In November 2021, Congress passed the
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Section 22214 of the law orders the
Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to study the restoration of all
long-distance Amtrak routes that had been discontinued, daily service on non-daily trains (the and ), and the possibility of new long-distance routes—particularly those that were discontinued upon the formation of Amtrak. Included in the regional reports was information about current LD routes trip origin-destination pairs, as well as similar information for proposed routes. Materials from the meetings indicated that the FRA was studying 18
discontinued long-distance Amtrak routes, as well as four that were discontinued on Amtrak's creation in 1971: the
City of Miami,
George Washington,
Pan-American, and
San Francisco Chief. In August 2023, the FRA released their second round of meeting materials. In November 2023, the FRA released their interim report to congress describing their current progress in the study. In February 2024, the FRA released its third round of meeting materials which included a preferred draft network of fifteen new long-distance routes. The plan would increase the coverage of the long-distance Amtrak network by 23,200 route miles, reaching an additional 45 million population, 61 metropolitan statistical areas, twelve
National Park Service sites, and two states (
Wyoming and
South Dakota). == Notes ==