Stations whose ridership has plummeted since the start of Amtrak

[andegold]

I'll throw this in: Princeton Junction. I don't know what kind of service or ridership there was pre-Amtrak but in the Amtrak era the remnants of the Clockers still stopped there until around 2005. While they were running PJC was a top ten station. Afterwards the ridership was all shifted to NJT where it belonged anyway. How did the PRR account for ridership before their demise? Did it just track ridership by station/specific train or did it break it down into categories of long distance and commuter that could be compared to today?

[Gilbert B Norman]

Indianapolis Union Station....once served by NYC, PRR many trains a day....now down to one.

Mr. Morris, down to .4286 a day, vice one.

[Arborwayfan]

Indy is kind of sad that way. And it's too bad that if it had to be left with just one route in 1979, the route it was left with was a slow, multi-host route between Chicago, Cincinnati, and pts east instead of a fast, one-host route between St. Louis, Columbus, and pts east. (Not that I'm biased here in Terre Haute. ) So Indy has a decent station right on the edge of a lively downtown and steps from a brand-new stadium etc etc good place to be without a car, that could be really useful to visitors and to Indy, but isn't.

[gokeefe]

I think Cincinnati and Indianapolis are the walk off winners in this thread. Ohio & Indiana: The dark heart of the Penn Central strikes again ...

[Tadman]

Agreed. Indiana and Ohio had almost as much trackage and half the population of New York or Pennsylvania. PC really let that trackage go, and Conrail disposed of as much as possible under the assumption there was no potential for more traffic ever.

[CarterB]

Indianapolis used to be a really big rail hub. NYC, PRR, Monon, B&O, Nickle Plate. Even had set off pullman cars.

[Station Aficionado]

Well, this is a remarkably fact-free thread, at least free of any relevant facts. If the topic is stations where ridership has “plummeted “ (query: what is the definition of plummeted?) since Amtrak began, one of the base facts you need is the ridership numbers from before Amtrak. I haven’t seen any response here listing any such numbers. I’ve spent some time on the internet over the years trying to find such numbers—no luck. Did the freight roads keep such numbers? Are they buried in some musty corporate archives? Who knows? To address the issue, you need to those numbers and compare them to ridership under Amtrak.

In place of such facts, we have discussion of service frequencies. If you’re essentially saying that frequencies have declined at some stations, that’s certainly true. But that’s not quite the same thing as declining ridership. I’d posit the relevant query as ridership for a given level of service. Today, more frequencies usually result in geometric growth in ridership. But was that true before Amtrak. For instance, there were more trains serving Indianapolis before Amtrak than after. But everything I’ve ever read suggests that most of those trains were nearly empty.

So what does that really leave us with in terms of the putative topic of this thread? Not much beyond more paeans (with subtle or not so subtle anti-Amtrak leanings) to the good old days, when we (or our grandparents) had more trains to choose from in some places.

[Tadman]

Amtrak has been around long enough that I would be just as interested to discuss ridership dynamics between 70's and today. Lots of cities have significantly changed.

[gokeefe]

That was my take on this thread as well. Trend from 1971 to today. Also strongly agree with Tad, the city markets have changed dramatically.

Who would have ever imagined 160K+/year from Portland, ME???

[NRGeep]

So what does that really leave us with in terms of the putative topic of this thread? Not much beyond more paeans (with subtle or not so subtle anti-Amtrak leanings) to the good old days, when we (or our grandparents) had more trains to choose from in some places.

Bingo. The "privatize is always best" mantra seems to permeate with some well intentioned folks...and when it's private/public, well, it's surprising that Amtrak hasn't suffered the same fate as the Congressionally mandated death by 10,000 cuts poison pill (funding pensions for the next 75 years etc) which the USPS has somehow survived (so far).

[Tadman]

The USPS is constitutionally mandated, it would be very hard to cut it. Much harder than Amtrak, which has no such mandate.

But UPS and Fedex have taken a huge chunk of their business since 1980, and REA took a huge chunk of their business before.

I predict if Brightline ever gets going all the way to Orlando, they have far higher ridership than the Silvers, even train-for-train.

[ryanch]

So what does that really leave us with in terms of the putative topic of this thread? Not much beyond more paeans (with subtle or not so subtle anti-Amtrak leanings) to the good old days, when we (or our grandparents) had more trains to choose from in some places.

Bingo. The "privatize is always best" mantra seems to permeate with some well intentioned folks...and when it's private/public, well, it's surprising that Amtrak hasn't suffered the same fate as the Congressionally mandated death by 10,000 cuts poison pill (funding pensions for the next 75 years etc) which the USPS has somehow survived (so far).

Are heritage pensions a significant part of the Amtrak subsidy these days? How much?

[andrewjw]

I'll throw this in: Princeton Junction. I don't know what kind of service or ridership there was pre-Amtrak but in the Amtrak era the remnants of the Clockers still stopped there until around 2005. While they were running PJC was a top ten station. Afterwards the ridership was all shifted to NJT where it belonged anyway. How did the PRR account for ridership before their demise? Did it just track ridership by station/specific train or did it break it down into categories of long distance and commuter that could be compared to today?

Sure, there might be fewer Amtrak passengers at PJC now then there were on A-Day, but the thread is titled "stations whose ridership has plummeted" not "stations whose Amtrak ridership is plummeted". If you want to compare apples to apples, compare the A-Day -1 PRR ridership with Amtrak + NJT, I'd be shocked if the ridership is less than several times what it was, given the area growth.

[gokeefe]

Are heritage pensions a significant part of the Amtrak subsidy these days? How much?

Very unlikely given that the industry has the Railroad Retirement Board.

[ExCon90]

But Railroad Retirement is a substitute for (actually the predecessor of) Social Security--it's not the counterpart of a company pension. Individual railroads had, and have, their own pension plans separate from Railroad Retirement. I never knew whether Amtrak had a company pension plan, but I think they would almost have to have one.