With A Friend In Biden, Amtrak Has Big Dreams. But Freight Lines Have Other Ideas
President Biden has aspirations for a new era of train travel. Amtrak supporters hope that a new line between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama, is just the start. But major obstacles stand in the way.
Like a lot of us, Amtrak had a rough 2020. Ridership fell nearly half from the prior year.
But with the worst of the pandemic seemingly in the past, Amtrak doesn't just want to get back to where it was before the recession – chugging along, slowly adding new riders for a few decades. It wants Americans to fall back in love with trains.
Amtrak's planning on adding 39 new routes across the country and boosting service on lines that already exist. It's setting a goal of 20 million more customers each year – a 60% jump from
