Northeast Regional (including Acela) is also very successful. But you may not consider that long distance. In fact, I thought most of the Amtrak's profits came from that. There are a couple other city pairs that do reasonably but, yes, mostly not.
I took the Acela NY to Boston this year, and won't ever do it again. What was the time difference from the non-high speed supposed to be? I think it's a 40 minute difference or something.
We had multiple delays along our route and the 4 hour trip turned into almost 7.
Yeah, there are various regions but I don't consider it long distance until it has a sleeper (which I don't believe Acela has).
Pacific Surfliner is also very popular and close to profitable.
To be fair, Amtrak could make some or more of its routes profitable depending on how it allocates expenses - after all, they get hired to run some of the commuter rails, too.
No, Acela doesn't really make sense for Boston to DC travelers in general although I've done it when time wasn't really critical. Yeah Pacific SW combinations can work--again if time isn't of the essence. Have also done other relatively short routes like Raleigh to Charlotte.
LA → San Diego is competitive or even beats car trips (during rush hour).
It’s always my great sadness that they didn't make that the first high-speed rail segment, heck a few billion dollars on double track and other improvements would have cut an hour off that time. I don’t even know if LA union Station is straight though yet.
