Volume II Version 5 - This Was The Week That Was - An Amtrak Saga

January 18, 2002

As the new year rolls along, bits and pieces of interesting stuff are beginning to come to the surface.

1. An unconfirmed rumor is floating around Florida that the Silver Palm will lose its remaining sleeper and its dining car in February as an economy move. The train, which now operates much as a mixed freight and passenger train, will allegedly have coaches and a lounge car only for its 27 hour run between Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston, Richmond, Washington, and New York City. The train has had only one sleeping car for over a year now.
2. More unpaid Amtrak vendors are floating to the surface, now including several marketing-related vendors, one of which is a daily newspaper. The newspaper has outstanding invoices dating back to September of 2001. Since Amtrak has received its annual appropriate of free federal money of over half a billion dollars, where is the money going if its not being used to pay vendors?

   Back in 2000 we saw the FBI raid the Connecticut offices of one Amtrak vendor that built the NEC infrastructure into Boston because of financial irregularities. Will the FBI appear again, and cart off yet another truckload of boxes?

3. Among The Missing Department: Has anyone seen the last six Acela trainsets? Word is they haven’t been delivered yet. Are they tied up in the legal wrangling between builder Bombardier and Amtrak? Will the absence of these sets be yet another in an endless slew of excuses by Amtrak senior management why they need even more free federal money without valid explanation? It often seems that any excuse is a good excuse. Remember all of those billions Amtrak wanted after the tragedy of September 11th, yet settled for $100 million from Congress?
4. Amtrak has issued an official change of policy about purchasing tickets onboard trains in the Northeast Corridor. It seems it’s OK to do that again, if the local station is unstaffed or suffering from internal computer problems and can’t write tickets. Perhaps reality has set in that all of these alleged terrorists that were going to commandeer trains were really either just a “me, too!” reaction, or, perhaps, over reaction by the emotions of many at the time.
5. There is unhappiness in Meridian, Mississippi, the home of Mayor John Robert Smith, who is a member of the Amtrak Board of Directors.

   It seems that an op-ed piece, written by Amtrak critic Joe Vranich and first published in the Washington Post, was reprinted in the Meridian Star newspaper. His Honor took exception to the criticisms offered by Mr. Vranich, who, for a while was a member of the Amtrak Reform Council, the alleged nemesis of the Amtrak Board of Directors and Amtrak senior management. Mr. Vranich did not stay on the board for long, and left over differences with the direction of the board.

   His Honor said Mr. Vranich was a disgruntled former employee who left in 1979, and should be ignored.

   Mr. Vranich, also appearing on radio station WMOX. in Meridian, said His Honor is as bad as Enron board members for turning the other way while Amtrak’s finances are falling apart and not paying attention to what is going on. Mr. Vranich said Amtrak is another Enron in the making and the mayor is part of the problem.

   His Honor also apparently took exception to this.

   In the course of all of this, His Honor called a press conference and called on Congress to shut down the ARC.

   The mayor is a little late. The ARC is about to complete its work and issue its final report in less than a month. Congress already short-funded the ARC this year, providing barely enough money for them to issue their report.

   Mayor Smith has been a hard and tireless worker for Amtrak. It is a shame at this point that he allowed one opinion article in a newspaper to cause him this much grief. The last time your humble correspondent looked at the constitution, this was still a country where you can express opinions openly and freely.

   Amtrak senior management and the Amtrak Board of Directors need to realize what is going on in the real world. The ARC will end up being the best friend passenger rail has had in many, many years.

So ends another week. Don’t change that dial; it’s just getting interesting.