Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Investing $4.5B into Upgrades, Northeast Corridor
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. After achieving records in both ridership and revenue, Amtrak is ready to invest $4.5 billion in some major upgrades. The problem is the Trump administration has proposed major cuts to subsidies for the Northeast Corridor. So how is that going to affect Amtrak?

really Bloomberg clients and viewers who use this product so regularly. Joining us now to talk about that is Amtrak president Roger Harris. Roger, great to have you on. I know everybody in this office and certainly

many of our terminal users and Bloomberg television viewers and Bloomberg radio listeners uses your product a ton because we're always going back and forth between Boston and New York and Washington DC. It's really important. How will the Trump administration affect what you're able to invest? Well, thank you, Matt. And first of all, thank you for having us on today to talk about what's going on at Amtrak.

As you said, we've had record ridership in revenue in the past year. In fact, in the last few years,

And we've really seen that all across the country, not only in the Northeast Corridor, but also in places like Washington State, Oregon, North Carolina, Virginia. Even our new service in the Midwest between Chicago and the Twin Cities carried almost a quarter of a million customers in its first year. But specifically about the Northeast Corridor,

Our capital spending has increased between 2019 and this year from $800 million to $4.5 billion. And really, this is not so much a question of less money for the NEC. It's a change in the sources of funding for the projects that we're building. So traditionally...

A lot of the Northeast Corridor investment was funded from the operating earnings on the service. And during COVID, Congress appropriated more money for the Northeast Corridor to help underwrite the operating losses that occurred then. And what we're seeing now in the FY26 budget is really kind of a return to what the normal balance is between operating earnings, funding, some of the capital work on the Northeast Corridor. Right.

Right. Versus our annual appropriation. Well, talk to us a little bit more about how you're going to make up for that. I hear what you're saying that we're just going back to maybe pre-COVID levels when it comes to, you know, the subsidies for the Northeast Corridor. But even still, where do you plan to find the funding sources to make up for that going away, basically?

Well, I think there are two ways to think about this. One is what I said, which is the increase in operating earnings. So that's hundreds of millions of dollars a year that goes towards these projects. But the other thing to think about is that the split in our appropriation from Congress – it talks about the Northeast Corridor versus the national network –

about where the- assets are. Exists so much as it is the types of trade so- there are trains in the national network that come from states like Pennsylvania and Virginia that operate on the northeast part or and- the operation of those trades which contribute- the funding and that appropriation contributes to the reinvestment. On these assets so it's not quite a perfect alignment between-

which account the uh... which account the assets are funded from and where the train drop there seem to be a lot of projects

Bloomberg's reporters here are focused on. We've got some brilliant questions from Ted Mann, so shout out and thank you to him. The Frederick Douglass tunnel in Baltimore is one that the Republicans are making a lot of noise about potentially changing that project. Is that going to go through? The Susquehanna Bridge in Maryland needs to be replaced. The Connecticut River Bridge.

Are all of these projects that we're so focused on going to continue to be funded? Yes. You know, one of the things, Matt, that's going on is we're working with the administration and trying to understand where there's a lot of common ground on these projects because it

It's been made really clear to me and to the other members of Amtrak management that the administration is really interested in us running an efficient, reliable service and building great infrastructure. So you mentioned the Connecticut River Bridge, which we're building up near Old Saybrook in Connecticut. Just a few weeks ago, we got the grant for funding that project obligated by the administration, and they were very clear on the fact that they want to get that built.

We continue to talk to them about the Frederick Douglass Tunnel, and we're working on ways to reduce the total project cost. And we've come up with a lot of good ideas, and we're working through them with them.

We also had a project in Newark, New Jersey, the dock bridge, where we came up with some great ideas on how to reduce the total cost of the project. And we got a good shout out from the administration. So I would say that the challenge here is finding out where the common ground is, which there's a lot of that. It really is. And getting the projects built.

You know, last month I made the mistake of trying to take a plane when I needed to travel to Virginia. It ended in tears and pretty much a lost weekend. And the next week I was smart enough to take the train instead. It's a far better way to travel when you don't want to sit in the airport for nine hours and then find out that your flight is finally canceled. Are you able to...

take advantage of the chaos that U.S. airlines cause in travel because it's just so much easier and more reliable to take the train. Yeah, absolutely, Matt. You know, we look at the amount of traffic that we compete with the airlines on, and that's not really our primary focus. We want to get people out of their cars. But, you know,

What we want to make sure we do is that we have reliable service and that we communicate with our customers. We have great new Acela trains. I don't know if you want to talk about that right this minute, but we have brand new Acela that we are, you know, in the final steps of getting approved. I think you heard that from us before, but we are extremely close now. Got the final approvals from the Federal Road Administration earlier this week.

And, you know, that's one more step in improving the reliability and the comfort of the product for the end customer. So I really see us stepping up our

competitiveness of the airlines. Roger, we have less than a minute here, but I want to talk about that a little bit more because you compare Amtrak to the airlines. For airlines, I mean, you think about a fully booked first class, in many cases, that would subsidize the rest of the plane. Have you considered going ultra high end when it comes to what Amtrak offers on the higher end? Have you considered modeling luxury train travel in Europe?

Well, we've looked at it briefly, but really we see that our core mission is to deliver transportation to the American people. We're probably not the best people to be delivering that kind of very bespoke, very sort of limited product. We want to make sure that we focus the benefits and see money that the government invests in us in America.

touching as many of the technical customers as possible. All right, Roger, really appreciate your time. That is Amtrak president Roger Harris. There's a myth a lot of us grow up believing that hair loss is just a part of life. It happens. It runs in the family. Once it starts, there's no stopping it. But here's the truth. That's outdated thinking. Scientific understanding of hair loss has advanced in recent years.

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