Silver Service Ridership Up

[AlanB]

Achieving strong increases for the month of April against one year ago, Amtrak's Silver Service routes (Miami - New York) enjoyed their greatest ridership increases so far this fiscal year.  Nationally, Amtrak's long-distance routes have seen marked increases.
For the month of April, ridership on the Silver Star was 23,319, an increase of 15 percent over April of 2002.  April's ridership on the Palmetto was 18,247, an increase of 4.8 percent over last year.  Seeing the largest increase - 27 percent over last year -- was the Silver Meteor with ridership of 26,348.  This marks the fourth consecutive month of ridership growth for the Silver Meteor.  

Strong grassroots local marketing and promotions, competitive and attractive fares and popular national promotions such as Amtrak's Spring 1-2-Free worked together to generate the ridership gains.

"We are very encouraged by the recent growth in ridership on all three of our Silver Service routes," said Hank Koppelman, Amtrak's director of marketing and sales for the Southeast.  "Over the past few months, we offered a number of special fares on our long-distance routes to entice travelers to try the train, and it's clear that they have."

Ridership in sleeping accommodations on board the Silver Star was especially strong in April.  A total of 3,599 passengers traveled in sleeping cars on board the Silver Star in April, up 19.8 percent from April of 2002.  This continued a four-month trend that began in January.  March was also particularly strong with sleeping car ridership on the Silver Star reaching 4,227, an increase of 25.4 percent compared to March of 2002. System-wide, Amtrak saw an increase of 4.1 percent in the number of passengers choosing sleeping accommodations in April, the first increase in a year.  Nationally, total Amtrak ridership in April was 2,098,901, against 2,048,398 for April, 2002.

Amtrak's Silver Service provides daily service between Miami and New York.  Major stops along the routes include Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville, Fla.,  Savannah, Ga., Charleston, S.C., Raleigh, N.C., Richmond, Va., Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Md. and Philadelphia, Pa.

The complete press release is also available on Amtrak's website located here.

 

[amtrakadirondack]

That's good and thanks for the link, now we need all of the trains ridership up and the money for each route way up

 

[Superliner Diner]

Just like they did with the Crescent recently, Amtrak is putting out these press releases to make sure the public is aware that their ridership numbers are positive. Hopefully people are reading these things, so they don't get the wrong impressions of Amtrak from negative-slanted media reports.

 

[Viewliner]

Nice to hear, especially with theSilver Meteor!

I think the Palmetto would have even bigger ridership gains if it had a sleeper or two along with a diner....

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

SD. glad to hear the news about Silver service.

You also mentioned the Crescent I did not see that info. Is it still available somewhere?

 

[AlanB]

SD. glad to hear the news about Silver service.
You also mentioned the Crescent I did not see that info. Is it still available somewhere?

Bill,

You can check out Amtrak's press release on the Crecent by clicking here.

 

[Bill Haithcoat]

Wow! That is great news. I had no idea!