Amtrak Success Stories

A big part of the +16% ridership increase on the Cascades trains is likely due to the 2nd train to Vancouver BC and much of the +41% jump in revenue is likely due to higher fares on those trains to Canada. Having 2 daily roundtrips available increases the number of possible itineraries and ridership and revenue seem to have grown impressively. When 513/516 terminated in Bellingham ridership north of Seattle was weak and fares stayed in the lowest bucket. But now with the extension to BC, which greatly benefits Canadian passengers, many 513/516 trains are very full. Looking at reservations SEA<>VAC for the next 2 weeks shows that many trains are already selling in the top bucket (57) and very few seats can still be found in the lowest bucket (35). Amtrak and WSDOT also promoted the Cascades heavily this past winter and more people seem to now be aware of the rail option. Horizon Air also contributes indirectly to Amtrak's appeal by heavily advertising the horrors of driving on I-5 between Seattle and Portland.

Amtrak's May monthly performance report is out and reveals more great results for America's passenger railroad. Ridership on the system nationally was up 7 percent over May of last year and revenues were up 15%. The number of first class passengers reserving sleepers increased by 13%.
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... onthly.pdf

New Wi-Fi internet service on the Acela trains led to an increase in ridership of 14 percent compared to a 5% increase for the Northeast Regional trains. The average load factor for the fiscal year to date on the Acelas is up 4 points to 61%, and the average load factor on the Regionals is also up 4 points to 46%. The increases combined with an annual fare increase has raised May revenues on the route by 18% on the Acelas and 12% on the Regionals.

The three corridor trains that beat the Acela on load factor are the Carolinian, the Pennsylvanian and the Adirondack.

The Carolinian has been operating at an average load factor of 73% for the fiscal year and in May carried an average of 441 passengers per train, an increase of 7% over last May. May revenues were up 25% as more riders competed for the limited number of seats. North Carolina added a mid-day train along the Charlotte-Raleigh portion of this route beginning in June, and Virginia will add an additional daily train between Richmond and Washington D.C. beginning July 20th. These additional services should ease some of the crowding along segments of the Carolinian route, which stretches from Charlotte to New York.

Last year the Pennsylvanian was operating with a 72% average load factor. This year the load factor is down to 69% but ridership is up 5%, suggesting that an extra coach has been added to the train to handle the additional passengers. Three wrecked Amfleet cars were returned to service during the month of May, for a total of 14 since October 1st.

One route that could use a couple of those Amfleet cars is the Adirondack. Ridership on the New York to Montreal route increased by 8% in May, and the average load factor is up to 63%. Despite carrying an average of only 139 passengers per train, the route is sometimes sold out on weekends, and the short train could use an additional coach or possibly a lounge that could also seat passengers during the most crowded segment of the weekend trips.

During the warm summer months, New Yorkers are increasingly going north for the weekends. May ridership between Albany and Niagara Falls increased by 19 percent. Ridership on the New Haven to Springfield corridor was up 19 percent, and ridership on the Vermonter was up 14 percent.

In the southeast, the Washington-Lynchburg train continues to outperform expectations, with May ridership 142% above projections. That’s a decline since the University of Virginia at Charlottesville let out for the summer. The average load factor on the Lynchburg train has been 48%. The load factor on the trains from Washington to Newport News is even higher at 56%. May passenger counts were an average of 315 passengers per train on the eastern Virginia route. The new Virginia service to Richmond beginning this month may divert some passengers who currently only travel a segment of this route. The new service to Richmond will be the fourth new train or service extension in the past 12 months. The other three were a second train to Vancouver, BC that began in August, the Northeast Regional extension to Lynchburg that began in October and the mid-day Piedmont train that was added between Charlotte and Raleigh in June.

The Texas Eagle now has the highest load factor of all the long distance routes, running at an average of 66%. May ridership was up 15% and revenues were up 23%. The number of first class passengers reserving sleeping accommodations on the train increased by 25% over a year ago. On the thrice-weekly Sunset Limited, May ridership increased by 24%, revenues were up by 36%, and the number of passengers reserving sleepers increased by 21%. Amtrak’s board has approved combining the Texas Eagle and Sunset Limited to create daily service between Chicago and Los Angeles. Discussions are now underway with the Union Pacific regarding cost and scheduling. Amtrak hopes to run the daily service with one transition dorm and one sleeper per train, freeing up four sleepers for use on the Capitol Limited. If ridership on the route continues to grow, they may need more sleepers, not fewer.

The Auto Train has the second highest average load factor of the long distance routes at 65%. The higher average load factor is aided by the fact that the train does not make any intermediate stops between its endpoints in northern Virginia and central Florida. When trains make intermediate stops, passengers get on and off, using seats for relatively short sections that may be empty for the rest of the trip. The seat may be resold for a non-overlapping segment of the trip. This happens often on long distance routes. For example, a coach seat aboard the Empire Builder may have one passenger ride between Chicago and St. Paul, a second passenger from St. Paul to Fargo and a third passenger between Spokane and Seattle. Despite being sold three times over the course of the trip, the seat was empty from Fargo to Spokane, which is 1217 miles of the total 2205 miles travelled by that seat. The calculated load factor for that seat is just 45%. As a result, the 80% average load factors that are standard in the airline industry can never be met on most trains. On the Auto Train, an average of 317 passengers boarded the train in May with their vehicles and travelled end-to-end, an increase of 4% over last year.

The third highest load factor for long distance trains was on the Capitol Limited at 63%. May ridership was up 6% and revenues were up 10%. The trains carried an average of 318 passengers each.

On other long distance trains, ridership on the Palmetto grew by 18%, and revenues grew by 29% as more seats were sold from higher fare buckets. The number of passengers on the Lake Shore Limited grew by 13%, sleeper reservations were up 17% and revenues were 26% higher. May ridership on the Silver Meteor was up 13% and revenues were up 19%. Ridership on the Empire Builder was up 11%.

Florida train buffs are talking about relocating the Meteor to the Florida East Coast route with new stops in St. Augustine, Daytona Beach, Titusville, Cocoa, Melbourne, Vero Beach, Fort Pierce and Stuart. The possible route would reduce the travel time between Miami and Jacksonville by 3 ½ hours. The State of Florida, which requested $268 million in High Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail grants for the project last year, will be reapplying for funding again this year. The project lost out to the proposed Tampa-Orlando route last year and will be competing against it again when the applications are submitted in August.

In Michigan, ridership was up on the Wolverine between Chicago and Detroit by 12% and ridership on the Blue Water was up by 18%. A new station in New Buffalo, MI opened in October and Amtrak service changed from once per day on the Pere Marquette to once per day on the Wolverine and once per day on the Blue Water. Service was expanded again to include a stop by a second Wolverine beginning May 10th. Trains to New Buffalo now leave Chicago at 7:30 am, 4:10 pm and 6:00 pm Central Time, arriving 73 to 79 minutes later. Trains return to Chicago leaving New Buffalo at 11:34 am, 3:43 pm and 10:25 pm Eastern Time.

In the Pacific northwest, ridership on the Cascades trains was up by 11 percent and revenues were up by 37 percent. The average load factor is up three points to 51%. In addition to the second train to Vancouver, BC added in August, a new station at Stanwood, WA opened in November. The station is just a platform, canopy and a few parking spaces. Tickets need to be purchased in advance because there is no ticket agent at the station.

MudLake wrote: This isn't about how long the Great Recession lasts. It's about government solvency and that directly impacts Amtrak as it fundamentally exists via government support.

As I've said many many many times before, it is actually impossible for the federal government to become insolvent, given that it prints money. I could go into detail but this is not the time nor the place for an economics course.

Fundamentally the government can easily budget for Amtrak if the political will is present (note that currently we are approaching a *trillion* dollars a year for the military). Government solvency is not an issue. Government will to spend on trains rather than, say, bombs is the issue.

jstolberg wrote: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.

I suspect it's easier and cheaper to get fast trains on the water-level route through Erie than on the mountain route to Pittsburgh. Though I'm also curious if the state representatives from Erie were involved...

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

I like that idea. Maybe if NY joined too we would make faster progress.

Where do you get the load numbers from?

Im trying to find the numbers for the 3 california routes

jamesinclair wrote:Where do you get the load numbers from?

Im trying to find the numbers for the 3 california routes

The California trains have lower load factors for two reasons.
1. They have unreserved seating. More trains have to run on a given route to make sure that there are enough seats for everyone, since passengers are not turned away in advance. The Hiawatha trains between Chicago and Milwaukee, for example, are also unreserved and have an average load factor of 34% compared to an average load factor of 44% on reserved trains between Chicago and St. Louis.
2. The California economy has not recovered as much as most of the rest of the country. Ridership on the Capitol Corridor is affected by the ongoing furloughs of state workers.

The load factors for the California trains are:
Pacific Surfliner 30%
Capitols 27%
San Joaquins 38%

How to get those numbers is a little more difficult, since Amtrak doesn't publish them directly.
If you look at the financial performance of each route (page 60 of the May Monthly Performance Report), you'll see for example that the Pacific Surfliner has a fully allocated loss year-to-date of $21.1 million. The second to last column gives a loss of per passenger mile of 15.2 cents. Divide $21.1 million by 15.2 cents and you get 138.8 million passenger miles.

The last column gives a loss per seat mile of 4.6 cents. Divide the $21.1 million by 4.6 cents and you get 458.7 million seat miles.

138.8 million passenger miles/458.7 million seat miles gives a load factor of 0.302 passengers per seat, or 30%.

Simplifying the process, just divide the loss per seat mile by the loss per passenger mile.

I think the formula describes cost recovery rather than load factor because the total revenue figure that is used in the first column includes state support and F & B contributions. Ticket revenue is shown on pdf pg 25 of the May MPR if anyone would like to advance the science of load factor calculation.

I did some quick calculations of the operating costs per train mile of various routes and got some interesting numbers. Using the Amtrak timetable I calculated the number of train miles operated per month for several routes and divided that number into the operating cost number from the MPR. It looks like most routes are costing about $50/train mile, but there are some significant deviations from that number. The Hiawathas are way above (about $80/train mile) while other Chicago based trains (Wolverines, Blue Water and CHI-STL) are very near the average. The Piedmont and Downeaster are way below the average (about $29/train mile). Any suggestions for why there is so much deviation?

And a success story....

The Coast Starlight has been running like clockwork! The June OTP was 96.7% and the 12 month OTP is 93.1%. I feel almost honored that my only trip on the CS during the last year was about 90 minutes late, due to very bad weather. I know that the down economy has lifted Amtrak's OTP, but I don't think that the hopefully-soon-to-be-recovered economy will re-create the railroad logjams of the early 2000s.

Vincent wrote: It looks like most routes are costing about $50/train mile, but there are some significant deviations from that number. The Hiawathas are way above (about $80/train mile) while other Chicago based trains (Wolverines, Blue Water and CHI-STL) are very near the average. The Piedmont and Downeaster are way below the average (about $29/train mile). Any suggestions for why there is so much deviation?

There's far more train frequency for the Hiawatha trains sharing tracks part of the way with Metra trains, while the Piedmont runs mostly on NCRR owned tracks paying no track access fees. I can't fathom a reason off-hand why the Downeaster costs are so low, because they have high train frequencies and must pay trackage fees too? Maybe Amtrak's accounting tricks are at work again?

jstolberg wrote: The California trains have lower load factors for two reasons.
1. They have unreserved seating. More trains have to run on a given route to make sure that there are enough seats for everyone, since passengers are not turned away in advance.

The load factors for the California trains are:
Pacific Surfliner 30%
Capitols 27%
San Joaquins 38%

Hm, I hope your math is wrong because those numbers seem shockingly low, especially the pacific surfliner which is supposedly one of amtraks best routes.

Yes, there is no reserved seating and you can pay cash on board, but that means load factors could be higher than 100%, since nobody is turned away.

Also, I wonder how amtrak accounts for the thruway buses. The san joaquin line has an early departure and a late departure which are both simply buses stopping at the train stations (6:00am from fresno southbound and 8pm from san francisco southbound)

North Carolina started a second Piedmont train running between Raleigh and Charlotte on June 5th, and the number of passengers didn’t double, it tripled! The new mid-day train didn’t steal passengers from the longer New York to Charlotte Carolinian either. The number of passengers on the already crowded Carolinian rose by 8% from June of last year to an average of 460 people per train. Having three trains per day makes the service much more convenient. http://triangle.bizjournals.com/triangl ... ily18.html

Amtrak's third quarter results are now available on-line and the railroad is experiencing record ridership. June ridership was up by 9 percent nationwide. The number of passengers carried on long distance trains was up by 10 percent and the number of long distance first class passengers was up by 11 percent.
http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... onthly.pdf

Virginia’s new train between Lynchburg and Washington continued to do well, with June ridership 135% above expectations. The State of Virginia, which had agreed to subsidize the train by $2.9 million per year, finds that the route doesn’t need any subsidy. It is making money.

Virginia started a second state-supported train in July running between Richmond and Washington. No data is yet available on the popularity of the new Richmond train.

New Yorkers have been heading north to escape the summer heat. ‘“The number of people boarding the Vermonter in June was 25,866, up 29 percent over June 2009,” said Cliff Cole, an Amtrak spokesman.’ Ridership on the Ethan Allen Express, running between New York and Rutland, VT was up 10 percent for the month. Proposed improvements to the route of the Vermonter “could cut a trip from Essex Junction to New York to a little more than 8 hours, down from 9 hours and 40 minutes.”
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/arti ... rak-routes

Connecticut’s Governor M. Jodi Rell has her eye on even more improvements to the portion of the line that runs through her state. She has proposed borrowing $260 million to pay for installing a second track between New Haven and Springfield, MA. The state will apply for an additional $220 million in federal funds to come from the $2.5 billion available for high speed and intercity passenger rail this year. The New Haven to Springfield Shuttles are already carrying 12 percent more passengers than last year.

On other routes running north of New York, ticket sales on the Adirondack to Montreal were up by 22 percent and the number of passengers going to upstate New York destinations west of Albany and to Toronto was up by 31 percent. On the Northeast Corridor, traffic to destinations north of New York was up by more than destinations to the south. The high speed Acela trains served 11 percent more passengers, and revenue was up by 16 percent.

The Downeaster carried 17 percent more passengers during the month of June. Work began last Monday on a 28-mile extension of the Downeaster from Portland to Brunswick, ME. http://www.pressherald.com/news/downeas ... 08-03.html

Pennsylvania’s Keystone carried 18% more passengers in June. Putting that in perspective, the growth in popularity of the Keystone line is shown below.



Many of the single-level long distance trains that serve the east coast also demonstrated significant growth. Ridership on the Cardinal, a thrice weekly train that runs through New York, Washington, Cincinnati and Chicago, rose by 11 percent. The Cardinal has begun offering checked baggage service at selected stops.

Ridership on the Crescent also rose by 11 percent over last year. The number of passengers on the Palmetto rose by 17 percent.

The number of passengers on the Lake Shore Limited, a route that leaves Chicago nightly and splits at Albany into two trains that continue to Boston and New York, rose by 17 percent. Amtrak added a sleeping car on the Boston leg in March of last year and then began carrying a full-service dining car in December.

The baggage cars added to the Cardinal as well as the dining and sleeping cars added to the Lake Shore Limited are all old railcars from the 1950s, which Amtrak has patched up and put back into regular service. Last month, Amtrak placed an order for 130 new railcars to replace them and others built around the time of the Korean War. The first $29.8 million of the five-year, $298.1 million contract will be paid out of increased revenues from this year’s ticket sales. The order includes 25 sleeping cars, 25 diners, 55 baggage cars and 25 baggage-dormitory cars.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/article ... for-Amtrak

In Michigan, the number of passengers taking the Blue Water rose by 25 percent and the number on the Wolverine rose by 14 percent. Ground has been broken on a new station in Pontiac. http://www.freep.com/article/20100716/N ... ty-bus-hub The US Senate Appropriations Committee also approved a $2.5 million earmark for improvements to the East Lansing station. http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/arti ... ak-station

Due to work being done on the South Shore commuter line, the Wolverine will be making additional stops in Michigan City, Indiana. http://www.southbendtribune.com/article ... 09874/1130 The chart below shows the 10-year trend for ridership on the Michigan trains.



In and out of St. Louis, the number of passengers on the Missouri River Runner increased by 19 percent and the number of passengers on the Illinois trains to Chicago increased by 10 percent. The State of Illinois announced a $98 million contract with the Union Pacific to upgrade 90 miles of track between Alton and Lincoln, IL. The work began Friday. http://www.pantagraph.com/news/local/ar ... 002e0.html

The Heartland Flyer, running out of Oklahoma City, carried 37 percent more passengers in June. The grease train, running on beef fat biodiesel, connects with the Texas Eagle at Ft. Worth, which saw an increase in ridership of 18 percent. Oklahoma is considering a second frequency for the Heartland Flyer, and has joined with Texas in requesting federal planning money to study the corridor between Oklahoma City and Brownsville.
ftp://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub/txdot-inf ... kc_stx.pdf

California proved to be a popular rail destination in June. 25 percent more passengers rode the Sunset Limited. The number of first class passengers was up by 38 percent and revenues were up by 39 percent.

On the California Zephyr, ridership was up by 16 percent, the number of first class passengers was up by 27 percent and revenues were up by 20 percent.

The San Joaquin, running through the central valley, carried 9 percent more passengers. The popularity of the train has prompted Amtrak to add a fifth passenger car to some of the trains until Labor Day. http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/BlobServe ... crease.pdf

The following chart illustrates the long-term growth pattern for the San Joaquin.



On other routes worth noting, the City of New Orleans carried 21 percent more passengers in June, and ridership on the Cascades was up by 14 percent.

Great post. Thanks for all the work you put into it.

Thanks for the post, its great to see all the big increases, especially on routes that are getting improvements.

Regarding the Pennsylvanian, I'd wager that Amtrak might have lowered the number of seats in the East of Harrisburg bucket thus increasing the number of seats available for sale to Pitt. If those seats went unsold (possible with the new competition from megabus from NY earlier this year, and now from Philly), wouldn't that then lower the load factor? it does pretty well despite its slow trip time.

Suburban Station wrote:Regarding the Pennsylvanian, I'd wager that Amtrak might have lowered the number of seats in the East of Harrisburg bucket thus increasing the number of seats available for sale to Pitt. If those seats went unsold (possible with the new competition from megabus from NY earlier this year, and now from Philly), wouldn't that then lower the load factor? it does pretty well despite its slow trip time.

It is more likely to go the other way; more short-distance trips would produce both higher ridership and lower load factors. The scenario above (fewer seats HBG-PHL, lower ridership PIT-PHL) would produce both lower ridership and (probably) lower load factor.

mkellerm wrote: It is more likely to go the other way; more short-distance trips would produce both higher ridership and lower load factors. The scenario above (fewer seats HBG-PHL, lower ridership PIT-PHL) would produce both lower ridership and (probably) lower load factor.

let's say a seat is full for 104 miles out of 353m, then it's full nearly 30% of the trip (more if it's resold but let's assume it's not). if that seat is then moved to the longer distance bucket but isn't filled, it drops to 0%. no?