[gumby5647]

http://www.nationalcorridors.com Oct. 24, 2005 Issue

By D:F Staff

Washington - Amtrak, challenged by severe weather conditions and serious mechanical issues with its new Acela trainsets, still managed to set ridership records in the fiscal year just concluded, Amtrak announced this week, with 25.4 million riders.

Ridership increased by over 300,000 in the period October 1 – September 30, 2005, even though 2004 ridership was itself a record year. Amtrak CEO David Gunn has now led his company to record growth every year of his stewardship of the national passenger rail system, even as he reduced personnel levels by 20 per cent.

Gunn was recruited out of retirement to head Amtrak in 2002 by former Amtrak Chair John Robert Smith (who chairs the National Corridors Initiative) and by former Vice Chair Michael Dukakis. Gunn worked for Dukakis as head of operations in Massachusetts’ extensive commuter rail system, created by Dukakis and by former Massachusetts Governor Frank Sargent in the 1970’s.

The greatest ridership gains came in long distance service, which jumped in nearly every route served. The long distance routes, which have been targeted by the Bush administration for closure as unneeded, are frequently targeted by critics of Amtrak as luxury cruises for the wealthy, when the majority of the ridership in fact is working class people and families traveling Western, Midwestern, and Southern routes where airline service is prohibitively expensive or, increasingly for the smaller towns of those regions, absent altogether.

“This is a respectable achievement given the suspension of Acela Express in April and through most of the summer,” said David L. Gunn, Amtrak President & CEO. “Hurricanes Katrina and Rita also meant a loss of ridership for us. “We have recovered well from the Acela troubles (its on-time performance for September was 89 percent), the hurricanes that suspended our service to the Gulf Coast and many other challenges,” Gunn noted, in a letter to Amtrak co-workers.

“Despite hurricanes and Acela mechanical problems, we still managed to increase ridership over last year,” Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black told Destination:Freedom, “which was in itself a record year.”

Black noted that weather problems were not limited to recent hurricanes, but also included severe weather in California for much of the year, which slowed service and disrupted it altogether several times

The recent spike in gasoline prices is not reflected in ridership figures, Black noted, since most of that increase came at the end of the fiscal year.

Amtrak’s Acela is now back in full service, but was out of commission for much of the fiscal year with design and/or wear problems that forced replacement of brake rotors (similar to but much larger than disc brakes found in automobiles). The Acela, which is based upon a European design, is far heavier than its European forebears due to more stringent American safety standards. Some observers have attributed the train’s problems to its great weight, despite its being a sleek, fast, and quiet train --- and wildly popular with riders when it runs on time.

Black attributed the gains in part to a much-improved advertising and marketing program, which is largely route-specific and print-based, and gives information about schedules and special promotions. In the past, Amtrak marketing was largely focused on the “magic” of railroading. By giving potential riders specific information, Black indicated, it has made it easier to attract new riders.

“We still have a way to go with on-time performance,” Black noted. “There is no telling what we can do when we get that problem solved.”

A significant cause of delays on the Northeast Corridor is the result of aging infrastructure, such as 100-year-old bridges for which Amtrak has for 30 years unsuccessfully sought Congressional funding, and a stretch of the Corridor from New Haven to New York that is not owned by Amtrak but rather by the state of Connecticut. This segment has overhead wires --- catenary --- that are also 100 years old, and are being replaced very slowly by the state of Connecticut.

Here are the statistics, as released by Amtrak this past week:

Long-Distance highlights:

Following the August re-launch of new, enhanced service aboard the Chicago-Seattle/Portland Empire Builder to improve the train’s financial performance, ridership jumped 14 percent in September against September a year ago (40,269 v. 35,391). The Empire Builder upgrades – including refurbished rail equipment and a higher level of customer service – will serve as a model for improving the financial performance of other trains in the national network. For the year, the Empire Builder carried 476,531 passengers, the most of any of Amtrak’s 15 long-distance trains.

The daily Auto Train, which operates between the Washington, D.C. and Orlando areas, posted a 3.7 percent increase in ridership and received new auto carriers during the fiscal year, boosting the train’s capacity to carry passengers and their personal vehicles.

Other long-distance trains with notable hikes in ridership include the New York-Chicago Lake Shore Limited (up 11.8 percent), the Washington-Chicago Capitol Limited (up 7.9 percent) and the Chicago-Oakland California Zephyr (up 3.6 percent).

East highlights:

Ridership on all trains in the Northeast Corridor was 8 percent higher in September 2005 than it was in September 2004, excluding Clocker service, which is reverting to operation by New Jersey Transit this month. While Acela Express service began to return in the last few months of the fiscal year, Regional ridership continued to rise, with double-digit increases in the last three months of the fiscal year. More than 7 million passengers rode Regional trains in FY 2005, an increase of 9.7 percent.

For FY2005, the combination of the major Northeast Corridor services – Acela Express, Metroliner and Regional – serving Boston, New York, Washington and other destinations carried 9,476,923 passengers, showing an increase of one percent over the 9,371,630 passengers in FY2004.
Among state-supported services in the Northeast, the New York-Harrisburg, Penn., Keystone Service topped one million passengers (up 18.6 percent) and the Boston-Portland, Maine, Downeaster Service was up 10 percent.

Midwest highlights:

The Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha Service trains topped the half-million mark by carrying 525,239, an increase of 14.1 percent in ridership on the trains supported by the states of Wisconsin and Illinois.

Elsewhere in the Midwest, all three routes in Michigan showed strong increases, including the Chicago-Detroit/Pontiac Wolverines (up 11 percent) and the state-supported

Chicago-East Lansing/Port Huron Blue Water (up 18.3 percent) in its first full year of service and the Chicago-Grand Rapids Pere Marquette (up 9.9 percent) in its 21st year of service.

Other state-supported trains in the Midwest showing double-digit increases are the Oklahoma City-Fort Worth Heartland Flyer (up 23.1 percent) and the Chicago-Carbondale Illini in Illinois (up 10.3 percent).

West highlights:

In the California Corridors, the San Diego-Santa Barbara Pacific Surfliner service carried more than 2.5 million passengers, an increase of 7.5 percent. The Oakland/San Jose Capitol Corridor service had more than 1.2 million passengers, a gain of 8.1 percent, while the San Joaquins service had more than three-quarter-million passengers, a 2.3 percent increase.

The states of Washington and Oregon support the Cascades service, which was up 4.4 percent.

Discuss...

[goMac]

I take the Cascades line home to Seattle often. It's nice and pretty hassle free. The trains are aging a bit, but not worse than any airplane. They have power for laptops, although it would be nice to have WiFi. Nice service otherwise.

[Mastrap]

I love taking the train, much prefer it to flying any day of the week.
When I lived in London on of our main clients was Sony, with their main offices in Brussels.
The Eurostar from London Waterloo took just over 2 1/2 hours, going at a maximum speed of over 300km/h.

Whenever I have to go to Montreal from Toronto I take the train.

[OldManMac]

I haven't been on a train since my family came to America in 1953, but one of these days, I'm going to take a train trip just for the experience. I've done a fair amount of flying, driven well over a million miles in my cars, and covered 23 states in a semi, in two months, so a train trip is next on the list.

[hickey]

I take the train from philly to DC quite frequently, it works out so much better than driving. No qualms about it. Its fun too

[hickey]

sorry, really sorry about that

[mindwaves]

Originally Posted by hickey

sorry, really sorry about that

Sorry about what?

yeah, I wanted to take a road trip on a train one day. I love taking the BART everywhere, but it gets expensive IMO.

[Railroader]

I live a couple blocks from a Amtrak station.

Our small town was founded by the railroads.

Our city's festival is called "Railroad days".

We have/had business with such names as "The Iron Horse", Golden Spike", "The Whistle Stop", "The Caboose", and many more just like it.

The school's mascot is the "Railroader".

Our HS stadium is called "Roundhouse Stadium".

You can't drive through town without getting stopped by a train.

If you are late for anything you simply say "Train." and you are forgiven/understood/excused.
















And I still haven't ridden a real train.