While I know this is unlikely to happen as long as Donald Trump is in office, here are some fairly obvious AMTRAK expansions which should happen based solely off airport traffic data.
I might do a more thorough analysis later, but just pulling data off of Wikipedia which is from the FAA (because I’m lazy) here are obvious routes for AMTRAK to improve service.
In order to be on this list the two cities need to be closer than 1000 km and be in the top ten destinations from one of the two cities in the pair.
Vancouver – Seattle, WA. With over 600,000 passengers flying between Vancouver and Seattle with only two roundtrip trains per day, this route should really have hourly service on AMTRAK Cascades. But really we should have hourly service between Ashland, Oregon and Vancouver, British Columbia on Cascades someday. It’s not a crazy idea.
Los Angeles – Las Vegas, with over a million passengers last year. Brightline will someday serve this route. It is the top destination for Burbank and Long Beach, the third highest for LAX, the third highest for Ontario, and the fourth highest from John Wayne.
Los Angeles – San Francisco has over a million passengers. Only one train per day and it takes almost 10 hours compared to 5 hours driving. This is ridiculous. This is why California HSR needs to exist, and I should write another post clearly outlining why building HSR in the United States is impossible. This is the 2nd most traveled destination for LAX, the 2nd, 6th, and 7th highest destination for Burbank, the 3rd and 7th most traveled destination from Long Beach, the 8th and 9th highest destination from Ontario, the 6th, 8th, and 9th busiest destination from John Wayne.
Los Angeles – Phoenix is the third highest destination for Burbank, the 4th most popular destination from Long Beach, the 3rd most popular destination from Ontario, and the busiest route from John Wayne.
Los Angeles – Sacramento is the 4th busiest destination for Burbank, the 2nd busiest from Long Beach, and the 10th busiest destination from John Wayne.
| Oakland | SFO | San Jose | Las Vegas | Sacramento | Phoenix | |
| Burbank | 317000 | 226000 | 214000 | 459000 | 254000 | 303000 |
| LAX | 1363000 | 1336000 | ||||
| Long Beach | 173000 | 124000 | 250000 | 190000 | 146000 | |
| John Wayne | 254000 | 334000 | 259000 | 423000 | 231000 | 512000 |
Over 7 million passengers flew from Los Angeles to these 5 airports in 2024. For comparison, Portland, Oregon served 8 million passengers in 2023. Moving these passengers from LA over to rail would have an equivalent carbon footprint to shutting down Portland International Airport. This is why building rail in California is so important for the climate.
Atlanta – Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, and Miami would cut out 4.6 million passengers.
Denver – Phoenix has over a million passengers.
Denver – Las Vegas has over a million passengers.
Denver – Salt Lake City has over 900,000 passengers.
Denver – Dallas has around 900,000 passengers.
Chicago O’Hare – Toronto has over 700,000 passengers.
Las Vegas – Phoenix serves over 800,000 passengers.
Las Vegas – San Francisco serves around 800,000 passengers.
Las Vegas – San Diego has over 700,000 passengers.
Las Vegas – Sacramento has over 600,000 passengers.
Charlotte – Orlando, Miami, Tampa, and Fort Lauderdale has millions of passengers.
Charlotte – New York has over 600,000 passengers.
Charlotte – Raleigh has over 500,000 passengers. Driving is faster than taking the train, and this is unacceptable. With only 5 trains per day, this service clearly needs hourly service and to increase until the time taken is under 2 hours.Then passengers will move from flying to taking the train.
New York – Toronto serves over 800,000 passengers a year. We need more frequent and faster service to Toronto.
Phoenix – Salt Lake City serves over 700,000 passengers per year.
Phoenix – San Diego serves over 600,000 passengers per year.
Houston – Dallas serves over 600,000 passengers per year.
Houston – Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico serves over 400,000 passengers per year. We finally have our first Mexican city on this list.
Boston – Toronto serves over 200,000 passengers per year.
Minneapolis – Chicago serves over 600,000 passengers per year. AMTRAK just beefed up service on this route a few years ago and it was an instant success. This shows how expanding AMTRAK service where we have high air traffic between two cities which are not too far apart is a good strategy for establishing more routes. Now we just need to increase frequency on the route.
These 25 routes are from my brief overview of readily available statistics the best routes for expanding AMTRAK service by improving rail lines up to high speed standards across the country while increasing frequency.
We have already seen recognition of this, from California HSR, Brightline West and Brightline East, and the creation of a new AMTRAK route between Chicago and Minneapolis. It is clear that using existing market data to plan new train service is a good strategy which works.
This is what the map looks like in practice. The Southwest and improving the East Coast corridor south of DC are the obvious places to increase AMTRAK services, including improving connectivity to Toronto, while beefing up AMTRAK Cascades.
This is an easy way to reduce emissions while making our airports less congested.
There is no downside. Let’s do it.