(The following article by Tom Bell was posted on the Portland Press Herald website on August 12.)
PORTLAND, Me. — This has been a good summer for Amtrak’s Downeaster service.
Ridership is up, in part because faster travel time between Portland and Boston is helping the train compete against automobiles, say rail authority officials.
But the best news came from Washington, where Congress approved a transportation bill that assures the federal government will continue to subsidize the service until 2009.
Since the service began in December 2001, Maine has been using mostly federal funds to subsidize the Downeaster, which offers four round trips a day. The funds were due to run out this year and Maine taxpayers were scheduled to pick up the entire cost, about $5 million to $6 million annually.
Signed into law Wednesday by President Bush, the transportation bill allows the state to continue using federal funds to pay for 80 percent of the subsidy.
That will save Maine taxpayers $3 million to $4 million annually and buy state officials more time to figure out how to pay for the train when the federal money runs out. Gov. John Baldacci plans to appoint a task force this fall to look at long-term funding issues.
Like other forms of public transportation, the Downeaster will never pay for itself from ticket sales, officials at the rail authority say. But more passengers means fewer tax dollars, and they say ridership figures show the service has become a viable transportation alternative, with 700 to 900 one-way trips a day.
The authority has been working to attract more passengers since ridership slumped after the service’s first year, when many people rode the train because it was a novel attraction. The marketing efforts seem to be paying off.
Ridership in May was up 8 percent from a year ago, and June ridership was up 12 percent.
From July 1 to July 22, there were 17,703 trips, a 9 percent increase from a year ago.
“We have seen three solid months of growth,” said Patricia Douglas, acting executive director of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority, the agency that operates the Downeaster. “The resurgence is impressive.”
The number of people traveling between Portland and Boston has jumped since travel time was reduced in April to two hours and 30 minutes, a savings of up to 15 minutes.
Ridership on the train that departs Portland at 6:20 a.m., for example, has increased about 20 percent on weekdays because more business travelers are using the train, Douglas said. She said rising gasoline prices also may have caused more people to switch from their cars to the train.
Last year, the Downeaster increased its maximum speed from 60 mph to 79 mph, which helped shorten the trip. Track improvements in Kennebunk, shorter stops at stations and new speed limits on tracks in Massachusetts owned by the MBTA shaved more minutes off travel time.
Still, Douglas admits the Downeaster’s schedule presents a serious obstacle to additional ridership. There are huge gaps between train trips, leaving people with few options. Missing the 12:05 p.m. train out of Boston, for example, means waiting more than six hours for the next train.
While some trains are usually packed, others run nearly empty.
Train No. 685, which leaves Boston on weekdays at 6:15 p.m., is crammed with commuters and carries 25 percent of the Downeaster’s total passenger load. But on the early morning weekend train out of Portland, empty seats outnumber passengers seven to one.
When passenger counts on all the runs are averaged out, more than half of the Downeaster’s seats are empty.
To fill gaps in the schedule and make the train more attractive, the rail authority wants to add a fifth round trip between Boston and Portland. To do that, the authority needs help from New Hampshire.
Maine is asking New Hampshire to spend $1.2 million in federal funds to add two sidings in that state, making it easier for freight trains to get off the main line so Amtrak can add another train. Maine would provide $479,000 in matching funds. The Downeaster has three stops in New Hampshire.
But New Hampshire state legislators have been reluctant to spend the money. C&J Trailways, which operates bus service to Boston from Portsmouth, Dover and Durham, N.H., and Newbury, Mass., has lobbied New Hampshire officials to block the funding, arguing that the rail authority has failed to integrate bus and train service.
Douglas said a group that includes officials from Maine and New Hampshire is working on a plan that would allow the bus company and train service to work together as part of an integrated transportation system.
She hopes the plan will be presented to a New Hampshire transportation committee for approval in October.
There’s a “lot of hostility” toward the train in New Hampshire, said Wayne Davis of Trainriders-Northeast, a citizen train advocacy group. “We are hoping that the new negotiations will have better luck than the old ones.”