Amtrak officials say train ridership is down about 80-percent as a result of the COVID pandemic.
A billion dollars in funding for the passenger rail industry is included in the current federal stimulus plan. Marc Magliari is an Amtrak spokesperson. He says that number won’t be enough to support the rail service long-term.
A lot of what was just passed by congress is a band-aid just to move things along for a couple months. And we and others in the travel industry will be going to the new congress that takes office starting in january to talk about some additional releif we need going forward.
Magliari says Amtrak has received about three-billion dollars in federal stimulus funding so far. However he says that’s about two-billion dollars short of what it needs.