NEC City Pairs, Which are the Busiest??

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Acela150

Acela150

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I have been tossing around the thought of, which city pairs in the NEC are busiest?

We're talking WAS-BOS.

I can see WAS-PHL, WAS-NYP, PHL-NYP, NYP-BOS being at the top of the list. But any ideas on which is used the most?
 
My guess is NYP-WAS.

I'm on 67 (13) right now and in NYP it filled up to the gills! So if a train from NYP-WAS in the middle of the night is full, what does that say about the rest of the day? And I've taken 190 (the 3:15 am departure from WAS) many times. It is full out of WAS and usually empties 80-90% at NYP,
 
NYP-WAS

Yes, it adds more passengers at PHL but everyone is going to either NYP or WAS. Having the Keystone service also helps alleviate some of the NYP-PHL traffic.
 
I think we can all agree that the southern half of the corridor is busier than the northern half.

I would assume NYP - WAS or PHL - NYP are the two most common city pairs, followed by PHL -WAS.
 
Are you talking just Acela or all trains?

I would say NYP-PHL is the busiest city pair. That stretch of route has more trains then any other city pair. NER, Acela, most Keystones, and many others go through those points. Once you get north of NYP, some do not go through and others branch off in other directions. South of PHL, the Keystones drop off.
 
Are we talking of just Amtrak passengers?

Are we talking of O/D at the select end points, or total number of passengers traveling between the two points even though their journey does not start or end at the end points?
 
NY Penn to Philadelphia (or back) has *always* been the busiest city pair and probably always will be.
 
I recalled seeing a list of the top intercity markets on or connected to the NEC in an Amtrak document. Found one in the 2010 NEC Infrastructure Master Plan, so these numbers are likely either FY2009 or FY2008. NYP-WAS edged out NYP-PHL. Pretty sure the city pair which generates the most revenue by a comfortable margin is NYP-WAS.

Table 12: Top [10] Intercity Travel Markets on page 22:

Code: 
City Pair Ridership % Total
New York - Washington 1,740,474 25.7%
New York - Philadelphia 1,548,212 22.9%
Philadelphia - Washington 701,136 10.4%
Boston - New York 663,919 9.8%
Albany - New York 623,829 9.2%
Baltimore - New York 378,961 5.6%
New York - Wilmington 308,087 4.6%
New York - Route 128 273,681 4.0%
BWI Airport - New York 266,923 3.9%
New York - Providence 263,432 3.9%
Total 6,768,654 100.0%
 
jis said:
Are we talking of just Amtrak passengers?

Are we talking of O/D at the select end points, or total number of passengers traveling between the two points even though their journey does not start or end at the end points?
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Jis, we're talking just Amtrak, and from Point A to B. Or if you wanna get crazy all the multi city pairs that pax come up with! :)
 
We assume that Boston includes both BBY Back Bay and BOS South Station?

That puts NYP to all 3 Boston Stations (including 128 higher than PHL-WAS), 937,600, interesting.
 
OK, Amtrak pretty much dropped the ball on serving the NYP - PHL market when it dumped the Clockers on NJT. Before it could still possibly be NYP - PHL.

Amtrak has been actively trying to get out of the business of serving NYP - PHL for a long time now, but those darned passengers still keep coming, no matter how hard Amtrak tries to screw the pooch! :) Must be quite irritating actually. They have worked even harder and with a much greater degree of success to kill the NJ to Philly market by simply refusing to stop even extremely local type of trains in place like Princeton Jct. and New Brunswick. One of the fears in NJ is that with the advent of HSR on the NEC, NJ will just become a flyover country!
 
SubwayNut said:
We assume that Boston includes both BBY Back Bay and BOS South Station?

That puts NYP to all 3 Boston Stations (including 128 higher than PHL-WAS), 937,600, interesting.
Click to expand...
Looks like BBY and BOS are combined in the top intercity market table. BBY has more passengers than Rt. 128, so if it was treated separately, it would likely show up on the top 10 list. Since BOS and BBY both serve the Boston city core, makes sense to combine them for intercity pairs. Rt. 128 is a suburban station like BWI Airport or New Carrollton for the DC region.

If BOS-NYP trip times for the Acela and Regionals were similar to the Acela & Regional NYP-WAS times and there were 30+ daily BOS-NYP trains in each direction, the Boston - NYC city pair ridership would very likely be comparable to the NYP-WAS and NYP-PHL ridership numbers. But the route through CT is what it is, so the Boston-NYC ridership numbers are lower than they could be.
 
Wow, that surprises me. I would have guessed NYP - PHL because of the commuters.

*Bear in mind I live nowhere near that area of the country, so it was a wild guess.
 
With the fare that Amtrak charges between NYP and PHL, no normal commuter can afford to ride Amtrak and put food on their own tables at the same time. It is either this or that, and most choose food. :)

NYP - PHL is the poster child of what does not work very well for the rail riders on the NEC, and there is ample blame to go all around for the current sorry state of affairs.
 
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As a Bostonian, I'm surprised that there isn't more sentiment for the Boston--New York corridor as the busiest. (And, as been noted, there are three stations up here. LOL)

I defer to the others and assume they are correct. But I've taken the BOS--NYC run a great many times and it is very well subscribed. If Amtrak could routinely get the ridership on all their trains that they get on the NEC and Autotrain, it would be a very healthy venture.
 
As far as Boston, my guess (and only a guess) is that it's only South Station. I read here on AU that BBY has over 400K alone. So if that's the case, that would be about 1/2 the total!
 
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