(The following article by Patrick McGeehan was posted on the New York Times website on September 10.)
NEW YORK — Citing the high cost of diesel fuel, Amtrak said yesterday that it would raise its train fares across most of the nation by at least 5 percent this month, but that its most frequent riders would face much steeper increases.
Amtrak, which has been battling in Washington for enough federal financing to maintain its operations, said ticket prices would rise an average of $4 in the Northeast and $3 elsewhere on Sept. 20. For commuters who ride Amtrak trains daily in the Washington-Boston corridor, however, the cost will rise by up to $375 a month.
Amtrak officials do not normally announce fare increases in advance, but word of the big changes in the works had begun circulating among regular riders, prompting an official notice late yesterday. The warning will give customers time to stock up on 10-trip tickets and monthly passes, said Cliff Black, an Amtrak spokesman.
A few thousand commuters purchase those tickets, which are much less costly than buying a round-trip ticket each day. Amtrak, which is awaiting Congressional approval of $1.45 billion for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, decided it could no longer afford to be so accommodating, Mr. Black said.
“We traditionally raise fares two or three times a year, but the multi-ride tickets have generally been protected from fare increases,” Mr. Black said. “We felt we have been deeply discounting these prices for a long period of time. Even though some of them are going up by hundreds of dollars, they still represent half price of the regular one-way fares.”
After raising the ticket prices, Amtrak will recalculate the prices of the multiride tickets and passes so that they equal 50 percent of the full fare, he said.
For example, the price of a basic, one-way ticket between Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Station in New York will rise to $56 from $53. But the cost of a monthly pass between those cities, which allows unlimited travel on certain trains, will increase almost 60 percent, to $1,008 from $633. Commuters and their advocates expressed shock at the increases, and some said they would have to find a less expensive alternative.
“It’s basic transportation management that you do not hit people with a sledgehammer fare increase in one step, you give them a series of gradual fare increases over time,” said Ross Capon, president of the Association of Railroad Passengers. “We believe Amtrak should be working to become more relevant to more people and this will do just the opposite.”
Mr. Capon cited the Capitol Corridor train service in California as a model, saying its managers had raised fares in 13 increments over several years, always with “significant advance notice” and while continually upgrading service.
That intrastate service, though operated by Amtrak, is not included in the railroad’s pending fare increase, Mr. Black said, because the bulk of its costs are borne by state and local agencies, and its managers chose not to raise ticket prices now. Other state-supported Amtrak services, including those within Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, will also be unaffected, he said. But the price of tickets on Amtrak’s long-distance trains that pass through those states will go up, he said.
Told on the train home last evening that her monthly pass would soon cost about $850, Ahema Asare, a manager at a hospital in Manhattan, said she would switch to a combination of local trains. “I won’t be buying the Amtrak because that’s too much,” Ms. Asare said.