Version IX – This Was The Week That Was

July 6, 2001

Another week passes, including a major national holiday, and Amtrak keeps moving down the track – well, most of the time.

1. There was good news/bad news/good news this week about the venerable Sunset Limited.

   The good news was that CSX had its scheduled week of track work in the Southeast this week, and they completed the work on a timely basis, as promised. Hundreds of trains were annulled or rerouted to allow over 800 employees to rehab almost 400 miles of track between New Orleans and Montgomery, Alabama, and from Flomaton to Pensacola. The Sunset travels from New Orleans to Florida via Flomaton and Pensacola.

   The Amtrak Southwest Business Group made a decision to annul the Sunset east of New Orleans this week, providing no alternate transportation for guests seeking to reach Orlando, the largest vacation destination in the world.

   The bad news for the Sunset is that on the first day of the annulment, with the Sunset terminating in New Orleans, the train never showed up. The normally schedule-impaired Sunset didn’t arrived on Sunday, the day it ways supposed to arrive. Instead, it arrived a full day late, limping into New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal after Noon on Monday instead of early Sunday night. It passed a make-up Sunset on its way west. A myriad of problems were to blame, including slow orders for heat kinks dangers, work gangs, and more.

   Actually, CSX track work east of New Orleans had nothing to do with the tardiness of the Sunset from the west of New Orleans, but it was in one way fortunate that the train terminated in New Orleans anyway. They were far less complications from not having to worry about ongoing Florida passengers.

   The good news is that the train terminated in New Orleans, which is the home of one of Amtrak’s most well-run, competent and customer-service oriented business groups, the Gulf Coast Business Group. These managers and employees are 100% dedicated to always doing what is best for the passenger and what is best for the company, not just the individual Intercity business group.

   The New Orleans managers put together a whole new Sunset trainset and crew (there is also an excellent crew base in New Orleans that serves both the City of New Orleans and the Crescent), and had an on-time westbound departure of Monday’s Sunset Limited. Very few other terminals in Amtrak Intercity could have made this happen so quickly and efficiently to both the good of the passenger and the good of the company. These fine people exemplify the best of Amtrak Intercity because they believe in company wide cooperation and good customer service. And, they consistently practice what they preach.

2. Amtrak made public some figures that may seem startling to some. In a letter to Golden Spike travel agencies (travel agencies which are Amtrak’s largest sellers of tickets), the senior manager who was the author of the letter noted that “As you may know, Amtrak has undertaken major efforts to increase guest satisfaction across the system. Our service guarantee program promises your clients a safe, comfortable and enjoyable experience on every train every day. Due to the special training and focus of our employees we have now reached a 99.7% satisfaction level. However, we won’t be satisfied with anything less than 100%.”

   That’s a pretty gutsy thing to put a figure like that in writing. No one has determined their actual method of measurement of customer satisfaction, but it would be surprising for ANY common carrier of any type to actually achieve this level of customer satisfaction. This is yet another credibility issue which is constantly being raised with Amtrak when they are throwing out figures. Even Democrats may agree with Ronald Reagan’s old mantra about the Soviet Union: “Trust through verification.” When will we be able to completely trust Amtrak?

3. Speaking of trust through verification, an exercise by two All-Aboard list members this week raises speculation about the veracity of Amtrak’s online booking system.

   One member went to the Amtrak web page and entered a search for trains on July 5th, between El Paso and Houston to see how full the trains were in this peak summer season week. He found the Sunset Limited in both directions had sold out coach seating, and did not pull numbers on sleeping car space.

   Later, another list member, a travel agent, dug further into the actual Amtrak Arrow System that is available to travel agencies and found that he could not accurately confirm a sold out status for the eastbound Sunset Limited that day between the same city pairs. Instead he was able to identify 94 coach seats available between El Paso and Houston, and 18 available Standard Bedrooms and five available Deluxe Bedrooms on the same train. That meant that more than a complete coach car was unsold, half the deluxe accommodations were unsold and substantially more than half of the Standards were unsold.

   Amtrak wants more and more passengers to use the web page booking system. Sounds like the same reliable mechanics that have been maintaining the Acela trainsets are working on the reservations system, too.

4. Amtrak announced this week an innovative way to get more people to try an Acela trip. If you are holding any type of Amtrak ticket, and are traveling southbound from the BWI airport Amtrak station to Washington Union Station, you can step aboard and ensconce yourself in the indulgences of a short ride on Acela.

   Amtrak says the trains have plenty of space on the last few minutes of the ride and it wants more people to try its best and brightest service. As noted by one A-A member earlier this week, it is good free advertising for Acela. Too bad the load factors are so low they are resorting to allowing anyone with any type of ticket on the train. Perhaps if they brought the prices within reach of riders they may find better ridership?

5. The Associated Press reported this week that Amtrak senior management says the railroad new gets 43 percent of its revenue from non-passenger business, up from 29 percent in 1990. In the news article, Amtrak tipped its hat to itself that it was working very, very hard to make the company self-sufficient by bringing in new sources of revenue.

   This translates to the National Railroad PASSENGER Corporation (Amtrak’s legal name) receiving only 57% of its income from PASSENGER revenues.

   Choose your own best way to look at this: a) Amtrak is doing a good job of bringing in other innovative ways of creating revenues through real estate, fiber optic transmission on rights of way, etc., or b) Passenger levels have remained essentially static in the last 20 years and are not growing, despite the fact that tens of millions of dollars has been spent of advertising for Acela which is supposed to draw passengers in droves away from the airlines, or c) a combination of a and b.

   Which every choice you make, it appears Amtrak has not made good choices in its use of corporate resources. It’s core business is falling in its contribution to overall revenue streams. When a company’s core business begins to falter, it’s time for serious changes.

So ends another week in the Perils of Amtrak, a ongoing saga that has millions of Americans wondering if passenger rail transportation will be around much further into the 21st Century. We wait with eager anticipation for the answer.

Bruce Richardson
Jacksonville, Florida