Amtrak Success Stories

David Benton wrote:I think we need to vclear up what "making an operating profit " means on Amtrak . In this case i assume it means , after adding in the state subsidy , the train covered its direct operating costs .
Quite different from a profit in the ordinary sense of the word .
not to say it is good to see trains covering their costs , but we are not talking about Amtrak becoming profitable overall in your wildest dreams .

Nor should we, not when Amtrak's goals are defined the way they are. Since Amtrak is a political entity it must serve many masters and a budget is only one of them.

FFolz wrote:

David Benton wrote:I think we need to vclear up what "making an operating profit " means on Amtrak . In this case i assume it means , after adding in the state subsidy , the train covered its direct operating costs .
Quite different from a profit in the ordinary sense of the word .
not to say it is good to see trains covering their costs , but we are not talking about Amtrak becoming profitable overall in your wildest dreams .

Nor should we, not when Amtrak's goals are defined the way they are. Since Amtrak is a political entity it must serve many masters and a budget is only one of them.

It's important to distinguish cause from effect. Amtrak is a political entity because it's dependent on government funding and not the other way around. More important, though, Amtrak is a creation of the federal government but relies in many cases on state governments. There's no mandate from Washington that forces states to do their part. They are free to withdraw at which time it will matter greatly what "operating profit" really means.

Amtrak's January Monthly Performance Report should be out today. Attempts to post it on line yesterday were unsuccessful. I expect that long distance ridership was adversely affected by the snow and cold weather disruptions to the Empire Builder and California Zephyr during the month.

Ahead of the January report, Amtrak notes that ridership on long distance routes is up 13% over the last 3 years and on-time performance has improved from 30% to 75% over the same period. The press release is at http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... Strong.pdf

Virginia hopes to extend the Lynchburg train to Roanoke by 2015, Meredith Richards said in a presentation on March 6 in Richmond. She is head of Virginians for High Speed Rail and founder of the Piedmont Rail Coalition. She was addressing the annual meeting of the Virginia Assn. of Railway Patrons.

In January, cold weather and snow shut down the Empire Builder and California Zephyr for a time, but the rest of Amtrak’s long distance network did rather well. Amtrak’s January Monthly Performance Report is out and many routes had double-digit passenger growth.
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... onthly.pdf

City of New Orleans

The number of passengers on the City of New Orleans between Chicago and the Big Easy increased by 26% in January compared with a year earlier. The number of passengers paying for sleeping quarters increased by 33%.

Texas Eagle/Lincoln Service/River Runner

Also southbound from Chicago, the number of passengers on the Texas Eagle increased by 22% while sleeper sales increased 21%. Over the shorter Chicago-St. Louis segment, ridership grew 15% from January of last year. West of St. Louis, the River Runner to Kansas City had 19% more passengers in January than in 2009.

Coast Starlight/Cascades

On the west coast, ridership on the Cascades grew 25%. That was before the February Olympics in Vancouver. A new platform was completed at Stanwood in November but the stop is only handling about 9 boardings per day. The state of Oregon announced an order of two additional Talgo train sets to increase the frequency of trips between Portland and Seattle from four to six round trips.

Continuing to the south, ridership on the Coast Starlight grew by 19% and sleeper demand grew by 21%. The Coast Starlight is now Amtrak’s most dependable long distance train with an on-time performance record of 92%. The Coast Starlight shines compared to the San Joaquin corridor which had 8% more riders than last year and the Capitol Corridor which had 8% fewer. The California High-Speed Rail Authority published an eight-page response defending their ridership model, which forecasts that 41 million people will ride the L.A.–San Francisco line by 2030. The Authority was accused of exaggerating projected ridership and going through a flawed peer-review process. http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-new ... ck_check=1 They also issued an addendum to the Environmental Impact Statement defending the choice of a route through the Pacheco Pass instead of the Altamont Pass. http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-03-05/b ... -alignment

Sunset Limited

The Sunset Limited had 19% more riders in January compared with a year ago. Sleeping cars handled 21% more passengers. A final decision will be made later this year to extend the Texas Eagle from San Antonio to Los Angeles and provide connecting service to New Orleans. “The change would cut seven hours from the schedule to the west coast, provide daylight service to major cities along the route, increase ridership by more than 100,000 passengers, and improve financial performance.”
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... Strong.pdf

Lake Shore Limited

Ridership on the Lake Shore Limited increased by 18% in January compared to January 2009. Dining car service was restored in mid-December. The train was a topic at Amtrak’s Town Hall in Chicago on Saturday where one commenter raised the possibility of splitting the train in Ohio instead of Albany and routing the New York City train through Pittsburgh.

Virginia service

The new state of Virginia service between Lynchburg and Washington which began in October continues to surpass expectations. January ridership was 162% higher than forecast. To the east, the Virginia Commonwealth Transportation Board chose a new 90 mph route to Norfolk along the U.S. 460 corridor south of the James River. More work remains to be done on the Norfolk route proposal including chosing a route through or around Petersburg and breaking up the $2.6 billion project into useful segments.

Silver service

The number of passengers on the Silver Star between New York and Miami increased by 12% in December while its sister train, the Silver Meteor, had 16% more passengers.

As the economy continues to improve--at least for those with jobs or wealth who do almost all of the traveling--we can expect these success stories to continue.

In February, record snowfall buried Washington D.C. and shut down most government offices for a week. Still, Amtrak recorded a five percent increase in passenger volume over 2009. Amtrak’s February Monthly Performance Report is out and many routes had double digit growth. February typically has the least number of passengers of any month of the year. Higher numbers in February raises expectations for the rest of the year. http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... onthly.pdf

Northwest

While the snow fell heavily on the east coast, the Pacific northwest got practically none. Still, Vancouver successfully hosted the 21st Olympic Winter Games and was served by two daily Amtrak trains. Ridership on the entire Cascades route grew by 34% over February 2009. On Saturday, March 13th, the National Association of Railroad Passengers – Northwest held a their spring conference a the Red Lion Hotel in Seattle.
A report and videos can be found at http://railfunny.blogspot.com/2010/03/2 ... pring.html .

Meanwhile, the Empire Builder continued to post strong results, with passenger demand up 13% and sleeper sales up by 11%.

California

Continuing to the south, ridership on the Coast Starlight grew by 12% and sleeper demand grew by 16%. The San Joaquin corridor continued its post-recession recovery with 14% passenger growth. California’s High-Speed Rail Authority is having difficulty coordinating with Caltrain and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Caltrain is near to approving a plan to electrify the system, but doesn’t know if the electrification will be compatible with the California High-Speed Rail trains. http://www.examiner.com/x-35485-SF-Tran ... tal-Report
Art Leahy, chief executive of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, was particularly critical of the High Speed Rail Authority’s unwillingness to share tracks between LA and Anaheim. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 2823.story

Turning easterly, the Sunset Limited had 33% more riders than last February and 14% more in the sleeper cars.

City of New Orleans

The Big Easy continues to recover from hurricane Katrina and hosted the nation’s Mardi Gras party again in February. The Ash Wednesday train north from New Orleans was sold out as ridership for the month on the City of New Orleans grew by 27% in February compared with a year earlier. The number of passengers paying for sleeping quarters increased by 19%.

Midwest

The Texas Eagle, between Chicago and San Antonio had 15% more passengers. Over the shorter Chicago-St. Louis segment, ridership grew 13% from February of last year. West of St. Louis, the River Runner to Kansas City had 28% more passengers in February than in 2009. In Indiana, the Hoosier State had 16% more passengers as on-time performance in FY 2010 nearly doubled to 75%.

Lake Shore Limited

Ridership on the Lake Shore Limited increased by 22% in February compared to February 2009. Sleeper sales were up by an astounding 39%. Some of that increase was driven by people wanting to head east from Chicago who were not able to get on the Cardinal or Capitol Ltd. during the week when 27 inches of snow fell on Maryland and Virginia.

New York/New England

Service in upstate New York and the Connecticut River valley was strong in February. Ridership west of Albany to Niagara Falls and Toronto was up by 18%. North of Albany to Montreal, ridership rose by 29%. The number of passengers on all three trains between the US and Canada benefited as Canada hosted the Olympics. The Canadian dollar has strengthened against the US dollar so that its now nearly equal in value.

The number of passengers on the Vermonter was 22% more than February of last year and the number between New Haven and Springfield, MA grew by 14%.

On the Pennsylvanian, ridership grew by 14% as it was often the only train out of Pittsburgh.

AMTRAK RIDERSHIP ON RECORD-BREAKING PACE

Ridership for the first 6 months of FY 2010 is 4.3% higher over FY 2009 and 100,000 riders higher than FY 2008 (when the previous record was set).

Comparing March 2010 to March 2009, every train shows an ridership increase: The NEC is +13.3%, the State Supported routes are +12.7% and the LDs are +16.0%.

The Illinois number are astonishing. The Lincoln service, which before expansion was carrying about 20,000/month, was at 50,000 this March. If the all-modes travel figure from this study are still remotely correct:
http://www2.dot.state.oh.us/ohiorail/Oh ... alysis.pdf

... then Amtrak is now carrying double the bus and about 40% of air traffic in the corridor. At the time that survey was completed, the bus carried more than Amtrak, and planes had 6 times what either of them carried.

And all this is BEFORE some significant speed upgrades come to this corridor. (Though some have already been made). Medium high speed rail could end air travel here, or make it a small footnote. Meanwhile, the Hiawathas are up nicely too. I wonder how many Milwaukeeites have realized the ease of transfer, given frequency of service. This is starting to look interesting, folks.

Does anyone know whether revenues saw a similar increase? A 14% increase in passengers is great. If we had a 14% increase in revenues, while I'm not ready to talk profitability, it's starting to look brighter at the far end of the tunnel.

Amtrak's April monthly performance report is out and reveals more outstanding results for America's passenger railroad. Ridership on the system nationally was up 8 percent over April of last year and revenues were up 13%. The number of first class passengers reserving sleepers increased by 15%.

New Wi-Fi internet service on the Acela trains led to an increase in ridership of 10 percent despite flooding in New England which resulted in several days of service cancellations between New Haven and Boston. Almost 40% of Acela riders logged on to the wireless service. Amtrak announced this week that because of the popularity of the service, it will continue to be offered without charge on the Acela trains and they will try to increase bandwidth to allow for downloading video, which is currently blocked. Amtrak plans to expand Wi-Fi service to all of their trains, beginning in California. Bloomberg News reports that the 10% increase in Acela ridership continued into May.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-0 ... ate2-.html

Elsewhere in the northeast, ridership on the New Haven to Springfield corridor was up 18 percent and revenues were up 21 percent. Connecticut has received a $40 million grant to construct 11 miles of second track near Windsor to allow for more trains on the New Haven to Springfield segment. They also hope to start commuter service between Hartford and New Haven, possibly as early as 2014.

Ridership on the Vermonter was up 14 percent. Massachusetts has received $70 million and Vermont will get $50 million to re-route the Vermonter north of Springfield. The new route along the Connecticut River will reduce the distance by 11 miles and reduce the travel time by 25 minutes. Construction is expected to take about 2 years.

In upstate New York, ridership between Albany and Niagara Falls increased by 12 percent. A new deal with CSX has been announced to allow for installation of a third track which will be rated at 110 mph. It's really no change from the previous deal. In order to allow for 110 mph operation, the new passenger track will have to be constructed 30 feet away from the existing freight track. Unfortunately, that won't fit in most sections of the existing CSX right-of-way. That means that the state will either have to acquire new right-of-way or slow the trains down to 90 mph.

Ridership on the Adirondack between New York City and Montreal increased by 16%. Proposed improvements to the Adirondack line include 2.27 miles of third track at Ballston Spa.

In the southeast, the Washington-Lynchburg train continues to outperform expectations, with April ridership 190% above projections. In preparation for new service between Washington and Richmond, CSX spent the Memorial Day weekend sliding a new bridge span into place in Alexandria. See how they did it at http://alexandriava.gov/uploadedFiles/N ... 5Nov09.pdf .

In North Carolina, ridership on the Piedmont grew by 26% and revenue was up by 34% over April of 2009. For the Carolinian, ridership grew by 49% and revenue was up by 76%. North Carolina is starting a second Piedmont train today. That provides three daily trains between Raleigh and Charlotte.

Ridership on the Palmetto grew by 8%, and revenues grew by 48% as more seats were sold from higher fare buckets. The state of North Carolina has applied for federal funds to study the possibility of running service from Raleigh to Wilmington with stops in Fayetteville and Goldsboro. http://www.wral.com/traffic/story/7670111/

In the midwest, ridership between Chicago and St. Louis grew by 19 percent. Revenues for that segment were up 31%. Over the longer Texas Eagle route, ridership grew by 14% generally and the number of first class passengers with sleepers reserved increased by 12%. The combination of increases in both coach and first class led to an increase in revenue for the Eagle of 19%. The Union Pacific is closing one of the last manually operated switching towers in Illinois at Ridgely in Springfield as the manual switch becomes automated and controlled by UP headquarters in Omaha. http://www.sj-r.com/carousel/x43866324/ ... June?img=1 With the closing of the tower, it may be possible to increase the speed from 10 mph to 40 mph for the 2.1 miles between Lawrence Avenue and Ridgely.

From St. Louis to Kansas City, the number of passengers increased by 16 percent and revenues were up by 32 percent. The state of Kansas has now joined the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Compact.
http://governor.ks.gov/media-room/45-pr ... signatures

In Michigan, ridership was up strongly on all trains. The Wolverine between Chicago and Detroit had 17% more passengers and a 27% increase in revenue. The Blue Water to Port Huron had 19% more passengers and a 22% increase in revenue while the Pere Marquette had 13% more passengers and 22% more revenue than April of last year. PBS did a long documentary on plans to bring back light rail service to Detroit. You can view it at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/blueprintameric ... video/939/ .

In Indiana, ridership on the Hoosier State was up by 13% and revenue was up by 27%. The new schedule, effective since May 10th, has the morning train leaving Indianapolis half an hour earlier, at 6:00 am.

Hiawatha service to Milwaukee saw 10% more passengers in April. Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle announced that the proposed Hiawatha service extension would run to a new station in downtown Madison rather than the Dane County airport. http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/artic ... icle=29400

Down in Oklahoma, the Heartland Flyer is now running on biodiesel made from beef fat. Ridership was up 14%. It's not yet clear whether the smell will increase food sales in the cafe car.

In the Pacific northwest, ridership on the Cascades trains was up by 16 percent and revenues were up by 41 percent. Most Cascades trains were sold out on Friday and Monday this Memorial Day weekend.

Among long distance trains, the Empire Builder leads the pack. Ridership in April was up 24% over last year and revenues were up by 34%. 42 percent more passengers decided to reserve sleepers for the long journey. Stimulus money is being spent to rebuild 6 wrecked sleepers for this route, but none have been competed yet.

The thrice-weekly Sunset Limited had an increase in ridership of 21%, sold 47% more sleepers than last year and had an increase in revenues of 32 percent. On April 12th, Amtrak made available one hundred 3-minute podcasts covering points of interest along the Sunset Limited route.

The Lake Shore Limited had an increase in ridership of 14% and revenue increased by 20%. The state of Pennsylvania applied for a $1.6 million planning grant to study the possibility of increasing service between Cleveland and Buffalo. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ... 83244.html

The number of passengers taking the City of New Orleans increased by 20% and revenue was up by 21%.

Between Chicago and California, ridership on the California Zephyr was up 15 percent and sleeper sales were up 25% leading to a 21% increase in revenue. California received $6.2 million to relocate the freight tracks, install new passenger rail tracks and modernize the historic station at I and Fifth streets in Sacramento. http://www.modbee.com/2010/06/01/118999 ... z0pzlytcVb

On the Southwest Chief, ridership was up by 11 percent and sleeper sales were up by 26 percent leading to a 15 percent increase in revenue. The schedule was tweaked in May to arrange for the train to arrive 10 minutes earlier in Chicago.

Sounds very good. Do you have any year-to-date figures? A single month can be skewed by such things as where a holiday falls, etc. I know this is a "good news" thread, but what were the low performers, since given a ridership increase of 8%, many routes must have held about steady or even fallen to balance out the large increases you've cited. Despite some caveats, very good numbers for Amtrak.

Piedmont, Lincoln Service and Empire Builder revenues were all up by more than 30% (as were the Missouri River Runners and the Sunset Ltd., but those start from a lower performance against costs). Were these weird monthly blips? Was this budgeted? (ie, expected?) It seems like a sustained 30% revenue increase on the Lincoln Service would have a pretty substantial impact on Illinois's subsidy. Likewise, with the Empire Builder, a 30% increase in revenue, sustained, would suggest self-sufficiency might be on the horizon - an LD train meeting it's costs.

Here in Illinois, it's a pity that Blagojevich isn't governor any more. Well ... actually, I have very few regrets that he's not governor anymore. But if he were, I think he'd be trumpeting the success of his expansion initiative. With him gone, there isn't a prominent figure to claim responsibility, so it won't get as much attention.

ne plus ultra wrote:Sounds very good. Do you have any year-to-date figures? A single month can be skewed by such things as where a holiday falls, etc. I know this is a "good news" thread, but what were the low performers, since given a ridership increase of 8%, many routes must have held about steady or even fallen to balance out the large increases you've cited. Despite some caveats, very good numbers for Amtrak.

The year to date and monthly ridership numbers are available in the Amtrak monthly reports which can be found down the Amtrak Reports & Documents webpage at http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentSe ... 7608345018. Go to around page 25 of the April report.

Yes, there are some weaknesses in the ridership numbers for the fiscal year so far. The California corridor services
Capital Corridor: down 5.2% for Oct-Apt to 889k total
Surfliner: modest increase of 1% for Oct-Apr for 1,437k total
San Joaquin: up 5.6% for Oct-Apr for 549k total.
Presumably the major reason for the drop in the Capital corridor and the comparatively flat growth for the Surfliner is the state of the California economy.

In the Mid-West, for the 7 month period: the Pere Marquette is down -3.7%, the Wolverine is flat at +0.4%, Chicago-Carbondale is down -1.2%, Chicago-Quincy flat at +0.9%. But all of these corridors saw nice jumps in March & April offsetting earlier declines. Might be due to a combination of the economy starting to rebound and greater public awareness of the Amtrak option in the wake of the publicity for the HSR stimulus grants to the Chicago-St. Louis, -Madison, -Detroit corridors.

For the LD trains, the two with the falling ridership are the Cardinal, down -6.7%, and the Capital Limited, basically flat at -0.3% for the 7 month period. The Capital Limited was up 9.5% for April, but the Cardinal was down -1.2%. The AutoTrain was down -2.7% for April, but up 6.7% for Oct-Apr and up 25.1% in March, so figure Easter and when people decided to head north for Spring causes the AT numbers to bounce up or down. Amtrak does need to figure out how to get the Cardinal numbers up. Switch to 7 day service, improve the available service, schedule changes, moving the endpoint to St. Louis, whatever.

Overall, however, the ridership and revenue numbers are pretty good. Someone can extrapolate, but looks like Amtrak will exceed 29 million passengers for the year - which will help in getting funding for next year.

It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between trains that had a large ridership increase , and trains that were "in the news" . Wether it be for getting high speed grants , or running on biodiesel , it seems to me that Amtrak has such a low profile outside the NEC , that any publicity would increase inquiries at least .
I am curious as to why Pennsyvalia would fund a study into an increased service between Buffalo and Cleveland . i know it cuts across the top of penn , serving one station , but shouldnt the other 2 states fund it ???

David Benton wrote:It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between trains that had a large ridership increase , and trains that were "in the news" . Wether it be for getting high speed grants , or running on biodiesel , it seems to me that Amtrak has such a low profile outside the NEC , that any publicity would increase inquiries at least .
I am curious as to why Pennsyvalia would fund a study into an increased service between Buffalo and Cleveland . i know it cuts across the top of penn , serving one station , but shouldnt the other 2 states fund it ???

Mr. Benton, if Pennsylvania were responsible for paying the whole cost of the study, it probably wouldn't happen. But with the grant application, Pennsylvania gets a $2,000,000 study done for $400,000 in state funds.

The idea is intriguing, because in could involve extending the Chicago-Cleveland corridor to Buffalo, extending the 3-C corridor (Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati) to Buffalo, or extending the Empire corridor to Cleveland. I'm not sure which approach would attract the most riders. Perhaps one extra train per day to New York, one extra to Chicago and one to Cincinnati.

It is surprising, however, that the proposed study is to extend high speed rail to Erie, PA and not to extend the Chicago-Cleveland corridor to Pittsburgh.

Perhaps Pennsylvania should join the Midwest Interstate Passenger Rail Compact just like Penn State joined the Big Ten.

David Benton wrote:It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between trains that had a large ridership increase , and trains that were "in the news" . Wether it be for getting high speed grants , or running on biodiesel , it seems to me that Amtrak has such a low profile outside the NEC , that any publicity would increase inquiries at least .
I am curious as to why Pennsyvalia would fund a study into an increased service between Buffalo and Cleveland . i know it cuts across the top of penn , serving one station , but shouldnt the other 2 states fund it ???

Pennsylvania should forget about this study from Buffalo to Cleveland and instead look at the former PRR/PC train that ran from Washington DC-Baltimore-Harrisburg-Buffalo/Niagara Falls (or even Philly to Harrisburg and on up to Buffalo/Niagara Falls). I think a north-south train in this region would be successful. And of course PA needs more train serve west of Harrisburg to Pittsburgh, with the elimination of the Three Rivers. The line west of Harrisburg on the fomer PRR mainline could easily be upgraded for high speed running, as designated in the "high speed rail development" corridor rail maps!