Will Amtrak Benefit from Telecommuting?

Airlines carried 94 percent as many passengers in September 2022 as they did in September 2019, according to passenger counts published by the Transportation Security Administration. That’s up from 91 percent in August and 88 percent in September.

Photo by N509FZ.

According to United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby, the industry is thriving due to changes in leisure travel habits following the pandemic. People who work at home at least some days a week are taking more frequent short pleasure trips for long weekends. Continue reading

Airlines: Our #2 Source of Mobility

Airlines carried Americans 77 percent as many miles of domestic travel in 2021 as they did in 2019, according to data recently released by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. International air travel was still far short of pre-pandemic levels, being just 29 percent of 2019 numbers. The 578 billion miles of domestic air travel was about the same as in 2013, while the 1,743 miles per capita was slightly more than in 2003.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

U.S. airlines are, or should be, the envy of the world. They carry Americans far more miles per capita than airlines (or, for that matter, railroads) of almost any other country. Airport infrastructure is in excellent condition: as of 2020, 85 percent of commercial airport runways were in good condition, 13 percent in fair condition, and only 1 percent in poor condition. U.S. airlines’ safety record is second to none, experiencing just 14 fatalities while carrying more than 7 trillion passenger-miles since 2010. And airlines do all this at a profit: while some companies have lost money in some years, the domestic airline industry as a whole earned a profit in every year since 2010. Continue reading

December Transit Is 56.4% of Pre-COVID Ridership

When measured as a percent of pre-pandemic numbers, transit in December carried 56.4 percent of December 2019 riders, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration on Friday. This compared with 56.2 percent reported last month for November. These numbers are preliminary as some transit agencies may have been late in reporting ridership totals; the December report revised November ridership upwards by about a percent. This and other corrections are reflected in the chart below, so if December numbers are corrected by similar amounts, the final number may be closer to 58 percent.

Amtrak numbers from its Monthly Performance Report; airline numbers from the Transportation Security Administration. December highway numbers will be available in a week or so.

There http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=360 prices cheapest levitra are no proven side effects and it is totally safe and green like food we eat, has no side effect. Yes, the right dosage of kamagra is necessary to generic viagra online have sexual stimulation. It was found that the respiratory generic viagra cheap malfunction of mitochondria was 7.2 percent. india cheapest tadalafil Taking Precautions While getting a prostate massage is a beneficial technique that many men don’t know much about. Meanwhile, Amtrak passenger-miles fell from 76.6 percent of pre-pandemic numbers in November to 69.2 percent in December while air travel fell a smaller amount from 84.0 percent to 83.8 percent. Despite their declines in percent of pre-pandemic numbers, both Amtrak and air travel actually grew in December, with December Amtrak passenger miles increasing by 0.5 percent over November’s and December air travel increasing by 2.1 percent over November’s. Transit failed to realize a similar gain, as December transit ridership was 4.4 percent less than November’s. Continue reading

November Transit Reaches 56.2% of Pre-Pandemic Riders

The nation’s transit systems carried 56.2 percent as many riders in November 2021 as in November 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration on Friday. Though an improvement over October’s 53.5 percent, transit still lags behind the airlines, at 84.0 percent, and Amtrak, at 76.6 percent.

Amtrak numbers from its Monthly Performance Report; airline numbers from the Transportation Security Administration; November highway numbers will be available in a week or so.

Transit bus ridership numbers were up to 60.5 percent of pre-pandemic levels while rail numbers reached 52.2 percent. Ridership has still failed to reach 50 percent of pre-pandemic numbers in Detroit (35.4%), San Francisco-Oakland (45.0%), Washington DC (45.5%), Sacramento (48.4%), San Jose (49.1%), and Chicago (49.8%). At the other extreme, ridership has recovered the most in Los Angeles (72.1%), San Diego (64.7%), Tampa-St. Petersburg (63.9%), Las Vegas (63.4%), Dallas-Ft. Worth (62.6%), Houston (61.2%), and San Antonio (60.6%). The New York urban area, which produces about 45 percent of all transit numbers in the U.S., was slightly above average at 58.3 percent. Continue reading

Reducing Greenhouse Gases from Flying

Rail advocates say we need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on high-speed rail to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from flying. But there is probably a more cost-effective way of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions from flying, such as using aviation fuel that emits fewer net greenhouse gases.

Of course, there’s no reason to think that high-speed rail would reduce greenhouse gas emissions anyway. The best study on the issue found that the huge amount of greenhouse gases emitted during construction would require 71 years of savings to balance out. But rail lines must be extensively rebuilt every 20 to 30 years, and I don’t see that the study factored the greenhouse gas emissions of such reconstruction into the analysis. Continue reading

August Transit <50% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

Transit’s recovery falters as ridership in August was just 49.97 percent of August, 2019 numbers, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is only slightly above July’s 49.13 percent of July 2019.

I’ll post Amtrak and driving data when they become available.

August data are not yet available for Amtrak or driving, but both were well above transit levels in July. August flying fell slightly from July, probably because of worries about a new wave of COVID and associated health mandates. These factors may have also depressed transit ridership for the month. Continue reading

June Transit 50% of Pre-Pandemic Ridership

Transit ridership reached 50 percent of pre-pandemic levels in June, according to data released late last week by the Federal Transit Administration. This leaves transit well behind Amtrak, which carried 63 percent as many passenger miles; the airlines, which carried 74 percent as many passengers; and highways. Highway data for June are not yet available but in May they carried 96 percent of pre-pandemic miles of driving.

Amtrak numbers are from the company’s June Monthly Performance Report; airline data from the Transportation Security Administration; and highway data are from the Federal Highway Administration. Final June highway numbers should be available next week.

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Transit’s Post-COVID Recovery Is Slowest

Amtrak’s May ridership surged to 45.2 percent of pre-COVID levels (as compared with May 2019), surpassing public transit, which reached only 42.3 percent of 2019 levels. Transit’s recovery was partly hurt by the fact that May 2021 had two fewer business days than May 2019, but the slow growth makes transit the least-recovered of the various modes of travel.

Shown are transit trips from the National Transit Database, and airline trips from Transportation Safety Administration, and Amtrak passenger miles from the May performance report. Driving is in vehicle miles from the Federal Highway Administration’s Traffic Volume Trends; May highway data won’t be out for another week or so.

As usual, rail transit is doing worse than bus transit when compared with 2019, but rail has also recovered more since 2020. Most of rail’s recovery is in heavy rail and commuter rail; light rail’s recovery is only slightly faster than transit buses and hybrid rail (meaning Diesel-powered light rail) isn’t even recovering as fast as buses. Continue reading

Transit & Amtrak Lag Behind Driving & Flying

Transit carried 40.5 percent as many riders in April, 2021 as in April, 2019, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration last Friday. This is a slight step backwards from March, in which transit carried 40.8 percent as many people as in March 2019.

As indicated by the dotted line, driving data are not yet available, but a future Antiplanner post will update this chart when they are published.

Amtrak was even worse, carrying 37.2 percent of its 2019 passenger-miles, according to the company’s monthly performance report. This, however, was a bigger improvement over March, when it carried 32.7 percent of 2019 passenger-miles. Continue reading

January Transit Ridership Down 65.7%

Transit agencies carried only 34.3 percent as many riders in January 2021 as in January 2020, according to data released by the Federal Transit Administration last Friday. This is a sharp drop from the previous four months, when ridership was 37 to 38 percent of 2019 numbers.

The latest Amtrak data show that its fortunes have improved slightly, as the passenger miles it carried (as a percent of the previous year) grew from 22.4 percent in December to 26.8 percent in January. That’s still pretty pitiful. Continue reading