this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Amtrak is actually a government program that helped save passenger rail after it became unsustainable with the private companies. It's a fascinating history that they simply don't teach the general populace.
There were several key provisions:[29]
Of the 26 railroads still offering intercity passenger service in 1970, only six declined to join the NRPC.[31]
The original working brand name for NRPC was Railpax, but less than two weeks before operations began, the official marketing name was changed to Amtrak, a portmanteau of the words America and trak, the latter itself a sensational spelling of track.
source
huh, neat.
I still think rather unfortunately, that national scale business tends to incentivize extreme optimization, while good, tends to hurt significant portions of the service. But that's just me.