May marked 19 consecutive months of ridership growth for Amtrak, with more than 2.6 million passengers travelling.
The long-distance trains have experienced year-over-year passenger increases, making a significant contribution to the extended streak of national ridership growth.
In addition, advance reservations for summer travel indicate increased ridership on long-distance trains in June, July and August.
This strong performance is part of a long-term trend that has seen Amtrak set annual ridership records in seven of the last eight fiscal years, including more than 28.7 million passengers in FY 2010.
Comparing the first eight months of FY 2011 (October – May) to the same time period in FY 2010, national Amtrak ridership is up 6.7% so far this fiscal year and all three major business lines are showing gains: the Northeast Corridor up 5.3%, state-supported and other short distance corridors up 8.2%, and long-distance trains up 5.5%.
Northeast Highlights
On the Northeast Corridor, ridership for the high-speed Acela Express experienced a 5.1% increase in May 2011 vs. May 2010.
In addition, May was the best month on record for the increasingly popular Northeast Regional service carrying 693,268 passengers, which represents a 10.1% increase over the same month last year.
Central Highlights
State-supported Amtrak services in the Central U.S. continue to post impressive gains from year-ago figures, including the Missouri River Runner (Kansas City – St. Louis), up 28.8%, Blue Water (Chicago – East Lansing – Port Huron) with a 22% increase, Illini/Saluki (Chicago – Champaign – Carbondale) up 23% and Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr (Chicago – Quincy) with a 13.7% increase.
The busiest corridor in the Chicago Hub, the Hiawatha Service (Chicago – Milwaukee), continues on a pace to carry more than 800,000 passengers this year, with an increase of 6.7% in May.
West Highlights
In the West, strong ridership continued in May 2011 on all of the three California state-supported routes when compared to May 2010.
The Capitol Corridor (Auburn – Sacramento – Emeryville/San Francisco – San Jose) was up 9.7%; the San Joaquin (Oakland/Sacramento – Bakersfield) up 12.8%; and the Pacific Surfliner (San Diego – Los Angeles – Santa Barbara – San Luis Obispo) up 4.3% over the same month last year.
Ridership on the Amtrak Cascades (Eugene, Ore. – Seattle – Vancouver, B.C.) also was up by more than 6.5%.
National Highlights
Despite lengthy weather-related disruptions for two of the 15 trains, the overnight services reported an increase of 4.6%, lead by double-digit increases on the Lake Shore Limited (Chicago – New York/Boston), Sunset Limited (Los Angeles – New Orleans), Silver Star (New York – Miami), Auto Train (Lorton, Va., – Sanford, Fla.) and Southwest Chief (Los Angeles – Chicago).
Factors contributing to the continuing success of Amtrak include high gasoline prices which have trended higher, continued growth in business travel on the high-speed Acela Express trains with Wi-Fi service, the increased appeal and popularity of rail travel, and effective marketing campaigns.
