Amtrak Ridership Declined in 2018

Although Amtrak has posted its October, 2018 performance report, which includes the first month of FY 2019, it still has not released its September report, which would include year-end results for fiscal year 2018. However, data distributed by rail groups indicates that Amtrak passenger ridership was 0.1 percent lower in 2018 than in 2017.

All of the decline was among long-distance trains, which lost 3.9 percent of their riders. Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor saw a 0.8 percent ridership increase while state-subsidized short-distance trains gained 0.4 percent more riders.

Ridership fell for all but two long-distance trains, the exceptions being the Oakland-Chicago California Zephyr and the New York-New Orleans Crescent. The New York-Chicago Lake Shore Limited lost 13.1 percent of its riders, while the Chicago-Seattle Empire Builder lost 5.6 percent of its riders, while still managing to be Amtrak’s number one long-distance train.
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While Northeast Corridor ridership grew, the corridor still suffers from a state-of-good-repair backlog of more than $50 billion, and no one knows where the money will come from. The Trump administration and Senator Chuck Schumer are eyeball-to-eyeball over the Hudson River tunnels project hoping the other will blink. Schumer wants the federal government to pay half of the $30 billion cost and provide a federally guaranteed loan for the other half. Some in the media think that the sticking point is whether the federal government should pay half, but the real problem is the administration thinks the locals should come up with the other half themselves, not a federal loan that might never be repaid.

The New York Daily News thinks that Amtrak and New Jersey Transit, the main users of the tunnels, could cut costs in half if they were willing to give up an expansion of capacity. That may be true, but both New Jersey Transit and Amtrak would like to believe that demand for rail travel is growing. However, if they charge passengers the actual cost of riding the trains, including the costs of maintaining the lines, demand would surely fall more in line with existing capacity. Doing so, however, would take away the justification for all of the federal, state, and local subsidies those trains receive.

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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.

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