From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see
Amtrak (disambiguation).
The
National Railroad Passenger Corporation,
doing business as Amtrak (
reporting mark AMTK), is a
government-owned corporation[1] that was organized on May 1, 1971, to provide
intercity passenger train service in the United States. "Amtrak" is a
portmanteau of the words "America" and "track".
[2] It is headquartered at
Union Station in Washington, D.C.
[3]
All of Amtrak's
preferred stock is owned by the U.S. federal government. The members of its board of directors are appointed by the President of the United States and are subject to confirmation by the
United States Senate.
Common stock was issued in 1971 to railroads that contributed capital and equipment; these shares convey almost no benefits
[4] but their current holders
[5] declined a 2002 buy-out offer by Amtrak.
[6]
Amtrak employs nearly 19,000 people. It operates passenger service on 21,000 miles (34,000 km) of track primarily owned by freight railroads connecting 500 destinations in 46 states
[7] and three
Canadian provinces. In
fiscal year 2008, Amtrak served 28.7 million passengers, representing six straight years of record
ridership.
[7][8] Despite this recent growth, the United States still has one of the
lowest inter-city rail usages in the developed world.
Amtrak's origins are traceable to the sustained decline of private passenger rail services in the United States from about 1920 to 1970. In 1971, in response to the decline,
Congress and President
Richard Nixon created Amtrak. The Nixon administration secretly agreed with some railroads that Amtrak would be shut down after two years. After
Fortune magazine exposed the manufactured mismanagement in 1974, Louis W. Menk, chairman of the Burlington Northern Railroad remarked that the story was undermining the scheme to dismantle Amtrak.
[9] Though for its entire existence the company has been subjected to political cross-winds and insufficient capital resources, including owned railway, Amtrak's ridership has maintained consistent growth
From the middle 19th century until approximately 1920, nearly all intercity travelers in the United States moved by rail.
[10] The rails and the trains were owned and operated by private, for-profit organizations. Approximately 65,000 railroad passenger cars operated in 1929.
[11]
For a long time after 1920, passenger rail's popularity diminished and there were a series of pullbacks and tentative recoveries. Rail passenger revenues declined dramatically between 1920 and 1934 because of the rise of the automobile,
[10] but in the mid-1930s, railroads reignited popular imagination with service improvements and new, diesel-powered
streamliners, such as the gleaming silver
Pioneer Zephyr and
Flying Yankee.
[10] Even with the improvements, on a relative basis, traffic continued to decline, and by 1940 railroads held 67% of passenger-miles in the United States.
[10] World War II broke the malaise. During the war, troop movements and restrictions on automobile fuel generated a sixfold increase in passenger traffic from the low point of the Depression.
[10] After the war, railroads rejuvenated overworked and neglected fleets with fast and often luxurious streamliners—epitomized by the
Super Chief and
California Zephyr—which inspired the last major resurgence in passenger rail travel.
The postwar resurgence was short-lived. In 1946, there remained 45% fewer passenger trains than in 1929,
[10] and the decline quickened despite railroad optimism. Passengers disappeared and so did trains. Few trains generated profits; most produced losses. Broad-based passenger rail deficits appeared as early as 1948
[10] and by the mid-1950s railroads claimed aggregate annual losses on passenger services of more than $700 million (almost $5 billion in 2005 dollars using CPI).
[11][12][13] By 1965, only 10,000 rail passenger cars were in operation, 85% fewer than in 1929.
[11] Passenger service was provided on only 75,000 miles (120,000 km) of track, a stark decline.
[11] The 1960s also saw the end of
railway post office revenues, which had helped some of the remaining trains break even.
The causes of the decline of passenger rail in the United States were complex. Until 1920, rail was the only practical form of intercity transport, but the industry was subject to government regulation and labor inflexibility.
[15][16] By 1930, the railroad companies had constructed, with private funding, a vast and relatively efficient transportation network, but when the federal government began to construct the
National Highway System, the railroads found themselves faced with unprecedented competition for passengers and freight with automobiles, buses, trucks, and aircraft, all of which were heavily subsidized by the government road and airport building programs. In 1916, the amount of track in the United States peaked at 254,251 miles (409,177 km), compared to 140,695 miles (226,427 km) in 2007 (although it remained the largest rail network of any country in the world).
[17][18] Some routes had been built primarily to facilitate the sale of stock in the railroad companies; they were redundant from the beginning. These were the first to be abandoned as the railroads' financial positions deteriorated, and the rails were routinely removed to save money on taxes. Many rights of way were destroyed by being broken up and built over, but others remained the property of the railroad or were taken over by local or state authorities and turned into
rail trails, which could be returned to rail service if necessary.
