	Overview

Amtrak—officially, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation—is the nation's primary provider of intercity passenger rail service. Amtrak is structured as a private company, but virtually all its shares are held by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT). Amtrak was created by Congress in 1970 to preserve a basic level of intercity passenger rail service, while relieving private railroad companies of the obligation to provide money-losing passenger service. Although created as a for-profit corporation, Amtrak has never made a profit; in this it resembles both the passenger rail experience of the private-sector companies that preceded it and of intercity passenger rail operators in many other countries. Most of that track is owned by freight rail companies; Amtrak owns about 625 route miles. Most of its corridor routes are financially supported by states they serve. Congress changed the structure of federal grants to Amtrak in the Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act of 2015 (Title XI of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act; P.L. Starting in FY2017, the grants are divided between funding for Amtrak's NEC service (which is operationally self-sufficient but has billions of dollars in capital needs) and the rest of Amtrak's network (the National Network, which has modest capital needs but runs an operating deficit of several hundred million dollars). 114-94 ). The stability, or predictability, of Amtrak's federal funding levels is a perennial issue. These two factors have complicated Amtrak's efforts to improve service on the NEC. Operating Efficiency

The number of passengers carried is not the only measure that should be considered when evaluating Amtrak's performance. First and foremost, low on-time performance reduces ridership (and ticket revenue). PRIIA Initiatives to Improve On-Time Performance

In PRIIA §207, Congress directed FRA and Amtrak to develop metrics and standards for measuring the performance and service quality of intercity passenger train operations, including on-time performance and delays incurred by Amtrak trains on the rail lines of each carrier. When on-board labor costs are excluded, Amtrak says, the service covers its costs. Privatization of Intercity Passenger Rail Services

When discussing privatization of intercity passenger rail service, details are important. One obstacle to privatization is that if a state or a private operator other than Amtrak wishes to begin passenger service over freight-owned right-of-way, it would likely have to pay more than Amtrak does to gain access to freight property. Amtrak would be eligible to bid; if a bidder other than Amtrak is selected, the winning bidder would have the same right to operate over the freight railroad's tracks as Amtrak, subject to performance standards set by DOT, and could receive an operating subsidy of not more than 90% of the amount provided for service on that route in the year before the bid to operate the route was received, adjusted for inflation. The project group says it does not expect to request government grants, though it may seek a federal loan. California High-Speed Rail Project

The California High-Speed Rail Authority proposes to build a dedicated rail line between Sacramento and San Diego that will allow trains to reach speeds of up to 220 mph.
Amtrak is the nation's primary provider of intercity passenger rail service. It was created by Congress in 1970 to preserve some level of intercity passenger rail service while enabling private rail companies to exit the money-losing passenger rail business. It is a quasi-governmental entity, a corporation whose stock is almost entirely owned by the federal government. It runs a deficit each year, and relies on congressional appropriations to continue operations. Amtrak was last authorized in the Passenger Rail Reform and Investment Act of 2015 (Title XI of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST Act; P.L. 114-94). That authorization expires at the end of FY2020. Amtrak's annual appropriations do not rely on separate authorization legislation, but authorization legislation does allow Congress to set multiyear Amtrak funding goals and federal intercity passenger rail policies.
Since Amtrak's inception, Congress has been divided on the question of whether it should even exist. Amtrak is regularly criticized for failing to cover its costs. The need for federal financial support is often cited as evidence that passenger rail service is not financially viable, or that Amtrak should yield to private companies that would find ways to provide rail service profitably. Yet it is not clear that a private company could perform the same range of activities better than Amtrak does. Indeed, Amtrak was created because private-sector railroad companies in the United States lost money for decades operating intercity passenger rail service and wished to be relieved of the obligation to do so.
By some measures, Amtrak is performing as well as or better than it ever has in its 47-year history. For example, it is carrying a near-record number of passengers, and its passenger load factor and its operating ratio are at the upper end of their historic ranges. On the other hand, Amtrak's ridership is barely growing at a time when other transportation modes are seeing ridership increases. Amtrak contends that improvements to its infrastructure in the Northeast Corridor (NEC), between Washington, DC, and Boston, would enable it to offer faster and more reliable service and thus boost ridership. However, such improvements are expected to be extremely costly.
Amtrak's ridership may also be hurt by its relatively low on-time performance, which is especially low on routes which use tracks owned by freight railroads. In 2008, Congress tried to put in place measures that could improve Amtrak's on-time performance on these routes, but that effort has been blocked by the courts.
There are perennial calls to privatize Amtrak, but it could be argued that Amtrak is already privatized to a considerable degree. Efforts to create intercity passenger service independently of Amtrak have had limited success.
Several efforts are under way to build high-speed rail lines independent of Amtrak. These include the state-sponsored California High Speed Rail project and private passenger rail initiatives in Florida, Texas, and Nevada. It is unclear whether any of these initiatives, if completed, will ultimately be operated by or have business relationships with Amtrak.