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2008: A Boom Year for U.S. Passenger Railroads

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[quote user="NMRXfan"] <A class="" href="http://www.startsandfits.com/2008/12/2008-boom-year-for-us-passenger.html">2008: A Boom Year for US Passenger Railroad</A> Two thousand eight may have been a bad year for the economy, but it was a great year for the United States' passenger railroads, notwithstanding <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chatsworth_train_collision">the horrific crash</A> in Chatsworth, Calif., on Sept. 12 that killed 25 people. Nearly every U.S. railroad showed big ridership gains in 2008. Those at the bottom of the list below tend to be big-city, big ridership operations already, which means that movement up or down will tend to be muted because the denominator in the calculations is already a large number. Gasoline prices increased rapidly through July, accounting for much of this, of course, but ridership did not decline along with the gasoline price collapse that began in mid-July. This upholds the conventional wisdom that once people try the train, they stick with it. [/quote] All forms of public transport saw significant increases this summer in the number of riders.  Whether it lasts will depend on a number of variables, i.e. state of the economy, price of gasoline, etc. I pay close attention to Amtrak and Capital Metro, which is the public transport service in Austin, TX.  It, by the way, is scheduled to open its first commuter rail line in March. For FY 2008 the number of riders on Amtrak increased 11.7 per cent.  The peak month appears to have been July when the number of riders reached 2,750,000.  In August the number dropped to 2,684,000 and by September it was down to 2,305,000.  Amtrak has not released updated monthly figures for the remainder of the year on on its website.  It will be interesting to see what happened to the number of riders on Amtrak since the price of gasoline began its steep decline in the fall. I take an express bus to the University of Texas three or four days a week from my home, which is about 30 miles north of Austin.  During the summer, when gasoline prices peaked at nearly $4 per gallon, it was standing room only.  But with the decline in the price of gasoline, most of the riders that flocked to the bus appear to have returned to driving as indicated by the significant reduction in the number of cars in the parking lot.
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