As Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, approaches its golden anniversary in 2021, it is quite apparent that it has squandered opportunities to mature into a stable and useful transportation entity, given the plethora of internal issues that have historically crippled Amtrak operating under the federal umbrella as a state-owned enterprise. Adding to this position is the impact from a shortage of experienced senior management.
Hold on there! Sez right on his LinkedIn page that he’s a 'Noted pundit for op-ed editorials in transportation" and a “transportation historian”. Next you’ll be asking for his transcript from Champaign-Urbana!
And if you don’t believe his punditrous credentials, peruse his 518 articles. So far. Bet there’ll be more coming.
Seriously, he’ll fit right in as a Trains Forum poster on this subject, so why give him grief? I’d rather we take up his nine recommendations (apparently starting on p.7) and discuss their merits, perhaps in the context of what our own pundits have already expressed on these timeless topics.
He makes some valid points in his white paper but he also tends to over simplify things a little. For example, appointment of non-railroaders to the Amtrak board. First I do not see a lot of Class I railroaders stampeding over to run Amtrak so I think your going to find there is a drought in that department. Gunn was not a railroader from what I remember, he was the former head of NJ Transit. Moreman was reluctant to serve at Amtraks head and so was Graham Claytor, I suspect Graham Claytor served out of a concern if he didn’t a buffoon would be chosen and he didn’t want to see what was created so far be lost via incompetence.
Second, Amtrak needs to draw from outside the railroad industry for the sole reason that railroaders are militaristics and institutionalized into staying with the past and being overly skeptical of attempting new ideas that have not been tried before. So I think the Amtrak board should have a mix of railroad and non-railroad experience. Certainly there is some political cronyism as we saw with VP Biden sneaking his problem Son into the Amtrak Executive Suite not too long ago. I think they should get rid of the Cronyism.
IMO, a person with experience in managing mass/regional transit and commuter services is actually better suited than a freight railroad guy, for the reasons you indicated, plus their ability to deal with pols.
As a somewhat rough paraphrase (and division into what I think he intends the ‘nine points’ to be:
[quote]
Make Amtrak a major campaign issue for 2020 (he says to do this via ‘Congress, the public, and the media’) in particularly “inform and motivate” state people to question the idea of NEC subsidy, or being ‘saddled with’ disproportionate share of the cost of PRIIA-based train service in other area corridors.
“Ensure … the [Amtrak] Board of Directors and executive/senior management team places the public interest first”. He gives as an example putting the NRPC in ‘receivership’ under ‘the exclusive custody of the FRA Administrator’ who would appoint an ‘interim advisory board consisting of experienced railroad executives’ (He does not say how he would get these executives to serve, or how they would be compensated) He provides the appointments to the original Conrail Board as a contrast, and asks ‘is there the political will to take a similar step with Amtrak?’
Have the FRA determine why PRIIA doesn’t charge NEC states for Amtrak ‘corridor’ trains (traveling less than 450 miles end to end) while states outside the NEC are charged ‘fully allocated costs’ for trains under 750 miles; FRA should then ‘advise Congress’ that either the states along the NEC pay a pro-rata contribution to their ‘corridor’ trains or non-NEC states pay an amount ‘comparable’ to NEC states for their service. (He also wants FRA to examine why Amtrak did not charge/collect from Northeastern commuter lines that use Amtrak’s ‘corridor’ assets heavily before Congress m
Maybe the complete report, which at the moment I cannot read, provides evidence that each or many of these steps would improve matters. At the moment, I am very uncertain about most of them.
My food-service plan is a concrete step to drastically reduce food deficits. I don’t see anything analogous here. Making states pick up more tabs and Fed. Gov. less Balkonizes transportation and simply moves money from one pocket to the other, but still lets the taxpayer shoulder the load. And taking NEC away from Amtrak, ditto. And is NEC just Boston - Washington or Bangor or Portland - Richmond? And for either, why? If NEC is removed from Amtrak Boston - Washington, what does that do to encourage ridership on the Portland service? And do the Floirida and the Carolina-supported services terminate in Washington?
No fantasies about HSR Super-Chief’s, LD trains for sick people, a Texas extension of Southwest Chief at Newton KS (which surely has lots of potential), or any of the rest.
I hope your not attempting to ridicule someone because Amtrak has gone before Congress with stats showing it transports a lot of people with disabilities. Sooo, not so much a poster fantasy here. Perhaps you should watch CSPAN a little more?
If LD train supporters are going to try to keep LD trains around because of disabled and sick people, I doubt a majority of the population would agree with that as a good reason, or worth it. The airlines are doing just fine transporting both.
If LD train supporters would just come-out and admit they want their hobby subsidized, that’s fine with we. I like taking LD trains too. AND, there’s no good reason NOT the loot the government; everybody else is doing it, the LD train hobbyist might as well too. I’d rather see LD trains than F35’s or more freeways built over peasant hovels, but grasping at straws in order to save an obsolete form of transportation isn’t going to work with most of the population.
The same goes for “sightseeing trains” and “dining cars where people of all socioeconomic groups can talk over a find dinner”. Sorry, the LD trains aren’t for THAT either. If the cruise-people want cruise trains, let the cruise-ship companies run them.
My opinion (for what it’s worth, which is nothing).
The presidential elections are meaningless (and have been for decades now).
Who knows, without more loot it doesn’t matter who runs it.
Yes, figure-out the costs and where the loot is supposed to come from.
Same as 3 (but no public “business” should have a pretend accounting system).
Amtrak should ONLY be an infrastructure builder or owner. See 3. They obviously can’t OPERATE anything.
Same as 3
Amtrak shouldn’t be OPERATING anything. They’ll never BE able to operate a customer-service business, no government agency can.
If you are going to “revise” the legislation, fix where the loots gets spent and who owns the infrastructure and who gets to use it. The Government doesn’t OPERATE airlines or trucking companies. And, if they did, we’d all be dead now.
THAT is a good idea. Some mechanism to spend loot on existing ROW. A higher-speed track that the passenger trains use, that the freights could use at very low speeds (a continuous siding). Seems like a good incremental way to move the US rail-system into (at least) the 1980’s. Before the US rail-system can get to the 2020’s, it’s at LEAST got to move itself through the late 20th century (for the 2nd time; hard to imagine how much 1940-50’s higher-speed track was lost).
Historically, long distance trains have always been more used for leasure travel than business travel. Look at the brochures of railroads during the classic era. There is no reason to write-off that market today. I believe my station-restaurant scheme can preserve decent food and service in dining cars while effecting the needed economy. Sleepers need some similar thinking, but I have not come up with an answer, not for lack of trying.
And please rememver that your daily (weekday) business traveler receives ten times the subsidy that the once-a-year LDT rider receives. Per-ride it is the reverse, but per citizen, that is the case.
When I rode long distance trains, the impression I got was that most passengers felt their vacation started when the boarded the train, not when the train arrived at the destination.
However, let the cruise people operate them has a point. Perhaps we are on the way?
Virgin is heavily in the cruise-ship market and plans on extending their Virgin-Brightline to the Miami port to connect directly with their and others’ cruise ships.
Step 2 running to Jacksonville as well as Tampa.
Step 3 asking Amtrak for interline privileges. If you let us run one of our trains daily to and from New York, we will let you use our use of the FEC main Jacksonville-Miami and serve our intermediate stations with the Miami section of the Star and Meteor. (Initially our New York train for cruise-ship passengers and crew-members only, but then?)
Aside from this being a justification for Singer’s open-access ideas, this smacks of the situation with Iowa Pacific or the AOE … the problem being variable demand. Absent either an assured subsidy below xx passengers per train, or really good business-interruption insurance coverage, a private firm can have trouble meeting its fixed expenses (which for any well-run service would be relatively large) in off-traffic periods, or during outages or service limitations, especially if it is taxed on its ‘profits’ when it does well.
Expect politicians and taxpayer groups to howl, though, if special consideration is given to any private operator in this respect.
Also expect all sorts of government-related priorities, union agreements, etc. etc. etc. to be made to apply to any service authorized by Amtrak to operate either in furtherance or replacement of an “Amtrak” train. I am not sure that Singer-style political consciousness-raising or community organization will be enough to overcome this.
I will grant you that a typical cruise company can probably arrange enough excess ‘profit’ to cover losses on a number of train services, particularly if they are ‘bundled’ into a cruise price as part of its “experience”. However, my experience with these companies is that they can make nickels cry like tin whenever they can, so it may take some very careful backroom dealings, counting fingers carefully each time, before anything like this actually gets run.
Agree with one exception, the overnight departure trains. My Father rode the trains for business but only the overnight evening departure, arrive in the early morning scheduled ones. He rode the Milwaukee Road Southwest Limited quite a bit in the 1950’s for business. He liked the schedule that it got into Kansas City before 8:00 a.m. with time for a shower and change of clothes and the onboard lounge car seats. Apparently they had showers in KC Union Depot or nearby. Even though not listed on the timetable as equipment he said he got a roomette sleeper sometimes, so apparently Milwaukee put a sleeper on the train every once in while…probably in the late 1950’s.
I also remember when Amtrak ran the North Star to Duluth via Milwaukee and the Twin Cities it was all new Amfleet and carried sleepers departed Chicago 10:30 p.m. and got to the Twin Cities before 8:00 a.m. as well. No clue how many business travelers rode it but that decent schedule and nice equipment didn’t last long.
I think Amtrak should experiment more with the overnight trains between large cities and promote one or two of them and see how much patronage.
Re: I think Amtrak should experiment more with the overnight trains between large cities and promote one or two of them and see how much patronage.
So, a 21st century business traveler, who is getting all the travel expensed to the company, who is used to traveling for 1 or 2 hours in a modern airplane, maybe in business-class, to and from a modern airport, with modern restaurants, stays overnight in a modern hotel, AND he gets to keep his hotel and airline points; is INSTEAD going to spend 8+ hours in (what?) a 6x3 foot BOX called a roomette, with the bathroom down the hall, bouncing along all night on bad track, and leaving and departing from an Amshak surrounded by homeless people in the worse part of town?
Yeah, THAT sounds feasible… Maybe Amtrak can pitch that “concept” on Shark Tank.
(Business people don’t travel overnight in Japan or Europe where they’ve got 21st century trains!)
And
Interline is not the same as open-access. The analogy was the Southern Crescent operated by the Southern Ry Wash. – NO and Amtrak NYC – Washington.