proceed with the scheduled agenda.

Anthony Coscia: Okay, thank you, Bill. Um, welcome again everyone to Amtrak's public board meeting. I hope that everyone is staying safe and given the extreme storms and weather that we're having in this country, uh, everyone is taking care of themselves uh, appropriately. Uh, I'm speaking to you today from Washington, DC where I'm joined by my fellow board members. You've just heard the roll call uh listing who they are along with uh members of the Amtrak executive leadership team. It was great to see so many of uh people uh who are part of the Amtrak community at our public board meeting in New Orleans uh in December. Uh we're pleased that we had such a great turnout for that. Um and uh it's become an important part of Amtrak's engagement with the community that we serve. And for the past four years, Amtrak has held an annual public meeting and we invite everyone to join us in person. During those sessions, we provide detailed business review and we offer the public an opportunity to ask questions of our board members directly. Beyond that, beyond the annual public meeting that we have, we offer we're offering the public the opportunity to join us for a portion of our regular meeting. During these public updates, you'll hear from our executive leadership team members and questions and issues that are raised by our board members in in in response to some of those issues that have been outlined. And as always, you can submit your comments to the board by email at publicmeeting@amtrak.com. You could also share your comments on the board page on amtrak.com. Today's segment should last about 1 hour and we'll start with our business presentations. And with that, it's my pleasure to introduce our chief financial officer, Costin Corneau, who will provide an update uh on financial performance. Costin.

Costin Corneau: Thank you, Tony. And uh good afternoon, everyone. We today we will uh review our consolidated financial results uh through December. Through December, we delivered an adjusted operating loss of $74.6 million with a negative operating margin of 7%. This margin was relatively flat to our annual plan and to fiscal year 2025. A strong revenue performance is offset by higher employee benefits and other costs. On the revenue side, we continue to see solid year-over-year improvements across all service lines, led by the Northeast Corridor and long-distance routes. Revenue exceeded plan by 34.1 million and was $61.9 million higher than fiscal year 2025. While capacity was largely flat versus prior year, improved pricing and ridership drove increased financial performance. Overall expenses reflect several factors, including higher employee benefits and operational costs. We continue to remain focused on disciplined management of discretionary spending and making proactive adjustments to changing market conditions. Our operational metrics showed a mixed performance compared to prior year with unit metric revenue RASM or revenue per available seat mile improving by 5.6% while unit cost metric CHASM or cost per available seat mile worsened by 5.8% driven by higher than expected inflation in the aforementioned cost categories. Moving to our 2026 capital spend, we invested $1.2 billion through December, which is 5.8% higher than fiscal year 2025 and 19.4% lower than our plan. Our investments centered on critical infrastructure with largest allocations directed to bridges, tunnels, and state of good repair. While progress continues to advance compared to fiscal year 2025, certain projects within bridges, tunnels, major stations, and re-fleeting experience delays relative to plan. We continue to review schedules and adjust as needed to keep projects aligned with long-term strategic priorities. Within our 1.2 billion capital portfolio, our largest investment was in bridges and tunnels with $415.6 million dedicated to major infrastructure projects such as the New York East River Tunnel, Connecticut River Bridge, and BMP tunnel. We invested an additional $270.6 million to maintain essential rail assets such as track, catenary, signals and structural systems to ensure safe and reliable operations. Further investments supported fleeting modernization and facility expansion, including Airo, New Acela and ADA compliance station improvements. As we move from consolidated performance, I will now walk through results from our two business segments, passenger operations and infrastructure. In our passenger business, performance remained strong. Our adjusted operating loss of only $2.7 million is a 91% improvement over fiscal year 2025. An increase in ridership supported a 7.5% increase in revenue, while core structural costs only rose 3.9% year-over-year, resulting in an operating margin that is essentially break even and improve 334 basis points over fiscal year 2025. The results are similarly strong relatively to our plan, reinforcing our confidence in successful execution and providing a strong foundation as we prepare for near-term capacity growth and introduction of new fleet assets. In our infrastructure business, we delivered an adjusted operating loss of $71.8 million. While year-over-year results are disappointing largely due to increased employee benefits, professional fees, and other operating costs, we're closely monitoring and adjusting expenses and forecast and will continue to mitigate the gap to our initial expectations for fiscal year 2026. Now, I'd like to turn our focus to the service line results, starting with our Northeast Corridor operations. Our NEC service line continues to perform well with an operating margin of 33.8%. Ticket yield strengthened with revenue increasing 46.2 million year-over-year. Overall cost increased 11.7% with higher employee benefits, professional fees, and other labor costs offsetting savings coming from salaries and strong revenue. The NEC remains operationally profitable and while results fluctuate from period to period overall it is still on a clear improvement path and we look forward to this continuing momentum. Shifting to our state supported business within our national network. The adjusted operating loss of $67.8 million represents a 26.4% decline compared to prior year. Though capacity decreased due to fleet availability, ticket yield improved and revenue came 0.8% better than last year. Higher benefits and professional fees contributed to expense growth, though savings in materials and discretionary car costs partially offset that. Finally, our long-distance business within our national network delivered an adjusted operating loss of $132.8 million, which is 9.9% better than prior year. Capacity increased slightly and ticket yield improved 9.9% driving a 17.4% increase in revenue from fiscal year 2025. Strong performance growth continues across multiple routes, including the California Zephyr, Auto Train, and Lakeshore Limited. Expenses increased 4.5% compared to prior year, primarily due to higher operational costs, including fuel and materials. Overall, these trends reflect a healthy trajectory for our long distance routes and create opportunities for further improvement moving forward. And with that, I'll open uh for questions from the board.

Elaine Clegg: Mr. Mr. President, um could I ask a question of Costin and and we might add to this uh when Eliot gives his commercial report, but the long-distance system um obviously has seen some improvements. I think it has to do with both on-time performance but also availability of some of our revenue producing pieces of that system which are um the bedrooms and the dining. wonder uh if you could uh explain a little more what what are the things are those the things that are driving this improved performance and are there other factors?

Costin Corneau: Thank you Elaine and I will uh cover most of that question but I'll invite Eliot to soon uh when he covers the revenue section. Um there is a combination of two factors here. One is clearly a strong revenue performance uh on uh especially as you mentioned on Sleeper. We actually have a good demand on the coach side too uh on the long-distance network and that has driven the majority of the revenue and ridership improvement from a year-over-year base uh perspective. In addition to that, we've also been very focused on the deployment and capacity in in effective way. So, we can see that the unit’s cost increases uh have been very well managed on the long-distance network as we have grown capacity. So uh I am continuously hopeful that if we can move in both of those areas uh uh in the future we can continue to erode that uh operating loss which we're still expected to have but we're trying to get to a more efficient deployment of that capacity.

Elaine Clegg: Thank you.

Joel Szabat: And Costin, I would just ask a bigger picture question. Um while it's not uncommon to see um occasions where we have results that are um not favorable according to plan because we have had and continue to have a very ambitious plan. Um but our uh uh in the past it's been the norm to see improvements in financial performance uh year-over-year uh whether it's uh year-to-year comparisons or monthly or quarterly comparisons. Um here we're seeing some of the comparisons where we're not favorable year-over-year and yet our five-year plan uh continues to uh require us uh uh to year after year to be to see those improvements year-over-year. Um so is there anything that you're seeing from these results uh that suggests uh that we are um somehow moving outside of the guard rails for where we want to be with the five-year plan? 

Costin Corneau: Thank you, Joel, for the question. Um, I could tell you that we're just a quarter in the year and we have quite a long uh long year to go. Um, I can tell you that overall I don't have anything that uh tells me that we are getting outside of the boundaries that we've set for ourselves forward over a longer period of time. I do I do think we have some immediate challenges uh not necessarily reflected in Q1. Uh but part of it is uh what you heard me said today say today a lot around benefit costs. Uh those have been significantly higher than what we've built in plan market is significantly higher at this point. It’s not just Amtrak but the entire market. Then the historical 5-year average on both the prescription drugs RX uh which um partly caused by the high popularity of GLP1 uh drugs that we do think are very valuable and in turn uh will provide health benefit savings for Amtrak especially as we aim towards uh the end of this decade and improving our results. At the same time, we have a few challenges in front of us with increased outages. Uh but again, as I think the overall trajectory of the business and the path of improvement, we are still plotted on that course with some as I said, results will fluctuate from period to period based on short-term items. Uh but I think we're still there.

Joel Szabat:  Thank you

Ronald Batory: Costin. Um our revenue strategies are they keeping pace with inflation?

Costin Corneau: Yeah, good question Ron. So um we have built in our plan a revenue strategy that uh significantly outpaces the inflation and at this point uh especially when it comes to the train operations side. We are seeing uh a path above that. The the biggest focus for Amtrak is going to be the ability to deploy trains and ASMs into the market uh throughout the year which will be a challenge given the outages that we have. Uh but we do think where we can deploy that capacity, we can mitigate some of the revenue strategies that we will definitely have an impact to ridership. As for the total revenue perspective, yes, we are outpacing inflation. Thank you. And with that, I'll turn it to our chief commercial officer, Eliot Hamlish, for a commercial update. Eliot.

Eliot Hamlish: Excellent. Thank you, Costin. Maybe Elaine I'll start with just a direct answer to your question, which is more riders traveling further, paying more. So, all three of those stats are up for LD. You'll see a little bit of that uh when we jump into the content here, but that's the the short answer to your question. All right, let's jump in. I'm joined by Gery Williams, our Chief Operating Officer, to whom I will turn the mic over uh shortly after a bit of commentary on our commercial performance. So, let's start with ridership. Uh taking a look back at FY26 Q1 uh results, including how we compared both to last year and where we landed versus plan. Short version of the story is that FY26 is off to a record start. October set a new all-time ridership record for Amtrak only to be eclipsed in November. Uh December was also a record. Those three are the three highest producing ridership uh months in the history of the company. So off to quite a good start. Q1 ridership 422,000 riders above last year or 4.7% and we finished 49,000 riders ahead of our plan or roughly 50 basis points or.5%. This reflects broad-based demand strength across the network even as we continued to manage operational challenges particularly supply constraints tied to our NextGen Acela rollout. Let's take a look at or discuss uh tailwinds that contributed positively to our results. Uh starting with the Northeast Corridor which remains a significant source of strength. Despite limited fleet availability, the NEC travel demand continues to outperform the rest of the network. Service restorations in California state supported routes also contributed meaningfully to the strong Q1 ridership performance. The Goldrunner and Capital Corridor being two excellent examples. On the flip side, we faced a series of headwinds in parallel led by NextGen Acela rollout delays which continue to constrain our capacity on the Northeast Corridor and limit our ability to meet demand. We also have seen legacy Acela reliability issues which create constraints as we phase the equipment out by year's end and targeting late September of 26. Looking ahead to the rest of the year, uh it looks a bit less rosy. In short, January ridership projected to finish below plan. And again, NextGen Acela roll out uh and service cancellations with regard to track outages uh continue to be an issue and will be headwinds for us throughout the rest of the year. So in summary, while we delivered a record first quarter equipment delays and major infrastructure outages will continue to put downward pressure on the business throughout the rest of the year and we remain very steadfastly focused on mitigating those to the greatest extent possible. Transitioning to ridership by service line. Uh first a comparison to last year relative to Q1 of FY25. performance during the first quarter of 26 improved across all three service lines. For the NEC, ridership was up about 7.6% or 294,000 riders. The improvement in ridership on a percentage gain basis was relatively equal between the Northeast Regional and Acela service lines, illustrating the strength of demand that we saw across the Northeast Corridor that fueled those three record ridership months that I touched on earlier. On our state supported routes, ridership grew by 2.4% or roughly 95,000 riders. We saw substantial gains in our California services where capacity is being restored to prepandemic levels. Feels good to say those words. Been a while since we've been able to say that. On the other hand, equipment and infrastructure constraints have constrained ridership, including the Grounded Horizon fleet, which impacted our Cascade service, and the East River tunnel, which impacted the Empire service. Long-distance ridership was up 2.8% or 33,000 riders driven, Elaine to your earlier question, by a 2% increase in capacity. Customers also traveled further, boosting passenger miles by 5.5%. More specifically, the restoration of the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited in early December also supported ridership gains late in the quarter. Overall, encouraged by solid performance early in the year, but as I shared earlier, delays, equipment challenges, and ongoing trackwork continue to generate headwinds that we'll be watching closely throughout the remainder of the year. Transitioning from ridership to customer satisfaction index. And as a reminder, as I shared in our last meeting, we've transitioned from overall CSI to a bifurcated look at CSI, splitting our measurement into blue sky when things are going well and non-blue sky during uh delays. So, we'll dive into some insights from the first quarter of the year. Overall, through December, both blue sky and non-blue sky CSI finished favorable to plan and versus the prior year. However, factors driving CSI performance differ between non-blue sky and blue sky, just as on time and delayed customers differ in their needs and expectations. For non-blue sky specifically, it outperformed prior year levels in October and November. And while performance in December declined due to crowding and holiday travel delays, scores remained above both FY25 performance and goal. This improvement is a result of significant gains in on-time performance which you'll hear a bit more about from Gery and train status communication on which we're working very hard cross functionally continue to continue to make strides. Uh on-time performance improved really dramatically as winter conditions eased relative to nationwide winter storms that we experienced last year which caused major delays and disruptions. We also saw completed track work and construction projects across the system which led to more reliable schedules in Q1, increased train capacity and improved track conditions. Taking a look at Blue Sky, Blue Sky CSI stayed on pace with FY25 performance in October and November and improved steadily over the prior year in December. And while we've seen how on-time performance heavily influences non-blue sky, its service enhancements focused on the customer experience that drives blue sky CSI gains, Wi-Fi and 5G upgrades across the fleet, plus the rollout of our NextGen Acela equipment, improved onboard connectivity. We've seen enhanced uh and improved cleanliness protocols uh support there as well, checklists, QR code audits, all of which have enhanced the customer's cabin experience. And finally, helpful staff interactions on board and at stations continue to make customers feel safe and comfortable. Taking a look ahead to January, with the easing of crowding and disruptions associated with holiday travel, we project non-blue sky CSI to rebound from December, while blue sky CSI is expected to maintain its high performance. All right, let's take a closer look at both blue sky and non-blue sky CSI by service line. For the Northeast Corridor Blue sky CSI finished Q1 slightly ahead of plan but just .1 points shy of Q1 last year. That said, Acela drove some softness for FY25 down 2.4 points year-over-year and 1.8 points versus plan. NextGen equipment has brought significant enhancements to the onboard customer experience, such as better Wi-Fi connectivity, grab-and-go cafe food service, and newer, cleaner train interiors. That said, customers are still acclimating to the new train layout, including wayfinding, uh, navigation more broadly, and amenities. State supported Blue Sky CSI routes overperformed both plan and Q1 last year. More than two thirds of state supported routes finished Q1 at or above plan. The biggest contributors included the Keystone service, Pacific Surfliner and Pennsylvania. Here again, better Wi-Fi cleanliness and food and beverage satisfaction grow drove our blue-sky performance. Finally, with LD uh or long distance, uh we also finished Q1 strong for that service line beating plan and ending Q1 just shy of last year with nearly 3/4 of all routes ending at or above plan led by particularly high performances for Auto Train, Crescent, Floridian, and Texas Eagle. Briefly on non-blue sky CSI, we finished well above plan last year across all service lines. uh biggest contributor here on-time performance uh which again Gery will speak to in greater depth which has improved uh and dramatically I should say systemwide thanks to completed track work more reliable equipment and schedules and reduced disruptions relative to last year. Enhanced train status communication also made a significant dent in our non-blue sky CSI results. So as we continue to modernize our Acela fleet with ongoing rollout of our Next Gen Acela train sets, we are seeing experience variability reflected in CSI and at the same time the rest of the network is driving meaningful gains uh which we're excited to see continue as the year progresses. Before I hand it off to Gery, I will spend just a moment on this slide uh which is likely familiar to all given that we looked at a version of it last year. We’ll continue to show updated versions but the story here is largely the same which is uh that we saw an inflection point in FY25 uh after a bit of a decline which you can see coming out of COVID um combination of our equipment reliability challenges track work uh created a lot of pressure uh over the years and we continue to work together cross functionally on making improvements uh which you see in FY26 thus far have come out quite positively. And with that, it is my pleasure to introduce our Chief Operating Officer, Mr. Gery Williams.

Gery Williams: All right. Thank you, Eliot. And uh again, I'm Gery Williams, Chief Operations Officer for Amtrak. So outside of COVID, we have had one of the best first quarters for on-time performance at 78% overall, nearly five points better than the same period in FY25. That still puts us about three points behind our aggressive plan. So we have work to do to meet our goals. We saw very strong performance on our state and long-distance business lines versus last year, with routes like the Auto Train and Pennsylvanian showing big improvements. However, we have had very challenging couple of months on the NEC after a really strong October. December OTP finished 75% while January was at 83% mid-month. Although the weather issues over the last week have impacted that January figure. Looking closer at quarter 1 versus last year, the NEC was a mixed bag. We had challenges with the Acela service, six points lower than last year, along with the big year-over-year gains on the Northeast Regionals at seven points better. The state supported service line had a very good quarter, five points better than last year. We see very strong performance in January, 85% after a dip in December performance of 79%. As I mentioned, the Pennsylvania had a great quarter, finishing at 89%, a 25-point improvement year-over-year, which is wonderful to see. The long-distance service line also had a good quarter, up eight points versus last year. The Auto Train, which had a tough last year, finishing the first quarter at just 35%, rebounded strongly to finish the first quarter this year at 83%. It was also great to see the California Zephyr finish the quarter at 71%. We have set aggressive goals for the long-distance service this year and still have a long way to get back to those goals. Overall, it was a much improved first quarter versus last year. Despite the recent storms, quarter 2 started well, and we are looking to sustain this run of improved performance. Looking at the month-by-month performance, we weren't able to sustain the record-breaking figures we posted in October. With that said, each month in fiscal year 26 has posted year-over-year improvement. And as I mentioned, quarter 2 has gotten off to a great start. Outside of our Acela service, we are seeing performance gains across the many parts of the network. As we note on this slide, Acela performance in December was down seven points versus the prior year. And let's talk about that for a moment. We now have eight NextGen train sets in service which represent half of the total active high-speed fleet. We continue to battle infancy issues with the new equipment in its early months of operation. However, it's important to remember that Amtrak is the first customer for this type of trainset from Alstom. So, we suspected we would face some challenges. One of the main issues has been the reliability of the doors. Alstom identified the need to recalibrate some of the door settings as the car bodies settle. Progress is being made. However, it's been slower than we would like, and that is due to the difficulty in taking the trains out of service long enough for Alstom to do the lengthy calibration work. As we take delivery of more train sets, the additional capacity will give us more flexibility to complete this work and other work needed to get to a more steady state. Getting this fleet stabilized and operating to its full potential is of vital importance to Amtrak to meet the demand from our customers for this service and Amtrak and Alstom are committed to achieving that. Fiscal year 26 host rail responsible delays per 10,000 train miles or 85 minutes per 10,000 train miles 8.6% favorable year-over-year for state supported services. The services with the lowest delays per 10,000 train miles were the Pennsylvanian, Piedmont, and Capitol Corridor. For long distance services, the services with the lowest delays were the Empire Builder, California Zephyr, and Silver Meteor. And as you can see, our customer train consists fulfillment continues to hover around the 91% for the same reasons. The Venture or Amfleet coaches missing or replaced, Viewliner or Superliner sleepers missing or replaced, and of course missing Superliner, coach or lounge. Again, indications of our capacity constraints. At this time, I'll ask Eliot to join us back up here and we'll field any questions regarding commercial or ops.

Elaine Clegg: Gery. Uh the on-time performance on the long distance system is certainly something that's great to see. Uh folks in my region of the country have been commenting on it, um being able to really count on the Zephyr in particular. Um having said that, a couple of the long-distance trains are still um suffering from from lower on-time performance. Have we identified what's changed in uh the ones that are performing that might be able to impact better performance on the ones that still aren't?

Gery Williams: Yeah. Without getting too much into specifics, I mean, the the the biggest I will say if you look at probably the roads that have that either continue to do the best or have improved the most, CPKC and NS, it's just a very strong partnership and they're really paying attention and making sure that that the uh train our trains get preference. Um, not to mention, it's not to say that at times there's not some issues coming from the freight world myself. I understand things get uh at times beyond their control. Uh, weather and things like that are impacting, but but uh I think that uh especially watching what our partners on the NS have done over the last year or so. It's just a matter of really paying attention to what the issues are, good communication and partnership and uh and then if there's uh capacity issues, addressing those through the proper processes in terms of grants and things like that.

Elaine Clegg: Thank you. So, I guess I'm hearing um part of our job is to make sure that we build those uh same kinds of partnerships with all of our long-distance partners, all of our host partners so that we can see that improvement on other lines.

Gery Williams: Yes, exactly.

Elaine Clegg: Thank you.

Gery Williams: Okay, I'll introduce Laura Mason.

Laura Mason: [clears throat] Thank you, Gery. [cough] Thank you, Gery, and thank you, Eliot. I'm going to give an update now on our capital delivery uh major projects. Uh this first chart here uh just shows the capital spend within capital delivery. We do represent the bulk of the capital program within uh the company, but uh while Costin touched on the high levels, I did want to give a little more detail. I want to start by acknowledging it's been a tough first quarter this year. Um within capital delivery we are 21% or $231 million underspent meaning behind plan for the year. Uh this performance is really driven by 12 key projects. Um and when I look into kind of the categorization of why they are challenged and under spending uh there's three main categories that stand out. 45% of this about $103 million is true project delay. These are projects that are facing different headwinds, construction delays or delays in delivery of new fleet that we are actively seeking to mitigate to recover schedule and make sure that we hold our overall budgets and overall delivery of these assets into operation. About 35% of this underrun or $82 million actually relates to resequencing of the work or accounting treatment of it. So, it's related to the timing of when we recognize these costs, not so much the work itself. The work on those projects generally remains on schedule and on plan, but we have some work to do to make sure our plan is updated to reflect uh that resequencing. And then finally 20% or so uh with about $47 million represents projects or programs that have challenges with alignment with key partners be that the FRA um our partners local partners and some utility flow down issues that are delaying work that we had planned for this year. Two projects in particular I will highlight that are called out on the slide. Uh, as you've already heard about, the delays with the accepting of the NextGen Acela train sets continues to hamper our capital delivery. That's represents about $26 million of the underrun. And then on Hudson Yards concrete casing three, we have a $21 million underrun which was caused by essentially a month delay of um work on the site following a fatality while we completed that investigation to understand how that happened and prevent any future uh loss of life or harm. Shifting to the positive, what has been accomplished. Um, despite those headwinds I just mentioned, we've had some really big projects uh and really big milestones so far this year. East River Tunnel, our biggest outage done under Amtrak to date, uh, is making fantastic project uh, progress. This outage started in June and so far we have nearly completed the uh, concrete bench wall. It's been fully demoed and we will complete pouring back the new bench walls this month. Uh work continues even ahead of schedule on some of the other items including installation of cabling. The running rails have just been delivered for the first installation and we've already started commissioning some systems. Hudson Yards concrete casing 3 in New York. The picture uh second from the left. Uh this is a part this is an enabling project for the Hudson tunnel project. This is protecting the alignment. Uh, as you can see, this is an enormous excavation in the heart of Manhattan, and we've had two concrete pores uh this fiscal year so far, each of which were among the largest pores in New York City history, taking uh nearly every concrete company and concrete truck available in order to make two large continuous pores. Connecticut River Bridge uh has also seen some incredible progress this first quarter. Uh we've had CN our communications and signaling and electric traction systems cut over enabling us to finalize the demolition of the fender and prepare ourselves for the uh construction of the foundations within the river. And we also cut over the new temporary uh bridge operator house which is what you see depicted on the screen. Not shown on the screen though, but uh equally important is that we now have multiple drilled shaft platforms that have been constructed allowing the contractor to work at three different peers concurrently and we have the temporary work trestles completed at the corners enabling us to start work on the abutments and the walls of this important bridge project. The fourth project I'd like to highlight is the Post Road Branch slope stabilization. This was an emergency project that was not initially in our plan. We had a significant slope failure on this uh alignment. And so our project our team mobilized emergency repairs in under six months uh for a $10 million expenditure to restore this track and be able to restore service. A few more highlights I'd like to mention would be the NextGen Acela. Again, this is a double-edged sword. We do have new train sets coming in. We've got nine train sets uh that will be conditionally accepted by the end of this month. We have uh Southampton Yard. This is our facility in Boston. Uh we have them starting work and commencing their first concrete pores on that site. That will be to build the new maintenance facility for the new Airo trains. 30th Street station in Philadelphia, we are nearing uh completion on our south concourse and south tower uh work and that is progressing well. And then finally uh the Airo program itself. We have already taken uh the first train set for delivery and have started testing on the Northeast Corridor. So some of the challenges I alluded to these already. Uh we do have challenges in the readiness um of the NextGen Acela transets to accept them for to accept them conditionally and be able to introduce them into revenue service as well as modifications that are necessary to address reliability issues. Um [clears throat] I'll touch a little bit on the project agreements. We continue to work with some of our partners on some of their funding challenges which have held up some key projects particularly our work in the Zudapaoli region as we work with PennDOT on funding for that project and the B&P tunnel replacement program continues to face challenges uh with flow down issues with utility companies. We are making progress on that vital project uh but also working very closely with the FRA to find a solution here to allow them to continue uh full bore, pardon the pun. Uh looking [clears throat] ahead as Eliot said this may be a tough uh coming quarter for ridership and revenue but it is going to be a great quarter for construction. Uh I am uh pleased to share with you a couple of the upcoming outages. These are really important because this is real work that needs to get built and the completion of these projects will allow us to improve safety, improve reliability, and even improve capacity in some locations on our system. The first outage I'd like to highlight on the Northeast Corridor is one for Penn Station Access. This is a project I've mentioned in past board meetings. It is led by the MTA and we are uh a partner to them, a minority partner on the project. And we are doing a significant outage. We call it a double block meaning we are going through an interlocking taking out two blocks of track making for a very long single track. Why is this outage required? It is critical as we needed to both uh replace a critical bridge that carried both tracks of the railroad as well as continue vital track and systems installation in the other block. Uh it is a significant impact to our operations. We will be reduced to one track through this area uh with train service reductions on the order of about 20% of our Northeast Corridor service. This is a big big impact. Uh further outages will be expected uh roughly mid-May to mid-November. We continue to work with a contractor to minimize those outages and ensure that we are using any track time we take as productively as possible to balance delivering this vital project with ensuring that we can still provide service for the Northeast Corridor. The second outage I'd like to highlight is for Portal North Bridge. This is a part uh again a partner project. Uh New Jersey Transit is the lead sponsor and we are their partner. Uh this will be a four-week cut over from February 13th to March 16th. Uh and this is necessary to cut in the new bridge for service for the first time. Uh the activities in this four-week period are really about connecting, testing, and commissioning uh the first track onto the new bridge. When we come out of this outage, we will have the south or westbound track now operating on the new Portal North Bridge at that high fixed bridge, not needing to open for any maritime traffic. Uh we will have to do this outage, a similar version of it again in the fall to cut over the second track. And at that point, the new bridge will be fully in service. This is a very impactful outage um as it takes one of our busiest uh sections of the corridor down to one track um and it will require major service changes for both New Jersey Transit and Amtrak on the order of a 50% reduction of service for that four-week period. I do want to note we have worked hard to align this outage with the Penn Station access outages to make sure that where we are taking service impacts we are um maximizing the good that can come from those reductions. And so with that I will highlight our third project third outage uh Long Bridge Project which is being led by VPRA. This actually started in January and will continue for five years through 2031 as they rebuild the Long Bridge that takes rail traffic south out of uh the District of Columbia into Virginia and point south. Um the [clears throat] impact here is less severe than what I've just described for Penn Station Access and Portal North Bridge. Uh but it will take much longer. Uh the impacts here for Amtrak are daily outages from 8:15 to 1:00 p.m. 8:15 a.m. excuse me, to 1:00 p.m. on this two-track bridge. And to accommodate that, we have modified our train schedules coming from Virginia to avoid that window. So again, these are impacting our um train service on the Northeast Corridor. And within capital delivery, we're making sure that we are as efficient as possible with our construction and that where possible, we piggyback projects together to get as much work done while the trains have been removed from the schedule. And with that, I will pause to see if there are any questions.

Unknown Speaker: Laura, I have a pair. Um so uh this year 2026 and next year 2027 uh will be uh Amtrak's peak years for capital expenditures over 6 billion and 7 billion um respectively. So first question um do you see at this point uh any problems uh either staffing up internally um or managing our stakeholders to be able to handle that level of workload which Amtrak has never had before?

Laura Mason: Uh thank you for that question. It is a a real challenge. We have focused a lot in the last few years preparing for this moment, preparing for these years, hiring a fantastic team with backgrounds deep in railroad operations, in design and in construction. Uh the challenge will be talent retention, particularly uh if we see the capital program declining. Uh my concern will be to make sure that we hold people and keep them engaged through the end of these projects and not have people leave prematurely as they seek out their next opportunity. Construction is always a business though where you are working as quickly as you can to put yourself out of a job. Uh beyond talent uh one of the key challenges I do see is working with our partners to understand the service impacts as I just described that will we we will experience over the course of the next two years. This construction is necessary. Everybody agreed it was important. We signed up to these agreements. But when you actually get down into the nitty-gritty of the construction, it will take work um and partnership across the corridor as well as with some of our other partners um on state supported service lines in particular to understand how do we get through this construction? How do we build these new facilities to maintain the fleet as well as update our tracks and that will be an ongoing concern that we will actively manage over the next two years.

Unknown Speaker: Great. Thank thank you for that. And then the second question, um, you know, you just we laid out, um, uh, a lot of the new projects that we're kicking off this year. Uh, you've pointed out that an unfortunate byproduct of desirable new products are increased outages. Uh, would it be fair to say that as we ramp up our capital spending this year and next year for at least these next two years that we'll be seeing an increase uh, in outages?

Laura Mason: That is correct. So what we have worked closely with um, a crossfunctional team is to understand what those outages look like. How do we maximize every weekend? Uh I like to say I want to take as much track out of service every weekend as I can to get as much work done as possible. Uh it's been a close partnership with the commercial team as well as with operations to see what we can do to maximize the service we run around these outages so that we can both get work done and move passengers. But we need to do so in a reliable fashion. And so you'll hear a lot of dialogue over these two years about making sure we are um developing outages and service patterns that we can consistently deliver rather than stretching ourselves overpromising and risking underdelivering on that service.

Unknown Speaker: Um and yet there'll be hope for us that beyond 2027 as your capital expenditures go down that outages will decrease uh commeasurably. I hope.

Laura Mason: Yeah, I do see us um complete projects. We expect to actually see improvements as we go in uh on-time performance as well as customer satisfaction. I'll highlight as an example track 22 which was a project here at Washington Union Station where we reactivated a platform that had been out of service for many years. Uh as soon as that platform went into use, we saw improvement in our initial terminal performance uh and OTP on the corridor by virtue of having that additional asset. So with each platform, each interlocking, each asset we renew, we will see improvements in OTP uh and our performance overall. So you will not have to wait till 2029 to feel any benefits.

Unknown Speaker: Thank you.

Paul Nissenbomb: Hey Laura, uh this is Paul Nissenbomb. So we as number of us inspected the uh East River tunnel last month and were really impressed with sort of the amount of work that had been done in a short period of time. It looks like even more progress just in the last [clears throat] month. What accounts for the success of that and can that be replicated? Are there some lessons we can learn from that and apply to other projects?

Laura Mason: Uh thank [clears throat] you for the question. Yes, there are definitely some lessons we can learn. I think that shows that the contractors in this country are ready to build and for the most part know how to do their work. Uh what was really effective at East River Tunnel was bringing the construction team together with the rail operations team to find new solutions. Uh that contractor team proposed a new access point. The shaft that we put in at uh 32nd and Sixth allowed us to really allow the contractor to be much more efficient and allow much greater work progress than had been initially contemplated or planned. So the lessons I take from that is that making sure we're working with our project teams and the railroad operations team to really think bigger about how long will this project last, not just the four-week look ahead and what we need to do next weekend, but how long will this last? How much railroad can I take out of service and how can I physically and electrically isolate them from the main um from the tracks that are in service because the more I can isolate that contractor physically and electrically from the railroad operations the more work they can do the less force account we need to protect them and the more productive everyone can be. So we are definitely taking those lessons to look even on other projects where we might not have the benefit of tunnel walls around us. How can we set up barriers or consider different ways to physically and electrically isolate the project work from rail operations? All right, any other questions? All right, with no further questions, I will turn it over to Roger Harris for closing remarks.

Roger Harris: Thank you, Laura. And uh thank you to the executive team for updates today. After uh listening to the updates they gave us, I have to say that um it's really gratifying after two record-breaking years of FY 2024 and 2025 to see such incredible results in the first quarter of FY26. Thinking a minute about what Eliott had to say that every month of this year so far has been a record-breaking month for both revenue and ridership. So November highest ever revenue month in Amtrak history and yet October and December also beat all previous months as well. Uh and like same for ridership. So October, best ridership month ever, and yet November and December also beat all previous months prior to FY26. So really, really strong start to the year. Um Gery talked about on-time performance. Um absent uh some challenges with teething pains with our new fleet, we still managed to turn in significantly better on-time performance this year versus last year. Hats off to the operations team. And uh to give a little bit more color to what Eliot said about customer satisfaction, uh when customers are on time, which they increasingly are, they tell us 93% of the time that they're happy uh or favorably impressed with the encounters they have with our station employees, our onboard service employees, and our communications about the status of their trains. And all of those scores improved year-over-year. And what's better, our customers are noticing all of the money that we're investing in our better Wi-Fi systems with those scores up two points year-over-year. So, really happy to see that as well. Uh, turning to Laura's update, um, we have some really impressive things coming in FY26. So, some really big milestones that you'll be seeing. First one is the continued rollout of the Next Generation Acela that uh, both Gery and Laura talked about. We will see the retirement of all the legacy Acelas in FY26. So that's a big milestone. We'll also see the rollout of the Airo train sets that Laura mentioned. They will be introduced in the Pacific Northwest uh this summer. Um and uh they'll be showing up on the Northeast Regionals on the Northeast Corridor in FY 2027. So, we still have a little bit more time to wait for that, but we'll certainly see them in service in this coming year. In terms of the infrastructure, Laura talked about the Portal North Bridge, and it's going to be so rewarding to get that first track into service in just a matter of a few weeks. As she said, uh once we get that first track into service, we won't have to open the bridge for um for maritime traffic in one direction. Uh in just a few weeks. So really excited about that. Um East River Tunnel will be reopening that tube that you saw, the first tube that we are rebuilding. We're going to be reopening it in July of this year. Uh another big milestone coming up this year. And then late in the year, we're going to be opening um our new Seattle train maintenance facility, which will support our entire Airo fleet in the Pacific Northwest. And that's very exciting because it really will be a revolutionary change in terms of the uh technology and techniques that we use to maintain our train fleet. Finally, in FY 2026, in just a few months, we're really looking forward to welcoming um and taking care of customers from all over the US and all over the world for the FIFA World Cup, which will be held throughout North America. And of course the America 250 celebration, the birthday celebration of the United States. I would like to thank our board for their support, our employees for their tireless work, much of which was on display in the past week with the uh very difficult weather conditions across the country. I'd like to thank our customers for giving them for giving us their business, their loyalty, and sometimes their patience. And I'd like to thank the American taxpayer for entrusting us with the funds needed to make all of this possible. With that, I would like to thank everybody for attending today's public meeting. And uh I will close the meeting.