Train
travel can be a viable alternative means of transportation for those who can’t just
hop on a plane, find it too expensive to fly or think it's
too tedious to drive.
As a
result, Amtrak is challenging
the record for the number of users set in 2019.
2019
was the last year before the pandemic and a good barometer for travel services
to use to measure themselves against to gauge a comeback.
In
the second half of 2023 and the first couple of months of 2024, ridership on
Amtrak is only off 3 percent from what it was in 2019.
The
question is, can America’s national rail carrier sustain that success?
Some
have even called it the new golden age of train travel, led by President Joe
Biden and his affinity for rail service. When he was a U.S. Senator,
Biden would frequently take the train between his home in Delaware and his
duties in Washington, D.C.
Now,
as president, he’s doing even more for train travel.
Through his infrastructure law of 2021, the Biden
administration has invested $66 billion in passenger rail service. The
improvements will cover new rail trains as well as existing services. But is the
increase in ridership just a bounce back from the pandemic? Or is it
sustainable?
Perhaps
only time will tell.
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