Amtrak

Identification Quasi-public corporation created by the federal government to operate passenger train service in the United States

Date Began operations on May 1, 1971

The federal government’s creation of Amtrak allowed private railroad companies to abandon their passenger services, which had become highly unprofitable. Amtrak and the sizable federal subsidies supporting it make it possible to maintain a national rail passenger service that would otherwise be financially unsustainable.

After World War II ended in 1945, the automobile and airline industries began to make major inroads into the customer base of commercial passenger trains, threatening the major US railroad companies. By the late 1960s, passenger rail service faced a serious crisis. Many railroads wanted to end passenger service, but government regulations made it difficult to suspend unprofitable trains. In 1970, Congress passed the Rail Passenger Service Act, which President Richard Nixon signed into law on October 30 of that year. The law created Amtrak (National Railroad Passenger Corporation) to maintain railroad passenger service while allowing the private railroads to stop carrying passengers.

Advocates of the Amtrak system believed that with improvements in service and the rationalization of routes, passenger trains could operate profitably, so the legislation creating Amtrak mandated that it should make a profit. Amtrak was free from Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) regulations that had often kept the private railroads from cutting money-losing trains. However, Amtrak did not prove to be free from the political pressures that might be brought to keep operating underutilized lines.

Relatively modest federal subsidies in Amtrak’s early years proved to be wholly inadequate. For several years, annual subsidies of more than $1 billion were required. Later, deficits were decreased, and subsidies were cut to between $600 million and $700 million per year. Significant gains in performance were achieved by the mid-1980s, and by the 1990s, Amtrak had largely replaced the outdated equipment it inherited from the private railroads. The system remained unable to realize a profit, however.

The Northeast Corridor, from Washington, DC, to Boston, Massachusetts, is the most heavily used part of the system. Amtrak owns the track in the Northeast Corridor. In other parts of the country, Amtrak pays fees to use the tracks owned by the freight railroads. In the Northeast Corridor, many trains operate on frequent service schedules. In the rest of the country, long-distance trains operate much less frequently (often one train runs per day in each direction). In parts of the Midwest and along the West Coast, there are regional corridors that provide more frequent service.

In addition to its own intercity trains, Amtrak operates commuter trains on a contract basis in several large metropolitan areas. Amtrak operates twenty-one thousand miles of routes, serving over five hundred communities, and employs about nineteen thousand people. In fiscal year 2014, Amtrak carried nearly forty million passengers, a record high and part of a general upward trend over the preceding ten years (prior to which ridership had steadily been around twenty million per year since 1979). Several service lines, including the Northeast Corridor, continued to see new record ridership in subsequent years, with an estimated 31.3 million riders in fiscal year 2016.

Revenue from these passengers has accounted for about 80 percent of Amtrak's operating costs in the 2010s, but the company still requires federal subsidies of more than $1 billion per year in order to operate. Even this has not been sufficient to allow Amtrak to keep the sections of track it owns in a state of good repair—in 2010, Amtrak stated that the total cost of needed repairs to bridges, tunnels, and obsolete track switches would be $5.2 billion. Meanwhile, some object to Amtrak's receiving government subsidies at all, arguing that intercity rail service should be privatized. Though Amtrak receives less money overall than the Interstate Highway System or the Federal Aviation Administration, the cost per passenger-mile is higher, as many fewer people use trains than cars or airplanes for long-distance transport.

In 2015 a train on the Northeast Corridor route derailed in Philadelphia, killing eight people and injuring over two hundred. The action prompted over a dozen lawsuits against Amtrak, as the train had been going over 100 miles per hour on a curved section of track where the speed limit was 50 mph. Amtrak had recently begun installing positive train control, a system which could automatically stop or slow a train in certain areas of track, but it was not yet operational due to Amtrak's budget issues, among other factors. The accident added fuel to the ongoing budget controversy. When, shortly afterward, the US House Appropriations Committee passed a measure to cut Amtrak's budget for the following year, some Democrats argued that such cuts could exacerbate safety issues and lead to further accidents, while some Republicans objected to this use of a recent tragedy for political ends and argued that the accident was not directly budget-related.

In 2016, Amtrak partnered with the states of New York and New Jersey to form the Gateway Program Development Corporation, which was tasked with overseeing rail infrastructure improvements. By 2018, Amtrak served nearly 87,000 passengers on more than 300 trains a day. The same fiscal year, Amtrak served 31.7 million passengers total.

In 2020, Amtrak revenue dropped severely due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. By May of that year, the company announced estimated projections that ridership and ticket revenue in 2021 would be half of 2019's revenue; it also announced plans to lay off nearly 20 percent of its workforce.

Bibliography

Edmondson, Harold A., ed. Journey to Amtrak: The Year History Rode the Passenger Train. Milwaukee: Kalmbach, 1972.

Fostik, John A. Amtrak Across America: An Illustrated History. Hudson: Enthusiast, 2012. Print.

Garrett, Mark, ed. Encyclopedia of Transportation: Social Science and Policy. Los Angeles: Sage, 2014. Print.

Martin, Albro. Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Merrill, Jeremy B. "The Northeast Corridor's Curviest Stretches, and Amtrak's Plans for Safety and Speed." New York Times. New York Times, 23 June 2015. Web. 8 July 2015.

Solomon, Brian. Amtrak. St. Paul, Minn.: MBI, 2002.

Tate, Curtis. "What Amtrak Passengers Need to Know as Train Service Comes Back from Coronavirus Pandemic." USA Today, 18 May 2020, www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2020/05/28/amtrak-train-service-safety-changes-layoffs-coming-amid-coronavirus/5275213002. Accessed 8 June 2020.