Earlier this week, the Department of Transportation's Federal Railroad Administration released its quarterly report of Amtrak's performance and service quality.
Amtrak is evaluated by analyzing four categories: on-time performance, customer service, financial performance, and public benefits. One way that the report helps improve services is through analyzing on-time performance. Most of Amtrak's routes operate over tracks owned by other companies and if on-time performance falls below healthy thresholds, those companies can be held accordingly accountable. This threshold is 80% of customers arriving on time, which is defined as being no more than 15 minutes later than the scheduled arrival.
“This data provides in-depth, comprehensive information on passenger rail performance that can be used by a wide array of stakeholders, from the individual customer to transportation policymakers,” said FRA Administrator Amit Bose. “As the country returns to travel, customers deserve to have access to high quality, reliable passenger rail service. Amtrak and the host railroads have made remarkable progress in reviewing and, in some cases, updating train schedules, which are critical steps to improving passenger rail service.”
The report includes ridership data, which showed a 48% increase in ridership from the third to the fourth quarter of 2021.
The Federal Railroad Administration was allocated $66 billion from the infrastructure bill, which it will use to complete backlogged projects and modernize the Northeast corridor.
