The New York Times publishes a report on an interview of Amtrak President Alex Kummant by Matthew Wald and Trains’ columnist Don Phillips.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/washington/23amtrak.html
Among many other things, Kummant wants to keep long distance trains and appearantly he and Amtrak Chairman Laney are no longer considering a spin off of the Northeast Corridor.
That is good news.
However, it’s ironic as these are among the issues that led to David Gunn’s termination.
But Minetta isn’t involved anymore.
…And isn’t that a blessing.
Amen!
SUPER FANTASTIC!
Forgot about that! That’s one transportation secretary that’s not going to be missed. Wasn’t much help on the Homeland Security issue either. Hampered more than helped.
Bye Norm! Hope you do well, but please don’t come back.
Putting two and two together, I may have come up with five, but this is my view.
At this point, I am not convinced that the issues had so much to do with Dave Gunn’s firing. Rather I think it was because he succeeded in bucking the Bush Administration and built the Congressional support necessary to get grant funding far in excess of the White House/DOT requests. No doubt, his unwillingness to go along with the Administration’s various ideas for Amtrak was a big factor in his being pushed out.
I won’t claim that either the President or Secretary Mineta initiated the action against Gunn. The President was and still is far to busy with other matters and, for reasons that those who know him still don’t understand, Secretary Mineta just went along with anything that was handed to him by his underlings. It is fairly well extablished that his deputy that was handling Amtrak has a conservative ideology and I think he pursued the fairly common approach of the Bush Administration-“If you are not with us, you’re out of here!”
So the question might be, “What has changed so that Kummant can go forward with basicly the same position on Amtrak issues that had been presented by Gunn?” The answer could be that there have been some big changes. Dealing with Iraq, the White House has even less time for anything else. Mineta, and even more importantly, his deputy is gone. The new leaders in Congress are more inclined to provide greater funding for Amtrak.
Finally, I suspect that Kummant looked at the various Amtrak issues and, possessing the necessary selfconfidence and leadership skills, is moving on his agenda, even if it is similar to the position held by Gunn.
As
Jeaton,
Very though provoking and insightful. I do hope that you are right and hopefully Amtrak’s future outlook improves considerably.
Inspite of the frequent criticisms, over here in the Tampa Bay area the Silver Star still continues to run 8 to 11 cars in length with plenty of passengers onboard. Impressive sight watching the Star whip by at nearly 80 mph near my neighborhood. [4:-)][tup]
Inspite of the Amfleet cars looking a bit worn and the intentional/unintentional delays caused by CSX, it seems that Amtrak must be doing something right.[C):-)]
We can only hope that maybe, A. Kummant, is the first breath of new air, as far as AMTRAK is concerned; not just another political hack, who is going to pee down our collective legs, and tell us it is raining!
It is a shame that the machinations within, and witout of AMTRAK for lo thesem many years have generated levels of cynacism, rather than outlooks of hope and better days.[2c]
[quote user=“jeaton”]
Putting two and two together, I may have come up with five, but this is my view.
At this point, I am not convinced that the issues had so much to do with Dave Gunn’s firing. Rather I think it was because he succeeded in bucking the Bush Administration and built the Congressional support necessary to get grant funding far in excess of the White House/DOT requests. No doubt, his unwillingness to go along with the Administration’s various ideas for Amtrak was a big factor in his being pushed out.
I won’t claim that either the President or Secretary Mineta initiated the action against Gunn. The President was and still is far to busy with other matters and, for reasons that those who know him still don’t understand, Secretary Mineta just went along with anything that was handed to him by his underlings. It is fairly well extablished that his deputy that was handling Amtrak has a conservative ideology and I think he pursued the fairly common approach of the Bush Administration-“If you are not with us, you’re out of here!”
So the question might be, “What has changed so that Kummant can go forward with basicly the same position on Amtrak issues that had been presented by Gunn?” The answer could be that there have been some big changes. Dealing with Iraq, the White House has even less time for anything else. Mineta, and even more importantly, his deputy is gone. The new leaders in Congress are more inclined to provide greater funding for Amtrak.
Finally, I suspect that Kummant looked at the various Amtrak issues and, possessing the necessary selfconfidence and leadership skills, is moving on his agenda, even if it is similar to the position held by Gunn.