Ridership and revenue forecasting and analytical modeling support for Amtrak

Steer was selected as Amtrak’s ridership and revenue forecasting consultant for a contract period of up to five years to help support a variety of modeling and forecast work for routes across the U.S.

How we helped

This project includes supply of a full range of ridership and revenue forecasting and analytic/modeling support. This includes:

• • Market demand information to guide capital investments.
  • Ridership and ticket revenue budgets by train/route.
  • Ridership and revenue forecasts resulting from service changes to existing levels.
  • Ridership and revenue forecasts for potential new routes, addition of new stop(s) to existing routes or elimination of routes.
  • Ridership and revenue forecasts for the introduction or elimination of connections opportunities between Amtrak routes.
  • Ridership and revenue forecasts for changes in on-board service, such as catering provision or availability of premium Business and/or Sleeper service.
  • Solving technical problems dealing with survey approach, execution and analysis;
  • Studies using sophisticated sampling, analytic/modeling, and multivariate analytical techniques such as conjoint analysis, regression analysis, discriminant analysis, segmentation and cluster analysis.
  • Analyzing Amtrak customer survey data (eCSI).
  • Examining the possibility of refreshing the existing forecasting demand analytics/models, and/or creating a new model for a route subset.

Successes and outcomes

As part of this project, Steer has been providing a full range of ridership and revenue forecasting and analytical modeling support to Amtrak for all of its routes in the U.S.