Page 5

Suggested Citation: "1 Introduction and Scope." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. The Future of Commuter Rail in North America. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29128.

CHAPTER 1 Introduction and Scope

It is hard to overstate the dramatic turn of fortunes for commuter rail systems in North America. “US Commuter Rail Renaissance: A 30-Year Progress Report,” published by TRB in 2019, reviewed the “remarkable success story” of commuter rail, showing that the number of systems operating had more than doubled since 1990, and the legacy systems had “enjoyed a 50 percent growth in ridership” during that same period (Nelson and O’Neil 2019). Commuter railroad operators covered a high proportion of their costs with fare revenues, largely from monthly passes purchased by downtown office workers, covering on average more than half of their systems’ operating expenses.¹ And cities around the United States planned to expand commuter rail systems or create new ones to address their regional goals of congestion mitigation, roadway construction avoidance, and greenhouse gas reduction.²

Then in 2020, commuter rail ridership and revenues plummeted with the COVID-19 pandemic and the massive shift toward work-from-home among office workers. Ridership on systems overall has been slow to return to pre-pandemic levels. As of October 2024, the average commuter railroad is carrying only 70 percent of the riders for the same month in 2019.³ The proportion of workers regularly commuting into downtown offices served by commuter rail has seemingly plateaued around 62 percent of what it was in 2019.⁴ A series of COVID-19 relief laws passed by the U.S. Congress provided billions of dollars to transit providers to temporarily support revenues, and now agencies are struggling to find ways to support long-term operations.⁵ The Canadian Parliament also passed a law providing funding to transit agencies across the country.⁶ Teleworking and hybrid work schedules for North American downtown office workers have become entrenched, and a return to pre-2020 commuting patterns does not appear likely.⁷

To provide valuable transportation services in the modern travel market and remain financially sustainable, commuter rail providers must reconsider the future of commuter rail. This report explores definitions, common challenges, goals, and alternative approaches that can assist in employing the infrastructure, rolling stock, and talent assembled by commuter railroad providers to advance their support of broad regional mobility goals.

While there is international evidence that a broad regional rail operating pattern should be more effective in capturing broader travel markets than narrower, commuter-focused ones, it is not necessarily easy, nor is it entirely clear how it could work in a North American context. Significant questions remain on how such a model interfaces with existing land use, what changes would need to be made in terms of infrastructure and governance, how it would complement or compete with existing bus and urban rail networks, and which travel markets might use the service. Large variances in network structures, institutions, and operating patterns prohibit a one-size-fits-all approach. In addition, many commuter rail lines in North America operate on railroads owned and controlled by other entities, such as freight railways or Amtrak. In these circumstances, there are important questions as to whether commuter rail providers can muster

Page 6

the physical and financial capacity to change the operating model. Assessing the potential of commuter rail in fulfilling regional mobility, environmental, and economic goals within these constraints has never been more important.

An industry-wide report for commuter rail practitioners based on careful research is both timely and necessary. Attracting more passengers will require commuter rail providers to determine market needs, trends, and opportunities; explore potential changes in service levels and configurations; introduce new fare strategies; and refine marketing and messaging. Finding opportunities to improve efficiency (i.e., reduce costs per passenger served and per vehicle mile) and secure new and larger funding sources is more important than ever. Commuter rail providers in North America will need to demonstrate that they remain important to the future vitality of urban centers and their surrounding communities.

This report examines the history of commuter rail in North America, evaluates current trends, presents constraints, reviews case studies, and develops strategies to implement new goals at the agency, regional, and national levels in the United States and Canada. Predicting if and how commuters return to the office is beyond the scope of this inquiry, but understanding how a regional rail network can better serve existing transportation demand is not. The report concludes with implementation strategies that commuter rail agencies might employ to effectively serve their existing and future markets.

1.1 Defining Commuter Rail

When considering the future of commuter rail in North America, it is helpful to first define what commuter rail is. According to the FTA, commuter rail is

An electric or diesel-propelled railway for urban passenger train service consisting of local travel which operates between a central city and outlying areas. Service must be operated on a regular basis by or under contract with a transit operator for the purpose of transporting passengers within urbanized areas, or between urbanized areas and outlying areas. Commuter rail is generally characterized by multi-trip tickets, specific station-to-station fares, railroad employment practices, relatively long distance between stops, and only 1–2 stations in the central business district.⁸

The scope of this research follows this general definition and uses the 25 systems that the FTA classifies as commuter rail in the National Transit Database.⁹ In addition, because this report covers U.S. and Canadian systems, the networks in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver have also been included in the scope. These systems, their official names, their operating names, and largest city served are as follows:

Altamont Corridor Express, San Jose, California
Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority (Sound Transit) Sounder Commuter Rail, Seattle, Washington
Connecticut Department of Transportation (CTDOT) Shore Line East, New Haven, Connecticut
Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Trinity Railway Express, A-Train, Dallas, Texas
Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) Commuter Rail, Denver, Colorado
Maryland Transit Authority (MTA) Maryland Area Rail Commuter (MARC), Washington, DC
Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Commuter Rail, Boston, Massachusetts
Metra Commuter Rail, Chicago, Illinois
Metro Transit Northstar Line, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Metrolink, Los Angeles, California
Metrolinx GO Transit Commuter Rail, Toronto, Ontario
New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Long Island Rail Road, New York City
New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority Metro-North Railroad, New York City

Page 7

New Jersey Transit (NJT) Rail, Newark, New Jersey
North County Transit District Coaster, San Diego, California
Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) South Short Line, Chicago, Illinois
Peninsula Corridor Joint Powers Board Caltrain, San Francisco, California
Réseau de Transport Métropolitain Exo Commuter Rail, Montreal, Quebec
Rio Metro Regional Transit District Rail Runner Express, Albuquerque, New Mexico
Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART), Marin County, California
South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, Tri-Rail, South Florida (Miami)
Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) Regional Rail, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
SunRail, Central Florida (Orlando)
TransLink West Coast Express, Vancouver, British Columbia
Trinity Metro TEXRail, Tarrant County, Texas (Fort Worth)
Utah Transit Authority (UTA) FrontRunner, Salt Lake City, Utah
Virginia Railway Express (VRE), Washington, DC
WeGo Public Transit Star, Nashville, Tennessee

In total, these 28 systems are the focus of this work.

1.2 Commuter Rail versus Regional Rail

The definition of commuter rail and what it might become deserves more attention.¹⁰ The scope definition describes some of the infrastructure and operational attributes, such as one or two stops in the central city, long stop spacing (typically 2–3 miles), railroad employment practices, and zone-based fares. However, these attributes do not define the core product of commuter rail services. Ultimately, the product consumed by riders is the timetable: the actual service that gets people from one place to another. The term commuter rail is limiting in this nature. The prototypical commuter railroad is narrowly focused on attracting and serving suburban commuters destined for downtown offices. Expanding the temporal coverage of the service design should expand the range of passenger trips that can be attracted to the railway.

While many commuter rail service providers offer some off-peak and reverse commute services, historically, the principal objective of commuter rail services has been to bring suburban commuters to downtown offices. With this limited objective, some view commuter rail differently than any other type of transit: In 2016, the general manager of the MBTA said, “Commuter rail is commuter rail. It’s not transit. It’s designed to bring people into the city in the morning and take them home at night.”¹¹ While this was traditionally a strong market, it is also a limited one. In fact, commuting accounted for only 19 percent of all trips taken on weekdays in 2022, and the commuter-focused timetable limits the ability to serve other trip purposes.¹²

Considering the limiting nature of the term commuter rail, planners and officials are coalescing around another term: regional rail.¹³ The articles and reports discussing regional rail do not suggest changing the fundamental infrastructure and operational practices the FTA uses to define commuter rail. Rather, they focus on using the existing vehicles and infrastructure to expand the service model to economically provide broader rail service availability, serving a wider array of travel markets.

It is beyond the scope of this report to determine whether a new official term is warranted for the industry, let alone to discuss the merits and trade-offs of different terminology options. Therefore, this section is less about what branding U.S. and Canadian commuter rail providers should choose for their systems and more about defining terms for specific operational practices.

Page 8

Regional Rail Nomenclature Around the World

In French-speaking regions, the Reseau Express Regional (Paris) and Reseau Express Metropolitan (Montreal) mean Express Regional/Metropolitan Network.

German-speaking regions use the term S-Bahn, which stands for Schnellbahn (fast train) or Stadtschnellbahn (fast city train) for local services and Regionalbahn for longer-distance and express trains within regions.

China does not have typical commuter rail but has fast local services that connect nearby cities within megaregions on mainline railroads, with many city pairs well under 100 km (60 mi) distant from each other. Int Beijing and Shanghai, these are called Suburban Railways, but there are also systems branded as intercity, including those in Zhengzhou, Wuhan, Changsha, and the Pearl River Delta. Seoul is building a higher-speed subway called the GTX (Great Train eXpress) through the city center and out to the suburbs. Delhi has a similar project under construction called the Regional Rapid Transit System.

In conclusion, the names of the services have little bearing on what service is offered, but country by country, there is consistent branding about what regional rail services are for travelers.

In this report, the term commuter rail will be used to describe the current paradigm of commuter-oriented high peak service in the United States and Canada, with sparse off-peak, reverse-peak, and weekend service.

In addition, the term regional rail will serve as a catch-all for a toolbox of specific operating practices that can be implemented when relevant. From an operating standpoint, regional rail refers to a business model with three main characteristics:

All-day service availability;
Simplified, standardized service patterns with repeating schedules; and
Integration of the timetable and fare structure with connecting public transportation services.