National Railroad Passenger Corporation Grants — CFDA 20.315

What $38.72 billion on 19 awards means

Assistance listing 20.315 is titled NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION GRANTS in the USAspending.gov files this site indexes. The obligation total on that code is $38,722,161,153.58. An obligation is a recorded federal commitment on an award. It is not an outlay. Treating $38,722,161,153.58 as operating cash already spent mixes two series. SpendingVault keeps the label as obligations.

19 awards sit under that dollar book. Dividing $38,722,161,153.58 by 19 produces a mean near $2.04 billion per award record. That quotient is derived from the two packet totals. It is not a typical ticket subsidy and not a cost per train-mile. This listing’s dollars sit on a small number of large assistance actions to a single organizational recipient, which is why 19 records can carry $38,722,161,153.58.

The extract lists 1 recipient and 1 state. Those concentration facts belong next to the dollar total. They are file statistics, not a claim that passenger rail exists in only one jurisdiction.

One recipient, one state, 19 awards

CFDA 20.315 lists 1 recipient, 1 state, and 19 awards. Recipient count is how many organizational recipients the assistance extract stores. For this listing, that count is 1. It is not a census of riders and not a count of stations. State count of 1 is place-of-performance coding in the USAspending state field, not a route map.

Because dollars are concentrated, moving any of the 19 awards would move a noticeable share of $38,722,161,153.58, and all of those rows still tag the same recipient in this extract. Cite the 1-recipient and 1-state structure explicitly when the Amtrak-grants figure is reused so readers do not expect a 50-state table.

Obligations versus railroad outlays

USAspending.gov publishes obligations on assistance awards. The $38,722,161,153.58 figure for CFDA 20.315 can include multi-year grant commitments that will disburse later. FRA grant reports, Amtrak monthly performance reports, and a single fiscal year’s passenger-rail appropriation are different publications. This page does not translate the obligation total into those series.

If a number you expected is missing—especially a multi-state geography table—the cause here is the 1-state count in the packet, not a missing paragraph. Start from the obligation definition, then open the 20.315 program page. Do not stretch 19 awards or 1 recipient into a ridership census.

What the 20.315 tables omit

The National Railroad Passenger Corporation Grants hub lists award-backed obligations from USAspending.gov. It is not a timetable, not an on-time-performance file, and not a capital-project punch list. Series that never appear as assistance awards will not show up in the $38,722,161,153.58. That omission is definitional rather than a gap in the 19 award rows.

With 1 state in the extract, there is little place-of-performance split to read. Rankings that need a 50-state map should look at other listings; this page will not invent cells. The 1-recipient structure is the concentration fact, not a quality score.

How to cite CFDA 20.315

A complete citation is $38,722,161,153.58 in obligations for CFDA 20.315, covering 19 awards, 1 recipient, and 1 state, drawn from USAspending.gov assistance awards on SpendingVault. Name the series as obligations. If the question is concentration rather than dollars, lead with 1 recipient and 19 awards, then the dollar total.

Start with the National Railroad Passenger Corporation Grants program page, then the all-programs index. Agency pages show awarding organizations; they do not replace this listing’s obligation total. Nothing here is a service-planning recommendation.

A worked reading of the 20.315 extract

Start from the four packet facts: $38,722,161,153.58, 19 awards, 1 recipient, and 1 state under CFDA 20.315. The mean near $2.04 billion is a quotient from 19 records, not a cost per train-mile. If a later USAspending.gov file adds grant actions, 19 can rise while the 1-recipient count stays put. If a large capital grant posts, $38,722,161,153.58 can jump without adding states. The 1-state field is coding, not a route map.

Nothing in the extract splits operating grants from capital grants, or Northeast Corridor from national network. Those cuts live in FRA and Amtrak publications. Treat CFDA 20.315 as an assistance-listing tag on USAspending.gov award files. Open the National Railroad Passenger Corporation Grants program page, then the all-programs index, for a same-series ranking. Cite 19 awards, 1 recipient, and 1 state next to the dollars so concentration is the story.

Questions

How much is obligated under National Railroad Passenger Corporation Grants?

USAspending.gov assistance awards indexed on SpendingVault show $38,722,161,153.58 in obligations for CFDA 20.315. That sum is an obligation total, not a Treasury outlay total and not a count of train-miles. The same extract lists 19 awards, 1 recipient, and 1 state.

Why does CFDA 20.315 show only 1 recipient?

The indexed recipient count is 1. This listing’s dollars sit on assistance actions stored against a single organizational recipient in the USAspending.gov extract, which is why $38,722,161,153.58 can coexist with 19 awards and 1 recipient. The 1 figure is a file statistic, not a ridership count.

Why does CFDA 20.315 show only 1 state?

The extract’s state count for this listing is 1. That is place-of-performance coding in the USAspending.gov assistance roll-up, not a claim that passenger rail operates in one jurisdiction. The $38,722,161,153.58 total still sits on 19 awards and 1 recipient. This page does not invent a 50-state table.

Are these Amtrak grant figures outlays or obligations?

They are obligations. An obligation is a legal commitment on an award. An outlay is cash leaving the Treasury. CFDA 20.315’s $38,722,161,153.58 headline is built from USAspending.gov assistance obligation amounts covering 19 awards, not from a cash-outlay series. Cite CFDA 20.315 with the obligation total from USAspending.gov assistance awards, not an outlay series.