RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia’s state-supported Amtrak operations set a new ridership record during the 2025 fiscal year that ended June 30, closing the period with a record for June ridership.
According to the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority, the four state-supported routes — serving Roanoke, Newport News, Norfolk, and Richmond — carried 1.45 million passengers, a 4.8% increase over the 1.38 million carried in fiscal 2024. The greatest growth among those lines was a 6.9% increase on the Roanoke route, from 338,125 to 361,420 passengers, awhile the Norfolk route carried the most passengers at 542,743, up 4.7% from the previous year.
Ridership in June rose to 126,284, up 13.3% from the 111,489 in June 2024.
“The growth that we are continually seeing in our Amtrak Virginia ridership just confirms our work to expand passenger rail in Virginia,” DJ Stadtler, executive director of VPRA, in a press release. “We have projects progressing throughout the Commonwealth from Northern Virginia to Richmond to the New River Valley. These projects will be transformative for the state’s transportation mix and are necessary to keep Virginians moving.”
When all projects are completed in 2030, the state will sponsor 13 round trips to Washington, D.C., up from the current eight. More information is available at the VRPA website.
The increase in ridership is impressive. It is too little too late by more than a half century to benefit the passenger trains formerly serving Roanoke including the ‘Birmingham Special’, the ‘Tennessean’, and the ‘Pelican’ that ran the segment now covered by the ‘Northeast Regional’.