The
May, 2015 Monthly Performance Report has been posted (64 page PDF). It is not a good monthly report for ridership, revenue, operating losses, etc due to the derailment of Regional #188 which shut down the southern NEC for days. Weather, track work, and service interruptions in other corridors added to the misery.
Mostly expected. As usual, I'll look at this geographically. And I tend to consider changes less than 3% to be fluctuation, unless there's a trend.
Big ridership & revenue losses on everything traversing or connecting to the NEC. On top of this, major trackwork hit the LSL & Empire Service. And different major trackwork hit the Downeaster. That's pretty much everything in the east, except the Auto Train (which did just fine). I am expecting reputational damage from 188 to hurt Amtrak ridership overall for the rest of the year at least.
Worth noting that the Star is hemmoraghing more riders than the Meteor -- maybe people who read the announcement about lack of dining car service.
The Vermonter is showing very definite ridership gains since the reroute, so that's good news! (And one of the new stations hasn't even opened yet!)
The Capitol Limited, LSL, and Michigan services are, I believe, still suffering ridership & revenue losses from the reputational aftereffects of Norfolk Southern's total system failure over the winter. NS really should pay damages for that, though they won't. I expect to see the rebound from this next year (2016) sometime, assuming there isn't another system failure. When the upstate New York track & station work finishes *and* people's short memories have forgotten last winter's delays, I expect a dramatic and relatively sudden rebound of LSL & Empire Service ridership. That might be next year or it might be in 2017... Well, unless CSX or NS manages to sabotage things again.
The whole Chicago hub is down on ridership and revenue. I can blame the Michigan situation on the aftereffects of the NS system failure. And Amtrak mentions trackwork for the Wolverines. And there is constant trackwork and bustitutions on the St. Louis-Chicago line (which probably also hurts St. Louis-Kansas City). I don't see an end to that in the forseeable future. There were lots of delays on the Texas Eagle both in Illinois and in Texas... but fewer than last year, so I guess its increase in ridership makes sense?
However, the year-over-year drop on the Carbondale and Quincy lines doesn't have an obvious explanation.
Perhaps lower gas prices are having a significant ridership effect in the Midwest? (They don't seem to have much of an effect in the Northeast.)
Severe flooding hit the Heartland Flyer.... hopefully that's a one-time event. The effects were dramatic, ridership down 50%.
The Empire Builder hasn't recovered ridership lost during the massive delays of the last couple of years, and has had some pretty big recent delays on top of that, so I'm not surprised to see ridership down again. I'm not sure when it will recover, but 2016 or 2017 is my guess.
The Zephyr is doing surprisingly well. Considering that there have been some well-publicized *massive* delays, I expect this to get worse for June and July.
The Southwest Chief is doing fine (and why wouldn't it? nothing went wrong there), and even the Sunset Limited is up a bit.
The Coast Starlight seems to be losing riders continually. This is actually a trend now, it's been consistent for several years. Perhaps due to increased prices? Revenue is staying flat. The shorter California services are all doing reasonably well. Cascades was hurt by trackwork.
----
The chief engineer's report is interesting. Bear is behind due to not getting cars. Beech Grove is behind but not by that much. Chicago is waaaay behind, and it's not entirely clear to me why.