List of major cities in U.S. lacking Amtrak service

Several major cities and regional business centers in the continental United States lack Amtrak or some form of inter-city passenger rail service. Four of these metropolitan areas boast more than one million residents. However, some of these cities may be served by Thruway Motorcoach. Other than the service provided by the Alaska Railroad, there is no U.S. based passenger rail service outside of 46 of the contiguous states and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec. There is no inter-city passenger rail service to the states of South Dakota or Wyoming. For purposes of this list, a city is considered served if it is within 30 miles of an Amtrak or other inter-city passenger rail station. A partial list of the cities with a population of over 100,000 that are not served by some form of inter-city rail service is as follows (in order by decreasing population of metropolitan area):

In addition, the following cities are not directly served by inter-city rail service, but have a rail station within 30 miles of the city.

Other cities are not served directly due to inconvenient water barriers:

Amtrak provides no service to Mexico. The closest Amtrak service to Mexico may be found at stations along the western portion of the Sunset Limited and southwestern portion of the Texas Eagle in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California; as well as the Pacific Surfliner service to Union Station in San Diego.

Phoenix, Arizona is served via Thruway Motorcoach from the Southwest Chief at Flagstaff, Arizona. The Sunset Limited stops three times a week at Maricopa, roughly 30 miles (48 km) south of the city; private taxis and the Maricopa MAX express bus are the only transportation from there to metro Phoenix, although MAX bus schedules do not coincide with Amtrak, which arrives during the night. Phoenix lost direct service in June 1996 after Southern Pacific (now part of the Union Pacific) threatened to abandon the line from Yuma.

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