But that's freight. If there's really a situation where we need to move vast numbers of /people/ around the country, the few dozen passenger consists that Amtrak owns or leases are just not gonna do the job. It would need to be the highways (probably pressing transit and school buses into service) or nothing.

It's possible that the NE corridor services could be helpful in an emergency, but for the vast majority of the country, the idea that Amtrak could be pressed into service as anything other than a minor sideline during a major evacuation or emergency is a just a weird fantasy.