A Private Rail Renaissance Percolates after Fifty Years of Amtrak Failures

For the first time in fifty years, America has an intercity passenger railroad worthy of pride. In the heart of downtown Miami stands the shining new MiamiCentral Station, the southern terminus of Brightline—a private railroad linking Florida’s largest city with Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

A journey on Brightline is quite a departure from the experience American rail users are used to. Inside MiamiCentral station is a modern atrium with helpful staff, food and drink outlets, bright digital displays, a kids’ play area, and fully stocked lounges for ticketed passengers. Once your train arrives, you are whisked up to the elevated platforms for a smooth journey over carefully rebuilt tracks on a brand-new high-speed train with spacious seating and an airline-style snack and beverage service. Passengers traveling in the “Select” class even get a hot towel. You reach Fort Lauderdale in less than thirty minutes and West Palm Beach in less than an hour.

Contrast that with my journey from Cleveland to Buffalo on Amtrak’s Lake Shore Limited. I had to get up early because the train was scheduled to depart at 5:35 a.m. from Cleveland’s Lakefront station, a stop along its painfully slow twenty-hour journey from Chicago to New York. Lakefront, despite being close to downtown, is barely accessible by any means but car; the only walking route is alongside a freeway ramp. The station consists of little more than a strip of concrete and a small hut. Cleveland Metro trains whistle straight past it without stopping.

The line to board the delayed Lake Shore Limited at Cleveland.

In the end, my early start was unnecessary; the train was more than an hour late. I was escorted across the busy tracks of the metro and several hundred yards down a bare platform to board via a single open door. There, the train attendant issued each passenger a seat number. No advanced seat selection on Amtrak—just a randomly assigned piece of paper before you ascend the steep steps into the coach.

The journey was rough. Amtrak is not really a “railroad” at all but, rather, a state-owned company that runs trains over the tracks of freight railroads such as CSX, Norfolk Southern, and others. That the tracks are meant for freight trains quickly became obvious; the train barely ever went more than 50 mph and lurched violently every time it rolled over intersecting tracks. Eventually it lumbered into Buffalo’s suburban station at Depew, ten miles outside the city (only Amtrak’s New York-Toronto service uses its downtown station). Fortunately, a friend was ready to drive me into the city; otherwise the journey would have involved a three-hour wait for another train or an expensive Uber ride.

The differences between Brightline and Amtrak can be traced back to May 1, 1971—the day Amtrak came into existence. Before then, twenty-six private railroads operated an intricate network of 366 routes across the United States.¹ But these companies and their services and routes had been shrinking for years as federal and state governments plowed massive amounts of tax dollars into road and airport infrastructure. In 1971 alone, governments spent $127 million of taxpayer’s money on highway infrastructure per day.² As Richard Hall recently wrote in The Independent,

Massive public funding flowed into building highways: $21bn for 41,000 miles, to be precise [intended to be spent between 1955 and 1967, although the ultimate cost was over $100 billion, and it took until 1980 to complete the network]. Most of that was paid for by the federal government, while states picked up around 10 per cent of the cost. . . . The federal government not only subsidised highways but airlines too. Meanwhile, [railroads were] subject to all kinds of regulations that inhibited growth and investment.³

Unlike the alternate forms of transportation they competed with, railroad companies built and maintained their infrastructure at their own expense. The federal government required railroads to maintain their passenger services in “the public interest” while also plowing public money into competing modes of transportation. This drove some railroads, such as the Penn Central, to complete financial collapse.⁴

Many campaigners, led by the National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP), pushed for changes in government policy. However, rather than advocating that governments cut spending in other modes and reinstate relatively free and fair competition, they lobbied for similar public spending in rail. The Nixon administration settled on a compromise: It created a new public body, Amtrak, which assumed control of the passenger services of railroads that opted into the project.⁵ Those that didn’t were barred from discontinuing passenger services without government permission.

Amtrak promised immediate improvements over its private progenitors, with new customer-focused staff, equipment, booking systems, and much more. Instead, overnight they cut 366 routes down to 184 and after eight weeks stopped advertising efforts because they didn’t have “anything to sell.”⁶ Some thought Amtrak would eventually fulfill its promises, attract former passengers, and become a viable for-profit company.

What actually transpired was a long, slow decline in service, caused largely by the nature of Amtrak as a state-owned company. The public subsidies it receives remove incentives to improve services and attract customers. Outside of the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., Amtrak has given up on the idea of competing against other modes of transportation and essentially subsists as a service for two tiny markets: those with no other means of traveling and wealthy tourists who are happy to take a three-day train ride across the Midwest.

Conversely, Brightline focuses heavily on competing to attract travelers. In the dense and congested Miami metropolitan area, the comfortable 80 mph ride between Miami and West Palm Beach with just one intermediate stop is a compelling alternative to sitting in backed-up traffic on I-95. Moreover, Brightline—which, before COVID, offered departures every ninety minutes—is faster and more comfortable than the Tri-Rail commuter train, with its dozens of stops and basic no-frills service. The once-daily Amtrak service, which leaves from a windswept concrete platform six miles from downtown, is barely worth mentioning.

At Brightline’s MiamiCentral Station, it’s impossible not to notice the three glistening skyscrapers rising above the station. This isn’t just a station—MiamiCentral is also a world-class property development; the towers above generate rental income for the station below. Brightline is “more than train service,” says the company’s website. It “is part of a real estate vision to reenergize static neighborhoods with transportation hubs including modern stations,” each complete with a “40,000 sq ft food hall,” and “27+ acres of office, retail, residential and commercial space.”⁷

This was a common revenue model for the railroads of yesteryear, one that still works wonders for the successful and widely admired private railways of Japan. However, in America, most intercity rail stations today either are abandoned husks hinting at the glory of another time or little more than bus shelters located miles outside the nearest city.

Brightline will have to be even more competitive when it opens the next phase of its route, a nearly two hundred-mile extension from West Palm Beach to Orlando Airport. On this section, trains will accelerate to 110 mph, traveling from Miami to Orlando in three hours (two hours from Palm Beach).⁸ Brightline aims to win over airline customers by providing greater comfort with its many amenities and the convenience of its downtown stations, where passengers can avoid the long wait times, security checkpoints, and inconvenient locations of airports. Brightline is planning a third phase of the line, a high-speed (125 mph) run from Orlando to Tampa.⁹

Enabling this kind of railroad to develop in more parts of the country requires a substantial shift in government transportation policies. Government spending on highways is still astronomical—in 2017, state and local governments spent $181 billion on highway infrastructure.¹⁰ Unlike in some European countries, most American airports are still government owned. It’s easy to interpret the downfall of passenger rail in America as the public choosing the freedom of the car over an outdated mode of travel, but that’s not the whole story. Governments appropriated people’s money by force to pay for a colossal road-building project that continues to this day—and drove American railroads out of business in the process. According to Amtrak public relations officer Marc Magliari:

[President Dwight D.] Eisenhower looked at the Autobahn [the world’s first national freeway system, implemented by none other than Adolf Hitler] and decided it was a great thing, so the federal government invested many millions of dollars building a freeway system with lots of lanes and unlimited access across the country. If a mountain was in the way, they took it out. Highways were built through mountains at public expense and were built very well. When the railroads were built they went around, or tunnelled through.¹¹

The government used taxpayer’s money to distort what should have been a free and fair market between transportation modes, turning a railroad system that was once the envy of the world into one of the worst passenger rail systems of any developed country.

More government spending on railroads, as pushed for in Joe Biden’s new $2 trillion infrastructure plan, is not the answer. Americans do not need trillions more dollars of their money being spent on mismanaged public projects.¹² Consider the state-run California High Speed Rail project, now reduced from its original vision of a Japanese-style bullet train linking one end of the state to the other to little more than an upgrade of existing lines and a few realignments at three times the original $33 billion price tag.¹³

If America wants a world-class transportation system, it needs to let private businesses take the lead without hindrance. Instead of spending more on rail in addition to the huge volumes of tax dollars already being spent on roads and airports, governments should stop tilting the playing field and let travelers make their own choices. Governments’ attempts to centrally plan how people travel have failed dramatically, leaving Americans utterly dependent on an overcrowded highway network. The solution is not further expansion of government control.

As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of Amtrak, a rail renaissance is percolating. If Americans want this renaissance to continue and grow, they must fight for a free market in transportation.

Editor’s note: This article was initially published without footnote number nine, which addresses some criticisms against Brightline.

About Thomas Walker-Werth

Thomas Walker-Werth is associate editor at The Objective Standard and a fellow at both Objective Standard Institute and Foundation for Economic Education. He is currently writing his first full-length book, Reason for Living: A Rational, Fact-Based Approach to Living Your Best Life. See more of his work at walker-werth.com.

View all articles by Thomas Walker-Werth →