The causes of this decline were heavily debated. For many railroads, these losses threatened financial viability. The railroads had lost money on passenger service since the Great Depression, but deficits reached $723 million in 1957. Even as postwar travel exploded, passenger travel percentages of the overall market share fell to 46% by 1950, and then 32% by 1957. These new trains brought only temporary relief to the overall decline. After the war, railroads rejuvenated their overworked and neglected passenger fleets with fast and luxurious streamliners. The railroad's market share surged to 74% in 1945, with a massive 94 billion passenger-miles. Traffic surged during World War II, which was aided by troop movement and gasoline rationing. In real terms, passenger-miles had fallen by 40% since 1916, from 42 billion to 25 billion. By 1940, railroads held 67 percent of commercial passenger-miles in the United States. New streamlined diesel-powered trains such as the Pioneer Zephyr were popular with the traveling public but could not reverse the trend. As the 20th century progressed, patronage declined in the face of competition from buses, air travel, and the car. Passenger trains were owned and operated by the same privately owned companies that operated freight trains. Nearly 42 million passengers used railways as primary transportation. In 1916, 98% of all commercial intercity travelers in the United States moved by rail, and the remaining 2% moved by inland waterways. History The Pennsylvania Railroad's Congressional in the 1960s Private passenger service Nearly two-thirds of passengers come from the 10 largest metropolitan areas 83% of passengers travel on routes shorter than 400 miles (645 km). Nearly 87,000 passengers ride more than 300 Amtrak trains daily. In fiscal year 2022, Amtrak served 22.9 million passengers and had $2.1 billion in revenue, with more than 17,100 employees as of fiscal year 2021. Some track sections allow trains to run as fast as 150 mph (240 km/h). It directly owns approximately 623 miles (1,003 km) of this track and operates an additional 132 miles of track the remaining mileage is over rail lines owned by other railroad companies. Īmtrak's network includes over 500 stations along 21,400 miles (34,000 km) of track. Amtrak is headed by a Board of Directors, two of whom are the Secretary of Transportation and CEO of Amtrak, while the other eight members are nominated to serve a term of five years. The company's headquarters is located one block west of Union Station in Washington, D.C. passenger rail routes, Amtrak receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization. Amtrak is a portmanteau of the words America and trak, the latter itself a sensational spelling of track.įounded in 1971 as a quasi-public corporation to operate many U.S. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous U.S. The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, doing business as Amtrak ( / ˈ æ m t r æ k/ reporting marks AMTK, AMTZ), is the national passenger railroad company of the United States.
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