(The following story by Ken Stanford appeared at AccessNorthGa.com on February 14, 2010.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Newly released figures show that despite the recession, Amtrak trains serving Georgia generally held their own during fiscal 2009.
According to the Georgia Association of Railroad Passengers (GARP), The two trains serving Amtrak’s New York-Savannah-Miami route actually posted ridership gains: the Silver Star carried 371,235 passengers, up 1.1% from 2008; and the Silver Meteor carried 330,734 passengers, up 3.4% from 2008.
The two other trains serving Georgia posted slight declines.
The New York-Atlanta-New Orleans Crescent, which stops twice daily in Toccoa, Gainesville and Atlanta, carried 286,576 passengers in fiscal 2009, down 1.6% from fiscal 2008; and the New York-Savannah Palmetto carried 171,316 passengers, down 1.5%.
Nationally, Amtrak ridership was down 5.4% in fiscal 2009. But Amtrak’s fiscal year ended September 30, and there are already signs that Amtrak ridership is on the rebound. During the first quarter of fiscal 2010 (October 2009 through December 2009) a record-
breaking 7.2 million passengers rode Amtrak trains nationwide. Here in the Southeast, the Silver Star, the Silver Meteor and the Palmetto all enjoyed ridership increases compared with the first quarter of fiscal 2009, although the Crescent continued to lag.
ON-TIME PERFORMANCE
The weak economy has had a bright side for Amtrak passengers, according to GARP: it’s decreased freight congestion on the nation’s
railroads. That’s at least one of the reasons why three of the four Amtrak trains serving Georgia had better on-time records during fiscal 2009.
The Silver Star and the Silver Meteor both posted on-time percentages of 86.7%, 15.5 percentage points better than 2008 for the Star and 2.7 points better for the Meteor. The Crescent completed 78.3% of its trips on schedule, an improvement of 6.7 percentage points.
The only Georgia Amtrak train to slip in on-time performance was the train that had the worst timekeeping problems to begin with: the Palmetto finished its runs on time just 66.7% of the time, down 2.8 percentage points from 2008.