Amtrak carried 87.0 percent as many passenger-miles in January 2023 as in January 2019, according to the state-owned company’s monthly performance report released earlier this week. That’s up from December’s 80 percent but down from November’s 91 percent.
Amtrak ridership seems to be bouncing around between 80 and 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
Amtrak’s January ticket revenues were only 83 percent of January 2019, but its basic operating expenses were 122 percent of 2019’s. As a result, its net losses were 52 percent greater in January 2023 than the same month in 2019.
Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor has recovered 90 percent of its pre-pandemic riders, while long-distance trains carried 88 percent. The state-supported trains, however, carried under 75 percent of 2019 numbers.
Congress’ infrastructure bill gave Amtrak twice as much money as it gave urban transit even though transit carries ten times as many passenger-miles and 300 times as many riders as Amtrak. This misallocation is not surprising considering that Congress gave more money to Amtrak and transit together than it gave to highways even though highways carry well 100 times as many passenger miles as Amtrak and transit.
Amtrak is using its infrastructure money to entice more states to support the operating costs of local trains even though those trains are the slowest to recover from the pandemic. That probably won’t work out well for the states that are ensnared by those funds.
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Amtrak is using its infrastructure money to entice more states to support the operating costs of local trains
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There’s one to chew on. The money Amtrak could be using to fix bridges is being used to pay for a train to Mobile.