Is Amtrak long distance truly relevant? From a personal foamer standpoint, my answer is yes. As a tax payer I'm happy to pay for Amtrak funding. I'm also happy to pay for highways, national parks, monuments, affordable air line pricing and everything else. That said it becomes difficult for the average person who has very little emotional attachment to trains to understand why we're paying for a rail system that is perceived as: chronically late, poorly run, expensive to maintain and not utilized (outside of the NEC) by even a significant minority of the population.
Case in point, a friend of mine's nephew was traveling from Chicago to visit my friend in Des Moines. My friend chronicled the train's tardiness on Facebook: First posting when 3 hours late, then four hours late, then expressing his frustration that he had to practically "drive to Missouri" to pick his nephew up because Amtrak doesn't serve Des Moines. Then finally posting the train arrived...nine hours late, and pointing out that the place he picked his nephew up was "a dump." Of course, other friends of his peppered his post with comments like, "that's it...I'm officially never taking Amtrak." "Just be glad the train stayed on the tracks." This is the perception a lot of potential riders and public has about Amtrak, especially outside the North East Corridor.
It's easy for those of us who love trains, even someone like me who isn't all that plugged in to the current state of Amtrak, to explain the reasons why Amtrak has problems: Lack of equipment, consistently starved for funding, poor understanding by politicians for what Amtrak is and could be, Amtrak and how politicians use the agency for their own grandstanding purposes, resentment from the freight railroads. Yadda, Yadda, Yadda. At the end of the day the potential Amtrak rider doesn't care about any of this. They want to get where they want to go on time and with the least hassle possible. They may understand an occasional delay because of mother nature or a train hitting a car or truck, but that's it. Unfortunately there are 40 years worth of Amtrak's "trips from hell" floating around out there dogging the company.
Between the perceived public reputation of Amtrak, how it's used as a political football by politicians and chronic equipment shortages--might Amtrak do a better job and create a better reputation for itself by curtailing some long distance operations and creating more corridor and mid distance trains? I'm not saying you need to cut all long distance trains, but maybe have 1 or 2 from Chicago to points west, 1 from Chicago to New York and 1 from Chicago down towards New Orleans. Then perhaps focus on corridor and mid-distance trains throughout the rest of the system? I'm not familiar enough with Amtrak's schedules these days to determine if this is workable, I'm just spit balling.
Ideally the solution is to educate our elected officials on why Amtrak was created. How politics and starvation funding have hurt and hindered the company. How investing in equipment, infrastructure and the rider experience may not make it profitable--but might help us create a cleaner environment, might get more people to ride the system and could create a reliable transportation alternative that is worth supporting. That unfortunately, probably won't happen in our current political environment.