Clearly Transport Secretary Mineta knows nothing of railroading, and in particular running non-commuter passenger service. His statement that Amtrak should learn from the Alaska Railroad is way off base, in fact, wrong headed. ARR is a niche railroad. Amtrak is not.
Actually, Amtrak and ARR are both niche railroads, they just serve different niches. The Secretary also failed to note that ARR also has a regular freight service, which may provide an internal subsidy to cover any passenger losses.
Not to mention that the Alaska RR was, if I recall correctly, built using military dollars.
Dave Nelson
And he doesn’t realize the passenger trains and fraight thrains are scheduled by the same people!
I have made the analogy between Mineta and Amtrak and a bean counter who tells NY City to close down the Manhattan bus system (with a few exceptions) because all its passengers can be handled by the subway, and at much lower subsidy. Of course, for many people the busses are a near necessity, they don’t want to ride underground, and for that reason, there are many NY City bus lines that parallel the subways and they are used. Although the subsidy per passenger is far higher on the Manhattan buses than on the subway.
But now it’s like that bean counter has visited Staten Island Ferry, which has a subsidy far higher, per passenger, than either the bus lines or the subways. Then this same bean counter gets a freebee on Carnival Cruise Lines, complete with band, gourmet meals, stateroom with shower, etc. and says NY City is at fault and looses money on the Ferry Boat because it isn’t like Carnival Cruise Lines.
And of course the people that ride the bus over Veranzano Bridge and then connect with R-train subway to New York cost the city far less in subsidy than those that ride the Ferry. Doesn’t that “prove that highways are better than water transportation?” Mineta’s reasoning would say yes. Anyone sensible would say it is not in anyway a fair comparison.
One of the things that I tell my business students is that there are three types of people who should NEVER, EVER be allowed any say in the design of a product or service. First are the accountants, since they will have a burger stand selling hamburgers that are made out of soybean meal, beef tallow, and sawdust, since these ingredients are cheap. Second, one should never allow the advertising types to be involved in product design, since they will want to put all sorts of bells, lights, and whistles in the package with the soybean meal, beet tallow, and sawdust burgers. Finally, if the lawyers get involved, then they will not allow us to sell our sawdust burgers with the bells, ect. to anybody because of product liability.
It would be interesting if we put the cost ($5 billion plus) of a couple of major airport upgrades into Amtrack instead. Then, we might actually see some improvements.
[soapbox]
Wow, what business school is that?
Most Business Schools try to teach the importance of as much input as possible in product and service design: from the accountants for costing, from the ad people because they often have a better sense of public needs, and the lawyers because … well, yes, because of product liability concerns because that can be a company’s number one downfall — putting a dangerous product on the market.
So, I am curious, which Business School do you teach at, and who DO you suggest get involved in a product or service design?
Best regards, Michael Sol
Where to begin? Maybe I should rephrase things a bit so that my statement is a bit more specific. Something like “Never let these groups DRIVE product design.” While costs are important, it is the accountants who are more likely to come up with the idea of cutting quality in order to reduce costs. By profession, accountants tend to be concerned only with costs and the bottom line of an Income Statement. They are not trained to think beyond that, leading to tunnel vision.
Second,
Well, this doesn’t really explain why you would keep the company lawyers OUT of the process, it seems like it offers good reasoning to get them INTO the process early. This is particularly true where safety standards are set both by regulatory agencies through legal proceedings, and in court proceedings. Safety in design is very often a legal standard, not specifically an engineering standard.
Indeed, “safe design” is a negligence or tort law concept, not an engineering concept, and that is of utmost importance for business students entering the field to fully understand.
While hyperbole is a pronounced exageration, it isn’t the word used for getting it backwards.
Fortunately, most companies do usually engage in product reviews through counsel these days and while it certainly hasn’t ended product liability suits, it has gone a long ways to making products safer.
I suppose your students will just have to learn about that the hard way.
That, and the proper use hyperbole.
Best regards, Michael Sol
Michael-Suggest you read the post again. He said you would not want the lawyers to DRIVE the process.
In many years of doing product development for railroads I wholeheartedly agree. I know several fine railroad lawyers, including my roommate at the Univ. of Tenn, but their talents lie elsewhere.
The first barrier they face is that they are raised in a world of argument and confrontation. That may make for a good legal system but it is a bad approach with customers and marshalling company resources for a new product. The second is my lawyer was paid to warn me about riks in areas that are not black or white but grey. The good ones were always worried. This is an important staff service but marketing is a line function. It is about putting your neck out and accepting appropriate risks.
Well, I did read that post. But I also read the first post that said " there are three types of people who should NEVER, EVER be allowed any say in the design of a product or service …".
I guess the “NEVER, EVER” caught my eye because he felt strongly enough to emphasize it. by using capital letters, so that I would especially read that part. KIND OF LIKE THE LAWNMOWER NOTICE.
I understand that he then strongly qualfied his original statement almost to the point of retraction, but my point was that anyone teaching business students that they should keep the company lawyers out of the loop on safety issues, when in fact those are in many cases legal compliance issues, is not just misguided. And I should perhaps emphasize that, because legal compliance issues on matters of safety is of utmost – not ancillary – importance to corporate conduct and ultimately corporate profitability.
And of course, it was my post that said nothing about “driving the process,” but only suggested “the importance of as much input as possible.”
And nothing more.
Best regards, Michael Sol
Norm is not a very smart dude
…but apparently alot smarter than Gunn, et al, in that at least Secretary Mineta has the discerning ability to differentiate between forward-thinking passenger operations and backward thinking anachronitis. All Gunn has done so far is to keep on shoveling the same ole BS we’ve been subject to now for the last three decades.
Whatr Mineta should have learned but was too plain dumb, is that when the Fedreal subsidy is high enough to do the job right, which plainly on a per passenger basis, it is a lot higher for Alaska, the Feds built the rr with tax dollars after all, the service and impression on the passenger is top notch. Which it certainly would be on Amtrak with 2 Billion a year and Gunn running the show.
Again, I must use the timeless analogy of the pot calling the kettle black. How the original ARR was financed is an apples and oranges argument. Whether the Alaska RR was built with federal funds or by using the land grant method, either way would have gotten the job done. At the time, it was thought that the RR should be a federal government operation, so naturally it was federally funded. If the feds thought that a private company or the Alaskan government could be entrusted with the job, they could have used the land grant enticement. Alaska had (and still has) way too much land under federal control, so using it to encourage development was and still is an apt idea.
Why you think Amtrak would be top notch if only the rail grid in the lower 48 was financed with federal tax dollars is to apparently ignore the role of the land grants down here. The feds DID help finance the primary railroads in most of the U.S. via the land grants, but for some inexplicable reason the federally run passenger rail service is sub par. Perhaps the answer lies in the difference of ROW ownership between Alaska and the lower 48, as well as who it is running passenger trains up there vs those down here!
If there ever is a serious effort to connect the end or track east of Fairbanks with the North American rail network, the feds should offer the State of Alaska a sufficient land grant to build their share up to the Canadian border or beyond.
Thank God this argument got back on track . . . literally as well as figuratively!
I disagree with the last criticism of Gunn. He inhereted an operation where maintenance had been sacrificed to shore up the immediate bottom line and where some decisions, lilke the Acela program, had been made by incompetents, as the brake problem proves. He had a fine reputation as a person who could improve service while cutting costs before he came to Amtrak. If he had had the right support from the Administration, some of the problems of Amtrak would not be around. Others, like the Acela problem, take longer to fix. But money is badly needed to repair the damage of the lack of maintenance, which was characteristic of all of Amtrak’s management since Graham Claytor’s retirement. Reistrup and Claytor were really the last decent heads of Amtrak who knew the railroad business before Gunn.