AMTRAK
Brand Development
Founded in 1971, The National Passenger Railroad Corporation—or “Amtrak”—provides medium- and long-distance rail travel to over 500 destinations.
Amtrak serves 30 million passengers per year covering 21,400 miles in Canada and the US. These numbers pale compared with the airline industry’s 778 million domestic passengers per year (pre-pandemic) but are on the rise.
(Above) the California coastal “Surfliner” Amtrak route; one of the many spectacular routes of which many Americans remain unaware.
PROBLEM + PROCESS
Since its inception in 1971, Amtrak has never turned a profit.
Despite its continental reach, the majority of Amtrak’s revenue comes from commuters. Amtrak uses profits from these lines to offset losses on long-distance routes, a practice that perennially falls short.
Compared to domestic transportation competitors (air, car, and bus), Amtrak’s long-distance routes are seen as slow and pricey, essentially pointless. AMTRAK is further under threat due to the lingering impact of the pandemic and ambitions of small-government think tanks.
As this chart from Eno Center for Transportation shows, AMTRAK now concedes to losing $1B dollars annually going forward.
In order to address shortfalls in ridership and revenue, I created a speculative campaign, Travel Mind Fully, that A) transforms the apparent drawbacks of long-distance Amtrak travel into its selling points and B) highlights the wondrous array of routes and destinations that Amtrak serves across our staggeringly gorgeous and diverse country.
Through touchpoints such as collectible notebooks tailored to each route, the campaign conveys long-distance travel on Amtrak as a meaningfully paced journey, an uncommon time to observe and reflect, within and without.
Travel Mind Fully reminds riders that—more than a mere means of conveyance—rail travel offers time and space to settle in and behold this wide and varied country from a new, surprising, and comfortable perspective.
