With all of the bad news about Amtrak (at least on this website) we do need to remember that all of the news is not bad. For example, here are some historic and recent ridership statistics:
1972, Amtrak’s first full year of operation, there were about 16 million passenters. (All years are fiscal years). By 1980 the number of riders had grown to about 21 million and it hovered around 20 million for 20 years. Then it began to rise:
2001, 2 and 3 22 million passengers
2004 23 " "
2005 and 06 24 " "
2007 26 " "
2008 29 " "
2009 27 " "
2010 29 " "
2011 30 " "
2012 31 " "
These increases are mostly due to the Northeast Corridor and to increased intercity ridership around Chicago and the west coast.
In 1980 the US population was 226,545,805; Amtrak carried 21,406,768 passengers
In 2012 it was 312,780,968, which is a 38% increase; Amtrak = .31,240,565, an increase of 40%. So I guess that is really impressive, slightly exceeding population growth.
A better comparsion is 2001, 2002, 2003 to today. 1980 - 2000 appered to be flat due to being artifically constrained by various factors including Congress, lack of maintenance, and Heruitage passengeer equipment ?
Thank you but these numbers mean nothing. All this shows are the numbers of people who bought a ticket. If one owned a grocery store and counted only the number of people who came through the registers it would not tell the story. If 1000 customers came and only purchased one pack of gum each the 1000 number quickly slips into irrelevance.
The real number, at least for the purpose of transportation, is passenger miles. In FY 1990 Graham Claytor pegged Amtrak’s passenger miles at 6.1 billion. According to the Federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics 2011 Pocket Guide to Transportation Amtrak was at 6,179,000,000 passenger miles. Not much of a difference for two decades, is it.
I don’t agree. Amtrak exists to serve people, and the number of individual journeys is, to me, a better indication of its usefulness than passenger miles. But I sm glad that that figure also exceeded pop growth.
Both statistics are useful. Passenger head counts, as John posted and Dave Klepper pointed out are useful because they give a sense of the public served. It sgould be pointed out, as has been before, that Amrak shows boardings and alightings, while an airline count for passengers is departures only. Thus to compare, one should cut Amtrak’s number in half. For 2012, that would be Amtrak 15.5 million, airlines 650 million. Passenger miles are simply a different statistic derived by combining distance with number served. To claim passenger counts “mean nothing” is inflammatory and displays a lack of knowledge about statistics.
I believe a large part of passenger growth over more than the last decade is the introduction of inter-city routes on Amtrak. Generally, these routes are funded by the states served rather than the Federal government. As I recall you are one of several people on this site who has argues that Amtrak should look to have more state funded inter-city routes. Certainly the statistics point to the validity of that argument and also point to Amtrak’s acceptance of it.
Actually Amtrak growth does not track population growth. If you look at the statistics ridership was fairly flat at about 20 million people per year for many years despite population growth; then it began an upward climb.
Given the current debate in Congress over Amtrak funding it seems to me that having individual states provide funding apart from the Federal government is desirable. Do you agree?
I have to disagree with your point that the total number of people Amtrak serves means “nothing.” (The emphasis is yours). That is not the only measure and yes, passenger miles are important too. But people served are important. You attribute the increase–from 20 million to 31 million riders–to people making extremely short trips, for example riding Amtrak from New York Penn Station to Newark Liberty Airport. But is there any evidence to support your allegation? I am skeptical because very often there is less expensive transportation for short trips such as commuter rail or buses. But if you do have evidence it would be helpful if you could share it with us.
John
PS. Since you were good enough to read my post I though I should acquaint myself with some of your writing. I read your last column, especially the part about Amtrak since 1993. You observe that railroads are a classic case of an enterprise that requires long term planning while “politics” is focused on the short term. I would clarify that comment. In the United States the term of a member of the House of Representatives is limited to 2 years. That is certainly a “short term” and that is why our Federal politics are focused on the short term. House members always need to be preparing for the next election. And since all money bills originate in the house it guarantees that anything requiring an appropriation will be considered in the short term and things may be very different in the next short term than in this short term. But it is a lot easier to block legislation than it is to originate and pass legislation. Once a law is enacted the very short term nature of the House makes it difficult (but not impossible) to change that law. One result is that it is hard to g
My only point here is that the statistics I offer are described as Passengers Carried on Amtrak Trains. My source is Wikipedia. Here is the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak.
In Amtrak’s state fact sheets the number of people using each station are reported and the number includes “boardings and alightings.” Here, however, the number used is “passengers carried.”
It is a good question: what is the operational definition? Amtrak (and the Wiki article) seem to use both terms, ridership and passengers carried. And yes the state fact sheets give ridership as total station boardings and alightings. But I am inclined to believe you are correct, since the Illinois number alone for 2012 was 5 million.
We–not just me but all of us–should be really careful with all of our posts, Don. I often wish no one would write posts others may find offensive but that has not happened yet. But if we are not going to use numbers, actual statistics about Amtrak, on what shall we base our discussions?
As I wrote this post I was aware no one set of statistics shows the whole picture. Others deserve consideration too. But I did think this particular set was worth taking a little time to focus on.
You say you are interested in Amtrak’s “effectiveness.” Yet I wonder if there is any single measure that will show it. Today we have the Acela, the Northeast Corridor regional trains, the long distance trains, the Amtrak run commuter trains and the intercity trains, many (or perhaps all) of which get state support so it seems to me there are 5 Amtraks. And yet, they are bound up with each other and each has implicatons for the others.
You can certainly argue that some parts of Amtrak are more effective than other parts and in fact you have made that argument. I don’t disagree with you but I have made the argument that cutting back on any one part can have undesirable consequences for other parts because of the politics of Amtrak’s budgetary process.
Maybe we should compare the figures as Amtrak now publishes them. ie NEC, Short haul, & long haul. It may not be possible but the number of passengers, number of passenger miles, Train miles for each of these categorgies ?
it would be great if we could have 20 years of figures to see where the growth is. Don Oltmann thinks mostly NEC and some of the shorter state corridors. I believe that is true, but I’ve never actually seen those numbers: passengers carried, passenger miles and maybe train miles. I wonder how useful the latter is, however. i would prefer to see the trend lines on operating subsidy (or positive contribution) by segment and average occupancy numbers.
The largest growth in Amtrak ridership comes from the state and short/medium distance corridors. This includes the 3 CA corridors, Cascades, the Miwest corridors, and the eastern trains ranging from the Downeaster, Keystones, Empire Service, Virginia Regionals, Piedmonts, etc. The NEC has seen growth as well. The growth has been in the past 10 years after decades of stagnation with ridership growth from FY2002 (21.67 million) to FY2013 (31.24 million) ahead of US population growth.
The 31.24 million passengers in FY2012 is the total number of passengers that boarded an Amtrak train. The station stats show boarding plus alightings to count the total number going through the station. If one were to add up all the station passenger counts, the total would be twice 31.2 million.
The breakdown of the ridership stats is publicly available. Comparing fiscal years 2002 and 2012 in millions:
FY2002: NEC 9.14M, State & Short/medium distance corridors 8.91M, LD 3.62M; total 21.67M
FY2012: NEC 11.42M, State & Short/medium distance 15.08M, LD 4.74M
Growth on the LD trains the past several years is being held by lack of capacity for the peak travel periods. Also the problem with the Acela. That is why Amtrak is considering adding 4 coach seats in the upper level of each Superliner coach car to squeeze out a bit more capacity and revenue for the western LD trains. And planning to order Acela IIs to deal with the Acela capacity constraints.
While passenger miles are a useful metric for evaluating one mode of transportation against itself, it is not an appropriate standard for “effectiveness” when considering transportation spending overall. The reason for this is that different types of transportation investment equate to different outcomes both in cost and, separately, in the type lifestyles they sponsor.
As many have pointed out, Amtrak’s growth has mostly come in the commuter area. This is largely due to the increase in urban population over the last 10 years. Growth in this category feeds on itself- as mass transit becomes more available, more people move to urban areas and utilize the system.
The critical part of this to consider is that these are people who previously would have lived in suburbs and used roads and highways for most of their transportation needs. As they begin to populate urban areas and switch from highway to rail, their personal “passenger miles” are reduced. This happens not just because their commute is shorter, but because city dwellers tend to drive a lot less generally.
So it’s possible that even if Amtrak’s passenger mile price is higher, their overall effectiveness per dollar is better (than roads) because of the fact that fixed rail transit tends to concentrate populations -thereby reducing total passenger miles while still serving the same population.
I grew up in the suburbs. Every place we went my parents drove. The only exception I can think of is Boy Scouts where I walked. Then I grew up and for many years had no car. Living in the city I planned on public transit. Generally my wife and I walked to the supermarket and used transit for shopping. For longer trips we took the train or, for really long trips, we took a plane. Occasionally we rented a car. But we did much less traveling, especially long distance traveling, because we did not need to.
Then we bought a car. And we moved out. Now we had to drive to the supermarket when ever we went there and other shopping was at shopping centers because parking was easier. Even if down town was closer we drove out to a shopping center to park. And of course down towns withered a way. The whole thing was a self fulfilling prophecy.
My last house was the nicest one I ever owned. And it was 35 minutes from the closest bus stop–I still used transit for work. Walking was not impossible but almost always my wife met me with the car and drove me home. Our present home is smaller than our last one. But it is 3 blocks from the bus to get to a variety of places including the local commuter train to get into New York Penn Station to take Amtrak to Providence or Newark Penn Station to take Amtrak to Washington. The super market is 3 blocks away too but old habits die hard. We still drive.