With all its widely-publicized troubles, there’s also a tiny glint of good news for Amtrak: the Boston to New York route.
Last year, Amtrak’s high-speed Acela Express train carried a record 593,000 passengers from Boston to New York. An Amtrak rep says Acela’s market share on the busy route grew from 36% in 2006 to 41% last year.
Passengers are picking Amtrak over other options such as Greyhound, which runs about 30 busses a day between Boston and New York. The Fung Wah bus also links the Chinatowns of the two cities.
For flights, the New York-Boston route is the seventh busiest in the country. Delta and US Airways fly hourly shuttles from Boston Logan to LaGuardia; American, Delta and JetBlue to JFK; and Continental flies hourly from Boston to its hub at Newark.
Reasons for the train route’s success include its speed (a three and a half hour trip) and the ability to work on the train, officials say. But the train is also cheaper or often half the price of an airline ticket.
“After a long, slow start, Amtrak seems to have found a way to compete with the airlines, at least in the Northeast Corridor,†said Wired — Autopia in a report that asks:
“Could this signal a renewed interest in US passenger rail, at least in short haul markets?â€
The answer: possibly.
Report by David Wilkening
