Amtrak ridership hits record levels

Nancy Trejos, USA TODAY | USATODAY

A record number of travelers opted to ride Amtrak in March, helping the rail service achieve higher ridership numbers in the first six months of fiscal 2013, the carrier said today.

From October 2012 to March 2013, ridership increased by 0.9% to 15.1 million riders compared with the same period the previous year.

Amtrak took a significant hit after Superstorm Sandy and other severe weather hit in October.

Since then, the rail carrier has rebounded, setting ridership records every month.

March set a record for the single best month ever in the history of the government-subsidized railroad, with 2.8 million riders, a 1.9% increase over last March.

In all, 26 of 45 routes had ridership increases in the first six months of the fiscal year. By the time the fiscal year ends in October, Amtrak expects to match or exceed last year's record of 31.2 million passengers.

Most passengers use Amtrak's Northeast corridor routes. The Northeast Regional and Acela Express accounted for 5.5 million passengers in the first half of the fiscal year, which was actually a 1.2% decrease from the same time period last year.

The Northeast Corridor took the blunt of the blow from last year's Sandy storm but is beginning to recover with a modest 0.6% growth in ridership March over the same time period last year.

Amtrak spokesman Steve Kulm says Amtrak has been in a period of growth for nine of the last 10 years.

He attributes that to the introduction of high-speed Acela service on the Northeast Corridor, better on-time performance, free Wi-Fi open to 70% of passengers, and a new ticketing system that lets people present their tickets on their Smartphones.

Amtrak has also added service to areas outside of the Northeast Corridor, including parts of Virgina, Washington state, and North Carolina.

But he also says travelers are turning to Amtrak because they have grown tired of other modes of transportation.

"They're fed up with highway congestion, they don't like the hassles of airline travel, gas prices are high, and there's a movement to support rail travel," he says.

Still, inter-city bus bus service, with its low fares, continues to try to aggressively chip away at Amtrak's ridership. Companies such as Bolt Bus and Megabus have grown increasingly popular.

City-to-city bus service grew by 7.5% between the end of 2011 and 2012, the highest rate of growth in four years, the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development of DePaul University said in its fifth annual study earlier this year.

Nonetheless, Amtrak President and CEO Joe Boardman said in a written statement that the service's ridership numbers support federal government funding of the nation's rail system.

"The continued ridership growth on routes across the country reinforces the need for dedicated, multi-year federal operating and capital funding to support existing intercity passenger rail services and the development of new ones," Boardman said.