Amtrak - Fifty Years

It was fifty years ago today that President Nixon signed the law nationalizing intercity passenger rail in the United States.  Rather than have a patchwork of private railroad companies - all privately owned, many of them going bankrupt as passenger rail was losing ground to automobiles and airlines - connect us, we would have one, unified system.

And the system contacted almost immediately to a small bunch of routes.

What President Nixon did was more than what he or his eight immediate successors would do for intercity passenger rail in the U.S. going forward.  Republican Presidents ignored Amtrak while Democrats mostly gave lip service to rebuilding and modernizing it.  President Biden is the first President since 1971 to go bold and make a big investment in Amtrak. (Obama, whom Biden served as Vice President, dropped his plans to invest in passenger rail when it became apparent that the lift was going to be heavier than he thought.)  Which makes sense, considering that Biden rode Amtrak back and forth between Washington, D.C. and his home in Delaware as a U.S. Senator.  Folks don't call him Amtrak Joe for nothing, though anti-transit, anti-Amtrak politicians likely call him that as a pejorative.

Despite all that, and despite the fact that Amtrak still has equipment and infrastructure dating back decades before Amtrak's founding, rail travel has been on the rebound in the past fifty years. Ridership has been going up steadily, routes have been improved and expanded, and the higher-speed Acela, pictured above (Spanish for "bullet train lite," but still a pretty sweet ride), was added on the Northeast Corridor in 2000.  But indifference from libertarians who prefer the "personal freedom" of the automobile, budget-conscious members of Congress, U.S. House members whose districts don't have Amtrak service, Americans who are sick and tried of being told to live like the Japanese or the French, and outright pricks like Jim Jordan have held Amtrak back from offering service that gets up to par with Japan's Shinkansen trains and France's TGV fleet.  Many of these same folks want to eliminate Amtrak altogether, and attempts have been made to lessen Amtrak subsidies to the point where it would have to shut down.  

But Amtrak has proven resilient, and for the first time since 1971, we have a big chance to invest the resources it needs to continue for another fifty years.  Even if some priorities, like a high-speed corridor between Chicago and Milwaukee, or increased service in California, have to be set aside for others - like increasing service in Florida or making the Acela a true bullet train - to get increased funding for Amtrak passed, I think it's obvious that Amtrak will stay around, and it will get much better than it is now because President Biden has the fortitude to make it happen even with a sharply divided Congress.  As I said on this blog back in 2003, no one wants Amtrak, except the people.