Volume II Version 12 - This Was The Week That Was - An Amtrak Saga

February 13, 2002

Tomorrow (Thursday) is the big day for the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee - hearings on the Amtrak Reform Council begin at 2:00 P.M. This first round of hearings will consist of the testimony of the venerable ARC Chairman, Gil Carmichael, and other members of the ARC. Again, the ARC, as a group, since the 1997 Amtrak Reauthorization, has been the ONLY part of the United States government that has followed the law and completely fulfilled its statutory obligations. These people are heroes, not the “wackos” that Amtrak Acting Chairman Michael Dukakis has had the bad taste to publicly label them and their supporters.

1. Same Pay, More Work Department: Some of the details are coming out about the immediate cutbacks that are occurring throughout the Amtrak system to save money. As an example, on one of the long distance trains that carries four coaches, there will only be one train attendant, but the attendant will not work the entire length of the trip, leaving only the conductors and assistant conductors to assist passengers. Conductors and ACs will be expected to help passengers entrain and detrain, as well as pass out pillows and handle other routine passenger service chores.

   It’s going to be fascinating to see how this plays in Peoria. Assistant Conductors are already the baggage master on the long distance trains, so they are not available to help passengers at manned station stops. That leaves only the conductor.

   It looks like less doors to the platform will be open, and passengers will be schleping their suitcases and belongings over longer distances onboard to get to the one open door in a distant coach. This should be VERY popular with the many elderly grandmothers who travel by train.

   And, then there is the safety issue. Train attendants and airline flight attendants may be in place to meet passenger needs, but their real job is as a safety related employee. These are the people who are leaders and problem solvers during an accident or crisis.

   Let’s see. Take four full Superliner coaches, containing more than 250 passengers, many who are elderly or with small children. Then, take those four coaches and put them in a ditch during an accident. Then, have ONE train attendant and ONE conductor and ONE assistant conductor helping all of those people, presuming none of those three were injured, too.

   So, as we found on the Northeast Corridor in the very early days of Acela, and we find again, Amtrak senior management and the board of directors is willing to play with the lives and safety of passengers in the name of corporate cost cutting because of their failed business plan. It’s becoming more and more dangerous to ride a train; unless you’re a veteran passenger, that helpful evacuation card in the seatback in front of you won’t go very far in knowing what to do in case of emergency.

   Again, the question must be asked: Is Amtrak senior management and the board of directors willing to put passengers in a situation where they can lose their lives because of their management incompetence? How many lives lost will it take to convince those in charge in Washington to clear out these people and their failed business plan and install some real leadership at Amtrak headquarters?

2. How do you like your eggs at breakfast? It better be scrambled, or you’re out of luck. Other details are coming out about what passengers can expect shortly on the food front.

   There is a new NATIONAL menu coming out very soon. Whether you’re speeding across the desert on the Southwest Chief or across Indiana on the Lake Shore Limited, you’re going to be enjoying the same identical menu. And, what a menu it is.

   There will be precooked and pre-plated meals, including liquid eggs.

   Liquid eggs? Yep, nutritious liquid eggs that will whip up any way you like, as long as they are scrambled. Apparently, on Amtrak, making eggs is about to join the same category as making sausage and making laws. You may enjoy the outcome, but you don’t want to see the process being done.

   Your humble correspondent has sampled Amtrak’s pre-plated meals on the Twilight Shoreliner in the past couple of years. While tasty, they lack any individuality or room for personal tastes. Whatever is on the plate is what you get, whether or not you wanted the sauce on the meat or on the side is no longer relevant. If it’s already there, you’re getting it.

   Then there is the issue of portions. One size fits all, just like one meal fits all. No derivations from the norm.

   It will be interesting to see how the many varied needs of Amtrak passengers are met, including those of diabetics, in need of salt-free diets, and those needing low cholesterol menus.

   Of course, if you don’t like what’s in the diner, you can always sample the fare in the lounge car. After all, who could resist that $1.75 bag of M&Ms?

   So, riding the train is about to become more taxing. Full service dining will be disappearing, replaced by airline style dining that always leaves you hungry for more (not because of the taste, but because of the microscopic portions).

   All of this is reminiscent of the bad old days of a former Amtrak executive, Rima Parkhurst. Ms. Parkhurst was part of the first Amtrak management team that tried to turn the railroad into a pseudo airline. Get rid of those pesky dining cars. They are inconvenient and expensive. Give people the kind of food they really want - whatever is cheap for the company to provide.

   So, this type of silly experiment was tried before. As a result, passengers stayed away in droves. Service plummeted. Revenues plummeted. It took years to rebuild what these people destroyed in a relatively short period of time. (Ms. Parkhurst left the company at the completion of this first experiment.)

   Amtrak, which is desperately short on institutional memory, is now again willing to risk the nourishment of you and your family because it still wants to remake all of those evil long distance trains into the image of the NEC corridor trains.

   This is yet ANOTHER (if there were not enough already) compelling reason to rid the country of the plague of the current Amtrak senior management and board of directors.

3. During the February 1st press conference that first announced the extortion plans of Amtrak senior management and the board of directors to seek $1.2 billion next budget year or they would discontinue ALL of the national system long distance trains, a number of other cost cutting measures were announced, including the reduction of station hours at many staffed stations all over the country.

   Some preliminary plans call for there to be ONE employee working in a station, and only for five days a week, eight hours a day.

   What will that bring us? A self-fulfilling prophesy and more and more passengers staying away in droves. Station hours will be reduced, so there will be less opportunity for passengers to plan trips and purchase tickets. Stations probably will not be open during all of the hours that trains stop at that station, so checked baggage service will possibly be eliminated. Phones will go unanswered. Ridership will dry up. Then, a tight money situation will become even worse. Amtrak senior management will be able to smugly point at the situation and say, “See? We told you so. Nobody wants to ride those bad, money-losing long distance trains. Cut ‘em before they do any more damage!”

4. The Big Lie, continued: People who think independently need to stop accepting The Big Lie, that the national system loses huge amounts of money and only corridor trains make money or have the ability to make money. Just the opposite is true. Yet, Amtrak senior management and the board of directors has spouted these lies so many times, they even get repeated in the press as the truth.

   Do your own research and come to your own conclusions. We have seen what extremes the thugs at Amtrak senior management are willing to go do, including what appears to be outright lying to Congress and the American public just to obtain more free federal money. Believe yourself and your instincts, first. Do your own research, then come to your own conclusions.

That’s it for another midweek update. Stay tuned. Tomorrow is going to be fun when the House hearing are gaveled into reality.

Still proud to be a wacko as defined by Michael Dukakis for supporting the work of the ARC,

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2002 at 12:00 am and is filed under This Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.