Slight dip for train ridership in Fresno, Valley. How does that stack up in the U.S.?
Amtrak trains running through central California between Bakersfield, Oakland and Sacramento carried nearly 1.1 million passengers in 2018-19, maintaining the Amtrak San Joaquin line’s status as the nation’s fifth-busiest state-supported passenger rail corridor in the country despite a slight dip in ridership.
The San Joaquin trains, as well the Capitol Corridor trains between Auburn and San Jose and the Pacific Surfliner route from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, are among Amtrak’s 29 “state-supported” intercity rail services across the country. All three are in the top-five state-subsidized routes nationwide.
Collectively, the San Joaquin, Capitol Corridor and Pacific Surfliner trains accounted for about 5.6 million ticketed passengers in the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. But that was a decline of more than 100,000 riders from the 2017-18 fiscal year, when Amtrak reported 5.7 million passengers:
- The San Joaquin trains carried 1,071,190 riders in 2019, down slightly from 1,078,707 in 2018.
- The Pacific Surfliners carried 2,776,654 riders in 2019, down from 2,946,239 the prior year.
- The Capitol Corridor line carried 1,777,136 riders in 2019, up from 1,706,849 in 2018.
The California State Transportation Agency subsidizes the operation of the three routes, owns the train equipment, and manages capital improvements to the system. The department’s budget for the Intercity Rail Passenger Program amounted to $383.6 million in 2018-19 and is $798.6 million in 2019-2020.
Outside of the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak carried 19.9 million passengers on both its long-distance and state-subsidized routes. California’s three state-supported routes accounted for more than 28% of the nation’s ridership.
Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., accounted for more than 12.5 million in an area where commuters are far more accustomed to train travel than people in other parts of the country. The Northeast Corridor includes Acela high-speed trains capable of carrying passengers at up to 150 miles per hour on some stretches of the route.
The San Joaquin route provides seven daily northbound trains and another seven southbound through the Valley between Bakersfield and Stockton. From Stockton, five trains continue west to Oakland while bus service takes passengers to Sacramento; the other two daily trains go to Sacramento while buses go to Oakland. Passengers taking the trains south from the Valley must transfer to buses to continue on to Los Angeles.
The San Joaquin trains don’t have tracks of their own that are only for passenger rail, but instead use tracks that belong to freight railroads BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad.
Earlier this year, the San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority, which oversees policymaking for the San Joaquin trains, discontinued an early morning service that left Fresno at about 4:30 a.m. and arrived in Sacramento by 8 a.m., in time for people to conduct business at the state Capitol or other places in the city. Before it was canceled in May after about a year in operation, the Sacramento Morning Express train was attracting too few riders to warrant continuing the service.
Amtrak serves as a contractor to operate the trains for the San Joaquins and the other two state-supported routes. The San Joaquin Joint Powers Authority estimated in its 2019-2020 business plan that the Amtrak operations contract will cost about $58.8 million this year, plus another $3.6 million for other operating expenses such as cleanup along the railroad right of way, computer software, leased parking lots at stations, and the startup of a new Amtrak Thruway bus service from the Madera Amtrak station to San Jose.
Ticket revenue for the San Joaquins added up to a little over $36 million in 2017-18 year, but that covered only about 43% of operating costs for the service. The state covered the operating loss of $47.8 million – or about 32 cents per passenger mile on the route.
