Building momentum

Meanwhile, Amtrak has its eye on the day when no one will choose to fly from Boston to New York. In a report looking ahead to 2040, when projected 220-mile-per-hour train speeds will cut the 3 1/2-hour trip to 83 minutes, Amtrak officials forecast air travel on the route will fall to zero.

“We’ve designed a product for the business travelers’ needs, and we’re trying to reach them at the most relevant points of their travel experience,’’ said David Lim, Amtrak’s chief marketing officer. “The underlying assumption being the airport experience has not been the best in the last couple of years.’’

Acela was launched in late 2000 with the goal of grabbing a larger share of the lucrative business travel market from short-haul air routes between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. By most measures, it has succeeded.

Amtrak now transports 55 percent of passengers in the Boston-New York air-rail market, up from 16 percent in the mid-1990s, according to the New England Transportation Institute, a nonprofit research organization in Vermont. Acela’s ridership has risen nearly 30 percent, from 2.5 million passengers in its first full year of service to 3.2 million passengers in fiscal 2010, which ended in September. Air travel, on the other hand, has declined.

Last year, nearly 30 percent fewer people flew between Logan and the three New York-area airports than in 1999, the year before Amtrak introduced Acela, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Air passenger numbers decreased 35 percent between Boston and Philadelphia and 8 percent between Boston and Washington in the same period.

Airlines acknowledge that they have fewer passengers on these routes but note that air travel is down in general because of the weak economy, not competition. “It’s no different than what we have seen in the rest of the system,’’ said Gail Grimmett, senior vice president at Delta Air Lines, which operates frequent shuttle flights between Boston, New York, and Washington.