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March 2025 Transport Results

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Amtrak boomed, carrying 21 percent more passenger-miles in March 2025 than the same month before the pandemic. The airlines carried 5.5 percent more passengers and highways carried 2.2 percent more vehicle-miles. As expected, transit continues to lag behind, carrying only 80.9 percent as many passengers as in March of 2019. That’s still the most since the beginning of the pandemic, but it is only 0.73 percent more (relative to 2019) than in February.

Amtrak data are from March monthly performance report; airline riders from Transportation Security Administration; highway vehicle-miles from the Federal Highway Administration, and transit data are from the Federal Transit Administration.

The transit industry is increasingly desperate to get more subsidies to offset the decline in ridership and the increase in operating expenses since 2019. Flush with Congressional COVID-relief funds, agencies increased salaries and wages and continued to operate nearly as many vehicle-miles of service despite the declines in ridership. Now the relief funds are running out and agencies that previously relied heavily on fares to fund their operations are getting panicky. Continue reading →

Amtrak, Air Travel Each Grow 8 Percent

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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. Continue reading →

January Air Travel 11.7%, Amtrak 7.8% Above 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The airlines carried 11.7 percent more passengers in January 2025, while Amtrak carried 7.8 percent more passenger-miles, than in the same month in 2019. The air travel data are based on passenger counts from the Transportation Security Administration, while the Amtrak data are based on its monthly performance report.

The big question is where are the highway data? The Federal Highway Administration usually releases traffic volume trends about 45 days after the end of any given month. In other words, December data should have been out in the middle of February, but here we are in March and it hasn’t yet been posted. Did Elon Musk fire the people in the Federal Highway Administration who keep track of this data? If so, it would be hypocritical for me to complain as I believe the federal government is too big, but I still hope the data appear soon. Continue reading →

Amtrak Does Well in December; Airlines Do Better

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Amtrak carried 7 percent more passenger-miles in December of 2024 than in the same month of 2019, according to its monthly performance report issued earlier this week. The airlines, meanwhile, carried 10 percent more passengers in December of 2024 than 2019, according to TSA passenger counts.

Transit and highway data will be added as soon as it is available.

The airlines, of course, carried a lot more passengers than Amtrak. Amtrak carried about 3.0 million passengers in December while the airlines carried 66 million. The difference in passenger-miles is even greater. While airline passenger-mile data is not yet available for December, the average Amtrak trip is about 200 miles long while the average domestic airline trip is 950 miles, which means domestic airlines carry about 100 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak. When international airline trips are included, the difference is even greater. Continue reading →

November 2024 Transportation Recovery

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Americans drove 2.2 percent more miles, flew 4.7 percent more trips, and took Amtrak 6.2 percent more passenger-miles in November 2024 than the same month before the pandemic, according to data recently released by federal agencies. Transit ridership, however, still lagged almost 22 percent behind pre-pandemic numbers.

For once, the Federal Highway Administration, Federal Transit Administration, and Amtrak all released their monthly data reports at about the same time, late last week. TSA passenger counts are available only a day or two after each day, but I generally wait for data from other agencies before posting the airline data. Continue reading →

Highways, Amtrak, Airlines Set Records in 2024

By | | Transportation
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Americans drove 2.8 percent more miles in October 2024 than the same month before the pandemic, according to data released by the Federal Highway Administration last Friday. Both urban and rural driving were greater in October 2024 than October 2019.

Meanwhile, Amtrak brags that it carried an all-time record number of passengers in its fiscal year 2024 (which ended September 30). In that year, it carried 32.8 million riders and 6.54 billion passenger-miles. That is only a small fraction of the number carried by passenger trains when they were private, as ridership peaked at 1.2 billion in 1920 and passenger-miles peaked at 89 billion in 1944. But 2024 was a record year since Amtrak began in 1971. Continue reading →

October Amtrak & Airline Riders Up 6% from 2019

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Amtrak carried 6.2 percent more riders and almost 8 percent more passenger-miles in October of 2024 than the same month before the pandemic, according to the entity’s latest monthly performance report. The airlines, meanwhile, carried 5.9 percent more passengers, according to TSA passenger counts.

October transit and highway data will be posted here when it is released by the Department of Transportation.

Although growth in air travel did not quite equal growth in rail travel, airlines still carried 25 times as many passengers and far more passenger-miles than Amtrak. While October airline passenger-miles won’t be available for a month or so, in August domestic airlines carried 110 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak. When international air travel is included, airlines carried 226 times as many passenger-miles as Amtrak. Continue reading →

September Transit Ridership 76.3% of 2019

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Transit agencies carried 76.3 percent as many riders in September of 2024 as they did in the same month in 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is transit’s best performance, when measured as a share of pre-pandemic numbers, since the pandemic began.

Highway and Amtrak results for September will be posted here when it becomes available.

Highway travel had fully recovered from the pandemic by around July 2021. Air travel, which the Transportation Security Administration says carried 108.7 percent as many travelers as in September 2019, had recovered by January 2023 and Amtrak by October 2023. In October 2023, transit ridership still hadn’t reached 75 percent of pre-pandemic numbers, but that is probably the best it was going to do. Some of the growth in transit since then is due to some people returning to downtown offices, but much of that growth is probably more attributable to regular growth, not to recovery from the pandemic. Continue reading →

Amtrak Recovers to 99.7% of Pre-Pandemic PMs

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Amtrak carried 99.7 percent as many passenger-miles in August 2024 as in the same month of 2019, according to the state-owned company’s monthly performance report. This was up from 85.1 percent in July. While Amtrak was still slightly short of pre-pandemic levels, domestic airline flights comfortably carried 8.7 percent more passengers in August 2024 than in 2019, according to TSA passenger counts.

The Department of Transportation has not yet posted August highway or transit data but when it does the results will be reported here.

While Amtrak numbers are in passenger-miles (which is the preferred measure) and airline numbers are in passenger counts, data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics show that these follow one another fairly closely. In June, the most recent month for which such data are available, domestic flights carried 6.8 percent more passenger-miles than in June 2019. Continue reading →

Amtrak Ridership Nosedives in July

By | | Transportation
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Airlines carried 4.5 percent more passengers in July 2024 than the same month in 2019, according to TSA passenger counts. But Amtrak numbers dramatically dropped, carrying nearly 15 percent fewer passenger-miles than July of 2019, according to the state-owned company’s monthly performance report.

July transit and highway data are not yet available.

The report shows that Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor carried 11 percent more riders in July than in 2019, but state-subsidized trains carried 8 percent fewer riders and long-distance trains carried 15 percent fewer. State-subsidized train ridership fell despite the fact that Amtrak added two new routes and extended a third one. Continue reading →