(The following story by Ted Jackovics appeared on the Tampa Tribune website on January 27, 2010.)
TAMPA — Tampa International Airport handles the same number of passengers in two days that Amtrak in Tampa handles over a year, but local ridership on the single northbound and southbound daily trains that stop in Tampa on a New York-Miami run continues to grow.
Tampa’s Amtrak ridership grew 10.7 percent in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30 compared with the previous year, with 110,857 inbound and outbound passengers compared with 100,119 in fiscal 2008, an Amtrak report shows.
Tampa ranked third among Florida stations, behind the Sanford Amtrak Auto-Train terminal and Orlando, in passenger traffic in the past fiscal year.
Sanford handled 213,955 passengers and Orlando reported 145,775, about 35,000 more than Tampa, although the Orlando station serves two trains a day compared with one for Tampa.
Miami was the state’s fourth busiest Amtrak station, with 81,582 passengers for two trains.
In 2008, Miami, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale; Orlando; Hollywood, Fla.; Deerfield Beach; New York; Washington; and Raleigh and Columbia, S.C., were the most frequent destinations – in succession – from Tampa.