Listen/Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts,Substack,Spotify,YouTube, or watch this page for New Episodes.

Why was Amtrak created? What impact did that have on US passenger rail service? How is Amtrak’s story part of a broader struggle between public purpose and private profit that has consistently plagued U.S. railroading?

In this Rail Bite, Meredith Richards, who is chair of the Rail Passengers Association (RPA), articulates two principles that lie at the center of successful passenger rail systems everywhere.

Why is it that many Americans suddenly seem obsessed with building high speed rail, when most of us don’t even use the 21,400-mile passenger rail system we already have? It’s not as though regular passenger trains are incapable of going faster than the cars we choose to drive instead. Many Amtrak trains can top 100 miles per hour, given the right track conditions. And who can claim that being stuck behind the wheel in traffic is enjoyable?

Amtrak was established by the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970 and began operations on May 1, 1971. It was created to relieve the struggling railroad corporations of their historic obligation to carry passengers. Half a century of public investment in highways and air travel had undermined the ability of railroads to provide passenger service at a profit and was causing a crisis in the industry. (Check out Episode 2 of our main series for an in-depth exploration of this history.) So the public bailed the railroads out by creating Amtrak, a quasi-public corporation that would henceforth carry passengers across almost the entire U.S. rail network.

Knox Ross is chair of the Southern Rail Commission, an interstate rail compact between Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama that advocates for and engages stakeholders around the expansion and revitalization of rail service in the region.

In this timely Rail Bite, Mr. Ross—who is also a practicing Certified Public Accountant—illuminates some of the widespread misconceptions behind the expectation that passenger trains turn a profit.

If you look at Amtrak’s national network on a map, you will see a giant hole spanning roughly a third of the contiguous United States. Two states in this area, Wyoming and South Dakota, have no intercity passenger rail service at all. The lone route that crosses the northern tier of the country through Idaho, Montana, and North Dakota lies far away from most of the major cities in each state.

If you follow Solutionary Rail on Substack or another platform, you may have noticed that we have a new, weekly podcast series!

Our brand new Rail Bites series presents you with some of our favorite clips from our amazing guests on Reconnect America.

With Rail Bites, you can look forward to more frequent, shorter-form content in between our carefully crafted longer episodes.

In this timely meditation, author and professor David Alff probes the inner tension of rail transport in the U.S.: that it is expected to make a profit while providing an essential public service.

Meredith Richards is chair of the Rail Passengers Association—the country’s largest passenger rail advocacy organization—and president of the Virginia Rail Policy Institute.

Those who follow U.S. passenger rail closely know that Virginia has accomplished a lot in the last several years, and Mrs. Richards has been one of the figures at the center of it all.

John Robert Smith is chairman of Transportation for America. He is a former chair of Amtrak's Board of Directors and served 16 years as mayor of his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi. He first became a passenger rail champion while serving as mayor, when Amtrak proposed cutting service through Meridian, and he has since become a highly respected voice for restoring and revitalizing passenger service around the country.