Amtrak—National Disgrace and Quiet Success

It was a momentous occasion in the history of passenger rail in the United States. On August 28th, Amtrak’s next-generation Acela departed from Washington D.C.’s Union Station on its first commercial trip to Boston’s South Station. As the only high-speed rail service currently in operation in the Americas, the new Acelas can run up to 160 miles per hour (mph), a 10 mph increase from their predecessors. Its state-of-the-art tilting technology facilitates turns at higher speeds, allowing for increased passenger comfort along the Northeast Corridor.

But as any regular passenger of the Acela—or any other Amtrak service for that matter—can tell you, the technical specs of a given train are much less than they’re chalked up to be. By the time the train arrived in Boston around seven hours later, it was almost an hour behind schedule. In practice, the new Acelas are no faster than their predecessors. Indeed, of the 457 miles that run the length of the Northeast Corridor, the Acela can run at top speed for less than 10 percent of the route, or 35 miles.

Why then is public passenger rail in the richest and most powerful country in history so inadequate?

It’s worth noting the broader history of rail in the United States and its role in the creation of Amtrak. In the latter half of the 19th century, the U.S. was the world’s premier sponsor of passenger travel, commerce, and territorial expansion by train. After World War I, the railroads were increasingly torn between the divergent interests of a shrinking share of passengers and commercial freight, particularly following the mass popularization of the automobile.

For its part, freight faced its first outside competition after World War II from trucking companies that benefited from the construction of interstate highways. Trucks began moving myriad goods from scattered, exurban factories to cities and ever-expanding suburbs, with freight struggling to match the flexibility of their automotive peers. Rail, however, continued to dominate heavy freight as passenger service increasingly succumbed to the almighty car.

Prior to the creation of Amtrak, iconic lines such as the Empire Builder—which remains a scarce source of transportation for a handful of towns in Montana and North Dakota—remained in operation via mandate from the Interstate Commerce Commission despite costs far outpacing revenues. During the Progressive Era, the ICC finally reined in abuse by rail companies by preventing them from abandoning unprofitable routes that remained vital to the public interest, particularly in rural communities.

While necessary, by the middle of the 20th century, this mandate saw the industry on the verge of bankruptcy. Outdated regulations stipulating, for instance, excessively large crew sizes for mostly riderless routes only compounded passenger rail’s decline. The Department of Transportation came to the logical conclusion that a public corporation would service passenger rail while rail companies would retain control over their more profitable freight operations. Thus, Amtrak was born in 1970 following the passage of the Rail Passenger Service Act. Initially conceived as a for-profit public enterprise, the logic from policymakers saw potential in profitable routes such as the Northeast Corridor and conceived that immediate investment would lead to the service breaking even in the short term.

Rail companies subsequently ditched unprofitable lines and underwent a process of consolidation enabled by weakened antitrust enforcement, leading to an oligopoly dominated by Norfolk Southern, BNSF Railway, CSX Transportation, and Union Pacific. Amtrak, on the other hand, failed to turn a profit and was plagued by abysmally slow service and chronic delays. Yet despite how maligned Amtrak has been in its more than half-a-century existence, the heart of its woes largely boils down to its not-so-symbiotic relationship with private-sector freight.

Just three years after Amtrak’s creation, the service and freight companies were locked in an intractable dispute over who held priority to existing tracks, leading Congress to pass the Amtrak Improvement Act of 1973. The law itself is clear, with the pursuant section stating:

(e) (1) Except in an emergency, intercity passenger trains operated by or on behalf of the [Amtrak] Corporation shall be accorded preference over freight trains in the use of any given line of track, junction, or crossing, unless the Secretary has issued an order to the contrary in accordance with paragraph (2) of this subsection.

(2) Any railroad whose rights with regard to freight train operation are affected by paragraph (1) of this subsection may file an application with the Secretary requesting appropriate relief. If, after hearing under section 553 of title 5 of the United States Code, the Secretary finds that adherence to such paragraph (1) will materially lessen the quality of freight service provided to shippers, the Secretary shall issue an order fixing rights of trains, on such terms and conditions as are just and reasonable.

Naturally, freight companies have spent billions lobbying Congress and the Department of Transportation under the subsection’s second paragraph to ensure that freight virtually always receives preference over warm-blooded passengers. Amtrak, in turn, has spent the past five decades protesting authorities’ blatant disregard for the law. Between 1979 and 2024, the Department of Justice lodged only a single lawsuit against freight companies over track preference. On its official website, Amtrak provides a .pdf noting the number of hours passengers are delayed each year as a result of authorities’ deference to freight.

Indeed, deregulation in freight rail has itself worsened Amtrak’s condition over time. Freight companies became obsessed with misguided metrics that have compounded delays and consequently travel times for both parties. Gross tonnage per train, for example, presumes that adding more cars reduces per-unit operating costs, leading companies to build increasingly lengthy trains over time. The problem, however, is that while each individual train is superficially more profitable, the totality of existing rail infrastructure is rendered increasingly dysfunctional.

In order to load such serpentine trains, rail firms focus on transporting bulk commodities and consolidating operations, leading to fewer routes. The historic scam of so-called “clean coal” and outsourcing in manufacturing offer illustrative case studies. As concerns over pollution shifted demand from Appalachian mines to “cleaner” western sources, rail became the most viable method for transporting western coal to eastern power plants.

Similarly, as manufacturing migrated overseas, consumer goods arrived from Asia via shipping containers from western ports. The node-to-node model between exurban manufacturing communities vanished in favor of a hub-to-node model from major ports. This concentration of high-volume traffic created a nightmare for rail infrastructure writ large. Interminable, slow-moving trains are now so long, they’ve rendered most rail sidings—meaning the shorter tracks used to allow faster trains to pass slower ones—defunct.

The irony is that deregulation has produced comparable dysfunction to the outdated regulations that produced the current system in the first place. To give an idea, an analysis from Open Secrets found that freight companies spent $654 million dollars over the past 20 years lobbying Congress against safety regulations, antitrust, and track preference enforcement. Indeed, deregulation has contributed to faulty safety standards and understaffed freight trains of the kind that have led to hundreds of freight derailments, including in East Palestine in 2023, which spilled toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride.

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For all its limitations and sabotage endured by freight companies, regulators, and capricious legislators, Amtrak has defied each of these challenges and delivered quantifiable, incremental results. Lackluster as the launch of the next-gen Acela may have been, the company’s preceding 2024 report found something remarkable: annual ridership hit record levels at almost 33 million riders with a projected 35 million riders in 2025. Further, after nearly breaking even in 2019, Amtrak is once again nearing profitability for the first time in history with a $700 million net loss in 2024; for perspective, Florida’s private and single-route Brightline saw a comparable loss of $550 million last year.

Unsurprisingly, of the service’s three route categories, the Northeast Corridor and state-supported routes comprised virtually all growth, while long-distance routes remained mostly stagnant. Indeed, state-supported regional routes now represent around 40 percent of ridership thanks to strategic, long-term investments. These are routes that are operated by Amtrak but proposed by individual states, leading to increasingly creative partnerships in recent years, mainly by expanding service on existing routes.

Virginia has relied on Amtrak for passenger operations since 2009, beginning with a Washington-Lynchburg extension, followed by D.C.-Richmond service in 2010. When ridership immediately exceeded expectations, the state doubled down. In 2012, Virginia extended Richmond service to Norfolk. A year later, plans emerged to extend the Lynchburg line to Roanoke. Then Virginia committed to constructing a Potomac bridge that broke ground in 2025—a project that may eventually double total passengers.

In the Midwest, Amtrak launched the Borealis line in 2024 in collaboration with the states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Connecting Chicago to St. Paul via Milwaukee, the service averages barely 55 mph over its slow, seven-and-a-half-hour journey. Yet ridership nearly doubled projections, with passenger counts remaining steady on the long-distance Empire Builder that shares the route. To many’s surprise, the mere act of adding new lines to existing routes has boosted ridership.

Naturally, Amtrak has limited control over state-led expansions given that it can only operate and support such routes. Another story is the uniquely profitable Northeast Corridor, where Congress has granted the corporation considerable leeway. Yet here too, Amtrak’s strategic tinkering has stimulated growth. In 2024, the service added a million seats to the Northeast Regional and also added four weekday services between New York and D.C., a morning Philadelphia-New York run, and a weekend Philadelphia-Boston trip. And while delays are still rampant, the increased capacity once again boosted ridership to a record 14 million.

Amid the sudden collapse of passenger travel during the pandemic, in 2021, Amtrak conjured a five-year plan worthy of a CCP congress. The corporation committed to detailed investments in new rolling stock, network expansion, and updating aging infrastructure—all of which benefitted from the fortuitous passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Not five years later, America’s national disgrace has fulfilled each of the goals set out within its own plan.

The new Acelas, while severely limited by existing infrastructure, are nonetheless a technical marvel. In 2022, routes like the Empire Builder were upgraded with the faster and cleaner ALC-42 locomotives, while Virginia’s aforementioned Potomac Long Bridge is already under construction. Most significantly, however, the long-planned Frederick Douglass Tunnel began construction, providing a much-needed alternative to the B&P Tunnel connecting Baltimore Penn Station and BWI, a major bottleneck on the route.

Shockingly, each of these projects has thus far been (mostly) uninterrupted during Trump’s second term; in April, the White House terminated a grant for a high-speed rail line between Houston and Dallas. Indeed, the administration has shamelessly taken credit for projects it played little to no role in—such as the next-gen Acelas—under the slogan “Make America Build Again.” Still, the fact that the administration has, for the moment, chosen not to gut crucial investments such as the Frederick Douglass tunnel is a welcome sign of partisan neutrality towards Amtrak.

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Amtrak’s simultaneously chronic failings and quiet successes offer stark lessons for the past and future of passenger rail in America. Regulation, for instance, is both necessary to the public interest and can also unduly crater specific industries, particularly when existing safeguards are no longer apt for the time. In the same way that outdated regulations contributed to rail companies’ near collapse in the 1960s, so too has subsequent deregulation contributed to freight companies’ degradation of existing rail infrastructure, Amtrak’s delays, and abuse towards freight workers.

To that end, the latter items have finally garnered relative action in recent years. In 2024, the Biden administration sued Norfolk Southern over undue track preference, noting that just 24 percent of passenger trains along the Norfolk-owned Crescent Route between New Orleans and New York City arrived on time. A year later, Norfolk agreed to give Amtrak the “highest priority” over freight in a settlement with the Justice Department. In the wake of the East Palestine derailment, former Ohio senators Sherrod Brown and JD Vance introduced the Bipartisan Railway Safety Act, strengthening regulations over the transport of toxic chemicals and mandating two-person crews. Sadly, the legislation has yet to pass; the Biden administration also crushed striking rail workers in 2022.

Anti-trust efforts from both the Biden and Trump administrations have seemingly also floundered against freight companies. While it’s certainly true that antitrust can be counterproductive in industries reliant on economies of scale, such as semiconductor manufacturing, the same is not true of business models reliant on the use of existing infrastructure, whether real-world or digital, such as freight transport or online ticket sales. Subjecting freight companies to competition would help dynamize the sector by deprioritizing counterproductive metrics such as gross tonnage per train.

Of course, the most logical recourse, simply improving Amtrak, would entail the construction of nationwide dedicated tracks such that passenger trains no longer share lines with freight. Naturally, this has been the approach of rare but successful state lines such as Maryland’s MARC trains between Washington, D.C., and Baltimore. A fleet of Acelas could easily glide between Boston and Washington, D.C., in under three hours, while slower trains would make the journey in five. Such a move, however, would entail an unspeakable crime in American politics: spending hundreds of billions on passenger rail run by Amtrak.

Time and again, the unwavering constant of passenger rail in America is policymakers’ aversion towards appropriating taxpayer dollars. To give an idea, former Amtrak board member John Robert Smith has noted that in some years, the federal government has spent more money collecting roadkill than funding its own public rail service. The sad and only reason why private ventures in passenger rail such as the Brightline exist is on account of the bold-faced lie that their construction and operation will come at no risk to taxpayers. Considering that the 230-mile Brightline is currently as unprofitable as its nationwide and public counterpart, Amtrak stands as a herculean testament to the grit and strategic thinking of its long-term management.

Until such time as policymakers muster the will to spend a fraction of the taxpayer dollars on passenger rail as on dropping bombs in mindless foreign conflicts, Amtrak will remain both a national disgrace and a quiet success amid half a century of sabotage.

Juan David Rojas is South Florida-based writer specializing in U.S. and Latin American politics. He is a frequent contributor to Compact, UnHerd, and American Affairs.