Comparing Historical Passenger Train Ridership

Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum

Help Support Amtrak Unlimited Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
May 1, 2017
Messages
1,087
Location
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Fairly soon into October Amtrak will release its annual ridership figures which, we hope, sets another record. If that proves to be the case, we'll rejoice and recognize how far passenger rail ridership has progressed since May 1, 1971. To add context, is anyone aware of ridership numbers that go before the establishment of Amtrak? Some of you astute observers may have thoughts on that. I haven't been around here long enough to know if it has been discussed previously. It's possible that we can rely only on estimates, unless the late, great FCC kept track of such things. But I think it would be interesting to how far back we can go to understand where we are today from a historical perspective. I don't know if overall there are more trains today than on March 30, 1971. We know there are far fewer long distance trains but there could very well be a higher number of corridor trains given the combined expansions of the NEC, California and Midwest corridors. I also expect one of these days Amtrak's vaunted IG will come out with criticism on how Amtrak calculates its ridership but that discussion can wait for another day.
 
There are definitely ridership numbers available for pre-Amtrak years, and are probably in archival dockets for train-off petitions submitted to the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) in those pre-Amtrak years.
 
There are still far fewer routes than there were on 3/31/71. Over half of all passenger trains operating were axed at the the start of Amtrak.

With that said, there is far more "corridor" type service in many areas than in 1971. There was little "corridor" style service on the West Coast. The only thing that vaguely resembled corridor style service was LA-San Diego and Portland-Seattle, both with 3 trains a day. There was no corridor style service north of Los Angeles at all, just the Coast Daylight. The LA-San Diego corridor now is served by 11 trains a day. There were 3 "pool" trains between Portland and Seattle, which did provide corridor service, now there are 4 Cascades plus the Coast Starlight. The San Joaquin valley, now served by the San Joaquin service with multiple frequencies, was only served by the SP San Joaquin Daylight. Sacramento - Bay Area only got the City of San Francisco, which by the beginning of Amtrak, only operated 3 days a week. Now there is the frequent Capitol Corridor service.

Not as familiar with the Midwest, but I imagine there is somewhat more corridor service, particularly Chicago-Milwaukee and Chicago-St. Louis.

But bear in mind ALL these corridors, except the NEC are fully funded by their respective states, and are basically answerable to the states.

I think overall there are still fewer trains than in 1971, but there are are a lot more corridors.

BTW, I think you meant the ICC. I don't think the Federal Communications Commission had much to do with passenger trains.
 
By the way, Amtrak Day was May 1, 1971. so the last full day of railroad operation of passenger trains was April 30, 1971, not March 30.
True (although there was a moritorium on train-offs just prior to Amtrak, so the same trains were running on April 30 as March 30).

Heck as of March 30, 1971 Santa Fe was still pondering whether or not to join and had not signed an Amtrak contract yet.
 
My best read is that intercity ridership now is probably substantially higher than it was on A-Day, but the character of it has changed. A good example would be the Surfliners/San Diegans: In 1971, the 3x daily San Diegans were almost assuredly pulling in less than half a million passengers per year. The Surfliners (expanded up to SLO, granted) have been running in the high two millions for quite a while. Of course, there's also the fact that as far as I can tell, the once-daily Southwest Chief (partly due to the addition of bilevel sleepers and a rise in ridership on the eastern end, in particular) has far more ridership than it did not only 15 years ago (check my data table for that), but something like 3x what it had back in the late 1970s (at least according to a table from a book I once saw quoted here). Where those numbers were back in the late 1960s, I can't guess.
 
They actually probably held up fairly well in the late 1960s for the El Capitan. The train was long, a lot longer than SWC's 2 or 3 coaches (and remember, they were Hi Levels with equivalent seating capacity to Superliners), plus Santa Fe kept advertising the service and tried to attract passengers. Also, John S. Reed, the Santa Fe President at the time, has been repeatedly quoted as saying if Santa Fe had been allowed to cut back to running to what Amtrak actually kept, he would not have joined Amtrak (unfortunately, the legislation didn't allow for that, either continue to run everything with, no discontinuance petitions considered for 5 years, or join Amtrak). That says something about the ridership holding up.
 
They actually probably held up fairly well in the late 1960s for the El Capitan. The train was long, a lot longer than SWC's 2 or 3 coaches (and remember, they were Hi Levels with equivalent seating capacity to Superliners), plus Santa Fe kept advertising the service and tried to attract passengers. Also, John S. Reed, the Santa Fe President at the time, has been repeatedly quoted as saying if Santa Fe had been allowed to cut back to running to what Amtrak actually kept, he would not have joined Amtrak (unfortunately, the legislation didn't allow for that, either continue to run everything with, no discontinuance petitions considered for 5 years, or join Amtrak). That says something about the ridership holding up.
Provide good, reliable service at a fair price in well - maintained equipment by professional employees overseen by competent managers with an incentive to please customers...and your traffic base holds up, even in the 1960s? What a concept! Who'd a thunk?
 
Here's a pretty good rundown of just what was running immediately prior to Amtrak (and some a few days after), birthday.

It should be noted, that if you just went back a few years further, say 1967, there were a lot more...

http://ctr.trains.com/~/media/import/files/pdf/f/7/7/passenger_trains_operating_on_the_eve_of_amtrak.pdf
The big train-offs, nationally, started in the late 1950s. 1958 was, IIRC, the year Ithaca lost service from the Lehigh Valley Railroad; it had previously been served from *five directions*. (The DL&W carried on serving Ithaca for a few more years but had already removed its service from its national schedule so that nobody could find it if they didn't already know about it, in an attempt to prevent people from riding.)

Most of the damage had been done already by 1970. It is apparent how badly Ohio (Cincinnati, Columbus, Akron) got hammered during the creation of Amtrak and subsequent cuts, though.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here's a pretty good rundown of just what was running immediately prior to Amtrak (and some a few days after), birthday.

It should be noted, that if you just went back a few years further, say 1967, there were a lot more...

http://ctr.trains.com/~/media/import/files/pdf/f/7/7/passenger_trains_operating_on_the_eve_of_amtrak.pdf
The big train-offs, nationally, started in the late 1950s. 1958 was, IIRC, the year Ithaca lost service from the Lehigh Valley Railroad; it had previously been served from *five directions*. (The DL&W carried on serving Ithaca for a few more years but had already removed its service from its national schedule so that nobody could find it if they didn't already know about it, in an attempt to prevent people from riding.)

Most of the damage had been done already by 1970. It is apparent how badly Ohio (Cincinnati, Columbus, Akron) got hammered during the creation of Amtrak and subsequent cuts, though.
The shift of first class mail from trains to planes and trucks by the Post Office in September of 1967 took a heavy toll on passenger train revenues, and led to a spike in train-off activities, and the push to create Amtrak...
 
Fairly soon into October Amtrak will release its annual ridership figures which, we hope, sets another record. If that proves to be the case, we'll rejoice and recognize how far passenger rail ridership has progressed since May 1, 1971. To add context, is anyone aware of ridership numbers that go before the establishment of Amtrak? Some of you astute observers may have thoughts on that. I haven't been around here long enough to know if it has been discussed previously. It's possible that we can rely only on estimates, unless the late, great FCC kept track of such things. But I think it would be interesting to how far back we can go to understand where we are today from a historical perspective. I don't know if overall there are more trains today than on March 30, 1971. We know there are far fewer long distance trains but there could very well be a higher number of corridor trains given the combined expansions of the NEC, California and Midwest corridors. I also expect one of these days Amtrak's vaunted IG will come out with criticism on how Amtrak calculates its ridership but that discussion can wait for another day.
You didn't specify long distance or intercity rail as a criterion for your question, so perhaps it is important to remember that US passenger rail travel (by trip numbers, excluding subways and LRT) is totally dominated by commuter rail, which is in turn dominated by the three New York City commuter rail services. About half of all rail trips in the US in 2017 were on the NY commuter systems; the Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston commuter systems together accounted for about half the remaining trips. Everything else, including Amtrak, all corridor services, and all other commuter systems accounted for in the neighborhood of one quarter of the total ridership in 2017.

For what it is worth, the NYC commuter ridership roughly doubled between the creation of Metro North in 1983 and 2017. In the same period, the US population increased by a factor of 1.4.

Sources: various wikipedia pages.

Ainamkartma
 
Fairly soon into October Amtrak will release its annual ridership figures which, we hope, sets another record. If that proves to be the case, we'll rejoice and recognize how far passenger rail ridership has progressed since May 1, 1971. To add context, is anyone aware of ridership numbers that go before the establishment of Amtrak? Some of you astute observers may have thoughts on that. I haven't been around here long enough to know if it has been discussed previously. It's possible that we can rely only on estimates, unless the late, great FCC kept track of such things. But I think it would be interesting to how far back we can go to understand where we are today from a historical perspective. I don't know if overall there are more trains today than on March 30, 1971. We know there are far fewer long distance trains but there could very well be a higher number of corridor trains given the combined expansions of the NEC, California and Midwest corridors. I also expect one of these days Amtrak's vaunted IG will come out with criticism on how Amtrak calculates its ridership but that discussion can wait for another day.

Unlike most years, you might not find a unanimous hope that Amtrak increased across the board this year! I, for one, kind of hope that LSL, CL, and Silver Star ridership are down, while the long distance trains with real dining car service maintain their very high utilization rate.

Ainamkartma
 
I know it's exceedingly difficult to do, but I would like to believe it is useful to take Amtrak ridership today and compare it with intercity rail prior to Amtrak's founding in 1971. Commuter service completely obfuscates the issue. Amtrak isn't perfect, but arguably it prevented the national network from complete extinction. It would have died and never been resurrected. There are other factors, yes, but knowing the number of people riding rails now against what it was in pre-Amtrak days tells us something. I am guessing (yes, dangerously devoid of facts) that ridership now exceeds what it was in the 60s when there were far more intercity trains. If that presumption is correct, it is one factor in determining what Amtrak does is important, federal subsidies notwithstanding.

Fairly soon into October Amtrak will release its annual ridership figures which, we hope, sets another record. If that proves to be the case, we'll rejoice and recognize how far passenger rail ridership has progressed since May 1, 1971. To add context, is anyone aware of ridership numbers that go before the establishment of Amtrak? Some of you astute observers may have thoughts on that. I haven't been around here long enough to know if it has been discussed previously. It's possible that we can rely only on estimates, unless the late, great FCC kept track of such things. But I think it would be interesting to how far back we can go to understand where we are today from a historical perspective. I don't know if overall there are more trains today than on March 30, 1971. We know there are far fewer long distance trains but there could very well be a higher number of corridor trains given the combined expansions of the NEC, California and Midwest corridors. I also expect one of these days Amtrak's vaunted IG will come out with criticism on how Amtrak calculates its ridership but that discussion can wait for another day.
You didn't specify long distance or intercity rail as a criterion for your question, so perhaps it is important to remember that US passenger rail travel (by trip numbers, excluding subways and LRT) is totally dominated by commuter rail, which is in turn dominated by the three New York City commuter rail services. About half of all rail trips in the US in 2017 were on the NY commuter systems; the Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston commuter systems together accounted for about half the remaining trips. Everything else, including Amtrak, all corridor services, and all other commuter systems accounted for in the neighborhood of one quarter of the total ridership in 2017.

For what it is worth, the NYC commuter ridership roughly doubled between the creation of Metro North in 1983 and 2017. In the same period, the US population increased by a factor of 1.4.

Sources: various wikipedia pages.

Ainamkartma
 
Back
Top