MILWAUKEE — The planes were grounded and the nation had just watched airliners crashing into skyscrapers – but Amtrak ridership still didn’t grow as the railroad claimed after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, new figures show, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
In fact, September ridership actually dropped 6% from the same month of last year, and October ridership is down 1%, Amtrak’s top spokesman said Thursday.
Detailed September figures show a brief jump in long-distance and Midwestern ridership after the attacks – up 23% Sept. 12 and up 29% Sept. 13, compared with the same days of the week before – but the daily Northeast, West Coast and nationwide totals were all lower in the days after the attacks than they were in the days before.
On the Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha route, September ridership fell 12.5%, from 33,511 in September 2000 to 29,313, Amtrak Vice President Bill Schulz said.
October ridership was 34,873, nearly unchanged from year-ago levels, he said.
Those figures could undermine an important argument of Amtrak supporters seeking to justify the national passenger railroad’s continued existence – that the United States needs a strong network of passenger trains as a viable alternative to air travel.
“If they couldn’t get a spike in ridership where the airlines were shut down, where thousands of people were afraid to fly, when are they going to get it?” asked conservative leader Paul Weyrich, a member of the federal watchdog panel that is drawing up a plan to restructure Amtrak.
But Schulz said Amtrak is still doing better than the airlines in an economic recession. And Congress is unlikely to disband Amtrak as a result of the restructuring debate, rail supporters and critics agree.
Ridership boost evaporated
In the days immediately after Sept. 11, Amtrak supporters capitalized on the railroad’s claims of a ridership boost as they lobbied for more money for short- and long-term projects.
Amtrak officials had said nationwide ridership was 17% above normal levels for the first six days after the attack, then remained 10% to 15% above last year’s levels, with ridership up 20% on long-distance trains. They also said revenue was up sharply because most of those passengers were buying expensive cross-country tickets.
In fact, Schulz said, those statements were based not on actual ridership, but on projections derived from the number of reservations made. An unusually high number of passengers canceled their reservations or traded in their tickets, throwing off the projections, Schulz said.
Travelers apparently were “seeking to keep open their options as to how to travel as well as their mode of transportation,” Schulz said.
The ridership declines reflect the economic downturn that has cut all forms of leisure travel, Schulz said.
Still, business ridership is up on some key Northeastern routes, offsetting much of the drop in vacation riders, Schulz said. He said Amtrak was turning people away from sold-out trains on the 150-mph Acela Express, connecting Washington, D.C., New York City and Boston, and on the New York-to-Washington Metroliners, and that 40% to 50% of sleeper cars were sold out on long-distance trains.
Those statements were greeted with skepticism by Amtrak critics like Weyrich, a Racine native, and California writer Joe Vranich, who previously served alongside Weyrich on the Amtrak Reform Council.
Weyrich said Amtrak’s reservation system often shows trains sold out when they aren’t, because it saves seats on long-distance trains for more lucrative long-range tickets by denying them to short-range riders. Schulz said Weyrich was wrong.
Vranich said statements that sleeper cars are sold out suggest that ridership in regular seats is down. Schulz said that’s true, because all travel is down.
Amtrak won’t meet deadline
Overall, Amtrak’s nationwide ridership was up 4% in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, to a record 23.4 million.
Still, the news of an autumn ridership decline follows the reform council’s ruling earlier this month that Amtrak would not meet the congressionally set deadline of Oct. 1, 2002, to free itself of federal subsidies.
That decision – with Mayor John O. Norquist casting the deciding vote by cell phone – forced a debate on Amtrak’s future. Under federal law, the council now must draw up a restructuring plan, Amtrak must draw up a plan to liquidate itself and Congress must decide what to do early next year.
While Amtrak could be redesigned, “the least realistic plan right now is that (lawmakers) are going to take up Amtrak’s liquidation,” reform council spokeswoman Deirdre O’Sullivan said. “Politically, it’s not really viable,” because members of Congress want to save trains serving their home states.
“There’s not a dime’s worth of talk on” liquidation, Schulz agreed.
Norquist, who was presiding over a symposium on gun violence, was not available for comment Thursday. But he has said previously that he voted to restructure Amtrak, not to kill it.
The debate could have a positive effect, by highlighting the need for more funding for Amtrak and for projects like the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative, a $4.1 billion, nine-state plan for fast, frequent trains, said state Railroad
Commissioner Rodney Kreunen; Randy Wade, the initiative’s passenger rail implementation manager; and Rick Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Coalition.
Lack of funding is delaying plans to kick off the Midwest initiative with a $176 million, 110-mph route between Milwaukee and Madison in 2004. That would become part of a larger 110-mph Chicago-to-Twin Cities route, with a 79-mph branch from Milwaukee to Green Bay.
Weyrich, a longtime rail supporter who leads the Free Congress Foundation, would like to see Amtrak replaced by a network of private railroads running high-speed trains on short- to medium-length routes, such as the Chicago-Milwaukee-Twin Cities line. But he doesn’t expect to get his way. “At the end of the day, I don’t think anything will be done,” he said.