WASHINGTON — Though Amtrak ridership for June and July 2023 did not reach pre-pandemic levels for the same months in 2019, a review of company statistics shows systemwide revenue beat the total for those months thanks to strong performance from Northeast Corridor and long-distance service.
Frequency and capacity played a part in the performance shown in the table below for those two service groups, as well as the company’s third, state-supported services.
Losses and gains for state-supported routes
The commuter-dependent California, Pennsylvania, and Midwest corridors showed marked improvement over summer 2022; still, a decline in weekly passenger trips meant that was the only one of three service lines with declines in both revenue and ridership. But Maine’s Downeaster, New York’s Empire Service, and Virginia’s Northeast Corridor-linked service to Newport News, Norfolk, Richmond, and Roanoke set monthly records in July compared to July 2019.
The Boston-Brunswick, Maine, corridor delivered its highest fiscal year revenue ever through June. Also in the east, Empire Corridor patronage was up more than 7%. Both the Virginia trains and North Carolina’s Piedmonts benefitted from additional frequencies compared with July 2019. Monthly Virginia passenger counts rose 27% to 125,656 and Charlotte-Raleigh, N.C. ridership registered a whopping 59% gain to 25,732, not including the state-sponsored Carolinian.
On the strength of strong Northeast Regional ridership, Northeast Corridor departures managed to edge out their combined June and July 2019 delivery, with the Acela side showing an increasing ability to command higher prices than in previous months.
Stunted long-distance growth
What those regional services have in common are multiple frequencies and long enough trains to accommodate travelers at competitive fares. That was not the case on the long-distance network, whose ridership and gains should have beat the other categories.
Prior to the upcoming Labor Day holiday weekend, Amtrak has added a second Superliner coach to the Chicago-Washington Capitol Limited after operating only one coach and one sleeping car for most of the year. Nevertheless, as of Aug. 27, even with the additional car, the westbound Capitol is sold out on eight of the next 12 days at $201 for a Chicago-Washington coach seat. Roomettes ($643 for one adult) and/or bedrooms ($875) are available on half of the days.
On Friday, Sept. 8, the first date Capitol Limited coach seats are available for an extended period, a through fare to Orlando, Fla., is priced at $504 on www.amtrak.com, using a combination of the Capitol connecting to the Silver Star at Washington. People traveling from Chicago to Orlando, of course, have many other options: economy prices on United Airlines’ five nonstop flights on Sept. 8, booked on August 26, ranged from $99 to $164. But Amtrak’s inherent travel niche — using the Capitol and Star journey as an example — is that there are more than 30 intermediate stations between Chicago and Orlando where Amtrak offers service. If the rail option is not available because of a lack of equipment, or if prices are not competitive with the remaining alternatives — such as driving or not taking the trip at all — people won’t buy tickets. On an interconnected system like Amtrak, the ramifications are obvious.
In July, with the Capitol Limited operating with constrained capacity resulting in daily sellouts, the train’s patronage was off 49% from the same month in 2022. In June, the year-over-year decline was 52%. The 19,229 fewer passengers translated to $1.815 million in lost revenue for those two months alone.
After leading ridership demand and revenue among Amtrak’s three business units since COVID-19’s impact began to decimate Northeast Corridor and state-supported routes in March 2020, overall long-distance ridership was only up 3.7% and revenue 5.5% in June and July combined.
Impact on connections
With consists reduced on many trains throughout the long-distance network, the only reason the category eked out positive results is that the Crescent and City of New Orleans ran just five days per week last summer and the Silver Meteor didn’t operate at all. Combined Star-Meteor patronage is up 26.6% and revenue up 22.2% for June and July compared with Silver Star figures in those months in 2022. But it would be naive to conclude that high-priced connecting segments and the absence of always-available daily feeders didn’t handicap these two trains — indeed, performance throughout the entire network — throughout this summer.
Management’s inability to prioritize a return to service many of the cars and locomotives it parked in October 2020 continues to exact a cost. As recounted in “How to kill a network,” [pages 18-19, September 2020 Trains] Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner, then senior vice president, told employees in a May 27, 2020, “town hall” virtual meeting, “Now the good news: it is much easier to expand service than to reduce it.”
That may have been true for the Northeast Corridor’s generous frequencies and eight-car consists, but other state-supported trains and long-distance routes have had difficulty responding [see “Amtrak long-distance equipment shortage, mechanical challenges continue,” News Wire, Aug. 24, 2023].
Seeking the sweet spot
Equally limiting is high prices keyed to the diminished capacity, coupled with a lack of readily available and usable information for potential new customers about where the trains go, when they leave, and how they connect. That combination, along with sidelined assets not generating revenue, has clearly weakened the network’s viability, and thus increased the cost of providing an interconnected system.
As Amtrak formulates its operating plan for fiscal 2024 beginning Oct. 1, 2023, the traveling public will begin to see whether any of the current shortcomings are addressed.
In a CNBC “Power Lunch” interview last week to address the surge in summer travel, Amtrak President Roger Harris said, “Ridership is up about 10% and we’re benefiting from some of the air traffic delays, and we have some great new equipment coming on line to meet the needs of these travelers.”
When asked if Northeast Corridor fares might come down at some point, the Amtrak president said, “On the less popular trains, you’ll see the potential for lower prices. We seek to get more overall utilization out of the trains because that really is where the sweet spot is for the business — [it’s] getting the most utilization out of the assets we have.”
That has been Amtrak’s challenge all along.
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