January Travel Dips

Most modes of travel took a nosedive in January, whether measured on a month-to-month basis or compared with pre-pandemic travel. Amtrak passenger-miles fell from 404 million in December to 231 million in January. January travel is generally a little less than December’s, but in this case it is much less: as a percent of pre-pandemic numbers, Amtrak passenger-miles fell from 69 percent in December (relative to December 2019) to 56 percent in January (relative to January 2020), according to Amtrak’s Monthly Performance Report.

Transit is also lagging behind, according to data released earlier this week by the Federal Transit Administration. Transit carried 377 million riders in January, down from 438 million in December. As a share of pre-pandemic numbers, transit fell from 56 percent in December to 47 percent in January.

Air travel also dipped. According to TSA passenger counts, 46 million passengers went through security in January compared with 57 million in December. As a share of pre-pandemic numbers, air travel declined from 82 percent in December to 75 percent in January.

TSA numbers include both domestic and international travel. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics publishes passenger-miles broken down by domestic and international that show domestic travel running about 10 percentage points higher (compared with before the pandemic) than the TSA numbers. Unfortunately, the BTS numbers come out more than a month after other data — numbers are not yet available for December.

Driving data are also not yet available for January, but should be out in a week or so. I’ll post an update then.

For anyone who is interested, I’ve posted an enhanced version of the FTA’s spreadsheet showing monthly transit ridership, by agency and mode, from January 2002 through January 2022. The enhancements include annual totals, totals by transit agency, and totals by urban area. I made the same enhancements on the vehicle-revenue-miles worksheet as well.