"Acela Express has continued to perform consistently in ridership, ticket revenue and on-time performance," said Stan Bagley, Amtrak's Northeast Corridor President. "We are confident that as we continue to add more service throughout the year, even more people will choose our convenient, comfortable, world-class service here in the Northeast Corridor."

Amtrak celebrates the milestone today, providing free sodas and coffee to all guests on-board each of the four Acela Express round-trips it currently offers. Amtrak will also raffle off a pair of round-trip tickets on Acela Express.

Amtrak launched Acela Express service December 11 with one round-trip traveling from Washington to New York and Boston, and has continued to expand service, now at four round-trips weekdays and two-and-a-half round-trips weekends.

Additional round-trips will be added throughout the summer and fall, bringing the total to ten round-trips between New York and Boston and 19 round-trips between New York and Washington later this year.

During the first five months of service, December 11-May 11, Acela Express exceeded more than 100,000 riders and earned more than $11.9 million in ticket sales, beating projections by three percent. The service ran on time or early 341 of 370 trips. Also, 109 (nearly 30 percent) of those trains arrived at least 10 minutes early.

Based on the 15-minute tolerance utilized by the airline industry, Acela Express averaged overall on-time performance of nearly 93 percent (92.7%) throughout the Corridor.

According to the most recent statistics kept by the U.S. Department of Transportation, for the month of March 2001, nearly 20-percent of the flights from Boston's Logan Airport to New York's LaGuardia Airport arrived more than 23 minutes late.