Once again, Thanksgiving travelers helped to set a Capitol Corridor holiday ridership record. From Monday, November 21 through Sunday, November 27, 2011, 33,515 passengers avoided the holiday highway gridlock in favor of riding the train. This is a ten percent increase over the 2010 Thanksgiving holiday period and the highest Thanksgiving ridership in the history of the service.
“Not only did our Thanksgiving customers break the holiday record, Capitol Corridor passengers set an all-time one-day ridership record when 7,798 travelers chose our trains over driving on Wednesday, November 23,” Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA) Board Chair Bob Franklin said. “We were prepared by putting all available rail cars into service during this week to meet the projected demand. In addition, Caltrain came through for us again and provided a spare trainset so we could maximize available seating on Wednesday. We assigned Amtrak station employees and volunteer CCJPA team members to unstaffed stations to help out passengers so they could get their tickets and board their trains quickly.”
The icing on Capitol Corridor’s holiday cake was its on-time performance (OTP). It achieved a highly reliable 98% OTP for the week, with a perfect day (100% OTP) on Wednesday, November 23—the busiest day of the period. “Our host rail partner Union Pacific did an excellent job dispatching trains and Amtrak/CCJPA mechanical teams made sure the trains were clean and functioning safely and properly,” CCJPA Managing Director David Kutrosky said. “We were able to catch our breath briefly, but not before our roll-out of free Wi-Fi internet access on Capitol Corridor trains on Cyber Monday, November 28!”
