(The following story by David Abel appeared on the Boston Globe website on October 25.)
BOSTON — In the 20 years he has been selling tickets for Amtrak, Jimmy Tsang has seen his share of long lines and harried passengers. But the South Station agent says he has not seen anything like the crush of the past year.
“Every train is packed,” said Tsang, who sells tickets for the Acela Express. “The trains are sold out every weekend.”
After years of problems ranging from cracks in the trains’ shock absorbers to cracks in the spokes of their brake rotors, the Acela has become a more dependable and popular way to travel from Boston to New York and Washington, D.C.
In the fiscal year that ended last month, ridership on the high-speed train jumped nearly 20 percent over the previous year, to 3.1 million passengers, and revenue climbed 23 percent, to $403.5 million.
It is the largest increase in service since 2001, when droves of passengers avoided air travel after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“What we’re looking at is a changing society,” said Cliff Cole, a spokesman for Amtrak. “We look at our service as an alternative to the volatility of gas prices and the congestion at both the airports and the highway.”
As airlines cope with more and more delays, 29 percent of flights this year have been delayed at Logan International Airport and 35 percent have been delayed at LaGuardia Airport, according to the US Department of Transportation, Acela’s performance has improved.
In fiscal 2007, the train ran on time nearly 88 percent of the time, up about 3 percentage points from the previous year, according to Amtrak.
But Amtrak has little room for growth. The federally subsidized company has only 20 Acela trains that make nine daily weekday trips between South Station and Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan, and many of them are often sold out.
“There are definite limits to how much more Acela can do,” Cole said. “Amtrak is constrained by the size of the Acela fleet. . . . If we had our druthers, Amtrak would be able to add cars to Acela trains to meet demand.”
Acela is also limited by speed. The trains, which have a maximum of 304 passengers on its six cars, roll across winding rails, some owned by other companies. They reach their top speed of 150 miles per hour for just 18 miles, far slower than the bullet trains of Europe and Japan.
The Acela still takes about 3 1/2 hours to travel between Boston and New York, or about an hour less than the regional trains.
Adam Wasserman is one of many passengers who opted for a less expensive, slower train.
After buying a ticket at South Station to catch yesterday’s 3:30 p.m. train to New York, he said it was a better option than the bus.
He did not even consider flying, which would have cost him more than $200 for a roundtrip ticket, slightly more than taking the Acela.
“The good thing is that I can plug in my computer and do work,” said Wasserman, 31, of Colombia. “The bus and the plane are lost time.”
Officials at US Airways, which runs 16 flights from Logan to LaGuardia every day, say they have also seen an increase in passengers, by 3 percent to 5 percent, over the same period last year.
“It appears the whole pool is rising, if our pool is rising as well,” said Phil Gee, a US Air spokesman.
The advantage of flying, he said, is that it can be faster if a passenger’s destination is near the airport, allows them to connect to other cities, and adds to their frequent-flier mileage.
“We’re comfortable with what our shuttle is doing, and we’re not worried about the Acela,” Gee said.
In recent years, while being criticized for poor service, Amtrak has faced efforts by the Bush administration to slash its federal subsides, which amounted to $1.3 billion in fiscal 2007.
The administration also wanted to turn over much of Amtrak’s Northeast service to the states.
This week, Amtrak announced that a record 25.8 million passengers took Amtrak in the past fiscal year, an increase of 1.5 million over the previous year.
Ticket revenue increased 11 percent, from $1.37 billion in 2006 to $1.5 billion.
The Northeast had the biggest increase in revenue, by 14 percent to more than $829 million, Amtrak said.