The airlines carried nearly 10 percent more travelers in January 2024 than in the same month of 2019, according to checkpoint counts made by the Transportation Security Administration. Meanwhile, Amtrak carried 98.2 percent as many passenger-miles in January as in 2019, according to its monthly performance report released early this week.
Transit and highway data for January 2024 should be available soon.
Don’t let the closeness of the airline and Amtrak lines fool you. Airline passenger-miles are not yet available for December and January, but in the 12 months ending in November 2023, the airlines carried 128 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak. And that’s just counting domestic air travel; when international travel is counted, airlines carried 232 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak.
These numbers would surprise anyone who is only aware of the comparative amount of political noise made about Amtrak vs. the airlines. The 2021 infrastructure law gave Amtrak tens of billions of dollars in new subsidies. Even without the infrastructure subsidies, subsidies to Amtrak are much greater than to the airlines.
The latest airline data are from 2021, a year in which air travel was still well below average. In that year, government support for the airlines (mainly airport subsidies) was $55.2 billion while government revenues (mainly taxes on airline tickets) were $27.2 billion. The airlines carried about 811 billion passenger-miles that year for a total subsidy of about 3.4¢ per passenger-mile.
In comparison, Amtrak carried just over 6.0 billion passenger-miles in 2023, earning $2.3 billion in ticket and food & beverage revenues. To carry those passengers, Amtrak spend nearly $4.4 billion, for an average operating subsidy of 33.9¢ per passenger-mile, nearly ten times as much as the airlines. This doesn’t count capital subsidies to Amtrak, which in 2023 were about $3.0 billion or 49.5¢ per passenger-mile.
The airline-Amtrak dichotomy is similar to the automobile-transit dichotomy. In each case, one does more than hundred times as much work as the other, yet the one that does the least work, namely Amtrak and transit, gets all the attention. This is mainly because Amtrak and transit are functionally obsolete so they have been turned into state-owned businesses. As such, they use government money not just to survive but to propagandize people so that they thrive despite making no real contributions to society.
The 737 door/bolt fiasco.
Not to mention various other aspects.
DEI infiltrated Airline industry years ago.
It aint the nation it’s the demographic. Diversity quotas have consequences. Reminds me Hyundai factory ? in Alabama hired thousand black employees….. and failure follow basic directions to blow dust/dirt out engine blocks they were machining. DEI helped create one of Hyudnai largest ever recall. Over 470,000 santa fe, tuscon, and elantras were pulled because shaniqua and Tyrone couldn’t follow directions.
I wonder when you guys will discuss your views on arterials/collector/stroad routes.
On my Strong Towns meeting today here in Las Vegas, you #1 opposition was stroads. They are even more harmful than freeways/highways especially if the 55+ mph routes are parkways or sunken.
Does it make sense to have a busy 45 mph road have a bunch of entrances and exits to businesses on it? At 45 mph, one must stop and slow down, this makes stroads horrendous traffic. Solution is a turn intersection to pull into the businesses. At the very least they’d be better served with access roads on the side, but there’s not always space to do that in denser areas.
Stroads are bad. Even the Federal Highway Administration knows it. So now what? Now we look at our local stroads and decide: Should this be a street, or should it be a road? To Auto drivers, it’s a Autobahn.
West of Tampa, Florida, US-19 runs along the Gulf of Mexico, eight or nine lanes of pure American stroad. Thou far from the desert of SouthWest, it’s nick name is “Death Valley”
Non-freeway arterial roads, stroads, which typically carry large volumes of traffic at high speeds, are the most dangerous for people on foot, accounting for 60% of all fatalities in US. But as the Antiplanner aruged 6. in his Mobility principles. Segregation of use. But impossible because they gained in speed as a lane was added because traffic was bad to begin with.
Segregation of Use is the problem. Without sidewalks/crosswalks and single zoning practices that segregate retail from housing, it’s extremely dangerous to leave suburban enclaves just for a gallon of milk.
Strong Towns, after releasing latest facebook post,
Funny we never see children’s books depicting idyllic stroads.
With images of Richard Scary’ Busytown.
Most of these so called “Story book” towns were actually Corporate towns, whose primary economy was often a major employer.
Hershey
Industrial manufacturer
Singer Sewing Machines,
Mining
Steel production
lumber
etc.
They were extremely exploitative of working class people
By the 1920s, the wide spread adoption of the automobile meant workers no longer needed to live in such close proximity to their work places, and now had access to more employment opportunities and new homes. And by 1930s, Roosevelt administration’s New Deal dealt the final blow to end American company towns by raising minimum wages, encouraging industrial self-governance, and pushing for the owners of company towns to “consider the question of plans for eventual employee ownership of homes”
Once Company” towns, they sold off the housing stock to poorer working class owners.
Like the Shotgun houses that dot New Orleans, Mississippi, Alabama. Or the sugar shack houses ; such as Birthplace of Elvis.
Most idyllic towns in novels and tv and movies were economically depressed, until they became tourist attractions or opened development to new housing for moving professionals. San Bernadino was an agricultural town, til it was opened as relief valve for Bay Area congestion and housing prices. Yorba Linda, California… was an impoverished dirt berg, Birthplace of Richard Nixon, now it’s orange county most pricy residents in the region.
“This doesn’t count capital subsidies to Amtrak, which in 2023 were about $3.0 billion or 49.5¢ per passenger-mile.”
Did you forget about the $66-billion, 5-year infrastructure bill gift to Amtrak? That amounts to another $13.2 billion in 2023, making the total $16.2 billion, or $2.70 per passenger mile.
Henry Porter,
I only count subsidies when they are spent, not when they are appropriated. Also, capital subsidies need to be compared with ridership or other benefits produced over the life of the improvement, not just against one year before the improvement is even done.
The Antiplanner
#BREAKING: A United Airlines Boeing 777 has lost a wheel while taking off San Francisco
Several cars have been CRUSHED by the falling wheel.
Boeing uses DEI in it’s hiring practice…………
“when international travel is counted, airlines carried 232 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak.”
Are you going to count trains in other countries, then, or only Amtrak?
It’s unusual that the AP even considers international travel. He rarely looks at other countries besides the US because the rest of the developed world is moving away from automotive transport as a priority within cities and thus there’s little support for his favorite format of blog posts “People are driving more and more”`