As stated in another comment (which links to a transcript by the author with ~two dozen cited sources), this isn't staff on the train, but calculated by breakin

As stated in another comment (which links to a transcript by the author with ~two dozen cited sources), this isn't staff on the train, but calculated by breaking down Amtrak's headcount of 20K people, and amortizing it over the number of annual trips and passengers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16179794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16179794 Result is ~1 employee per 4 passengers per trip. The author has some other really interesting (with cited sources) videos about many other transit topics, including how hub-and-spoke/direct played out in the aircraft marketplace, how budget airlines have such great profit margins, long haul aircraft economics, airline schedule methodology, etc.