The past as prologue: US passenger rail service in the last half-century

To commemorate the 40th anniversary of Amtrak's start of operations, the editors at Greater Greater Washington have compiled a slideshow visually documenting the evolution of passenger rail service since the early 1960s. Here are a few snapshots of recent history in US passenger rail transport.

For some perspective on precipitous decline in the US passenger rail sector during the 1960s, compare the two maps above, less than a decade apart. Such loss was particularly steep in the Northern Plains, where passenger service on the relatively heavily-travelled mainlines of the early 1960s and prior was in many cases reduced to no more than one train with two lightly loaded carriages daily by the late 1960s.

Note how the network became 'rationalized' by comparing the above map with the 1970 one, illustrating the government takeover of passenger rail service between passage of the Rail Passenger Service Act and the first run of an Amtrak train, which was the Clockers service between Philadelphia and New York (now branded along with its connecting routes as Northeast Regional, a slower but cheaper alternative to Acela Express). Sixty percent of cities with passenger rail service lost it when private rail companies save for a few such as Southern and Denver, Rio Grande and Western (though both ultimately turned their passenger operations to Amtrak within a decade of its creation) relieved themselves of the passenger carrier business.

Other than frequency increases and scheduling improvements since 2000, as well as the replacement of Metroliner with Acela along the Northeast Corridor, the present state of Amtrak rail service is not much different from its 1971 state. Given the sparse network, a low modal share for passenger rail is quite understandable, with the implication that increasing frequency and coverage of service appears a reasonable remedy.