Amtrak and the airlines each carried about 8 percent more passengers in February 2025 as the same month in 2019. According to Amtrak’s monthly performance report, the state-owned railroad carried 8.2 percent more passenger-miles, while Transportation Security Administration boarding data indicate that airlines carried 8.1 percent more passengers.
Transit and highway data are not yet available but will be reported here soon.
Airline passenger-mile data for February won’t be available for several more weeks. However, as of December, the latest month for which data are available, domestic air passenger-miles were 5.1 percent greater than in December 2019. Domestic airlines carried Americans 108 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak in December 2024.
Most of the growth in Amtrak travel since 2019 was in the Northeast Corridor, which attracted 24.2 percent more riders in February of 2025 than the same month in 2019. In the same time period, ridership on state-subsidized trains declined by 3.0 percent while ridership on long-distance trains grew by 9.2 percent.
Amtrak’s February fare revenues were $12.5 million more than in February of 2024, while subsidies from the states declined by $7.1 million. The growth in fare revenues barely made a dent in Amtrak’s operating losses, which in February alone totaled more than $193 million million. That doesn’t count February expenditures of more than $600 million on capital improvements, most of which went to restore neglected infrastructure and replace worn-out railcars.
Looking at Amtrak’s results, it appears that a 66.2% increase in fares would pay for operations. Would anyone ride at that cost?