The Biz Buzz - Amtrak ridership up nationwide and in the Northwest

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Tuesday, October 30th, 2007

Amtrak ridership up nationwide and in the Northwest

Posted by John Gillie @ 03:54:31 pm

Despite equipment problems that sidelined Amtrak's Spanish-designed Talgo trains in the Northwest from August through late October, ridership grew 7.4 percent in the last year, Amtrak reports.

The rail passenger service's Cascades trains, which provides rail service in the corridor from Eugene, Ore., to Vancouver, B.C., grew for the eighth consecutive year.

Cascades trains carried 674,000 passengers in the fiscal year that stretches from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30, the rail passenger service said. Tacoma was the second busiest station for Amtrak in Washington with more than 100,000 passengers. Seattle was first with nearly 600,000.

Nationwide, Amtrak ridership reached 25,847,531, the fifth straight year of increasing traffic.

Amtrak took the Cascades' Talgo equipment out of service in August because an inspection showed small cracks in the trains' suspension system. Those cracks were repaired and all five Talgo trains returned to service last week. In the interim, Amtrak substituted slower, older trains for the Talgo equipment.

Categories: Aerospace, Economic Development, Tourism

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Marce Edwards is the business editor. She has been at The News Tribune for seven years and has written about technology and big businesses in the South Sound including Weyerhaeuser and Russell. Before moving to Tacoma, she worked at The Idaho Statesman in Boise. She is a Northwest native who likes to garden and refuses to use an umbrella. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and two kids.

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John Gillie writes about the aerospace and airline industries, commercial development and consumer issues. During his 30-year-tenure at The News Tribune he has covered issues as diverse as the Native American fishing rights disputes, crime and the courts, the wood products industry and energy. He lived in Tacoma with his family for 25 years, but now lives in Kent because his wife heads a five-state non-profit foundation headquartered in Ballard, and it only seemed a sensible compromise to make considering their workplaces are 40 miles apart.

Kelly Kearsley has been a business reporter at The News Tribune since 2005. She covers the Port of Tacoma and international trade. Being born and raised in Spokane she’s used to living in cities with inferiority complexes and, in fact, prefers it. Prior to working at The News Tribune, she spent three years as a reporter for The Bulletin in Bend, Oregon and another year working stints for The Associated Press and Seattle Times. She graduated from Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Tacoma with her husband and miniature schnauzer.

Devona Wells has been a reporter for 10 years, starting in Silverdale (where she grew up) then east to the Yakima Valley, down to Bakersfield, Calif., and even further south to Riverside. She primarily covers real estate at the TNT, including housing trends, new projects and consumer-related issues. You can check out Open House, her real estate blog, here.