Brookings Butchers Amtrak Data

Intercity passenger trains are experiencing a “renaissance” with Amtrak ridership growing “faster than other major travel modes,” says a new report from the Brookings Institution. Unfortunately, the authors of the report are guilty of selectively using data to make their case.

“Amtrak ridership grew by 55 percent since 1997,” says the report. Why 1997? Fifteen years is a strange time period to use unless there were no data before then; but annual passenger travel data go back many decades before 1997 so that’s no excuse. As it happens, in 1997 Amtrak was nearing bottom: gas prices were low and few people felt the need to resort to government-subsidized travel. Ridership actually bottomed out in 1996 at 5.1 billion passenger miles, but grew to just 5.2 billion in 1997. This makes the growth since 1997 look especially impressive.

Another problem with Brookings data is that it is based on trips rather than passenger miles. A journey of 1,000 miles potentially accesses four times as many destinations as a journey of 500 miles, so measurements based on passenger miles are a much better indication of value than measurements based on trips.

Extending the time horizon back 20 years to 1992 and using passenger miles produces quite a different picture. From 1992 to 2012, Amtrak passenger miles grew by a paltry 12 percent (compared with 32 percent between 1997 and 2012), while airline passenger miles grew by 60 percent (vs. 26 percent from 1997 to 2012). Let’s see: air travel grew 60 percent; Amtrak 12 percent. Where is your rail renaissance now?

Of course, in picking 1992 I could be selectively using data too. As it happens, until 2010, 1991 was the peak year for Amtrak, seeing 6.3 billion passenger miles, while 1992 was just shy of that with 6.1 billion. If going 15 years back makes Amtrak today look especially good, going 20 years back makes Amtrak’s growth since then look especially anemic.

In order to avoid biases, the chart above shows annual passenger miles since 1990. The problem is that Amtrak numbers are totally swamped by the airlines, which since 1996 have carried 80 to 100 times as many passenger miles as Amtrak. Amtrak would appear even more insignificant if the vertical scale were changed to show intercity driving of personal vehicles (as opposed to trucks and buses), which moves about 200 times as many passenger miles as Amtrak.

Consult your doctor if you have ED; this will help price for levitra identify the cause. With every new connection comes the possibility for different behavior, some people make enough connections through one session to begin new programs, diets, or lifestyle changes with a few days at home. viagra generic wholesale Protect your happy love life and to know when to allude a patient cialis without prescriptions uk http://respitecaresa.org/author/jbuser/page/2/ to another person. While relationship-building contributes to career success, generic tadalafil uk so does physical health. When Brookings compares Amtrak with “other major travel modes,” it implies that Amtrak itself is a major travel mode. But it is not. In 2012, Amtrak carried only about 0.13 percent of all passenger travel and 0.36 percent of intercity passenger travel in the U.S. That’s up from 1997, when it was 0.11/0.32 percent, but down from 1992, when it was 0.15/0.44 percent. Fluctuating between a third and a half of a percent does not make Amtrak a “major travel mode.”

Amtrak’s performance looks even more dismal on a per capita basis. Amtrak may have posted record ridership in 2012, but the nation’s population was also 23 percent greater than two decades before. Per capita Amtrak ridership actually peaked in 1991, and in 2012 was 13 percent less than it was then.

Since 1990, air travel grew from about 1,300 miles per capita to a peak of 2,000 miles in 2007 falling to 1,800 in 2012. Intercity highway travel grew from about 3,700 miles per capita in 1990 to a peak of 4,600 miles in 2005 and is now at 4,200. By comparison, Amtrak’s numbers are less than a blip in the data: per capita Amtrak travel peaked at 25 miles in 1991 and is now about 22 miles.

If Amtrak is a “major mode of travel,” then so is intercity bus, which carries more passenger miles each year than Amtrak. Brookings gets away with ignoring buses because there is no central clearinghouse of bus ridership data. The closest is the Chaddick Institute at DePaul University, which has taken it upon itself to be the nation’s monitor of intercity bus service.

A recent report from the institute reveals that intercity bus service is growing far faster than Amtrak. Since 2005, it has grown by 60 percent, while Amtrak has grown by just 26 percent. Unfortunately, the Chaddick Institute doesn’t get the headlines that Brookings does.

Chaddick doesn’t have the data to count passenger miles or even seat miles but merely the number of bus operations per year. One bus trip from, say, Chicago to Detroit would be a single “operation” whether or not the bus stopped in intermediate communities.

If new operations have the same number of seats as old and fill the same percentage of those seats, then bus ridership is growing more than twice as fast as Amtrak. Bus operators aim to fill about two-thirds of seats and quickly adjust or shut down service if they don’t meet that target, but the number of bus seats per operation may be growing considering that fast-growing Megabus uses 81-seat double-decker buses instead of 55-seat single-deckers. I estimate that passenger miles on scheduled intercity buses are about three times those on Amtrak, meaning buses are at least as “major” a transport mode as trains.

Tomorrow I’ll look at Brookings’ financial analysis of Amtrak.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

10 Responses to Brookings Butchers Amtrak Data

  1. FrancisKing says:

    “A journey of 1,000 miles potentially accesses four times as many destinations as a journey of 500 miles, so measurements based on passenger miles are a much better indication of value than measurements based on trips.”

    A journey of 1000 miles does not potentially access four times as many destinations as journey of 500 miles. It can potentially access two times as many destinations.

    If I could travel twice as far, then, all things being equal, I could access four times as many places. My area of travel is a circle (more as less) and the area goes as the square of the distance.

    However, I can only go in one direction at a time, and so going on my route, all things being equal, if I travel twice as far, I could access two times as many places.

    Often, I want to go somewhere, such work or home. Then beyond a given threshold, travelling twice as far means I still only ever want to access one place.

    Finally, if I can travel further, local branches can be closed down, and I cannot access more destinations.

  2. FrancisKing says:

    “The problem is that Amtrak numbers are totally swamped by the airlines, which since 1996 have carried 80 to 100 times as many passenger miles as Amtrak. ”

    Except that the real consideration here is corridors, and on, for example, the NorthEast corridor, I doubt that these findings could be reproduced.

    “meaning buses are at least as “major” a transport mode as trains.”

    True between urban areas. At that scale, urban areas are like beads on a wire. The distance to be travelled by transit is much much higher than the local, private, journey within the urban area, and transit may be worthwhile. The graph shows how one kind of transit, air, appeals to the public.

    Inside the urban area, private transport makes more sense. In most parts of the UK, only young and old people, people without cars, take the bus. So is there a better solution than bus?

  3. transitboy says:

    It would be more fair if you compared airplanes and trains by dividing passenger miles by vehicle miles to account for the fact that there are so many more flights than train departures. I’m sure airlines would still be higher, but it would be much closer. Or the change in that quotient in the past few years for AMTRAK. I believe AMTRAK is becoming much more productive than it used to be, adding passengers while not adding a lot more trains.

  4. FrancisKing says:

    “It would be more fair if you compared airplanes and trains by dividing passenger miles by vehicle miles to account for the fact that there are so many more flights than train departures.”

    This will calculate the average vehicle occupancy, which is not what you want.

  5. libertyrailroad says:

    Meh this guy is an idiot. The institutions he works for are Koch and Rockefeller funded institutions. He is a mouth piece for oil an auto interests. So of course he will constantly try bash passenger rail at every step. I am not against buses but for whatever reason he seems to have an obsession with them.

  6. FrancisKing,

    If I am going to take a journey of 1,000 miles, I get to choose which direction I am going to go. Within my 1,000-mile radius, I can reach four times as many destinations as within a 500-mile radius.

    Transitboy,

    For what it is worth, Amtrak has about 50 percent occupancies while the airlines are averaging close to 90 percent. The airlines have more than 20,000 flights per day while Amtrak has a few hundred. I suppose Amtrak could increase its ridership if it had 20,000 trains per day, but the subsidies required would bankrupt us.

  7. Frank says:

    I love Amtrak. I mean, what’s not to love? It’s great how it’s always running late. Love that many routes are really more expensive bus lines, especially on the Best Coast. Love that it takes about 20x longer to take the train from Seattle to Los Angeles than it does to fly. Love that a RT ticket from SEA to LAX on the train costs 2x more than a plane ticket. Love the overpriced and nasty food. Love the sketchy layover in Spokane. Love not showering for 36+ hours of travel. I love how the trails overheat in summer and add DAYS to travel time. I LOVE AMTRAK!

  8. FrancisKing says:

    “If I am going to take a journey of 1,000 miles, I get to choose which direction I am going to go. Within my 1,000-mile radius, I can reach four times as many destinations as within a 500-mile radius.”

    Not by transit. That goes in straight lines. If I travel twice as far down my favourite railway line, have I really passed four times as many stations?

  9. gblatham says:

    “Unfortunately, the authors of the report are guilty of selectively using data to make their case.”

    That IS “unfortunate,” isn’t it?

    Mr. Kettle, meet Mr. Black. You’ll find you have a great deal in common.

    Garl

  10. Iced Borscht says:

    I pretty much agree with what Frank said, although one tiny positive to Amtrak is that I can use it to go straight from Union Station in Portland to Century Link Field to get my NFL fix. Beats fighting traffic on a football Sunday, that’s for sure.

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