Measuring the Benefits of Intercity Passenger Rail: A Study

median number of household vehicles reported as 1.7 and 1.6 in April and July, respectively.
Zero-vehicle households comprised about 4 percent of the respondents in April and 3 percent of
the respondents in July. Median annual household income was $65,900 in April and $57,000 in
July. Low-income travelers (annual household incomes less than $20,000) accounted for about
16 percent of the travelers in each study period.
Mobility Impacts
The primary objective of this study was to identify the mobility impacts of providing
passenger rail service in an intercity corridor, using the Heartland Flyer corridor as a case study.
Examining how passenger rail supports mobility in an intercity corridor can reveal how the
provision of service affects progress toward larger policy goals such as safety, transportation
network efficiency, and asset preservation. The key measure used in this study to identify the
mobility impacts of the rail service was the passengers’ self-reported alternatives for travel if the
Heartland Flyer were discontinued. Approximately 60 percent of passengers reported that they
would use an automobile for their trip, with most of these passengers driving a private vehicle
for the trip. Less frequently cited travel mode alternatives were commercial airline (6 percent)
and intercity bus (3 percent). Notably, nearly 30 percent of Heartland Flyer travelers reported
that they would forgo their trip if the service was discontinued.
Using the total Heartland Flyer ridership for the 12-month period ending September
2009, researchers estimated the number of modal diverted and induced trips on the service.
Researchers estimated that the Heartland Flyer rail service diverted an estimated 39,427 vehicletrips
from parallel roadways in the intercity travel corridor between Oklahoma City and Fort
Worth. A vast majority (95 percent) of these vehicles were personal vehicles, while the balance
was either rental cars or company-owned vehicles. From these estimates of automobile traveler
diversion onto the Heartland Flyer, other sketch-level measures can be computed to gauge how
the passenger rail service supports other transportation policy goals. Assuming that, on average,
each diverted vehicle-trip would have traveled approximately 200 miles, researchers estimate
that the Heartland Flyer rail service removes approximately 7.9 million annual vehicle-miles
traveled (VMT) from parallel roadways. Researchers estimate that almost 4,400 commercial
airline passenger trips and more than 2,200 intercity bus passenger trips were diverted onto the
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