Progress, Promise, and a Little Soap and Water

by Jim Mathews / President & CEO

When I sat down with Amtrak President Roger Harris last weekend for what was billed as a “fireside chat” at our RailNation: San Antonio Fall conference, I half expected a comfy sofa and a cup of coffee. Alas, both were in short supply and the weather was a decidedly un-autumn-like 96 degrees.

But instead, I got something even better — a wide-ranging, candid conversation with a new Amtrak leader trying to be more visible and more engaged than ever before.

Roger came ready to talk about what’s working, what’s new, and where Amtrak still has work to do. And as I told him at the outset, it’s a great time to be Amtrak, but also a time when the company has to show that it can deliver consistently, every day, for passengers.

We began with the obvious: Amtrak’s long-awaited wave of new trains is finally becoming reality. I mentioned that between the new Mardi Gras service, the Borealis, and the long-anticipated Next Generation Acela, it really does feel as though decades of advocacy are finally paying off.

Roger agreed, and shared his excitement about the new Acela fleet beginning to enter service in the Northeast Corridor. He and I both rode the VIP inaugural run to Boston a few weeks ago from DC Union Station, and I have to say I thought it was a beautiful trainset. It’s the fifth generation of the French TGV — but, as he pointed out with some pride, “these trains aren’t even in service in France yet.”

The Next Gen Acelas are faster, more comfortable, and built with the latest Tier III safety standards — the culmination of years of regulatory work by Amtrak, FRA, and advocates (including yours truly, who remembers sitting through what felt like centuries of technical committee meetings during the Federal Railroad Administration’s Rail Safety Advisory Committee work sessions to hammer out Tier III).

(Photo: Ken Briers, RPA)

Meanwhile, the Airo program is reshaping expectations across the rest of the country. These aren’t just new trainsets, but instead they’re part of an entire program of new maintenance facilities, new manufacturing partnerships, and new jobs.

Roger said that six new facilities — in Seattle, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia, Albany, and one more on the East Coast — are already under construction, each costing between $250 million and $500 million. “They’re on time and on budget,” he told the audience, “and they’re going to transform the customer experience.”

He sees these trains as more than hardware: they’re catalysts to rebuild a sustainable American rail-supply base, which is something we lost decades ago when companies like Pullman and Budd went under. “We need predictability,” I observed, “so the people who build these trains know the next order is coming.”

That’s one reason why Rail Passengers continues to make the case on Capitol Hill that maintaining a pipeline of new orders, like the Superliner replacements, is so important and goes well beyond just Amtrak. As taxpayers we’ve invested more than a decade into building these supply chains, and they will evaporate – and thus require expensive and time-consuming restoration – if new orders don’t continue.

I also raised the kinds of smaller, but no less important, issues passengers notice every day: dirty windows, dingy, tired cars, and trains that don’t always leave or arrive on time.

Roger didn’t dodge the question.

“We’ve heard you,” he said. “We’ve built or are building more than ten new automated car washes. Seattle, New Orleans, and Boston are already online; Chicago’s next.”

It’s not just cosmetic. Federal environmental rules require Amtrak to capture and treat all wash water, so these facilities are multimillion-dollar operations in their own right. Chicago is already operating on a test basis, and Roger told our audience he’s even planning to visit Chicago personally to make sure the new system launches and is working as intended.

And while we talked about soap and water, Roger connected it to something larger: Amtrak’s renewed focus on “running a good railroad every day.” That’s how he describes his back-to-basics push — an effort to put reliability, efficiency, and consistency ahead of everything else.

When I remarked that Amtrak has had some good days and bad days, Roger nodded and said that he and his team are staying focused on the fundamentals, the everyday things that keep riders coming back. And while there’s a lot of work still left to do, particularly around notifying passengers about incidents and ensuring that passengers whose trips have been disrupted get appropriate compensation, those fundamentals are starting to pay off.

By almost any metric, Amtrak just finished its best year ever, with record ridership of 34.5 million in Fiscal 2025, up from 31 million pre-COVID, plus record revenue, and record capital investment – roughly four times 2019’s capital budget, designed to start to catch up on decades of underinvestment.

And all this got done, Harris noted, with less equipment. The Horizon fleet was grounded for part of the year, yet Amtrak moved more passengers than ever thanks to smarter scheduling, faster turnarounds, and better yield management.

On-time performance is improving, too. September saw the best results ever for Northeast Regional trains since Amtrak began its customer on-time performance metrics in 2017 — twelve points better than the year before.

Still, he didn’t sugarcoat the ongoing challenges. “We’ve had uncertainty, changes, and plenty of tough days,” he said. “But our people are focused on the fundamentals. And it’s working.”

It’s not just trains. Amtrak’s capital program has grown by 400 percent since 2019, fueled by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Major projects are visible everywhere — the Portal North Bridge in New Jersey, the East River Tunnel rebuild, the Hudson River and B&P tunnels, and new bridges over the Susquehanna and Connecticut Rivers. I went to speak at a couple of those groundbreaking ceremonies, and there really was a sense of possibility in the air at those events.

“This is the first time in decades that Americans can see their [rail] tax dollars at work,” Roger told the audience. And he’s right. You can spot the cranes and new structures from the train window, rolling past the Portal North Bridge, or watching the crews preparing the Connecticut River bridge span for replacement.

As I said to Roger during our chat, it really is a great time to be Amtrak. Between the Gulf Coast’s long-awaited Mardi Gras service, the new Acelas, the coming Airo fleet, and visible progress on infrastructure, Amtrak is finally starting to deliver the kind of network we’ve all been dreaming of...so long as we can keep programs funded, reverse “hostage-taking” on important infrastructure restoration programs, and stay focused on the passenger.

Roger echoed that optimism but stayed grounded. “My job,” he said, “is to help our 20,000 employees succeed, to take away the barriers that get in their way.”

He was refreshingly honest during our conversation about what it takes to get there: long, unglamorous work; smart partnerships; and yes, listening to critics, including Rail Passengers Association and our 127,000 members, donors, and supporters, who care enough to keep pushing for better days ahead.