Originally Posted by
bennos
On a typical weekday, there are about 16 (+/-) Acela Express trains between Washington and New York, each with a capacity of 304 passengers. Not every seat is necessarily sold, obviously, but a seat can also be sold twice (WAS-PHL and then again PHL-NYP). Assuming each seat is sold exactly once, that's just under 5000 passengers each way per day, or about 10000 round trip.
And that's just the Acela. Now let's add in the Regional trains (which can vary in length, so let's just call that another 10000), not to mention SEPTA commuter trains that normally run between Philadelphia and Trenton (another 12000 passengers per day). And the long distance trains (especially from Florida) that use this route to get to NY. So let's call it about 35000 people affected each day that trains aren't running.
In a country of 300M+, I guess that's not that many, but in comparison to the normally scheduled regional jets flying these routes it's several times larger.
To further expand on this... in 2014, there were more than 11 million unique trips on Amtrak (regional and Acela combined) between DC and Boston. That averages to 30,000 passenger/trips per day. Obviously, those trips do not always span the Philly-NYC segment that is currently out of service, but that is one of the busier segments since it's right in the middle of the route.