Stephen Gardner, CEO of railroad company Amtrak, is stepping down from his position “to ensure that Amtrak continues to enjoy the full faith and confidence of this administration,” according to a statement. Two sources told Reuters that this move had come after President Donald Trump sought the changes.
Gardner, who was appointed as CEO in 2022, said in his statement on Wednesday that he had been working at Amtrak for 16 years, and was the 13th executive to lead Amtrak since it was created in 1971.
“We look forward to working with President Trump and Secretary Duffy as we build the world-class passenger rail system this country deserves,” the Amtrak board said.
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This comes shortly after Trump ally and senior advisor Elon Musk, who is heading Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), said it was “kind of embarrassing” how other countries have “way better passenger rail than we do” and that “Amtrak is a sad situation,” at the Morgan Stanley’s Technology Media & Telecom (TMT) 2025 conference on March 5.
“I think we should privatize anything that can be privatized, just so you’ve got a feedback loop for improvement, is what happens when something’s privatized. Basically something’s got to have some chance of going bankrupt or there’s not a good feedback loop for improvement,” Musk said.
Amtrak is a federally chartered corporation, which means the federal government is its majority stockholder. Its board of directors, which includes the U.S. Transportation Secretary, is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
The train service carried a record 32.8 million passengers in fiscal year 2024 — a 15% increase from the year prior. Ticket revenue for fiscal 2024 hit a record $2.5 billion, according to the company, while it posted an operating loss of $635 million.
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Gardner, in a March memo, pushed back against criticism of Amtrak’s financial performance, and refuted the notion it should be privatized, stating that profitability was not Amtrak’s main goal, and that the heavily subsidized national railroads in other countries — which Musk mentioned — were also not expected to be profitable.
“It is further belied by more than half a century of inadequate federal funding that has left Amtrak with aged assets that are not in a state of good repair and thus more expensive to maintain,” the memo noted.
Another system that is being subject to privatization by the Trump administration is the two of the biggest government-owned mortgage firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The move comes amid the restructuring of the federal government under the DOGE initiative by Trump and Musk to cut costs.