PASSENGER RAIL OUTLOOK, RAILWAY AGE JANUARY 2026 ISSUE: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … in short, the period was … like the present period.” So went part of the opening paragraph of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. It could also describe Amtrak during “the present period.”
At a Board meeting held in New Orleans and streamed Dec. 4, Amtrak President Roger Harris described 2025’s record levels of ridership, ticket revenue, customer miles traveled and capital investment by Amtrak and expressed his hope that 2026 will be another record-breaking year for “America’s Railroad.” Yet, Amtrak moves forward, in some ways at restricted speed, as there could be solid red signals ahead outside the Northeast Corridor (NEC).
Rail transit, including “transit railroads” in the United States, is heading for red signals in many places, too. Some transit-rich places are seeing a clear indication for now, with the possibility of an “approach limited” or even a “restricted” indication some distance ahead. In this article, we will take our annual look at the passenger train and rail transit picture in the U.S. and Canada.
Amtrak: It Depends on Where and When
Amtrak management said joyfully that it set records in a number of areas in 2025. Ridership was back to pre-COVID levels, revenue was at its height, and there was plenty of capital investment. Board Chair Anthony Coscia said more people are interested in trains than had been the case ten years ago and even encouraged the prospect of new Public Private Partnerships (P3s) in terms of funding and innovation that could help Amtrak prosper.
When Scott R. Spencer of AmeriStarRail suggested rebranding Acela trains on the NEC as Libertyliner 250 trains and offering a “Freedom Pass” that would allow seven days of unlimited travel on the NEC for $250 per person, Coscia appeared open to considering those ideas. The acid test of Amtrak’s willingness to implement suggestions by outsiders will come soon, because Spencer’s suggestions are tied in with the country’s 250th birthday, which will happen this coming summer. AmeriStarRail is prepared to license trackage rights and run enhanced service on the NEC and its branches, whether Amtrak keeps control of the lines, as it exercises today, or another entity manages them in the future.
Rail Infrastructure Management, a different entity (through its RAILnet-21 plan) is proposing a different approach for the NEC: an Infrastructure Management Organization (IMO), using investors’ funds to make capital improvements. The plan would license trackage rights to various operating entities, including Amtrak and others, which could include AmeriStarRail. RAILnet-21’s proponents say that relieving Amtrak of the burden of having to maintain and manage the NEC’s infrastructure will enable Amtrak to spend its money on operating trains, which is its greatest strength, and acquiring rolling stock, which is its greatest need. In any event, the NEC and its branches will have to survive somehow, because it would be impossible to move all Amtrak’s riders and those on the local “transit railroads” along Amtrak’s NEC any other way.
The January 2025 Passenger Rail Outlook article was the grimmest I had written in more than 21 years reporting on the rail and transit beat. Elsewhere on Amtrak, not much has changed. Amtrak’s skeletal long-distance network is the smallest it has ever been: Only 13 trains that motorists and non-motorists alike can ride. The loss of the Silver Star and the consolidation of part of its route with the now-defunct Capitol Limited to form the new Floridian killed direct service between the NEC north of Washington D.C., and places in the Carolinas and Florida. It also resulted in disastrous on-time performance, even though it liberated some Superliner cars for service on trains further west.
Death by attrition is the hazard the entire long-distance network faces. Amtrak keeps talking about purchasing new equipment for its few long-haul trains, but officials, both at the December Board meeting and at a conference sponsored by the Rail Users’ Network (RUN) in November, had little to say about a long-distance fleet, but plenty about new cars for the NEC and state-supported trains and corridors. They acknowledged that Amtrak needs trainsets, and a 1,379-page Request for Proposals (RFP) for long-distance equipment has been released. Still, actual procurement, construction and other activities required before new equipment can be certified and placed into service could take so long that the current fleet might not last long enough to keep the existing network of trains running every day (except for the two tri-weekly trains). While Amtrak is catching up on repairing wreck-damaged cars, the best-case scenario is that those cars can relieve the short consists that Amtrak is running on its long-distance trains only for a limited time. Another decade is a stretch.
Amtrak officials are talking about placing new equipment into service “in the 2030s,” a long time from now. By 2033, more than half of the Superliner and Amfleet II equipment in service today will be 50 years old, the same age as the Amfleet I cars that now run on the NEC and state-supported corridors, and that Amtrak has announced plans to scrap. The current network might survive by running short trains and charging high fares until new equipment arrives, but every month of delay in the procurement process makes that result less likely. There is a limit to how long those cars can last.
In April 2021, Amtrak announced its Connects US program for developing new corridor-length routes, which the states would support. Two services running today demonstrate that, and once trains of that sort start running, they attract riders. The new Borealis train between Chicago and St. Paul is a great success, even though its schedule is only a few hours apart from that of the Empire Builder on the same route. A third frequency that would leave Chicago early in the morning, turn quickly at St. Paul in the afternoon and return to the Windy City before Metra trains and much of the CTA shut down for the evening would also perform successfully. The new Mardi Gras Service trains that run along the Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Mobile are also doing well, but it took a four-year war to get them running. I covered that war in its entirety for Railway Age and dubbed it the “Second Battle of Mobile.”
Amtrak had hoped to see almost 40 new corridor-length routes established by the end of 2035, but in the first five years since the program was announced, there is just one new round trip on an established route and only one new route, with only ten years to go until the end of the original planning frontier. With the fight that CSX, Norfolk Southern and the Port of Mobile waged to prevent the new Gulf Coast trains from running, in addition to Amtrak’s requirement that local agencies must pay an increasing share of the costs of running new trains during the first six years and the full cost after that, it seems unlikely that many other state and/or local entities will go to the trouble and expense to start new routes. With the current decline of federal funding for many programs forcing the states to pick up the tab for them, the prospect of those states or local agencies paying to run new trains for several years appears remote.
What I said at the beginning of 2025 still holds true at the beginning of 2026 for Amtrak. The long-term survival of the long-distance network seems questionable, and it still appears that only a few new state-supported routes will begin operation. The future of the NEC looks great in Amtrak’s view now, but, truth be told, it’s unsettled. The infrastructure needs massive state-of-good repair programs, and while Amtrak has several NEC projects planned or under way, they are expensive. New P3s with entities like AmeriStarRail or RAILnet-21 could spur investment and innovation, from which Amtrak and the region’s riders would benefit. Still, it will survive, for better or worse. If for no other reason, nothing else could serve all Amtrak riders.
Brightline, the nation’s only private-sector passenger railroad, now runs between Miami and Orlando Airport and is building Brightline West between Las Vegas and southern California, which would have a connection to Los Angeles on Metrolink. Brightline’s model appeared to serve as a viable alternative to the public-sector model of Amtrak and transit providers until recently, but now Brightline is facing severe financial problems and has cut service in Florida, while the anticipated cost of completing Brightline West is rising fast. It appears that Brightline needs to embrace the public sector similarly to how Amtrak must embrace the private sector, which leads to the inference that the P3 model is the only way to build or run a passenger railroad today. Whether the feds or Florida would go along is another question.
Challenges Ahead for Transit
The Dickensian opening does not quite hold for rail transit in the U.S., because transit riders and providers everywhere face a severe challenge. It comes from the fiscal cliff that has resulted from the loss of federal money that kept many transit systems going during the COVID-19 pandemic. As things stand for transit today, agencies that can’t get a financial reprieve face drastic service reductions.
Still, there is a bit of good news, even if it is somewhat anomalous. Before I came on board at Railway Age, there were more new transit starts and expansions than there are today, and I reported a “New Starts Roundup” every year at this time. For the first time in many years, there were several such events around the country. MBTA’s South Coast Rail between Boston and the historic cities of New Bedford and Fall River opened. DART in Dallas opened a new line on former Cotton Belt right-of-way. The South Shore Line (NICTD) is opening its Monon Corridor between Hammond and Munster, Ind., although the schedule only works well at peak commuting times. SMART in California’s North Bay is a few miles longer than it used to be. In Buffalo, the old DL&W terminal, the other end of the historic Lackawanna Railroad from Hoboken, N.J., is served by rail again, but it’s light rail. New rail transit segments are also running in Phoenix, Kansas City, Washington D.C.’s Maryland suburbs, and even Honolulu.
While the above-mentioned list should be greeted warmly as good news, it is questionable how many more years like 2025 will follow. In 2023 there were 64 grant applications before the FTA, 39 for busways and 25 for rail. That represented 40%, but they included mega-projects like the Gateway tunnel between Manhattan and New Jersey. Two years later there were 58 applications; 39 for busways and only 19 for rail, which amount to less than one-third. Percentagewise, that is a precipitous drop. It could herald the gradual phaseout of new rail starts over the next several years.
The fiscal cliff remains the biggest challenge on the transit side. Money from the one short federal infusion of operating funds during the COVID-19 pandemic has or soon will run out at essentially every U.S. transit agency. It is now up to the states and their political subdivisions to find a way to keep local transit going with service that residents of the impacted areas now have. The alternative would be service cuts so severe that their likes have not been seen since the middle of the past century. Without new funding, transit managers have threatened to eliminate 35% to 45% of existing service.
Some states have implemented solutions that are keeping local transit going, either by enacting new fees or corporate taxes to generate money for transit (New York and New Jersey for the next three years), or moved money from the capital side to the operating side (Pennsylvania for the next two years). It cannot be stated too strongly that these are not permanent solutions, but reprieves. Illinois has regionalized the governance for transit in Chicagoland and enacted new levies. It remains to be seen whether those measures will result in a permanent solution or will only manifest a reprieve.
In some other places, politicians who make decisions that affect transit and its riders have not come up with solutions. Transit managers are concerned and riders, especially those who depend on transit for all their mobility, are understandably upset. Essentially every official who has the power to help fund transit in their jurisdictions is a motorist who does not personally need transit. If they can be convinced that the local economy would be thrown into a downward spiral if they allow severe service cuts by inaction or indifference, they might be persuaded to come up with the money to keep transit going at present levels. Still, the best-case scenario will probably be a series of reprieves. In New York City, officials know that, without strong transit, the local economy would be devastated, although that city is the only place in the nation where non-motorists outnumber motorists.
Canada had some new extensions in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal, including conversion of the Deux-Montagnes line from traditional “commuter” rail to the REM mode. There is not much new on VIA Rail, although “Canada’s railroad” has strengthened its accessibility measures for persons with disabilities and has ordered new equipment for its skeletal long-distance network. It will be several years before it can be built and placed into service, so there is time to ride the transcontinental Canadian, which runs twice a week with Budd-built “Streamliner” equipment that has been in service for 70 years. Now, if Amtrak would just follow suit and order new cars for its own skeletal (but much more robust than VIA Rail’s) long-distance network, the riding public might feel more assured that the trains they enjoy will keep going for many more years.
