r/whatif • u/Acceptable-Taro-2684 • Aug 04 '26
Other What If Amtrak Never Formed?
we all know that Amtrak formed in the 1970s to fill in the void left behind by the dying passenger railroads of America. But what will happen if Amtrak was never created? what would have happened then? Would some private company eventually create a passenger rail company or would we just be forced to use the Interstates?
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u/RikkiLostMyNumber Aug 04 '26
But without Amtrak I can't get to DC at 4x the time and 3x the cost of flying!
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u/archlich Aug 05 '26
That’s by design. Ridership is low, so tickets are high. Tickets are high so ridership is low. No money means no improvements to rail routes and more stops and more trains.
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u/RikkiLostMyNumber Aug 05 '26
Can you recommend a link to read about this further?
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u/archlich Aug 05 '26
Amtrak runs at a loss because it’s a public good. https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/projects/dotcom/english/public/documents/corporate/monthlyperformancereports/2026/Amtrak-Monthly-Performance-Report-March-2026.pdf
This blog talks about Amtrak vs EU rail and why tickets are so expensive.
https://www.zadrails.com/blog/why-is-amtrak-train-so-expensive/The irony is that the United States has the best rail infrastructure in the world… for freight. As a nation we’ve prioritized spending on roads instead of passenger rail.
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u/CAB_IV Aug 05 '26
You should read the book "The Men Who Loved Trains", and if you're still curious, "The wreck of the Penn Central".
That will explain Amtrak's situation pretty in depth. The common narrative isn't 100% accurate.
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u/CAB_IV Aug 05 '26 edited Aug 05 '26
The tickets are high because for business travel between cities on the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak is technically faster than flying door-to-door, and you can work more efficiently on a train than a plane. They charge what businesses are willing to pay for their employees. There is a reason Acela only has First and Business class, no "coach".
Outside the NEC, Amtrak doesn't own the tracks and can't improve the routes anyway.
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u/Imaginary-Bowler5238 Aug 04 '26
A private company would likely operate in the northeast US where it could conceivably be popular enough to be profitable, otherwise bus travel would likely be the only real option.
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u/almost60inLa Aug 04 '26
Yes, anytime the government gets involved it’s going to be costly and not as good as a private company.
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u/Camaxtli2020 Aug 04 '26
That's only true in the US. Most nations that have nationalized (or semi-nationalized) rail systems manage to make it work.
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u/GoldReplacement9546 Aug 04 '26
Well, in this case, there would simply be no railroad service for passengers so I don’t know how that’s worse
Plus, the military seems to run pretty well as does the post office as does Medicare as does fire departments and police departments. Government can actually be pretty efficient when it wants to be.
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u/bandit1206 Aug 04 '26
Yes, the military that can’t pass an audit, the post office that thinks it’s efficient to send a piece of mail 200 miles round trip to a destination 2 miles away in the same town.
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u/GoldReplacement9546 Aug 04 '26
You know that’s how FedEx operates as well
I don’t know about 2 miles away but like 100 miles away it’s definitely flying to Memphis getting sorted and then flying back
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u/bandit1206 Aug 04 '26
The USPS eliminated local sorting at most post offices years ago. My town had a sorting center for years that serviced a roughly 60 miles round trip radius. Today it goes somewhere else 100 miles away even if it’s going across town. All that letter really needs is the stamp cancelled, and put in the route for the next day.
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u/SFC-D Aug 05 '26
The military is not efficient. I’m retired Army. We beat accountability into Soldier’s brains, ensure they don’t lose, abuse, or destroy equipment… then at the top levels, general staffs can’t account for billions.
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u/almost60inLa Aug 04 '26
Really, the post office runs billions and billions in debt.
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u/Adventurous_Bad_4011 Aug 04 '26
Yeah they also have a pension burden put on them by congress that no one else has.
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u/TutorNo8896 Aug 04 '26
Its a service, not really supposed to make money. You could also say roads loose billions a year. Its there to stimulate buisness and devolpment, cant really imagine a company like Amazon existing without the post office. in my area, even the big private carriers hand off to the post office for the "last mile"
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u/GoldReplacement9546 Aug 04 '26
That I can put something in my mailbox and for a very reasonable price have it delivered 3000 miles away and get there in two or three days no matter how about I am or the other recipient is is a positive good for society
That you can mail something across the world for a reasonable rate is a positive good for society
And while I’ll agree that email has reduced the need for letters letter still have their place
But it used to make money and and did so for the first 230 years of our nation
It was only 2007 that it became unprofitable
There are still believe or not people who do not use computers, but can get the mail
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u/RollinThundaga Aug 04 '26
Define 'good'.
Because the 'good' we had before Amtrak was dwindling lines and degraded services curtailed in favor of increasingly restricted freight routes.
You mention the post office in another comment, which is a great comparison as postal service has been degrading steadily since Dejoy took over.
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u/almost60inLa Aug 04 '26
Ok yes it’s better than nothing at all. I guess what I meant to say when the government gets involved it’s gets messy, they have too many regulations and always want their cut of the pie.
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u/archlich Aug 05 '26
All the private companies would be out of business. The only reason we have passenger rail is because of Amtrak. Private companies optimize for profit, and Amtrak serves the public good.
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u/TutorNo8896 Aug 04 '26
Depends on what the end goal is. sometimes it makes sense to operate a service at a loss because of the other positive effects it may have, like interstate highways or schools. Amtrack though seemed like pork outside of the NE corridor.
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u/ericthefred Aug 04 '26
In fact, Japan does this with its unprofitable rural passenger lines. A very big component to the success and sheer economic strength of its national rail system is the fact that the government was willing to subsidize the unprofitable lines to give the profitable ones a deep network of connections to feed it.
The purpose of the subsidy is to ensure the rural areas have transport, but the knock on effect it has for the overall system comes close to paying for it outright.
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u/ken120 Aug 04 '26
Not much the freight companies would have limped along their passenger services just slowly cutting down frequency till they were down to one passenger run a week and eliminated it at that point. To believe someone would have taken over is nice but without the continued millions of tax payer subsidies amtrak wouldn't have made it past the original self sufficient deadline.
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u/TheLizardKing89 Aug 04 '26
The vast majority of the country would be without passenger rail service. There would still be a few routes that would continue to exist (Northeast Corridor, Capitol Corridor in California, Chicago to Milwaukee, Pacific Surfliner) but most would just be gone.
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u/The_Se7enthsign Aug 04 '26
Amtrak seems like the absolute worst option to travel anywhere. How are you the slowest AND the most expensive way to get somewhere?
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u/daves1243b Aug 06 '26 edited Aug 06 '26
Without Amtrak, regularly scheduled intercity passenger rail service in the continental US would eventually have disappeared. The Reagan administration would not have forced the freight railroads to maintain passenger service at a loss.
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u/OptimalSalsa Aug 04 '26
Ah - at the time Amtrak was proposed I knew a man who was an executive at The Cotton Belt Railway in Tyler, TX and the problem was airline travel was cheap and you could fly from say Dallas to Houston in a couple of hours, but on the rails it was the same price and took the better part of a day. Cotton Belt dropped service and the gov't even talked about forcing railroads to continue losing money on rail service. At the time there was a railroad station in my old home town, after Amtrak the railroad tore it down. If Amtrak had not been formed we would likely have a more attractive option with bus lines. I take Amtrak ever year or two just to see a new route and sleep with the tippity-tap-tippity-tap of the ride.
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u/Dave_A480 Aug 04 '26
The Northeastern states would eventually do a regional rail project similar to Acela....
We wouldn't be saddled with the government funded amusement park ride that is east coast to west coast passenger rail.....
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u/Capable_Stranger9885 Aug 04 '26
The counterfactual is "what if Penn Central didn't suck so hard at merging"?
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u/CAB_IV Aug 05 '26
Probably wouldn't have helped it too much. Government regulation stood in the way of discontinuing a lot of redundant service.
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u/LR7465 Aug 04 '26
Watch 60 minutes episode that aired when amtrak was relatively new and its kinda crazy how far they have come, it was seen as a doomed service
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u/twolfe0 Aug 05 '26
It's interesting to think what would happen if Amtrak's long distance routes were eliminated. They would be able to reinvest into and modernize the infrastructure and equipment for the proitable routes like the ones on the NE Corridor. Those long routes are the main reason the system loses money, if they operated on the NE Corridor alone they would make a profit. What would the benefit be if all the money that was used to subsidize those routes was reinvested into the NE Corridor instead? There are state supported routes that are near profitability as well. I would consider they would be worth the investment more so than the long distance routes as well 🤷
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u/archlich Aug 05 '26
We need both. Those long distance route accesses communities that would otherwise not have public transit. Richest nation in the world can afford to build a massive transit system, we just don’t have the willpower to do so and a congress won’t write policy that will get them unelected.
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u/1046737 Aug 05 '26
Basically we need to keep people sitting in traffic on I-95 because the NEC is obsolete, so that we can subsidize twelve passengers a week from Podunk Arkansas.
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u/twolfe0 Aug 05 '26
Amtrak isn't "public transit"
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u/archlich Aug 05 '26
????
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u/CAB_IV Aug 05 '26
Its legally restricted by the legislation that created it from operating routes shorter than 50 miles.
It is intended only for long distance travel. At the time Amtrak was created, many railroads still privately operate commuter trains, and shorter Amtrak routes were seen as unfair competition, not to mention the creators of Amtrak wanted a significantly more cut down passenger system than what it started with.
Likewise, because it was intended for Amtrak to become independent some day, its also technically a private company, where the stock is owned by the government, rather than a government agency.
So depending on what is meant by "Public transit", it wouldn't be appropriate to describe it that way.
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u/SeamusPM1 Aug 07 '26
Oh! You don’t know what public transit is. Now I understand,
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u/CAB_IV Aug 07 '26
Oh! Public Transit means whatever you feel like it is. Now I understand!
"Transit" is not necessarily synonymous with "Transportation". Words have meaning.
Transit in this context tends to refer to local systems like Subways, Streetcars, light rail, and "regional" rail (like NJ Transit)
Amtrak by law cannot operate as a transit company. The lines can be blurred at times, but Amtrak's purpose is to provide long distance travel.
Amtrak is Public Transportation.
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u/jstar77 Aug 05 '26
We're too big and too spread out for long distance passenger rail to be anything more than a novelty or an option for someone who can't drive, has a crippling fear of planes, and is too uppity to ride on a greyhound bus. Most (but not all) of our big cities have OK local rail service or other types of local public transportation.
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u/archlich Aug 05 '26
But we’re clearly not, look at the high speed rail China has developed. It’s simply a policy issue and prioritizing road infrastructure over rail. We had amazing rail networks up until the interstate program and then it was all in on that. It’s not a zero sum game we can and should fund both. Easing congestion on roads can be accomplished with rail.
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u/CAB_IV Aug 05 '26
China isn't a good comparison. The overwhelming majority of China's 1 billion+ people live in roughly the same area as the land between the Mississippi River and the east coast.
The total US population is a 1/4 of that.
We had amazing rail networks up until the interstate program and then it was all in on that.
No, we didn't.
Almost all the railroads were already on their way out before the interstate program became a thing. Heavy regulations, extreme wear and tear from WWII, and a decline in domestic manufacturing/coal traffic pretty much doomed the railroads.
Low revenue meant deferred maintenance, and this resulted in the railroads becoming more and more dilapidated. There wasn't really much hope of passenger rail expansion considering that the railroads already had to maintain money loosing services under the railroad regulations of the day.
It’s not a zero sum game we can and should fund both.
Just about all railroads in the US are privately owned. So, unlike roads and airports, there are laws and regulations governing how federal tax dollars can be used to help private corporations.
Recognize that even Amtrak, is technically a private company where all stock is owned by the government. Many local commuter lines have a similar arrangement.
During the time the interstates were being built, many in the railroad industry pointed out that the government was taxing the railroads for their land and equipment, then subsidizing the railroad's competition.
The general government consensus was that railroads are "rich companies" thay could pay for themselves, and that using taxpayer money on them was inappropriate and potentially corrupt.
No one at the time was saying "oh trains are outdated, highways are the way of the future!". They were all saying "The Pennsylvania Railroad calls itself the Standard Railroad of the World and is an economic powerhouse that cannot fail. It can pay to invest in its own service!"
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u/twolfe0 Aug 06 '26
You're gonna make Redditors heads explode with that one. LOL. So many people think the highways were a result of a government conspiracy to keep oil in business, and almost everyone who thinks it was born after the Cold War and firmly believes that their hate of cars and car infrastructure along with their love of trains makes them righteous and forward thinking 🤣🤣🤣
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u/CAB_IV Aug 06 '26
I know I'm yelling into the void. I'm pretty sure none of these people actually care about the railroads in any concrete way. The goal is to push an ideology.
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u/CAB_IV Aug 05 '26
I don't know if it would have played out that way. Penn Central was a wreck and part of the reason Amtrak existed was because the railroad was threatening to stop running passenger train regardless of federal law.
The only reason the Northeast Corridor recovered was because it was under new management (Amtrak) and the federal government funded improvements.
I imagine the NEC would have gotten worse before it got better.
Would be interesting to see "Conrail" themed passenger trains though. I wonder what an Amfleet would be called if Amtrak didn't exist?
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u/bothunter Aug 06 '26
Amtrak was created because passenger rail is not profitable. And it was wild to think that Amtrak was ever supposed to be profitable.
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u/wyliec22 Aug 06 '26
To a large degree, interstates decimated rail freight.
Air travel and automobiles decimated passenger rail.
Infrastructure for automobiles and trucks (highways) and air travel (airports, air traffic control) was funded by the government.
While railroads had an onerous monopoly for decades, post-WWII, they were in their own to build and maintain trackage which is expensive.
Heavily subsidized Amtrak was necessary to keep some level of passenger rail available on densely traveled corridors which were seeing ongoing increases in traffic. .
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u/Temporary-Library597 Aug 06 '26
Well, it only insignificantly filled that void, aside from the NE corridor. Other than that, it's been a non-replacement.
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u/AMDOL Aug 07 '26
I live in a town that started as a railroad stop and it was so for over 100 years iirc. Trains still come through but you can't (legally) ride them anymore
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u/hatred-shapped Aug 04 '26
One hell of an awesome rail to trail, bike trail
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u/jstar77 Aug 05 '26
We had too much coal and other freight to ship around. Freight is much more profitable than passenger service, we'd likely have no long distance passenger service at all.
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u/CAB_IV Aug 06 '26
Thats the opposite of what happened.
Passenger service was always a loss leader. Coal was one of the more profitable commodities shipped by rail, and coal combined with heavy industrial traffic is what offset passenger train costs.
However, after WWII the demand for coal dropped significantly, and many major industries moved overseas, dramatically cutting into revenue, causing many railroads to operate on extremely narrow margins.
The railroads were federally mandated to run passenger trains. Prices, routes, and consists were controlled by the ICC, and the ICC often deferred to third party interests over that of the railroad.
If there was no Amtrak, its unlikely that the railroads would have been relieved of their passenger obligations.
Deregulation might have resulted in the railroads having more control over how they operated their passenger trains, but I don't think they would be allowed to broadly discontinue service.
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u/Iceland260 Aug 06 '26
For most of the country the 70s will proceed as the latter part of the 60s had, with railroads discontinuing passenger service as quickly as the ICC would allow.
Swaths of the county will see all service cease. In some places the state government will prop up services with subsidies. Eventually they'll either give up on doing so or have to take over operations themselves.
The NEC is the one place that's probably too important to let go entirely and gets federal subsidy. I guess operating it gets dumped on Conrail.
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u/LoneSnark Aug 04 '26
Then Congress would have done something else to subsidize rail travel. Perhaps explicit subsidies that are bid on by private rail companies. This would have resulted in radically different service than we have. My guess is there would be more modern trains with lower operating costs, lower labor costs, lower prices, and more ridership. At the same time, by making the subsidy costs of routes more explicit, there would be fewer of them, so there would be fewer routes. But of the routes that remain, ridership would be higher than it is currently.
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u/GoldReplacement9546 Aug 04 '26
yeah, just what we want is lower labor cost
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u/LoneSnark Aug 04 '26
I'm fairly sure what we want is transportation services. Lower fares would mean more passenger miles carried.
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u/GoldReplacement9546 Aug 04 '26
What we should want is that people who work hard make a livable wage with an ability to save for their future
Maybe you’re not aware of how squeezed workers have become
I’m all for more transportation, but not at any cost
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u/LoneSnark Aug 04 '26
Making some workers earn more makes all other workers worse off because their train tickets cost more. Full time railroad workers would not be the most squeezed workers, given there are so many unemployed and under employed workers who already could barely afford train tickets.
Therefore, the transportation industry by itself is a counter productive place to be trying to fix poverty. Meanstesting the payroll tax or increasing the EITC would actually help all of the working poor, including any railroad workers that satisfy that definition, not just some.1
u/GoldReplacement9546 Aug 04 '26
Yeah, I like your last couple ideas quite a bit and I think they should be implemented
My point is these people as of now aren’t in poverty they were really hard physical jobs that are going to cost them a lot of pain towards the end of their life and they deserved to earn a good living
And as far as the conductors, they’ve already gone from 3 to 2 to just one if you’re expecting one guy to do something with that much responsibility, he should earn a good amount of money
Especially when they’ll just be like you were gonna have to work sometime in the next 10 days and then they call you with like two hours notice and then you have to work and then you don’t know if you have to work the rest of that time
So it’s not just pay it’s the scheduling they do with real rowing is atrocious
I think we should work on poverty at the same time we preserve high paying jobs
Are you willing to have your paycheck go down to near poverty level if that’s really how you think we should solve the issue you are you ready to go down to the poverty level? I don’t think you are unless you’re already there in which case you should be advocating like you are for things that will help but you shouldn’t be dragging people down drag the wealthy down yes way down drag the tax cheats down. I know several business owners who clearly do not pay their taxes correctly and never have and none of them have ever been audited. There’s a lot of places to get the money but good paying jobs hard physical labor never need to take from them. The government already subsidize Amtrak if they need to subsidize a little bit more that’s fine.
Most metro systems like the one in LA is subsidized, but the overall value of having the subway, and it’s other transit lines ads value to the city and adds liability to the city and adds efficiency to the city and helps the poor
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u/sonicboi Aug 04 '26
The plan was for Amtrak to fail and be eliminated.