 |
| A Borealis train taking on passengers at St. Paul Union Depot |
Amtrak's Borealis posted a slight increase in ridership in June, going (with rounding) from 605 daily passengers for the first week and a half in May to 619 daily passengers last month, according to data obtained from WisDOT by the Wisconsin Association of Railroad Passengers (WisARP). Nearly all of the increase was in the eastbound direction, which went up by 13 daily riders, while westbound went up by 1 additional passenger per day.
| 1333 Westbound | 1340 Eastbound | Both trains | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Total | Daily | Total | Daily | Total | Daily |
| May 2024 (11 days) | 3,622 | 329 | 3,028 | 275 | 6,650 | 605 |
| June 2024 (30 days) | 9,906 | 330 | 8,651 | 288 | 18,557 | 619 |
| YTD (41 days) | 13,528 | 330 | 11,679 | 285 | 25,207 | 615 |
Projected ridership before the start of service was all over the map, so it's difficult to say exactly how well it's doing—it's definitely doing well, it's just a matter of finding the most appropriate benchmark. There are approximately 300 seats per train, so at first blush, this would seem to be more than 100% utilization, although most passengers are only riding for part of the route, and trains averaged being about 50% full in May (1.3 million passenger-miles vs. 2.6 million seat-miles).
All Aboard Minnesota says that MnDOT expected 125,000 riders per year, and AAMN themselves had forecasted 155,000. Those are closer to Amtrak's feasibility report from 2015 which estimated 117,500 (option 4-A) and 155,000 (option 4-B) for two schedule options. Due to high estimated capital costs, neither of those were chosen, and a third "4-C" cost-optimized option was moved forward that used a schedule very similar to what the Borealis has today, though the study didn't provide any passenger count forecasts.
| Westbound | Eastbound | Est. ridership | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schedules | Dep. CHI | Arr. MSP | Dep. MSP | Arr. CHI | Annual | Daily |
| Option 4-A | 9:25 am | 4:42 pm | 2:25 pm | 9:54 pm | 117,500 | 322 |
| Option 4-B | 9:25 am | 4:42 pm | 12:25 pm | 7:57 pm | 155,500 | 426 |
| Option 4-C | 10:15 am | N/A | 11:46 am | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| MnDOT | 125,000¹ | 343 | ||||
| WisDOT | 231,900 | 635 | ||||
| Borealis | 11:05 am | 6:29 pm | 11:50 am | 7:14 pm | 224,475² | 615 |
¹Via All Aboard Minnesota
²Multiplying current year-to-date average of 615 daily riders by 365 days
So, with those numbers sitting in the back of my head, I was really shocked to see news articles with much higher figures, such as 232,000 in the Star Tribune. It took me a while to notice that the Wisconsin Department of Transportation put a figure of 231,900 on their website, which is presumably what the Star Tribune reporter used. The number also appeared in testimony to Congress last year (along with the briefly-floated Great River name for the train).
I'm not sure where that figure ultimately comes from, but since the Borealis ended up being an extension of a pair of Hiawatha trains (train 333 became 1333, and train 340 became 1340), it seems likely WisDOT or Amtrak either directly added estimates for the 2nd daily train to ridership for that pre-existing train pair, or used a model that incorporated both existing and new ridership, while the older estimates from 2015 may have ignored some of the existing riders.
As of April, Hiawatha trains had carried 381,000 riders across 2,797 trains so far in Amtrak's 2024 fiscal year, so the average for a single train was 136 riders, or 272 passengers for a pair of trains. So if the Borealis was running empty between St. Paul and Milwaukee, you'd expect to see right around 100,000 passengers for the year. But simply adding that to the older projections doesn't really line up properly, so there has probably been some newer modeling that I don't currently have access to.
Depending on which number you're looking at, the train is either massively beating projections, or within a few percentage points of where it was expected to be. I'm certainly glad it isn't massively below where it was expected, but these different numbers definitely create confusion.
Now the question is, how much farther can it go? That's really hard to say. Westbound trains are overselling seating, with around 15% more riders being carried than there are seats available, and eastbound trains have ridership that almost exactly matches the seat count. The average trip length is only around 200 miles, though, so the trains had an average load factor of about 50% in May.
Ridership could theoretically double, but that would require most new trips to be added west of Milwaukee, since it looks like around 40% of the seating gets used just for the existing Hiawatha base of ridership between Milwaukee and Chicago. Dealing with full trains on the busiest segment will be a challenge going forward.
While I hope rumors of a third daily train are actually meaningful and can happen sometime soon, the most immediate way to accommodate growth would be to add another car to the existing trains. Business-class seating appears to sell out quickly on the Borealis, so a full business-class car would be a nice addition.
But for now, travel demand is able to overflow to the Empire Builder if needed. I haven't yet seen a day where both trains are sold out, but we'll have to keep an eye out in case that starts happening.
No comments:
Post a Comment