
U.S. Passenger Rail Ridership (2013) - jsc123
http://www.brookings.edu/research/interactives/2013/AmtrakRoutes
======
wallflower
Having taken Amtrak's rail from Coast to Coast, if you ever want a real
vacation (albeit one in a semi-confined area), I highly encourage taking
Amtrak to get where you are going. I met several retired couples who basically
to get to New Orleans went to New York City, Chicago, California, Texas, and
then New Orleans. There are kids on trains but unlike air travel and car
travel these kids (and parents alike) understand that they are not trying to
get anywhere in a hurry. The general vibe is one of just pondering life.
Spending hours in an upper-deck observation car staring at the beautiful or
even quite mundane passing landscape can really help you focus. The characters
who come to the onboard bar are quite interesting.

If you do decide to do long-haul Amtrak travel, sleeping in the seat is quite
difficult - the door opening can wake you, the observation cars so beautiful
during the day are absolutely frigid at night. The costs for a sleeper car
though are quite expensive (more than air travel for equivalent destination).
And yes, freight has priority over commuter on the tracks because freight owns
the tracks - so delays in the hours to days are possible.

For some people, it is a bucket list experience. I can honestly say after 5
days on a train - I was in no hurry to get back on (I flew back). I guarantee
you will meet interesting people. Two of the most interesting people I met
were these two beautiful Latina teenagers who sat for hours working on
something hard to figure out. I finally approached them and learned that they
were making Sudoku puzzles - by hand...

The wi-fi is so spotty that I don't think you'd have much luck working remote
from a train if you required ssh connections.

[http://www.trainweb.com/coaststarlight/](http://www.trainweb.com/coaststarlight/)

~~~
wglb
I took the Empire Builder from Montana to Chicago when I was in college. It
was a 28 or 34 hour ride, depending on which of the two trains you took.

 _sleeping in the seat is quite difficult_ Yes, but i ended up learning to
sleep anywhere, door opening or not.

But as you say the view from the upper level in the senic car was worth it. I
remember the journey through North Dakota next to route US 2. Those days,
everyone had one of the mercury-vapor yard lights that would turn on
automatically at dark, and you could see them for 10 miles or more. There
would be hour-long stretches in which you would see non of these on either
side.

Since I got off the train at Shelby, I never went through Glacier Park on the
train.

Insofar as a bucket list item, put on there taking a convertible on the Going
to the Sun highway. I got to check that one off when going to the
Glacier/Waterton international Hamfest with a friend when I was in high
school.

~~~
wglb
Oh, and I didn't worry about wifi, as my travel was done before that was
invented.

------
tptacek
From this data: almost half of Amtrak's ridership (north of 45%!) occurs on
roughly 1000 miles of track, or just 3% of Amtrak's almost 28,000 total miles
--- _all in the Northeastern US_ , DC to Boston through NYC and Philly.

Another gigantic bite of Amtrak's ridership comes from short-hop California
routes --- particularly LA to San Diego.

The sharp increase in Amtrak ridership that Brookings notice includes the
_zero riders to 3.3MM riders_ from the introduction of the Acela service, plus
another 2+MM from other Northeast routes, presumably knock-on benefit from the
Acela.

Most of Amtrak's route map seems, with this data, to be a pointless waste of
money. The "renaissance" is the Acela, and not much more.

~~~
melling
This tells me that speed increase made a large difference. Most people drive
when it's faster than the train. So, when we get our first high-speed rail in
this country, in a densely populated region, it should do well.

~~~
tptacek
There's a bigger gap between the 75MPH that normal Amtrak trains operate with
at peak speed and the 130MPH the Acela does than there is between the Acela
and a European high-speed train. Also: high-speed rail is going to go where
the Acela already is, and the Acela is already fast enough to be viable and
competitive. So, I kind of doubt train technology is going to make a huge
difference.

~~~
melling
This is incorrect on all accounts.

The Acela doesn't run in California and it doesn't run in Texas.

[http://texascentral.com/](http://texascentral.com/)

Trains in Eurpoe are going to 220mph.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/video/take-a-look-at-europe-s-
faste...](http://www.bloomberg.com/video/take-a-look-at-europe-s-fastest-
train-at-360-kph-n2fkR~dVRdqIgy1N7zzLzw.html)

The average speed between NYC and Boston is something like 79mph. Saying you
have a top speed 130mph, and doing it only for a small portion of the trip is
quite misleading. At any rate, peak has little meaning. I've been on commuter
trains that peaked at 90mph for 5 minutes.

~~~
rayiner
That's the point. Peak speed is really irrelevant on the northeast corridor.
The bottleneck is track conditions and tunnel capacity.

------
jacques_chester
I note that the profitable lines are on the East coast.

Your choices for intercity travel are:

1\. Drive. I hope you like staring at roads and other cars.

2\. Fly. I hope you like spending more time getting to, and going through, the
airport than you will spend in the air.

3\. Take a train. I hope you like having leg room, a view, the ability to do
some reading, going from city centre to city centre without fighting traffic,
leaving from a train station you arrived at 15 minutes before departure time.

From NYC, I can get to Philadelphia or DC substantially faster by train than
by any other method[^]. I can get to Boston sufficiently quickly that flying
isn't worth it.

To travel to Toronto by air takes about 5 hours, once you factor in all the
stuff that isn't flying. By train, it's about 10 hours. I am tempted, a lot of
the time, to take the damn train.

[^] With one whoopee cushion: US rail systems prioritise freight over
passenger traffic. You can easily be stuck for 10-30 minutes while several
thousand tons of clanking steel crawls past a high speed train. Mind you, they
close the airports any time somebody brings in a water bottle or if it's
slightly chilly. So.

~~~
tptacek
This is true in the Boston/NYC/Philly region, but not outside it. I prefer the
Acela to a Jetblue NYC-IAD(DC), but the flight is the better call for that
route.

It's also _only_ true of the Acela routes. Intercity travel on normal Amtrak
trains is awful.

~~~
weeksie
Meh, I regularly take the Adirondack line NYC/Montreal and it's a regular old
Amtrak that creaks its way through upstate NY. It's a lovely trip and it beats
the hell out of having to trudge through customs. It's 10 hours, but it's also
only $190 (or so), and it's far more conducive to working than being in the
air.

A plane trip is only three hours in the air, but all said it's probably six to
seven hours out of the day given airport time and horsing about at customs.
Tack on another $200 in cab fare for round trip rides to airports and I'm
paying an extra $300 or more for a far worse experience.

~~~
tptacek
NYC-Montreal is a 1.5 hour flight.

~~~
weeksie
Which is the least of it. There is anywhere from 1.5 to two hours on either
side. And the additional $200 each way, given the distance of the airports
from the city center.

~~~
timsally
I fly to Montreal once a year from Boston and 1.5-2 hours on either side is a
gross exaggeration. The Air Canada flights to Montreal have a dedicated
security line at BOS and it takes roughly 7 minutes to get through it. I've
also never waited more than 45 minutes for customs in Canada. On the way back,
US customs take about 20 minutes thanks to automated terminals they have
installed.

~~~
weeksie
You don't get to the airport an hour early? It doesn't take you a half hour to
drive to the airport and park? No idea, I've never flown out of Boston, maybe
Logan's closer to town than JFK is in NY. I'm just saying, because from my
place in Manhattan getting to Penn is literally a five minute shot up 6th Ave.

~~~
timsally
From the equivalent location in Boston (Beacon Hill) your a 15 minute or less
Uber ride away from the gate at BOS. For flights that have dedicated security
lines or if I get pre-check I'd leave downtown Boston 1 hour and 15 minutes
before takeoff. I've only been bitten by this once in the last few years, in
which case you can find an airline employee to get you through the security
line ASAP.

However, even if you want to get to the airport early, it's not like that time
is wasted. These days I would say relaxing in the airport is just as nice as
relaxing in a train car:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/nyregion/improving-
ground-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/08/nyregion/improving-ground-life-
for-travelers-at-laguardia-jfk-and-newark-airports.html). The last time I was
at LGA early I had a huge table to myself and the person I was with, and the
table had an iPad I could use to order food and drinks.

------
fesja
FYI

Spain has the second biggest high speed train network of the world, with over
3.000 km (many more kilometers being built), just after China.

This 2014, 28M people will have traveled by train, compared to 31.2M in USA in
2012. The goal is to reach 56M in a few years. After many years where the
prices were expensive, we have started to liberalize it and prices have go
down. Now it's reasonable cheap. You can buy one-way tickets for 30€ for a
1h30 route (like 4h by car). Madrid-Barcelona is one of the most demanding
routes and flights can't compete with the high speed train. In just a few
years, people have moved from using flights to most of them using the train.
It's way way more comfortable.

Of course, the key question is geography. Trains works best for a distance
less than 1.000km. In Spain that's the distance from east to west or south to
north. In USA there are some areas that make a lot of sense like Boston-NY-
Philly-Washington; and California.

~~~
chestnut-tree
In the UK, we tend to look enviously at our continental neighbours such as
Spain, France, Germany, Netherlands who we pereceive to have fast, modern,
reliable and cheap rail travel. All things that we tend not to have in the UK
(especially the cheap bit).

One interesting fact I discovered a while ago that greatly surprised me: the
percentage of public transport usage (as the main mode of travel) is higher in
the UK than in Germany, France and the Netherlands. This finding came from a
survey funded by the European Commission in 2010/2011.

    
    
      Country and % whose main mode of travel is public transport
      Czech Republic 37%
      Spain 30%
      UK 22%
      France 20%
      Germany 15%
      Ireland 14%
      Finland 13%
      Denmark 12%
      Netherlands 11%
    

The full list of countries is in the report (see page 8):
[http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_312_en.pdf](http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/fl_312_en.pdf)

~~~
_delirium
The UK has a higher share for public transport than the Netherlands in large
part because the Netherlands has a higher share of people who use no
mechanized transport at all: 34% of Dutch either bike or walk as their main
mode of travel, compared to about half as large a proportion of Britons (16%),
according to the source you linked.

Here's the ordering (same countries, same source) if you take
transit+walking+biking together:

    
    
        Czech Republic 60%
        Spain          46%
        Netherlands    45%
        UK             37%
        Denmark        35%
        Germany        35%
        Finland        35%
        France         32%
        Ireland        30%
    

The UK still does pretty well, admittedly. I think the reputation for bad
trains in the UK is mostly intercity trains, whereas these "main mode of
travel" statistics are more about commuting, which is a different set of
concerns; the London Underground alone accounts for a very large number of
commuters.

(Denmark, by contrast, doesn't look anywhere near as good as its reputation in
these kinds of figures. In large part because its reputation is built
specifically on _Copenhagen_ , the most visible city by a good margin.
Jutland, which has about half of the Danish population, is a sprawling, car-
centric collection of towns and suburbs.)

------
jpatokal
To bring an outsider's perspective to this discussion, I'm kind of shocked by
how _low_ all those numbers are, even with 200% growth and whatnot. Amtrak is
offering service on lines that get under 40k passengers a _year_. By
comparison, the Tokaido Shinkansen between Tokyo and Osaka has 391k passengers
a _day_ , meaning it also racks up the entire Acela corridor's yearly numbers
in a week.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I just looked at one of those routes under 40k passengers, the Hoosier State.

Wikipedia has an interesting fact, that there's a 2008 law that requires
intercity routes under 750 miles to have their costs covered by the affected
states by 2013.

1\. That changes almost every discussion in this thread, and really the
economics of Amtrak as a whole.

2\. The route brings in about $850k a year but costs $3M.

Obviously at this point I need to read up on this law that changed the short
route train funding. (Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act)

Edit - It looks like it's more about "cost-sharing" of various types. Still,
that does change things.

Amtrak's budget justification for 2014 is interesting. Particularly the graph
showing the decrease in operational defecits.
[http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/851/32/AmtrakFY14-Budget-
Request...](http://www.amtrak.com/ccurl/851/32/AmtrakFY14-Budget-Request-
Justification,0.pdf)

------
rayiner
It's interesting we're talking about so much money between questionably useful
routes. In areas not well-served by rail, it might make more sense to put
spend that money on express subway lines to the airport and more efficient
security processes.

------
Intermernet
I'd never come across the term "ridership" before. What a wonderful word!

I note that Google says it's a North American term (in Australia and England
this would probably be termed "patronage") but I may start using it. It has a
Samuel Clemensy feel to it, although dictionary.reference.com dates it to
1962.[1]

[1]
[http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ridership](http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ridership)

------
pstuart
Train travel is for the most part impractical because it's so slow --
passenger traffic takes a back seat to freight.

I've had a notion that we should nationalize the rail _lines_ and invest in
having it handle more passenger (and freight) traffic safely. The lines could
be opened to other passenger service (hello, Virgin) and some competition
could be had in that space.

~~~
tptacek
Train travel is also impractical because no train is ever going to be
competitive with an airplane on a Chicago-Houston, Chicago-Boston, or (heh)
Chicago-Seattle route, simply because of the distances involved, even assuming
the train runs the top operational speed of the Shanghai Maglev for the entire
route.

(Chicago isn't what's important; substitute Minneapolis, St. Louis, or
Indianapolis; the point is: trains can't efficiently get you from any coast to
or from the midwest, or for that matter from the Pacific Northwest to Southern
California).

The problem is geography, not freight traffic.

~~~
jdlegg
I disagree with this assessment.

The distance from Chicago to Houston is roughly 1100 miles. Non-stop flights
from O'Hare to Houston Hobby are listed on Kayak.com at 2 hours and 45
minutes. Add approx. 1 hour for pre-flight check-in, security and an average
delay factor (it's O'Hare after all). That's a 3 hour and 45 minute trip time.
We could add post-flight transportation from the airport to where you actually
want to be and probably add another hour, but let's ignore that detail.

In 2007, the French TGV set a speed record on conventional track of 357 mph.
The unconventional track (maglev) record belongs to the Japanese SCMaglev and
is 368 mph [0]. These were set under very experimental conditions, but if it
were possible to realize equivalent speeds in a practical setting (perhaps via
underground tunnels), the train trip from Chicago to Houston would require
only 3 hours(!).

But let's assume the above is impossible in real operating conditions. French
TGV passenger routes regularly attain speeds of 200mph. This makes our Houston
trip a little under 5 1/2 hours. That strikes me as quite efficient.

I'm not an expert, but given the deplorable state of American infrastructure,
especially rail, implementation of a system like this would most likely
require starting from scratch. As such, equivalence of the French TGV seems
very attainable.

More likely, new innovation would lead to performance improvements over their
system, which was conceived in the 1970s. Is 300mph attainable? I don't know,
but it seems like a reasonable goal. That brings our Houston trip to roughly
the equivalent of a flight, when including pre-flight check-in procedures. Of
course, trains are safer, less energy and infrastructure intensive and a lot
more pleasant.

All of this without mentioning the fact that SCNF, the operator of the French
TGV, achieved a $1.75 billion operating profit in 2007.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_speed_record_for_rail_vehicles)

~~~
icebraining
Amtrak issued a report saying that SNCF and other European rail companies only
report "profits" because they have higher public subsidies which are
unaccounted for.

[http://www.amtrakoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/E-08-02...](http://www.amtrakoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/E-08-02-042208.PDF)

~~~
jdlegg
Of course Amtrak would issue such a report...

~~~
tptacek
Did you read the report, or is that innuendo? The report makes actual
arguments about the structure of the public financing that European trains
get. Refute one of them.

