Ridership, Fare and On-Time Performance: A Granger Causality Analysis of Intercity Passenger Train in the Northeast Corridor

Abstract

Many studies have regarded fare and on-time performances as directly factors affecting ridership of Intercity Passenger Train. Yet these relationships may become complicated when considering effect from alternative trains running in the same routes and thus make forecasting result spurious. This paper presents a granger causality analysis on ridership, fare and on-time performance of two types of intercity passenger trains running in the Northeast Corridor (NEC) in the United States – the Acela Express and the Northeast Regional. A monthly time-series data from January 2003 to November 2009 is introduced to the Vector Autoregression model (VAR). After dealing with stationary test, the result shows that (1) the ridership and fare is endogenous in the Acela Express while the ridership and on-time performance is endogenous in the Northeast Regional. (2) The cross-granger causality test shows that both ridership and fare of Acela Express and the Regional Train are highly endogenous. The results can be adopted to improve the accuracy of current forecasting. Hopefully it could bring new perspectives for future high-speed rail ridership forecasting in the United States.

Keywords: Ridership, Fare, On-time Performance, Granger, Northeast Corridor

JEL Classification: L92, R48