Amtrak ridership Mar 2010 & 1st half FY

[blue streak 1]

Amtrak has announced both Mar 2010 and 1^st half FY 2010 ridership is up to a new record. FY ridership was 13.6M which was  4.3% more than 2009 and even exceeded 2008 numbers. March 2010 had  every route SD and LD with more riders than 2009. Some examples Acela +14%; NE Regional + 13%, SD +12%, LD + 16%; Total Mar +13.5% over 2008.  One item that cannot be found is how the number of passengers are counted. To give some examples: 1. The SPG – NH shuttle passengers that continue on. Are they counted twice one on each segment? Are the passengers that O&D SPG and south counted on Regional trains (143,145, &Vermonter)?  2. Passengers on  NYP – Albany – Buffalo thru trains counted once or twice?  3.  Lynchburg passengers north of WASH?  4.   Passengers that connect to LD trains? Sunset/Eagle Passengers? You get the idea. As long as Amtrak has counted them the same way over the years then for statistical purposes the figures will be valid. Maybe it is as simple as counting each ticket coupon as one person?  5.  In the case of Lynchburg and Newport News coupons O&D north of WASH count as Regional trips?  6.  Revenue figures are not yet available but for Feb Pass up 2.7% and revenue up 6.5%. There is no way to know if that will be the case for Mar 2010.

 For the Short distance trips I am going to try a different approach to ridership.

Some assumptions. 1. No adjustment for the March storm cancellations was made with the assumption that some fraction of passengers just travelled at another time or train. 2. Revenue passenger miles for each route are not available so no average trip miles are available for calculation. The ridership report for Mar that will be out in the middle of May will give only the avg system trip length and Revenue Pass Miles (RPM)  3. Average trip length for each route is not published so will assume all pass traveled the same distance (I know – impossible but the best I can do). 4. Some routes have different # of trips on weekends but will take Mo – Fr train count as base. 5. Empire service does not count other trains thru corridor (Maple leaf, Ethan, etc)  6.

                                     #            round      av pass         rt

Route                     # pass         trips        / trip            miles

Carolinian            26,152            1             421            704

Surfliners            217,534         11/5         318          128/231

Newpt news        37,539            3             302            187

Pennsylvanian     16,968            1            273             444

Cascades              67,039            4            270             157

ALB – nfs              30,191            3            243             321

San Joaquin          80,406           6            216             315

Blue Water          12780             1            206             319

Wolverine            37971             3            204             304

Chi – STL              50,629            4             204            284

Ill/Saluki                23563             2           189            310

Lynchburg            11,365            1            183             153

Lincoln                  50,629            4            163             284

CHI-MKE               63,778            7            146               86

Capitals              133,987        16/11        146             133

Sandberg/IZ         17343             2            139             258

Adirondack            8646             1            139             240

Keystone            116,743          14           134            104

NYP -alb                81,211           10         130            141 

Pere                         8076             1           130            175 

Heartland               7823             1           126            206  

STL-Kans C            15,543            2          125            282  

Dn east                 37,358            5          120             116  

Vermonter               6638           1          107             314  

Piedmont                 6543           1          105             173  

NH-SPG                   30339          5            97               62   

Ethan Allen              3831          1             61             241   

Hoosier                     3462          1             55             196   

Long Distance ridership was really up with the overall  a figure of 16%.

The empire builder carried 46K which makes us understand why the ARRA SL repairs will go to the EB first. Next is the Coast Star 35K. What was interesting is all primary sleeper equipped LD carried 26K or more (Crescent). Auto train 24K but they all go terminal to terminal in 17 hrs and it had some cancellations. Capitol was at 18K but had a week of cancellations?, Palmetto 17K (no sleepers). The 2 step children were Sunset 8.6K and then the lowly Cardinal at 9.3K .

The cardinal needs special mention because allocating the Hoosier ridership IND – CHI of 3.4K implies that of the 9,310 of cardinal riders that number would be reduced by 2596 to a figure of 6713 passengers.

On the other hand if all the Lynchburg passengers had been able to just travel on the Crescent it would have carried 37897 pass 2^nd behind the Empire builder.

With all these figures to absorb until we know the revenue for Mar we have no idea how many of these passengers could have traveled on discount fares. Since Amtrak does not break out their load factors on each route it will be very hard to determine.  However the total # of passengers is encouraging and may well either indicate pent up demand or that good marketing may have increased long term demand.