Amtrak Ridership Is Rising

“Passenger rail is dead” gets thrown around like it’s a fact, but the ridership numbers keep refusing to cooperate. We zoom out to Amtrak’s systemwide performance first, including record highs of 32.8 million rides in FY24 and 34.5 million trips in FY25, then we go route-by-route to see what happens when new service meets real demand.

We break down five recent Amtrak projects and compare early ridership to the projections that justified each launch. The Ethan Allen Express extension to Burlington shows how a simple 68-mile extension on existing track can produce a meaningful jump and hold it over time. The Mardi Gras Service between Mobile and New Orleans looks like a genuine breakout, blowing past its annual estimate in about six months while delivering strong customer satisfaction and enough demand that trains can sell out. Not every pilot shines though: the Berkshire Flyer’s seasonal tourism model struggles with low and declining ridership, while the Valley Flyer appears to be a quieter success as it recovers from the COVID shock and inches toward its original target.

Our biggest “wow” moment is the Borealis from Chicago to St. Paul, which beats its long-range forecast quickly and helps drive massive growth in the broader corridor. That success also points to the next problem: if demand is there, can we actually add frequency when there’s a multi-year backlog for trainsets? We close by kicking around a practical bridge solution while rail capacity catches up: better regional bus connections and how Amtrak already plays a bigger role in bus service than many people realize.

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Transcript

s Passenger Rail Really Dead

SPEAKER_01 0:52

There is this undying narrative that we often hear in the media, sometimes from our politicians and other times from rail industry folks, specifically around freight rail, that passenger rail service in the United States is dead. But is that really true? On this episode, we are going to jump into five of Amtrak's most recent projects and look at how their ridership numbers are performing today versus when the project was first proposed.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

So today we're going to take a look at five different Amtrak projects that some of them we have actually looked at on the show, like the Mardi Gras line, as well as the Borealis, um, as well as a couple others, and take a look at their ridership this year. So uh pretty excited to take a look at the list and share how things are looking.

SPEAKER_01 1:38

But before we get into these five projects, first we want to take a step back and look at Amtrak performance across the country, across the entire system. And I will say it looks like good news. In fiscal year 24, Amtrak actually hit an all-time ridership high at 32.8 million rides. And then we move into fiscal year 25. That's the fiscal year that just ended, and we end up at 34.5 million trips. So does that mean passenger rail is dead? To me, I think the answer is no. And when Amtrak is going in and they're creating these new projects, especially the ones that we are going to talk about, these aren't projects that are just launched in weak markets or projects when markets they haven't studied. These are places where they know that there is a high demand for rail. And as we continue to talk about these projects, um, hopefully you will see this as well, that there does seem to be this pent-up demand that we are only kind of feels like recently tapping into.

ow We Judge Route Success

SPEAKER_02 2:40

Yeah, and I would even say you're talking about, you know, they're they're not building these willy-nilly in places that it doesn't make sense. I would almost argue that they have overstudied some of these corridors. If you'll remember back a couple of years, I feel like it was uh every couple of months there was a new corridor rail ID and all this sort of stuff, and we're like like studying if a lot of people would choose another transportation option between uh Austin and San Antonio or between you know uh increased rail service in the the the North Carolina research triangle area and so many other places across the country that um I think I complained pretty uh pretty clearly at the time that we should just build them and stop studying them. But um I will say though that you know these numbers, while they do uh look really impressive, and and they are, and it's great to see them coming up. If you're outside of the Northeast Corridor, you're probably a little bit surprised to hear some of them.

SPEAKER_01 3:34

Yeah, and Lewis, you make a really good point there. If we are only talking about the Northeast Corridor, which historically is what has sort of carried a lot of Amtrak, then I wouldn't call this a success story. What we're actually gonna be looking at are projects that may tie into the Northeast Corridor, but are really spread across the country.

than Allen Extension To Burlington

SPEAKER_02 3:53

So before we jump into the actual routes here, a couple of things that we are taking a look at. So uh first off, we're gonna look at are these meeting the ridership expectations that were set up as, you know, if we're hitting these numbers, this is a successful route and a successful launch of these routes. So we'll kind of compare the actual numbers to what was being projected. Uh, and it's also important to note that not all of these are equal, essentially. Some of these are extensions to existing routes, some of them are brand new routes, so and some of them are are also seasonal routes and more tourist routes. So things to think about that you're not gonna compare it in the same way that, you know, a commuter line is not the same as a weekend tourist train, is not the same as, you know, we're adding one stop to the end of this.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Okay, so we are gonna jump into the first of these five projects that we're gonna look at. And the first project is the Ethan Allen Expressway extension. And every time I think about the the word or the name Ethan Allen, I just picture a furniture store.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

As I went to school in Vermont, so uh Ethan Allen's name is on a lot of things in Vermont.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Yeah. I who was Ethan Allen? Was it a founding f father? Or I don't know what's going on. No one's terrible as I have no idea. Okay, if you know who Ethan Allen is, put it in the the comments. For some reason, I have this this feeling in the back of my head that it was like a uh one of the founding fathers, but I'm not actually sure. I don't think so, but I could be wrong. It's really all I can picture. Well, the Ethan Allen Express actually has nothing to do with furniture, surprisingly, but it is an extension that was launched on July 29th of 2022. And what that extension did was that it extended the daily passenger rail service from its previous terminal in Rutland, Vermont, 68 miles north to Burlington. And what actually makes this um really notable is that it was the first time in 68 years that you had connections, direct connections between New York City and Burlington, Vermont, which is just so surprising to me as somebody who didn't really grow up in that region of the country. It just feels like every major city is connected by rail. So really, really surprising.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Oh, definitely. Uh a couple other things are surprising to me. Number one, that anyone would have a train end in Rutland. I'm sorry to knock Rutland here, but it is not a uh not a place that is a major destination that people are all traveling to. You do have, I mean, there's some beautiful areas around it, but uh, I think a lot of Vermonters would uh share similar feelings about Rutland, especially when the alternative of ending it in Burlington is there. I think this makes a ton of sense. And folks in Burlington, uh, it makes a lot of sense to me that that they're all uh you know supporting the railroute. So yeah, sorry, sorry, Rutland, folks. Um, but anyway, this train runs daily from Burlington, Vermont, uh to Penn Station, as Chris said, and it makes stops in several places along the way, including Vergenz, Middlebury, Rutland, Castleton, Whitehall, Fort Edwards, Saratoga Springs, Schenectady. I was that's my German now. Shinectady and Albany.

SPEAKER_01 7:10

Before this extension opened, this line saw about 50,000 trips in fiscal year 19. Now keep in mind the part of the Ethan Allen Express that we're talking about is the extension. So the existing line had about 50,000. And then VTrans and Amtrak, they initially projected that this new line would have roughly 2,000 to 2,500 riders per month. Following its launch in July 22, the uh service really took off, and by August of 2022, it saw a 51% increase in ridership from the initial projections. So I would call that definitely an early success.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

Yeah, absolutely huge bump. And I mean, when you compare the numbers again, it was 50,000 in 2019, and by 2023, it was 86,000. So obviously a significant jump there. Um, and in 2025, it was still sitting around the same amount there at 85,000, so within a thousand riders over the whole year. So it has flattened out a little bit, but again, still uh reaping the benefits of just extending that up a little bit further north up to Burlington. So this one, I think you can say is a big success. And again, it just makes so much sense. I uh to get one more Rutland knock-in, I can't believe that uh the end of this line was was in Rutland.

ardi Gras Service Early Ridership Boom

SPEAKER_01 8:32

This does seem like a really good example of where Amtrak could make efficiency gains, make better service around the country by just extending some of the lines one more stop. Uh, in this case, it was only 68 miles. But how many other use cases like this are there across the country that we could implement that are essentially low-cost solutions that would boost ridership in you know XYZ City?

SPEAKER_02 8:56

And the and the track was already there. So yeah, definitely a win. Uh only other thing I'll mention here is it's pretty interesting. Now uh you also have the Vermonter that doesn't quite get to Burlington, but has a station in Essex Junction. So the Burlington area now uh is being served by two different Amtrak lines. Again, each only serving one train per day, but uh definitely good to have the options. All right, number two on our list is the brand new Mardi Gras service that Chris was able to be at the inaugural train for over last summer, which runs between the cities of Mobile and New Orleans. And we are very happy to report that so far things are looking pretty good in terms of the launch there.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah, I was really excited about this one. And if you haven't seen that episode, please go back and watch it. I do give a lot of history about the area. I also talk about how I'm from Mobile and sort of my experience there. Uh, but the biggest, you know, the the best part about this is that it is uh a service that's relaunching after 20 years of no passenger service in this region, and it's being met with a lot of enthusiasm, and uh it looks like an early success. So that just makes me really, really excited and uh happy that it's on this list today. Amtrak's initial pre-launch estimates for ridership on the Moddy Girl service were around 60,000 trips per year. 108 days into service, they were already seeing over 40,000 passengers, and now uh a little over six months into the service, we've already exceeded over 70,500 trips uh within that half year period. So yeah, this service is on track to potentially double its initial ridership expectations.

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Yeah, maybe even more than double, which is super impressive. And what I love about this one, so many of these Amtrak services outside of the Northeast corridor are like one train per day per direction, which to me just is like it feels fairly lackluster and it's hard to use. Like if you're someone who wants to use it, it's just hard to you get one option per day. Uh, this one is a little bit more flexible, and I love that they did this right away, where they actually have two trains per day uh in each direction. So, you know, uh it's not a a ton of variability, but it seems like when you do add more route options, you're seeing success even in a part of the country where no one would expect to see these ridership numbers.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

No, people in mobile didn't expect to see these ridership numbers. There were so many people that I I do keep track of generally what people are saying on news articles back home. And there's so many people saying nobody's gonna ride this, nobody's gonna ride it, it's a waste of money. And here we are already exceeding the the annual ridership expectation six months in. I just think that's really impressive. And then on top of that, the Southern Rail Commission sort of tracks metrics across the board, and they say that the Amtrak service, uh the Modigras service is exceeding expectations in multiple areas, including its customer success uh rating, which is over 94% uh customer satisfaction with the route. So I'm really excited to see this. In fact, I have to go back home in a couple weeks, and I was looking at potentially flying into New Orleans and taking the train over. And for every date that I looked, the train was either sold out or only had one seat left. So it's actually difficult for me now to go back and use it like I want to.

SPEAKER_02 12:33

That's no, that's that's amazing on multiple, well, not amazing for you that you can't use it, but uh amazing on on multiple metrics. And uh I I can say here that uh in in Germany, Deutsche Bahn would never be able to hold that 94 or 95% uh customer satisfaction rating. Uh but uh so that's it's nice to see that.

erkshire Flyer Struggles And Sinkhole

SPEAKER_01 12:53

The last thing I'd say about this one is that they are right now, there's three cars on the train. They are looking at adding an additional passenger car to um help with some of that demand, which I think is amazing. It's still pretty early to say if this is going to be a long-term success. I mean, again, we're only around, you know, just over six months, I think, into this service. So it could be a lot of you know, launch buzz, but to see this consistently um hitting the metrics all through that time period uh shows a lot of promise. So fingers crossed, this is going to be uh a big success that we can talk about in the next six months.

SPEAKER_02 13:27

Definitely. And if you haven't watched Chris's episode on this, it's definitely worth checking out. We'll make sure it's linked down below.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Number three on our list is going to be a little different. Uh, this one is a seasonal service provided by Amtrak called the Berkshire Flyer. And this one connects New York's Moynihan station to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, uh, in the Berkshires. And it currently operates on weekends, usually through uh June, through Labor Day, and offers a direct, roughly four-hour uh what they call no middle seat travel option for tourists between these two destinations, uh, with stops in Hudson and Albany, New York as well.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

To me, the the no middle seat branding is kind of funny, just because first I mean, it's like Western Massachusetts. I don't even think you'd necessarily have the option to fly if that's what they're going for with the middle seat, but I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

That honestly, that's it's good marketing. It would really sell me. If there's nobody in the middle seat, Lewis, I would say, hey, that's a that's a viable option. I'll take it.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Yes, yeah, yeah. I will go to Pittsfield as long as there's no middle seat. Exactly. Anyway, uh Amtrak launched this Berkshire Flyer Passenger Service as a pilot um back in July of 2022. And initial estimates were for 2,600 one-way trips per 20-week season. Again, this does not run during the winter time. It was projected to have an annual operating cost of about$420,000, which is not very much in the grand scheme of things. Again, they're running on existing infrastructure, so it's really just running the trains back and forth, having the staffing and all that sort of stuff to be able to make this happen. Um, but unfortunately, according to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and Amtrak, ridership has been a bit mixed. Things started out fairly high, but by the time the 2023 season came around, which was the second year of its operation, uh, it was only carrying 1,261 riders. So um definitely not ideal. Uh in 2024, we're seeing some reports that it dropped even further to only 826 passengers, which is starting to make it feel like this isn't necessarily worth it. Not helping this route anymore in 2025. There were several service disruptions after a sinkhole happened, causing the service to be replaced by buses. Uh, it was since reinstated, so we'll have to keep an eye on this one moving forward into the 2026 season, but those numbers are rough. And if you ask me, I would be taking these resources and putting them elsewhere. I mean, I know the operating budget is low, but I mean, those passenger numbers do not warrant a train period, I don't think.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

No, I don't think so either. And this would actually be an interesting episode to do in the future, um, comparing different seasonal routes and seeing what their uh ridership looks like based on their expectations. Because I know like Colorado has a couple seasonals, and there's other places in the country that have a seasonal. Uh, but yeah, this is this could be a bus service, basically. So if we're looking at uh Amtrak success stories, I wouldn't necessarily call this one of them.

alley Flyer Quiet Gains In Mass

SPEAKER_02 16:38

Yeah. I I wouldn't even say not necessarily, I would say no. Yeah. Honestly, it feels like in general, Amtrak should probably be putting its resources towards not seasonal routes. I mean, it'd be one thing if Amtrak had a huge fleet of trains and carriages and all the sort of stuff that could, you know, meet the demand in all of their newer markets that are doing well. But that is not the case right now. Uh, we were talking about the before you know before the show started. I know there is a backlog of you know, ordering this new equipment. And when we're using some of it on like seasonal service like this, I I feel like it's like a poor use of resources. But when we are looking at some of these, there are differences in how things are funded. So this very well could be a case of Massachusetts um and the Massachusetts Department of Transportation being willing to spend the money to try this out, whereas other states are kind of less willing. I know that was an issue, at least with the um the Mardiar route where some of the states involved did not want to put money into it in the beginning. Yeah, I'm wondering if now I'm wondering, I'm wondering now if Alabama might change their mind after seeing some of the success moving forward. But uh that that is likely in part why the Berkshire Flyer uh has continued to run. I don't know that for sure, but that's just something to look at. But um moving on though to number four, we're keeping Flyer in the name here, but we're moving to the Valley Flyer now. Uh, this is a 102-mile daily passenger train service operating again in western Massachusetts as well as Connecticut, connecting Greenfield, Massachusetts with New Haven, Connecticut with two daily round trips. Um, this was enhanced service in the Pioneer Valley to improve access to the Northeast Corridor and has stops in Holyoke, Northampton, and Springfield. So um Holyoke, Northampton, and Springfield are all uh kind of smaller, but they're cities in western mass, and uh it it you know makes sense to have these places connected, especially in the northeast like this. They're not directly on the northeast corridor, but they are so close. So it makes sense to see this service trying to help feed those riders in.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

The Amtrak Valley Flyer pilot's goal was originally to attract around 24,000 riders a year uh to this route. However, it launched in 2019, so as everyone knows, COVID happened immediately after, and rail ridership across the country just completely cratered, uh, which led to a uh 2021 ridership of around 8.7,000. So still much, much lower than what their uh projected riders were going to be.

SPEAKER_02 19:29

Yeah, and I mean we have seen numbers go up after this uh quite a bit, but actually keeping track of what the specific numbers are for this route is fairly tricky because number one, the southern portion of this route sees a lot of traffic from the Hartford line. You've got these Northeast Corridor shuttles, you have other Amtrak routes that run through here, and then you also have the Vermonter and this Valley Flyer actually like merge together uh at least on one of their trips per day. So the specific ridership numbers here uh are pretty difficult to find.

orealis Beats Projections In Midwest

SPEAKER_01 20:07

We did get an estimate for fiscal year 23, which is around 19,000 riders. And when looking at ridership in general in this area, we're seeing an increase over the last two years of around 20%. So if we're doing the math, uh that does put the uh Valley Flyer closer to its projection of 24,000 per year. So if we're looking at this and trying to determine is it a success story, I would say it's a very quiet yes, because it looks like it is meeting or really close to meeting its ridership ridership expectations.

SPEAKER_02 20:42

Moving on to our last one here, though. This is, I would say, by far our biggest success story. Maybe not by far. I mean, the Mardi Gras service is also a big success, I would say. Uh, this one is the Borealis, which is uh a service that started in 2024 and connects Chicago with St. Paul. The Borealis also makes stops in Milwaukee and Lacrosse. Uh, in 2015, the planning for this was projecting 155,500 annual riders. Uh, this has one train per day per direction. So you have two trains essentially just going back and forth. It's about an eight-hour journey between them. Um, in the first 11 months, 205,800 riders. Again, 205,000 compared to 155,000. So seeing about a 50,000 rider uh beat of expectations here just in the first 11 months. Um, and then in fiscal year 2025, uh it listed at 212,909. So that major boost above expectations was maintained the next year and even grew a little bit on top of that. So uh really positive to see that.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Yeah, it was really impressive to see. And when you look at rail ridership in this broader area, which includes sort of the the St. Paul to Chicago corridor, um, so it includes the Borealis, it includes the Empire Builder and some other routes in this region. We're looking at ridership that is 227% up from the prior year, so 2024 to 2025. So there has been a massive demand, an increase in demand for rail ridership since the launch of the Borealis. That is what Is responsible for the bulk of this, but just in this region in general, more people are looking to ride the train.

quipment Backlog Limits Expansion

SPEAKER_02 22:41

Yeah. And I mean, it makes a ton of sense, especially, you know, this is another daily round trip between Chicago and Milwaukee, which is like an easy area where, of course, you would have, you know, if you increase the amount of trains going between those two cities, of course, you're going to see more success. And then getting from Milwaukee to St. Paul is not that significant of a journey. I mean, it's it's a similar uh distance to driving in a car. I looked it up before this. I want to say it's about six hours to drive from Chicago all the way up to St. Paul. Uh the train route is a little bit longer, but again, there are so many more benefits to taking the train where you can sit on the train and work the whole time. You've got Wi-Fi, uh, you can relax and have a drink, you can read your book, whatever you want to do. Um, and then, you know, when you arrive in St. Paul, the station is fairly close to the light rail, uh, and you should be able to get to your destination fairly easy there. It's also close to the BRT in St. Paul that we talked about before it launched, which I'd be very curious to see how that's doing. But that's a topic for another day.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

And you you hit on something earlier uh too about the the train sets. This is a this is a route where clearly another train would be a benefit. And I think they would probably do very well with adding another service or another uh departure time. But some sources are saying that we are about in a five-year backlog for new train sets for Amtrak. So I don't see an expansion of this service happening anytime soon. And what that also probably means is that if we're looking to the future for other services that could be uh greatly boosted by increased uh rail frequency, we may not see those for uh several more years. The prime example in my mind of where this should be applied is the Texas corridor between San Antonio and Dallas. If you had even just four trains a day running in this corridor, I I just can't believe that the truth that the passenger service wouldn't justify it, that you wouldn't have just so many people traveling along this central Texas spine.

ould Better Regional Buses Help

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Oh, I totally agree. And to be clear for folks who are maybe newer to the channel, we're we're biased. Uh uh Chris lives in Austin. I lived in Austin for the last couple of years, and I'll I'll probably be back in Austin in a couple more years. But um, so we're doing we're definitely biased on on wanting the Texas triangle. And I mean, I think that it could easily happen, but I I think that the state would need to, you know, say that they want it, like the state government. Um and you know, unfortunately, that's not the place that we're in at this at this stage. But I I agree. I mean, I think you would you would also smash records there, but um, but again, you'd run into the same issue potentially with with the uh the the backlog of not having the equipment.

unknown 25:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Yeah, I think that's probably the biggest hindrance right now is one political will, but also uh we just don't have the equipment to continue to to throw new train sets at uh new pilot services, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

What one other thing that I kind of want to get to here, and we we didn't really discuss this ahead of time, but uh I was thinking about it uh while you were talking earlier. And you know, I while while these numbers are huge, right? I mean, uh the Borealis seeing 212,909 riders in fiscal year 2025, when you do break that down to a, and I gotta pull my calculator out to do this here, when you break that down to daily ridership, so we'll do 212,000 divided by 365 for the Borealis, that's 580 riders per day. You gotta divide that by two again because it is people heading in either direction. So you're at 290, we'll call it 300 people per day per direction. If we're in a spot right now where it's like, okay, we can't get more trains right now. What are some other alternatives that we can do and things that we can try in other corridors? And I think, and this is a conversation for holder episode, if if we're gonna be five years out for some of this stuff, like let's potentially think about investing in more real regional buses. Like regional buses could achieve uh a lot in some of these corridors, but it's such a kind of stigmatized thing. People don't want to take a city bus or not even a city bus, like a Greyhound or a Flix bus or whatever from place to place.

eedback Requests And Ways To Support

SPEAKER_01 27:02

And and you also hit on an interesting thing here about Amtrak is that Amtrak does provide bus service between a lot of destinations. And I don't know that people really realize that Amtrak has so much involvement in bus transit as well. But yeah, they provide buses or they contracted Greyhound to provide connection services in so many different markets. We actually had an episode request come through via our email uh from someone in California who wanted us to talk about uh Amtrak buses and how they connect cities in California, which is absolutely something we will do in the future. Um, but yeah, absolutely. There we should be trying to uh help in these corridors by providing better bus service. You still have to convince people that the bus is going to be sexy, uh, which again is the difficult part um when compared to you know a sleek, beautiful train.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Yes, yeah. So I don't know. I I just think that that's uh something worth thinking about. And maybe that's an episode for the future, honestly. We can talk about where it makes sense to pilot regional bus service and how to make it, how to make it feasible. But well, if you have thoughts on this episode, if there are other routes that we should have looked into, definitely let us know. Um, and we will kind of keep an eye out for it. We're definitely making episodes that people are asking for right now, has definitely been something Chris just mentioned. Someone asked asked for the other one. We just did an episode on Pittsburgh that was someone asking in the comments on Miami. So we do want to hear from you. We do read the comments and we appreciate uh the thoughts and feedback. Uh, so definitely keep an eye out there. If you want to support the show, the best ways to do so are via our Patreon, buy us a coffee, or checking out our merch store down below. You can also just subscribe or send the episode to a friend. That helps out as well. But with all of that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit transit Tuesday.