FY 2025 Ridership Expansion and Fiscal Recovery

[NYP]

No- riders that travel any miles on a state-supported route are assigned to the state-supported route, not the NEC. A rider from New York to Lancaster would be counted as a Keystone rider.

 

[Septa9739]

This is correct. But if I understand properly, the same Keystone train carried a passenger NYP-PHL, it gets counted as an NER. If a passenger boards a regional in Charlottesville and gets off at WAS, it counts as the Roanoke service line. If he boards at Charlottesville bound for New York, it credits credited to the Roanoke service line. If he boards at Washington, however, he gets counted as an NER. That seems to be the only way the numbers make sense historically. Otherwise we would see dips in the NER every time a train gets extended into VA, which is not the case.

 

[Tom C]

The Vermonter has a rather complicated one. If you are on the Vermonter you may be assigned to 3 different routes depending on your northern terminus. If the northern terminus of your trip is New Haven or somewhere south of that on the NEC it’s a Northeast Regional trip, if the northern terminus is between Meriden and Springfield it’s a New Haven - Springfield line trip, if the northern terminus is north of Springfield it is a Vermonter trip.

 

[Septa9739]

After I posted last month’s update, I realized I didn’t like the way I formatted it. Winners and losers is too complicated, so I came up with a different program. Red, yellow, green, and pink. Red is below last year and pre-COVID. Yellow is above pre-COVID. Green is above both. I needed a color to reflect above last year, but still below pre-COVID. That is going to be pink, because I think that situation is more of a red than anything. This is NOVEMBER FY 2025 (CY 2024) Ridership. Percentages are of last year.

Green:

Northeast Regional 979,100 (108%)

1. Empire South 112,600 (105%)
2. Borealis 19,400 (first November ever!)
3. Illini/Saluki 28,300 (110%)
4. Cascades 81,600 (129%)
5. Missouri River Runner 15,400 (102%)
6. Pennsylvanian 20,900 (114%)
7. Piedmont 41,100 (121%)
8. Cardinal 8,700 (112%)
9. City of New Orleans 21,500 (108%)
10. Texas Eagle 31,800 (112%)
11. Floridian 33,400 (First November since Carter was president)
12. Palmetto 34,100 (102%)

Yellow

1. Heartland Flyer 6,600 (97%)
2. All FOUR Virginia services 112,100 (95%)
3. Carolinian 25,600 (80%)
4. Lakeshore Limited 30,000 (95%)
5. Crescent 26,900 (92%)
6. Auto Train 19,400 (97%)

Pink

1. Lincoln Service 52,700 (104%)
2. Illinois Service 12,800 (108%)
3. PacSurf 189,300 (103%)
4. Capitol Corridor 93,900 (102%)
5. Adirondack 6,700 (100%)
6. Silver Meteor 28,100 (108%)
7. CA Zephyr 27,400 (105%)
8. SWC 22,600 (101%)
9. Sunset Limited 7,200 (106%)

Red

1. Acela Express 261,000 (87%)
2. Ethan Allen Express 2,700 (36%)
3. Vermonter 5,900 (65%)
4. Downeaster 46,200 (96%)
5. Keystone 102,600 (88%)
6. Hiawatha 53,000 (91%)
7. Wolverine 35,700 (99%)
8. San Joaquin 81,000 (96%)
9. Blue Water 13,800 (97%)
10. Pere Marquette 7,200 (96%)
11. Silver Star 10,600 (31%)
12. Empire Builder 29,000 (96%)
13. Capitol Limited 4,000 (34%)
14. Coast Starlight 31,100 (96%)

 

[GariYaMoshi]

Ethan Allen Express 2,700 (36%)

Was Ethan Allen out of service for a while?

Full disclosure here - I once taught college level statistics. I'm thinking that Capitol Limited and Silver Star both deserve an asterisk given that they weren't in service the full month, losing their identities when combined for the Floridian.

 

[Septa9739]

As for commentary, the month looks pretty good on the whole. Big picture wise the railroad lost $45,100,000 over the last two months, which is dreadful, but half as dreadful as last year. Controlling operating losses may be key for Amtrak over the next length of time. Improvement was largely on the expenses side of the ledger. Revenue is soft compared to plan in line with ridership. YTD ridership is up over last year by 224,000. Ridership is up over all three segments, but 2 in three of them (on net) are NECSL passengers. Both the NECSL and SSSL are narrowly behind plan, LDSL is in line, but tilted ahead.

At the individual route level, the greens contain no surprises, expect for maybe the Cardinal, hitting first month of COVID recovery since February. Seven months of data in and the Borealis seems to be on track for 230,000 (ish) riders its first 12 months. We’ll see what the winter holds, but ridership has been very tight in this 18,000-22,000 range since June, most routes see bigger swings. The Cascades up 129% is about what we want to see going from 4 round trips to six.

The yellows aren’t terribly exciting. They are all within the striking distance. I think the only news story is that Virginia may just have a ceiling after all. Nothing can be straight growth forever.

The pinks are a little more interesting. The Lincoln service is right there to break through it’s COVID dip. It’s still a long way from its 2013 record. FY 2026 might see the record. All the California services are going to take years to rebuild. None of them are close. None are growing with any real speed. The Zephyr and Chief are getting close. The Adirondack just deserves a medal for surviving. Brutal schedule, long term track work, state non-commitment, and historically soft ridership usually spell the end (looking at the Hoosier State).

Reds are mostly easy to explain. Acela=pulled equipment+soft business demand+failing reliablity. At this point, the only reason I’d ride an Acela is because I never have. Otherwise, there’s no guarantee you’ll actually save the time advertised versus the NER. The Vermont trains collapsed out of nowhere and I don’t know why, but would like to. The Downeaster is a matter of a couple riders per train. The rest of the SSSL trains are repeat offenders. The Empire Builder is right there, and the Starlight is still like half the train it was in 2019. The Star and Capitol Limited only ran 10 days, which brings me to what everyone wants to know about.

 

[Bernie]

Interesting that the Keystone is down, but the Pennsylvanian is (way) up. Keystone is probably down because of track work requiring busing from Lancaster

 

[Septa9739]

That and also I think there is probably growth in the Western side with the change at Pittsburgh to Chicago more possible. Because the Pennsylvanian is a one-a-day with fairly low ridership in a absolute sense, it doesn’t take a whole lot to tilt the needle.