What is going to happen to rail transportation in the short term ?. With Amtrak having a 50% reduction in future bookings how is it going to handle the finances ? Will it start cancelling many trains on some multi train routes ? That would seem prudent. LD routes cut or at least 2 or 3 day a week trips would be a harsh reality. Trying to get host RRs to reduce payments might be difficult.
It is not going to be easy for anyone laid off to find another job.
Freight RRs must be also hurting as well. Here in my neck of the woods CSX PSR trains have a very noticible shorter consist length. One IM train today was about 40 wells running DPU 1x1. First one I had seen with loco on rear. LAX IM reported down quite a bit.
Suspect freight RRs running fewer trains as almost all Amtrak trains are running very close to on schedule. The few not running is for the usual feight train interferrence, mechanicl, etc. The one exception is still the Crescent south of CLT on NS. The only black train this evening was #19 south of Meredian. There were many green trains system wide. The red ones were only 1:35 late or less.
With all these problems will congress come to the rescue of Amtrak or will it allow Amtrak to loose a?
It might be best if Amtrak would let persons share jobs. That could be for agents and OBS. However it might be time for sidelined cars to get very deep cleanings and upgrades. Time for maintenance to repair cars not needed for service. Maybe some agents and others not presently needed could go over to help maintenance take care of minor items needed to spiff up the rail cars.
The freight RRs should go for job share for T&E and maybe other positions ?
In my view, this is all going to be a flash in the pan and the crisis largely over by Summer or Fall at the latest. Stock Market will fully recover and so will the rails. One to Two quarter financial hit thought it looks like. I have a neighborhood app I log into that I can speak online with my neighbors with. All of them are way far down the road of panic and some are not being rational about this. I think the whole society is in that state right now.
Ah! We should have the ultimate in job sharing. One employee that does it all for each corporation. Produce the products of the company by magic and the ‘employee’ just presses the button to keep the money machine flowing money into his (or her) pocket. [/sarcasm]
I believe that almost any union contracts may be temporality suspended by actions ofour President. Do not put anything past him ! The need to flatten out the number of persons sick at one time is going to trump anything that is normal . Check out the PBS 1 hour about the 1918 flu epidemic.
If we ( the US ) are not careful law and order may break down ?
No. We’re better than that. We’re stronger than that. Except for the 30% among us who aren’t happy unless they’re terrified of something, and you can’t do anything with those people anyway.
The USA, Canada, the UK. Australia, New Zeakand, South Korea, Kazistan, Taiwan, and Israel are all going to pull through pretty much OK. Because we are all self-reliant people, who still are allowed mostly to think for ourselves and not required to do things completely irrational because some higher political or religious authority has ordered us to do so. Much of the rest of the world, especially China and Iran, seem to be to be sufferieng comopletely because the opposite seems to be the case, Or, in fhe name of political correctness and diversity they allow such to be both the most vocal part of their population and limit the abilities of sensible people to cope.
I think the USA will make a quick rebound, and the truly free counties will help each other to do so, and if I were an investor, this would be a time for me to buy, not sell, stock.
China has almost no new cases. The local/provincial government screwed up badly in the critical first weeks, but then the central government took charge. Relatively few cases or deaths out of the totals occured outside Wuhan and Hubei province.
“China has almost no new cases. The local/provincial government screwed up badly in the critical first weeks, but then the central government took charge. Relatively few cases or deaths out of the totals occured outside Wuhan and Hubei province.”
China has just expelled several US journalists. Will they tell a different story? I suggest it is not as well in China as their controlling government would have the world believe.
I am in a similar situation. I live in a retirement community. Panic has swept through the community like a firestorm.
COVID-19 is a serious issue. But the folks in this community, many of whom are college graduates, are overreacting. They are hording everything they can get their hands on. Rationale thinking went out the door weeks ago.
It makes me wonder what would happen if North Korea or another adversary hit the United States with a couple of nuclear weapons, which would be a real crisis.
Dining car: Those actions were taken only after the Trump group expelled Chinese media people. It was an unfortunate reaction to more anti-China hysteria being stirred up to try to distract attention from the slow response to the crisis here.
Thats because their quarantine procedures involved welding the doors shut of buildings under quarantine. Something tells me that would not go over well in this country. Also, I would not rely on their stats since they are typically always suspect without verification from outside…which so far is prohibited.