Amtrak ridership up, but board concerned by chronic delays, unhappy customers

Passenger train ridership in the U.S. is up, but so are delays, according to Amtrak's top brass during a quarterly Zoom board meeting July 31. Customer satisfaction and service delivery rates also are down, the leaders said.

While the presentation focused on nationwide data, the numbers presented ring true for Amtrak's Staples Mill Road Station in Henrico County, too. The one-story building of buff brick and steel construction with two tracks served by one platform is the busiest Amtrak facility in the Southeast, serving the Carolinian, Floridian, Northeast Regional, Palmetto and Silver Meteor routes. The Staples Mill station's annual ticket revenue in 2024 totaled $27.8 million.

The station's 2024 statistics also showed annual station ridership of 464,881 passengers – more than double the number of riders from Richmond's Main Street Station, an increase of more than 40,000 from 2023 and a jump of nearly 140,000 from 2022.

Indeed, the Virginia Passenger Rail Authority announced this week that Amtrak Virginia, the commonwealth’s state-supported passenger rail service, closed the state fiscal year by setting another “ridership record.”

VPRA reported that 1.4 million passengers traveled on Amtrak Virginia during the recently concluded fiscal year – an increase of 4.8% compared to the previous fiscal year and the highest ridership recorded since the state-supported service launched in 2009. 

Increases were seen on all corridors in Virginia, though the Norfolk corridor carried the most passengers, with 542,743 people traveling that route in Fiscal Year 2025.

The bulk of the riders at the Staples Mill station and throughout the state are traveling on regional trains, according to Danny Plaugher, the executive director of Virginians for High Speed Rail and the Virginia Transit Association (a group that wants to improve all the metrics for train travel).

Ridership on all Virginia trains totals 2.5 million trips annually, Plaugher said – about a one-million person increase from the 2019 pre-pandemic numbers.

But despite the increase in ridership, Amtrak officials acknowledged customer satisfaction is down because of delay rates.

Amtrak's latest statistics showed the Palmetto route (between New York City and Savannah, Georgia) had an only 60% on-time customer arrival rate in 2024.

“Amtrak's customer on time performance has decreased by three points year over year and is currently at 2.4 points, with service lines below goal,” said Amtrak Executive Vice President of Service Delivery Gary Williams at the board of directors meeting. “The primary drivers of this performance are extreme weather reliability issues with our aging fleet, and the volume of the major project work being performed.”

Williams also said that delays caused by Norfolk Southern have decreased by 29%. Amtrak is meeting with the freight train company that, along with CSX, owns the tracks that Amtrak uses. The freight companies control the tracks and give their trains priority.

An Amtrak document explaining this arrangement elaborated: “Host railroads often delay Amtrak trains, carrying hundreds of passengers, in favor of their trains carrying coal, garbage, crude oil, empty freight cars, or any other freight that the host chooses to prioritize over Amtrak passengers. Sometimes a host railroad will make Amtrak passengers trail a slower freight train, often for 50 to 100 miles, or wait in a siding while a lengthy freight train gets priority on the rail line. In the past several years, host railroads increasingly operate longer trains that can't fit in sidings, causing service issues along main routes. This means Amtrak trains are often forced to wait in sidings, causing more frequent and longer delays for passengers.”

The track-sharing greatly affects Amtrak trains' on time performance, with company documents online showing the Norfolk corridor was consistently delayed with its on-time performance for May and June of year at only 70% on time arrival rates. The Richmond corridor rated lowest for on time performance in Virginia at 60% for May and June.

Amtrak leaders indicated during Thursday's board of directors meeting that they are working to improve the issues they outlined.

Dina Weinstein is the Citizen’s community vitality reporter and a Report for America corps member, covering housing, health and transportation. Support her work and articles like this one by making a contribution to the Citizen.