Fiscal 2022 Facts Are Now At Your Fingers

By Jim Mathews / President & CEO

Your Association’s very well-regarded Amtrak ridership fact sheets for Fiscal Year 2022 are now ready for you to use, thanks to hard work by our friend and member Matt Fels.

It took awhile to get the data we needed from Amtrak, thanks to a combination of pandemic disruption and retirements at Amtrak. But late this summer we finally got the last pieces we needed and Matt got to work.

You can find ridership data by city, by state, by route, and even by congressional district. But it’s A LOT more than just simple ridership. Our fact sheets include historic ridership trends, the population served, passenger-miles traveled, the most-popular origin-and-destination pairs, and much more.

I’ve had Amtrak employees tell me they rely on our fact sheets when the time comes to make their case!

Want to see how the Vermonter is doing coming back from COVID-driven lows? Take a look by clicking on this link. Ridership in 2022 was nearly five times higher than in 2021.

How about the state-supported routes in general? What’s happening with them? Ridership just about doubled.

How are things going in Flint, Mich.? They’re pretty close to pre-pandemic levels. And where do people go from Flint? Mostly to Chicago. Next most-popular was Kalamazoo, and then New Buffalo, Battle Creek, and Port Huron.

Whose congressional district includes Las Vegas, New Mexico? That’s NM-3, represented by Teresa Leger Fernandez. The ridership in 2022 came to about 15 percent of the population living within 25 miles of this tiny but really awesome station. If you haven't visited, it's worth your popping by.

And if bigger congressional districts are more your thing, take a look at Rep. Dwight Evans (D-PA) PA-3, with multiple trains every day from across Amtrak's operation -- Northeast Corridor, state-supported, and long-distance.

These sheets are a terrific resource. We produce them so that you have interesting and compelling facts at your fingertips when you talk to your local elected and appointed officials – Mayors, town planners, state legislators – and to the business community about passenger trains and what they mean (or could mean) where you live.

All of these resources can be found at www.railpassengers.org/ridership . Use them today to get the word out!