Americans took 7.7 percent more airline trips in May 2024 than the same month in 2019, according to TSA passenger counts. While the release of airline passenger-mile data lags other data by a couple of months, March data indicate that domestic flying passenger-miles were 5.5 percent greater than in 2019 while international passenger-miles were 1.5 percent short of 2019. The number of international trips was 4.3 percent greater than in 2019, indicating that people who are traveling internationally are going to closer destinations.
Americans also drove 2.6 percent more miles in May 2024 than May 2019, according to data released last week by the Federal Highway Administration. Rural miles of driving were 8.8 percent greater than before the pandemic while urban miles were just 0.2 percent short of May 2019.
Meanwhile, transit systems carried 23.4 percent fewer riders than in May 2019, says the Federal Transit Administration’s monthly ridership release. While transit continues to lag well behind other modes, this is its best performance since the pandemic.
Ridership in Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, Phoenix, San Francisco, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Denver, St. Louis, Riverside-San Bernardino, Portland, Pittsburgh, and Charlotte continues to be well below average. Other urban areas, including New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, are doing better, but you have to go down the list to Salt Lake City, Richmond, and Tucson to find transit systems whose ridership has completely recovered from the pandemic. Richmond and Tucson, at least, achieved this by reducing transit fares to zero.
You can download my enhanced spreadsheet for complete transit data. This includes the FTA raw data in cells A1 through JS2291, annual totals in columns columns JT through KP, national and mode totals are in rows 2300 through 2319, transit agency totals in rows 2330 through 3329, and urban area totals in rows 3331 through 3821.
Amtrak passenger-miles were 1.1 percent greater than in 2019, according to the state-owned company’s monthly performance report. The Northeast Corridor is doing the best, carrying 11.2 percent more riders than in 2019. State-supported day trains carried 5.1 percent fewer ridership while long-distance transit carried 7.1 percent fewer. While Amtrak as a whole has at least recovered from the pandemic, it is still carrying only about 0.1 percent of the nation’s passenger-miles.
