The Northeast Corridor project was a public/private joint venture, started by the "High Speed Ground Transportation Act of 1965", involving the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Federal Government. Both invested equal shares, well in excess of 100 million total. The project started in 1965 under President Johnson, and the resulting Metroliner trains (operated by successor Penn Central) were placed in revenue service in 1969 under President Nixon.

Unfortunately, the Metroliners were a problem child, what with their onboard Westinghouse traction motors and electrical equipment constantly failing (where have heard about that problem before!), So after 3 years of Amtrak operation, an Amtrak initiative to replace the Metroliners was begun, which bore fruit by 1977 under President Ford, when production of the AEM7 started; which then permitted the conversion of metroliner cars into locomotive hauled trains at 110mph. Metroliner conversion was completed by 1978, barely one year into Carter's Administration.

If I recall correctly, funding was not by direct federal grant, but by a slight of hand financial gimmick, involving a clever leaseback arrangement and tax breaks, first authorized by congress under Pres. Ford; then later repealed in 1994 by Clinton, along with several other so-called loopholes.

So Carter had not one dang thing to do with any of it. He inherited it. Moreover, the airline industry's loudest complaints about the High speed rail service were directed at Mr Carter, who did attempt to please them with significant infrastructure subsidies and deregulation. Carter was nice enough to include the railroads in that deregulation, but the Staggers act as it applied to railroads has been a mixed bag for regional economies.

Meanwhile, the NE corridor received no such thing. In fact, the full scope of the project, and the maximum speeds envisioned in the original Act, were never realized; mostly because the promised federal infrastructure funding to complete the original vision, dried up under almost every president since, including Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan.

That is until 1991 under Papa Bush, when the "Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991", authorized money for new high speed tilt trains and significant infrastrure improvements, including the extension of catenary north of New Haven, and significant track improvements south of NYC. The Acela thus replaced the locmotive hauled Metroliners in November 2000, under then President Clinton.

So again, all of the Presidents of either party, have had an equally dismal record when it comes to supporting Amtrak, or passenger rail in general. And I believe I have identitified the actual reasons for this in previous posts.

I also believe that Amtrak is not the only possible way to have a good national "system" of trains. There are many alternatives, some of which might even be better than Amtrak. But discussing that will have to wait for another time, as I have a deadline looming and need to get busy.

OPB