If by Northeast you mean Boston - NY - DC, probably true, since that is just about the only profitable line that Amtrak has. But two of the lines in PA, which, last time I checked was still in the Northeast, are just about the worst in the country. I've ridden the Pittsburgh to Lewistown line [which can either be a Pittsburgh to Philly or DC, depending on time of day.] That train is scheduled to run 3:15, which is already
ridiculously long, and in the half-dozen times I rode it, it was never
less than 40 minutes late. Once, it was THREE HOURS late. How do you arrive three hours late on a barely three hour run?
Cross country I've fared no better. A four hour layover in Chicago is usually more like five or six hours, and once, during an Amtrak labor stoppage I was in Union Station a whopping TWENTY HOURS.
In 1994 I was taking the California Zephyr through the Rockies. The train was scheduled for a 1 hour refueling in Denver. Because of the length of the stop, passengers were encouraged to go into the station for lunch or to stretch their legs. The train left without making any announcement after a mere twenty minutes, stranding over a hundred passengers on the platform who were ferried by SCHOOL BUS into Southern Wyoming, where they hooked up a drinking car and a passenger car onto a Conrail train to take us into Salt Lake City. So much for the scenic view of the Rockies.
Amtrak sucks, period. The reason no one rides the line is because they have very, very few scheduled runs, they can't stay on time, their cars are filthy and their service is terrible. The porter won't touch your luggage until you've actually walked up three steps and handed it to him, at which point he takes two steps, turns around, and places it in an insecure open access area, and you'd better have a fiver for him if you ever want to see your luggage again.
Amtrak has got one good commuter. But it isn't a serious alternative to air travel over any significant distance anywhere in this country.
The “Northeast Corridor” is also the only line that the politicians focus on. 80 percent of it is owned by Amtrak; the other 20 percent is owned by state departments of transportation. I noted earlier that the feds
promised 160-mph operation on that corridor as early as 1969, but never delivered; here we are 45 years later and they are echoing the same empty promises.
What is sad is that the former Pennsylvania RR main line east of Pittsburgh is supposed to be one of the “federally-designated high-speed corridors”, but they don't bother to procure a tilting train for the mountain section with lots of curves. The track is also Class 4 track, which means no faster than 79 mph for passenger trains and no faster than 60 mph for freights (your Federal Railroad Administration micromanaging at work). Maybe if the feds got out of the way and let the private companies have a crack at it without all the historical overregulation, it could become something better.