Founded in 1971 as a quasi-public corporation to operate many U.S. passenger rail routes, Amtrak receives a combination of state and federal subsidies but is managed as a for-profit organization.

The National Highway System and airports, both funded by the government, competed directly with the railroads, which, unlike the airline, bus, and trucking companies, paid for their own infrastructure.

[21] In direct response, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway filed to discontinue 33 of its remaining 39 trains, ending almost all passenger service on one of the largest railroads in the country.

The federal government passed the High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965 to fund pilot programs in the Northeast Corridor, but this did nothing to address passenger deficits.

Matters were brought to a head on June 21, 1970, when the Penn Central, the largest railroad in the Northeastern United States and teetering on bankruptcy, filed to discontinue 34 of its passenger trains.

The Nixon administration and many Washington insiders viewed the NRPC as a politically expedient way for the President and Congress to give passenger trains a "last hurrah" as demanded by the public.

[33] 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.

[35][36] The Rail Passenger Service Act gave the Secretary of Transportation, at that time John A. Volpe, thirty days to produce an initial draft of the endpoints of the routes the NRPC would be required by law to serve for four years.

The Office of Management and Budget, however, believed Volpe and the DOT's analysis was far too optimistic, with director George Shultz arguing to cut the number of routes by around half.

The ICC produced its own report on December 29, criticising the proposed draft and arguing for the inclusion of 15 additional routes, giving further ammunition to the congressmen who wanted an expanded system.

On March 30, L&M's work was presented to the NRPC's board of incorporators, who unanimously agreed on the "headless arrow" logo and on the new brand name "Amtrak", a portmanteau of the words America and trak, the latter itself a sensational spelling of track.

[57] A large part of the legislation was directed to the creation of Conrail, but the law also enabled the transfer of the portions of the NEC not already owned by state authorities to Amtrak.

[citation needed] In its first decade, Amtrak fell far short of financial independence, which continues today, but it did find modest success rebuilding trade.

Amtrak advertised it as a great way to avoid traffic along the I-95 running between Lorton, Virginia (near Washington, D.C.) and Sanford, Florida (near Orlando) on the Silver Star alignment.

An X 2000 train was leased from Sweden for test runs from October 1992 to January 1993, followed by revenue service between Washington, D.C. and New York City from February to May and August to September 1993.

Under Downs, Congress included a provision in the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 that resulted in Amtrak receiving a $2.3 billion tax refund that resolved their cash crisis.

On August 19, 2016, the Amtrak Board of Directors named former Norfolk Southern Railway President & CEO Charles "Wick" Moorman as Boardman's successor with an effective date of September 1, 2016.

Later projects of the Gateway Program, including the expansion of track and platforms at Penn Station New York, construction of the Bergen Loop and other improvements will roughly double capacity for Amtrak and NJ Transit trains in the busiest, most complex section of the Northeast Corridor.

[99][100] This would expand service to cities including Las Vegas, Phoenix, Baton Rouge, Nashville, Chattanooga, Louisville, Columbus (Ohio), Wilmington (North Carolina), Cheyenne, Montgomery, Concord, and Scranton.

Service on the Northeast Corridor (NEC), between Boston, and Washington, D.C., as well as between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, is powered by overhead lines; for the rest of the system, diesel-fueled locomotives are used.

The service has developed a reputation for being unreliable and slow due to its cellular network connection;[151][152] on some routes it is usually unusable, either freezing on the login page or, if it manages to log in, failing to provide any internet bandwidth.

West–east routes such as Sunset Limited, Southwest Chief and Texas Eagle notably lacks Wi-Fi whether through Amtrak or using a private hotspot, as cell towers are not common on the rail paths through desert and mountain wilderness.

[157][158] With the passage of the Wicker Amendment in 2010 passengers are allowed to put lawfully owned, unloaded firearms in checked Amtrak baggage, reversing a decade-long ban on such carriage.

In contrast to airlines, which require riders to dismantle their bicycles and place them in specialized bags, most Amtrak trains have onboard bike racks in either the coaches or checked baggage car.

The electrified trains in the NEC are considerably more efficient than Amtrak's diesels and can feed energy captured from regenerative braking back to the electrical grid.

[176] In September 2021, the remnants of Hurricane Ida flooded the Amtrak Northeast Corridor running from Boston to Washington D.C. and caused it to shut down for an entire day.

[188] The final bill, spurred on by the September 12 Metrolink collision in California and retitled Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008, was signed into law by President Bush on October 16, 2008.

[191] Amtrak's budget is only allocated on a yearly basis, and it has been argued by Joseph Vranich that this makes multi-year development programs and long-term fiscal planning difficult if not impossible.

Critics have asserted that Amtrak has proven incapable of operating as a business and that it does not provide valuable transportation services meriting public support,[192][page needed] a "mobile money-burning machine".

[200] Then common stock was issued in 1971 to railroads that contributed capital and equipment; these shares convey almost no benefits,[201] but their holders[202] declined a 2002 buy-out offer by Amtrak.