Amtrak is not technically part of the federal government. It was set up as a private, for-profit corporation that is jointly owned by the government and the ra

Amtrak is not technically part of the federal government. It was set up as a private, for-profit corporation that is jointly owned by the government and the railroads whose passenger operations were turned over to Amtrak. The federal government's control over Amtrak is meant to end once Amtrak is able to operate independently, but Amtrak has never really been on a path to independent/profitable operations and will probably never get there. Amtrak's biggest challenge is that its service is inconvenient in most of the cities/towns it serves. For example, in Syracuse, NY, where Amtrak has 8 trains per day (four in each direction) that arrive at reasonably convenient times, the station is located on the outskirts of the city, far from the city center. Cleveland has the opposite problem: the station is near the downtown area, but all of the scheduled trains (4 per day, two in each direction) arrive between 1 am and 6 am. Where Amtrak is convenient to use (e.g. the NEC) it works reasonably well and is actually competitive with driving or flying.