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Ridership on Amtrak jumped 10 percent to 2.7 million passengers in April, setting a record for the month and extending the national intercity passenger railroad’s steak to 18 consecutive months of year-over-year ridership growth.

Amtrak officials attributed the gain to several factors, including strong travel trends during the Easter holiday, higher gasoline prices that influenced commuters’ travel mode choices, increased business travel on the high-speed Acela Express after the addition of Wi-Fi service and more effective advertising.

If the trend continues, ridership is on pace to set a new annual record, Amtrak officials said in a prepared statement. Amtrak has set annual ridership records in seven of the past eight fiscal years, including more than 28.7 million riders in FY2010.

For the first seven months of FY2011, national ridership was up 6.5 percent compared with the same period in FY2010. Ridership on all three major business lines registered gains: the Northeast Corridor grew 4.8 percent; state-supported and other short-distance corridors rose 8 percent; and long-distance trains climbed 5.6 percent.

On the Northeast Corridor, April ridership on the Acela rose 2.9 percent in April, while ridership soared 13.3 percent on the Northeast Regional service.

Ridership in the Midwest remained strong, too. In the Chicago area, the Blue Water Chicago-to-Port Huron, Mich., service soared 28.4 percent; the Illini/Saluki Chicago-to-Carbondale, Ill., service grew 21 percent; the Wolverine Chicago-to-Detroit/Pontiac, Mich., service increased 14 percent; and the Hiawatha Chicago-to-Milwaukee service rose 7 percent.

In the West, all three of California’s state-supported routes registered ridership gains: Capitol Corridor was up 10.8 percent, San Joaquin jumped 18.3 percent and Pacific Surfliner rose 8.2 percent. In the Northeast, Amtrak’s Cascade route from Eugene, Ore., to Seattle to Vancouver, B.C., increased 6.9 percent.

Among Amtrak’s 15 overnight long-distance routes, ridership grew 7.7 percent, with the largest percentage gains posted by the Sliver Star New York City-to-Miami service, which rose 16 percent; the Lake Shore Limited New York-to-Chicago service, which increased 15.3 percent; and the Southwest Chief Chicago-to-Los Angeles service, which rose 14.9 percent.