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Looking at that ridership chart, I'm amazed that they even run lines like the Empire Builder, California Zephyr, Southwest Chief, and Texas Eagle. They must be

Looking at that ridership chart, I'm amazed that they even run lines like the Empire Builder, California Zephyr, Southwest Chief, and Texas Eagle. They must be losing tens of millions of dollars a year on those lines, money which could be spent on upgrading lines like the Northeast Regional and the Pacific Surfliner. Edit: the Vermonter and Ethan Allen express have even less ridership but are shorter, I wonder how much money those lose.

ARandumGuy 3y ago
Ridership numbers isn't the whole story. For example, the Empire Builder only runs one train per day each direction, which puts a serious limit on the total ridership that's even possible. Anecdotally, I've used the Empire Builder for two trips this year, and both times every train was completely booked (on a weekday, no less). There is demand for these trains, which I suspect would be even higher if Amtrak ran faster, more frequent, and more consistently.
- runarberg 3y ago
  The Empire Builder is actually kind of a weird one. It is both an important interurban between Chicago and Minneapolis (and possible as far as Fargo) as well as between Seattle and Spokane (and Portland and Spokane), but also a very popular tourist route. The fact that it is serving both these purposes is kind of a determent to both. It runs to infrequently (and at weird hours) to serve as a nice interurban, and it gets too overbooked to serve a tourist route. To fix this the state of Washington (and Minnesota) need to operate more frequent interurbans that only services the end portions of the route (like 4 trains a day at least), and then Amtrak could operate the whole Empire builder in a more sane manner.
mikeocool 3y ago
It's a kind of interesting chicken and egg situation. The Northeast Corridor has at least hourly service through out the day, 'high-speed' (for america) trains, and lots of newish comfortable equipment, it's arguably the most civil way to get between NYC/DC/Boston. A lot of the rest of the lines have once-per-day service, that runs on old equipment along freight lines. If you want to ride the Empire Builder from Fargo to Minneapolis, your only option is to get up at 2 o'clock in the morning to catch the one train of the day, and if that train had to wait for a freight train (which has priority) along it's previous 2 day journey from Seattle, it wouldn't be unusual for it be delayed until 3 or 5am. Since the US doesn't invest in passenger rail outside the NEC, it becomes less and less viable for anyone to actually use it.
- gradys 3y ago
  The key feature of the NEC is that the cities are large and close together. This is true almost nowhere else in the country.
  - mikeocool 3y ago
    Fair, though if we invested in high speed rail a lot more cities would be within 4-5 hours of each other (and have the added advantage that the train would be consistently be faster than driving).
  - sofixa 3y ago
    It's true in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, Texas, Florida, California. Rail is still mostly shit over medium distances there, although finally there are concrete efforts being made in California, Texas and Florida to fix that.
Ichthypresbyter 3y ago
Those two services are subsidized by state governments- Vermont for both, plus AIUI Connecticut for the Vermonter and New York for the Ethan Allen Express. This also means that there are very cheap fares on those trains within Vermont, and I've sometimes noticed that it's actually cheaper to buy a ticket from DC to a station in Vermont than to buy one to New Haven.
supertrope 3y ago
Like many other US Government programs, service is provided in unprofitable states and rural areas as the representatives from those areas demand it.

ARandumGuy 3y ago

Ridership numbers isn't the whole story. For example, the Empire Builder only runs one train per day each direction, which puts a serious limit on the total ridership that's even possible. Anecdotally, I've used the Empire Builder for two trips this year, and both times every train was completely booked (on a weekday, no less). There is demand for these trains, which I suspect would be even higher if Amtrak ran faster, more frequent, and more consistently.

runarberg 3y ago
The Empire Builder is actually kind of a weird one. It is both an important interurban between Chicago and Minneapolis (and possible as far as Fargo) as well as between Seattle and Spokane (and Portland and Spokane), but also a very popular tourist route. The fact that it is serving both these purposes is kind of a determent to both. It runs to infrequently (and at weird hours) to serve as a nice interurban, and it gets too overbooked to serve a tourist route. To fix this the state of Washington (and Minnesota) need to operate more frequent interurbans that only services the end portions of the route (like 4 trains a day at least), and then Amtrak could operate the whole Empire builder in a more sane manner.

mikeocool 3y ago

It's a kind of interesting chicken and egg situation. The Northeast Corridor has at least hourly service through out the day, 'high-speed' (for america) trains, and lots of newish comfortable equipment, it's arguably the most civil way to get between NYC/DC/Boston. A lot of the rest of the lines have once-per-day service, that runs on old equipment along freight lines. If you want to ride the Empire Builder from Fargo to Minneapolis, your only option is to get up at 2 o'clock in the morning to catch the one train of the day, and if that train had to wait for a freight train (which has priority) along it's previous 2 day journey from Seattle, it wouldn't be unusual for it be delayed until 3 or 5am. Since the US doesn't invest in passenger rail outside the NEC, it becomes less and less viable for anyone to actually use it.

gradys 3y ago
The key feature of the NEC is that the cities are large and close together. This is true almost nowhere else in the country.
- mikeocool 3y ago
  Fair, though if we invested in high speed rail a lot more cities would be within 4-5 hours of each other (and have the added advantage that the train would be consistently be faster than driving).
- sofixa 3y ago
  It's true in the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, Texas, Florida, California. Rail is still mostly shit over medium distances there, although finally there are concrete efforts being made in California, Texas and Florida to fix that.

Ichthypresbyter 3y ago

Those two services are subsidized by state governments- Vermont for both, plus AIUI Connecticut for the Vermonter and New York for the Ethan Allen Express. This also means that there are very cheap fares on those trains within Vermont, and I've sometimes noticed that it's actually cheaper to buy a ticket from DC to a station in Vermont than to buy one to New Haven.

supertrope 3y ago

Like many other US Government programs, service is provided in unprofitable states and rural areas as the representatives from those areas demand it.