Announcement made today. Perhaps the new administration signalled him they have someone else in mind.
The new admin has no say except over the board and there terms are not up. I’d bet he was frrustrated he couldn’t fix things.
Why any sane business person would want to be the CEO of Amtrak is a mystery. It is a political organization masquerading as a business. How does a sane business person respond to 535 prima donnas (U.S. Congress) who are convinced that they know more about running a passenger railroad than anyone else? Amtrak is a poster child of how not to run a railroad. In fact, it is even a bad political organization.
According to Trains Newswire today, the board forced him out in a dispute over restructuring the debt; he and the chairman disagreed on matters related to debt restructure. No details were given.
The Amtrak Board is comprised of individuals whose selection may not have been based on their knowledge of the railroad business or perhaps any business at all – Joe Biden’s son is a poster child of an example. For that matter, the Amtrak Chairman is a Transportation Department executive who left to become a lobbyist for clients such as Boeing.
While I may not have agreed with everything Mr. Kummant attempted to do, I tend to accept his side as what would have been in the best interest of the company. .
That’s why the best and most successsful have been “true’ believers”, that is, people like us with,perhaps an unhealthy interest in trains. Those would include Reistrup, Claytor and Gunn. They at least has some sort of vision for the company and a high enough interest level to stick with it longer than any rational person would.
I worked for Amtrak for 13 years in the training operations departments. I enjoyed my work and travel with this company. Anything that the government puts there hands on they destroy it The only reason Amtrak has made it this far is because people need passenger trains in United States. The passenger train of today is still a poor tool. The equipment needs repair and with chickenwire and glue they keep the trains running. What is so badly needed in just about everything the government does his leadership something this government has no idea of. They get little boys and little girls that went to some college somewhere and that makes him qualified to be on the board of directors(appointed by the president of the United States) they make decisions on how to run trains and where to get the money to run the company. I liked Alex Kumant and I believe that he was given the chance he could straighten out a lot of the problems that Amtrak has. If we leave running a railroad up to the idiots in Congress forget it, we may as well go back to the horse and buggy days. We see what has happened to CSX when the whiz kids got on their board. There is no leadership anywhere today and it’s getting worse. You asked who would want to be the CEO of Amtrak, I wonder about that also. Just watch who they choose to be the next president of Amtrak. Look who is on the Board of Directors of Amtrak look into who they are and you’ll see what I mean. Amtrak was a great idea but as long as you don’t have any leadership you have what you got now. As our country goes down the tubes with the new administration that we have just voted on, watch what’s going to happen to Amtrak who knows how it will end up. I just can’t see anything good coming from the idiots in Congress and the Senate.Wake up America before it is too late
I am curious if you have some specific deficiencies in mind regarding the way Amtrak is operated.
The reason I ask is that being essentially a kid at heart, I like the idea of space travel, and I like trains. When I draw comparisons to what is happening with Amtrak to some of the concerns with NASA, my train advocate friends get all huffy that NASA has 10 times the budget of Amtrak and besides space travel is all pork-barrel waste and trains are a serious matter, but to react that way misses the point, to see if there are any common patterns in government agencies.
With what NASA is doing, their advocacy community may be armchair engineers and managers the way we are, but at least they have some pretty specific concerns. If you go on any of number of “rocket blogs”, the notion is that in the wake of the Columbia accident, NASA was given the charge to return humans to the Moon, and they have managed to spend a goodly amount of time and money on returning to the Moon, but they appear to be doing it badly and perhaps disasterously.
On one hand, they appear to have designed a Moon ship (a pair of them really, an Earth-return reentry module and a Moon lander) that is too big for the rocket they have in mind. The size of the Moon ship is driven by the desire to have something bigger than Apollo, what they did 40 years ago, an “Apollo on steroids.” It appears that the size of the Moon ship was driven by a desire to have something bigger and better rather than on practical considerations of what it would take to get it there. I also hear that the Moon ship is to allow for 6 foot-plus astronauts out of some desire to be socially inclusive,
Maybe I’m thickheaded, but I do not understand your comments about NASA. What has this got to do with Amtrak.
As long as I can remember I have been interested in passenger trains. When I went to Europe and Japan and saw how they run trains I always wondered why we do it the way we do. Someone has got to wake up to the fact that trains anywhere will not make a profit. Why can’t people understand this? Passenger trains are labor-intensive. Each car has to have an attendant even though I don’t understand why but that’s the way it is. You can’t just have a door way open at the station and expect people, the passenger to get on sitdown and go to where they are going without someone telling them where to sit pick up their tickets and make sure they get off at the right place. Yes I guess a lot of automation could come into being but so far I’ve seen nothing. Train crews want to put people where they want them because it’s easier for them to know where they are.
Look at the sleeping cars we have an attendant on each car that makes the beds puts them down when the passenger wants them down and all over waits on them. What do you expect for paying the price that you are paying to sleep on a train. The cars of today that we ride on were talking about over $1 million apiece. How do we pay for the car and make a profit at the same time with labor and maintenance and all over operation of the car. So we have to wake up to the fact that the price of the ticket will not cause a profit at what we are charging. I have heard some yo-yos Say that if it can’t make a profit that should not be run. Okay I agree let’s close down the airlines, bus lines, commuter trains,trucks and long-distance trains because none of them make a profit. The airlines are subsidized because we the taxpayers pay for the operation people. The truck and bus lines run on highways made by taxpayers, commuter trains are subsidized by state governments so yes I agree let’s shut it all
Whether in either the public or private sector, a certain amount of in-house politics is going to be played in climbing the ladder above the first level of management. While this means that some unqualified persons who are political sharks will climb and some able people who are unwilling to become someone else’s protege will get left behind, it does foster a certain amount of positive loyalty both up and down and generally works for the good of the organization.
WOW, I thought I would see some comment like I have in this last letter from Paul. I don’t agree at all with his last sentence which says" it does foster a certain amount of positive loyalty both up and down and generally works for the good of the organization." This is complete bull I don’t understand positive loyalty both up and down. All I know is in all the years I’ve worked and I’m still working I still see this going on. I’m very fortunate now to where I can tell these politicians or managers in a higher category to more or less take this job and shove it I don’t want it anymore. I packed my bags and leave when they want me to get involved in the politics of their company. I haven’t had to quit but two times since 1991 because of politics.
I have never seen the so-called term politics actually make a company any better, all I see is a company loses some good people as they packed their bags and leave. Paul take the rose-colored glasses off and look at your company like you are an outsider. In the years I’ve been in a certain company I’ve had a chance to judge in my opinion who is good and who isn’t, I see the people that are not what I would call my chosen people I have seen them go up the ladder because of their arrogant attitude or poor temperament. I’ve seen it with my own eyes and I watch them in a year or so crashed to the bottom and disappear from our company. But why did it take two years to finish him.How did the man get the job to start with. I find some ways to move up the ladder is that you play golf with the boss. You take him out to dinner buy them drinks just show all over friendship and a few months later I see that person move up. This is what I mean about leadership there isn’t any.
You said
I said, perhaps there are lessons learned about other government programs such as NASA, and you said
What NASA has got to do with Amtrak is that NASA is “Amtrak in Space.” It is a lot more like Amtrak than one would think. It has a small, vocal advocacy community. It has critics who would like to do away with it. It has a larger public that is largely indifferent to the whole operation. It perceives itself to be seriously underfunded for the mission it has been given, but a lot of people who favor what it does believes it could spend money more wisely.
What I don’t understand about your position is that 1) government is required to help pay for the trains because “trains never make a profit”, but that 2) government is ruining the trains because there is a lack of “leadership” to keep the trains clean and to change out the broken toilet seats. If something is unable to operate at a profit, it is also going to operate without the profit motive, and I guess you are suggesting that an inspired leader could substitute for the guiding hand of profits and loss to make all the right decisions?
If one makes the point too vigorously that trains are never profitable, are intrinsically expensive, and require large amounts of direct government subsidy, one is making the critics’ case.
“But all of those other guys are getting subsidy”, and indeed they are, and the original Amtrak idea was that small boost in the way of subsidy would level the playing field. That small boost has grown to a steady diet, and if we subsidized autos at the rate that we subsidize Amtrak passengers on a cents-per-mile basis, we would be spending a cool trillion dollars a year on roads, and you know that even
HUH? Amtrak is a Quazi government concern.I never said the government is to pay subsides, I said who else will pay a subsidy, the private sector? Why would the private sector pay for anything other that what they own to make a profit! The idea of Amtrak to begin with is wrong. I have always said "Let the railroad’s run the passenger train and the government subsidize them to pay for what it cost to operate them on their railroad, labor and operations cost. The locomotives and cars would be able to operate on anybody’s railroad financed by government subsidies again as any transportation business is today.
I don’t like this idea of subsidies for any business. I can’t see why the taxpayer should be responsible for any business. If they can’t make it on their own, the best ideas to fold up and forget it. As I said yesterday there is no transportation business today that is self-supporting. Yes we could have a locomotive and some cars that wanders all around the country stopping at stations day and night with nobody on board and let the people shift for themselves. No diner, no sleeper no lounge car no employees on a train except the engineer in the front and a conductor at the rear and maybe with a schedule that people could see at the station only to cut down on printing cost. This kind of operation would make a profit but nobody in their right mind would ride the train like this.
So where are we now. The government is the only way out if we want high-speed comfortable, clean equipment on the trains we ride. But as usual the government does everything half assed. The trains are dirty outside and inside, employees walk around like they’re another world, the food service is adequate but that’s all you can say for it. At least you don’t starve on the train. Let’s talk about food service on a train. The food served on plastic plates like you find in a grocery store plastic utensils and food that tastes like plastic. Our great g
First, Amtrak needs another “true believer” to run the company. Someone who believes that trains are useful and has a clue about railroading. As has been pointed out, that’s a pretty small pool to fish from.
Second, Amtrak needs to be reformed. Not those silly political “privatization” or “dismemberment” reforms that have been floated out there from time to time, but some internal ones where the company as a whole and individuals or groups specifically have a reason to care, do better and improve the company. There are a bunch of ways to do this. All one has to do is look at private industry. None of these ways is perfect, but they’re all better than what’s going on now.
Third, the company needs some goals and/or guiding principals that those holding the keys to the kingdom will see as valuable. Make them as measurable as possible and then set up rewards in steps towards the goal.
Something like:
"We are Amtrak. This is what we do:
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xxx
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yyy
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zzz
We’ll know we’re doing it right when we see:
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xxxx
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yyyy
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zzz
From today’s paper:
Amtrak on Tuesday tapped the administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration to lead the national passenger railroad for a year.
Joseph Boardman replaces Chief Executive Alex Kummant, who resigned Nov. 14 after two years marked by significant growth in ridership and revenue.
Boardman, 59, has spent his career working on transportation issues at all levels of government. He takes over as president and CEO on Wednesday and will serve for one year, Amtrak’s board of directors announced. A search will begin in the coming months for a permanent replacement.
“I am keenly aware of the challenges facing us right now,” Boardman said in a statement. “In my view, a national intercity, interconnected passenger rail service is critically important for the mobility and energy independence of the United States.”
Ross Capon, president of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, described Boardman as a “knowledgeable and hard-nosed leader” who will push for passenger rail funding as part of any federal stimulus package involving infrastructure.
I, for one, applaud the naming of Joe Boardman as Amtrak president…his was the first name that came to my mind when Kummant departed. I have been a “fan” of Boardman, if you will, since before he became NYS DOT Comissioner. He understands railroads, he understands the passenger business, and he understands politics; he has had experiences from county level transportation problems and programs right up through his most recent FRA post. I think he will prove a very wise choice for the intrim, and hopefully will be considered permanent in due time.
Mr. Boardman held a Presidential appointment, so he was out of a job this coming January 20th. I’d be more comfortable with the selection if it were someone who was not about to become unemployed.
On a related issue, I have heard speculation that a longtime Biden staffer would be appointed to fill the remainder of the Senator’s term. Essentially, his job would be to serve as a placeholder until the next election, at which time Amtrak Board member Hunter Biden would run for the seat.
Yes, heard the Biden story, too. But I hope Boardman’s credentials are taken into account when the time comes for permenancy in this post…I believe he will do us all good.