Several news soources are reporting March as a record ridership month & 6 months thru March also a record. AMTRAK has not yet released the actual numbers but I will edit this post when it does. The devil will be in the details and although the total number of passengers an important number the number of revenue passenger miles is also very important - as one could go up and other go down..
For comparsions Mar - July last year almost all had approximately the same riderships. July 2012 best last FY of 2,775,000 and Revenue passenger miles ( RPMs ) of 656,952,000. Watch this post ------
http://news.yahoo.com/amtrak-ridership-growth-continues-fy-2013-131700432.html
Now AMTRAK's news release.
http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/178/1001/Amtrak-Ridership-Growth-First-Six-Months-%20FY2013-ATK-13-031.pdf
2 edit
Here's the
Interesting....Sandy killed about a week's worth of NEC trains, which is about 4% of the 6 month period. Acela was down about 4% YOY, but the rest of the NEC trains were down much less.
LD trains are a different story. If you back out the Palmetto - which is a day train, they are exactly flat YOY for six months and down 1.2% for March YOY.
Another interesting tidbit. The Norfolk train carried 12,228 in March 2013. The Newport News trains dropped 2,000 riders - presumably due to the Norfolk train. So 80% of the Norfolk train riders are "new", not diverted.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
...a bit more:
The Eastern LD trains, which are considerably less defensible than the western trains, not matter how you like to measure it...
Dropped 2.3% YOY. Good thing they are getting new baggage cars!
Flip them all to day trains!
oltmannd Here's the http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/178/1001/Amtrak-Ridership-Growth-First-Six-Months-%20FY2013-ATK-13-031.pdf Interesting....Sandy killed about a week's worth of NEC trains, which is about 4% of the 6 month period. Acela was down about 4% YOY, but the rest of the NEC trains were down much less. LD trains are a different story. If you back out the Palmetto - which is a day train, they are exactly flat YOY for six months and down 1.2% for March YOY. Another interesting tidbit. The Norfolk train carried 12,228 in March 2013. The Newport News trains dropped 2,000 riders - presumably due to the Norfolk train. So 80% of the Norfolk train riders are "new", not diverted.
Don: Never like to take just one month's numbers without getting the context. Palmetto lost 47% traffic in 2012 due to trackwork. That loss probably moved some passengers to the silver service trains so we can expect some of the decrease in traffic on them this year.
Now how do we factor in the miserable east coast weather Mar 2013 vs, 2012 ? I cannot speculate. For example how will this April's ridership on the EB, Cal Z, SWL, be affected this year compared to last year with this very late snow storm now blasting thru the plains states ? North of Denver predicted for up to 18". The EB's loss of passenges March & maybe April may be affected by the land slides near Seattle causing train cancellations ?
In 2012 the Cardinal had 1400 pass more of the numbers in 2011 & 2013. It is the most volitile route year over year bymonth.
Newport News may be somewhat different. Last I remember NPN had about 35 - 40k so not as many new pass to Norfolk. Maybe more lost to Norfolk ? Would take a survey to tell. Hard to tell.
The previous record month was July 2012 at the amount of 2,763,381. March 2013 number is 2,816,154..So just 52,773 more passengers. avg of 1702 / day or ~ 17 / train day. Ttaking in account last year March - July 2013 each month was about 2.7M so it is possible that each month thru July this year will beat this March's number.
It will middle May before we know how the RPMs for March will be avaiolablej
Newswire has an announcement about Amtrak's March record. Even the Springfield shuttles increased ridership by 5.2 per cent.
John WR Newswire has an announcement about Amtrak's March record. Even the Springfield shuttles increased ridership by 5.2 per cent.
NEC decreases had to be weather related. Amtrak had to cancel service a few days because of Sandy.
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