Volume II Version 6 - This Was The Week That Was - An Amtrak Saga
- The hot rumor mill is working overtime. Depending on who you are talking to, the Amtrak Board of Directors either met last week or will meet this week and dismiss Amtrak President and CEO George Warrington. The polite term being used is that he is resigning his position.
The announcement is supposed to be made on Friday, February 1st, with Thursday, January 31st being his last day.
The rumor also contains references to Executive Vice President Barbara Richardson (no relation to your humble correspondent) that she will make a similar exit from the company in the same time frame.
Further, the rumor alleges that the Amtrak Board of Directors will meet again and come out with their own plan to “save the company” by Draconian cost cutting and economizing measures.
If this is true, that would match a rumor reported here last Friday that the Silver Palm, running between Miami and New York City, will become a sleeperless, dinerless, coach and lounge car only train on February 15th.
Also, unconfirmed reports say that cuts are being prepared in the area of Amtrak union personnel, particularly in the onboard services crafts for the long distance trains.
And, further, if this rumor is true (your humble correspondent has heard the same general story from sources on both coasts of the country that are independent of each other, as well as other sources in the heartland that are also independent of the other sources), the surprise of it is relates to who is angling to become the next president of Amtrak.
Amy Rosen, of New Jersey, and a current member of the Amtrak Board of Directors is said to be coveting the post of President of Amtrak. Ms. Rosen now works as a consultant, and is alleged to have created enough director’s fees to create the equivalent of a full-time salary. Members of the Amtrak board are not paid a salary, but rather have expenses reimbursed and some other very small fees as compensation for their efforts.
If Ms. Rosen is successful in this quest, that would make the third president and CEO from New Jersey for Amtrak. We all know what the stewardship of the past two has created for the company. Can Amtrak afford to take this high risk a third time? Will a member of the existing board be willing to institute real change at Amtrak, or still be wedded to the current failed policies they so heartily endorsed en mass?
This is probably not the last thing we are going to hear, but only the beginning. And, Congress just got back to town this week to begin anew the debate on the future of Amtrak. Hearings haven’t even been scheduled, yet. Things are likely to become very interesting before this is all over.
- Throughout the life of Amtrak there have been many people, both inside and outside of the government and the Amtrak hierarchy that have made many positive contributions to the cause of passenger rail travel in the United States.
One of those individuals was the late John Riley, FRA Administrator during the Reagan Administration. Andrew Selden, who knew Mr. Riley well, penned this remembrance of him last week in honor of what would have been Mr. Riley’s 55th birthday last Saturday.
“January 19th, is the 55th anniversary of the birth of the late John Riley. Lest it pass unnoticed, allow me to mention it here. John was FRA Administrator during the last six years of the Reagan administration, and it would be no exaggeration to state that the successes of Amtrak in those years — in some ways, its Golden Years — were the direct result of John’s political skills in the federal government, with the tacit permission if not support of DOT Secretary Elizabeth Dole, and his ability to influence the notoriously bullheaded [former Amtrak Chairman and President] Graham Claytor.
One of his first involvements with passenger railroading came in the late 1970s when we [The team that later became URPA leadership] showed him, and he quickly grasped and then proved to himself, the complete corruption of Amtrak’s notorious Route Profitability System when Minnesota was fighting with Amtrak over Amtrak’s cost allocations to the state-supported “Northstar” train service between the Twin Cities and Duluth.
John went into Amtrak’s books (when he was the chief legislative counsel for Minnesota’s U.S. Senator Dave Durenberger) and “found” more than enough money in arbitrary overcharges to Minnesota on the Northstar account to sustain operation of the train for an extra two years.
John is the one man most responsible for the spectacular rescue and restoration of Washington Union Station — it was he who managed the Union Station Restoration Corporation.
It was John who understood and accepted the “matrix theory” that underlay the proposal for the extension of the Palmetto that sort of proved the point about the nonlinear elasticity of output and revenue from measured system growth, and it was John who gave Mr. Claytor the ultimatum to do the Palmetto extension from Savannah to Jacksonville, or else.
John was an ardent supporter of the conventional national system at the same time that he understood and leveraged the politicians’ interest in “High Speed Rail” in order to sustain their interest in Amtrak as an institution and vehicle to build towards HSR.
He sustained what he called the “Grand Compromise” in the Senate, to the effect that sustaining the national system was the price for the constant needs of the NEC.
John returned to Minnesota in 1990 to become Commissioner of Transportation, and later, Chief of Staff to Minnesota’s Governor, Arne Carlson. That was his final posting.
John died at 48, vastly prematurely, of an aggressive and recurring brain cancer. It cut short the life of a man of vast energy, wisdom and enthusiasm. He was the President Amtrak deserved, but never had.”
Andrew Selden
Minneapolis
January 18, 2002
Whew! That’s enough for a midweek update. No telling what the next few days will bring. Don’t touch that dial!