(The following story by Angela Greiling Keane of Bloomberg News appeared on The Star website on June 7, 2010.)
Amtrak, the U.S. long-distance passenger railroad, is on course to set a record for riders this year, Chief Executive Officer Joseph Boardman said.
The railroad may surpass the 28.7 million passengers carried in 2008, Boardman said, without predicting how many customers will use Amtrak this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.
“People are riding the railroad,” Boardman said in an interview.
Amtrak carried 13.6 million passengers from October through March, a 4.3 per cent gain from the same months in 2009, the railroad said. In May, boardings rose 10 per cent on Acela high- speed trains linking Boston and Washington, Boardman said. In April, ridership on all Amtrak trains climbed 7.9 per cent and revenue increased 13 per cent, Amtrak has said.
In the first quarter of its fiscal year, the railroad captured a record share of travel on rail or air between New York and Washington and New York and Boston, he said.
The railroad, which gets operating cash from taxpayers, carried 65 per cent of air or rail travelers from New York to Washington and 52 per cent from New York to Boston, Boardman said. The previous market-share record was 63 per cent to Washington and 50 per cent to Boston since Acela began service in 2001, according to Amtrak.
Boardman, 61, became Amtrak’s CEO in 2008 after serving as head of the Federal Railroad Administration under Republican President George W. Bush and as New York state’s transportation commissioner.
Amtrak has no plans to follow most U.S. airlines and charge passengers for baggage. Security screening in major rail stations will be handled without installing the types of screening machines used at airports, Boardman said. Amtrak is increasing the use of dogs trained to detect explosives and vapors, especially on Northeast Corridor trains, he said.
The railroad plans to trim the travel time on Washington- New York route to 2 hours, 15 minutes within two decades, cutting about 30 minutes from the trip by repairing bridges, tunnels and tracks along the route, he said.
Ridership is climbing as the economy recovers and Amtrak improves customer service, including refurbishing passenger car interiors, adding free wireless Internet connections for its Acela service and planning to offer the feature on other trains.
Customers in New York City, accustomed to being jostled when boarding trains at aging Penn Station, should have an easier time if the plan to convert the landmark Manhattan post office across the street into Moynihan Station comes to fruition, Boardman said.
“There’s a lot of support behind it now,” he said of the project named for the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who wanted to expand and redevelop Penn Station, North America’s busiest rail station.