(The following article by Terry Hillig was posted on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website on December 13.)
ST. LOUIS — More travelers are taking the trains on three Illinois routes since increased state funding allowed Amtrak to offer additional service beginning Oct. 30.
Ridership on those routes was significantly greater in November than in November 2005 — up 61 percent between Chicago and Carbondale, 49 percent between Chicago and St. Louis and 35 percent between Chicago and Quincy.
Earlier this year, the Illinois Legislature nearly doubled state funding for passenger rail service, to $24 million. The money allowed Amtrak to add two daily round trips to the previous three between St. Louis and Chicago, and to offer one additional daily round trip each in the Chicago-Carbondale and Chicago-Quincy corridors.
Matt Vanover, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said the early ridership numbers are excellent and are about what state officials anticipated.
“Any time you add service, you’re going to see more people take the trains,” he said.
Amtrak previously offered an early-morning departure from St. Louis to Chicago at 4:35 a.m. The train rolled through Alton at 5:21 a.m. Now, one of the new trains leaves St. Louis at 6:35 a.m. and Alton at 7:21 a.m. It arrives in Chicago at 11:55 a.m.
“We believe (the increased ridership) is a combination of new passengers and people who were looking for a train that better fit their schedules,” said Marc Magliari, an Amtrak spokesman. But it might be too soon to draw sweeping conclusions from the numbers, he said.
“This is a busy ridership season,” Magliari said. “We need to see how things go in the off-peak seasons.”
Missouri’s Amtrak ridership in November was down 11 percent compared with November 2005, but Brian Weiler, Missouri Department of Transportation multimodal operations director, said an extensive track maintenance project in the St. Louis-Kansas City corridor had depressed ridership since it began earlier in the year. The project necessitated busing of passengers along part of the route, he said.
Weiler said Missouri’s Amtrak ridership was up 7 percent in early 2006 before the maintenance work began.