Volume II Number 17 – This Was The Week That Was – An Amtrak Saga

March 01, 2002

It’s March 1, 2002. Can you feel the Amtrak national long distance system crashing down around your shoulders today?

1. Today is the day that all of the cuts in station and passenger services take place. Now, all over the country, Amtrak service will look more and more like corridor services, with few amenities and just basic trains running up and down the tracks.

   The following cities will lose checked baggage services (not a complete list):
   

   Ann Arbor, Michigan Battle Creek, Michigan Columbus, Wisconsin Dearborn, Michigan Detroit, Michigan El Paso, Texas Fargo, North Dakota Fort Madison, Iowa Garden City, Kansas Grand Forks, North Dakota Grand Junction, Colorado Greenville, South Carolina Hastings, Nebraska Havre, Montana Hammond, Louisiana Hammond-Whiting, Indiana Houston, Texas

   Jackson, Michigan Kalamazoo, Michigan La Junta, Colorado Lakeland, Florida Lamy, New Mexico Lincoln, Nebraska Little Rock, Arkansas Lacrosse, Wisconsin Meridian, Mississippi Mobile, Alabama Minot, North Dakota Mount Pleasant, Iowa Newton, Kansas Niles, Michigan Ocala, Florida Ottumwa, Iowa Pensacola, Florida

   Pasco, Washington Raton, New Mexico Rugby, North Dakota Sebring, Florida Shelby, Montana San Bernardino, California Pinellas County, Florida   (St. Petersburg, Clearwater,   Pinellas Park) Tallahassee, Florida Topeka, Kansas Tampa, Florida Tucson, Arizona Winter Park/Fraser, Colorado Wolf Point, Montana Williston, North Dakota

   Did you notice some of the major names on that list, like Tampa, Florida (together, with neighboring Pinellas County, home of St. Petersburg and Clearwater, and neighboring Polk County, home of Lakeland, about a four million population metropolitan area), Houston, Texas (another multimillion population area), the winter holiday areas of Colorado and along the Empire Builder route, and, even Detroit, Michigan?

   What is chosen to be ignored by those still mesmerized by Amtrak senior management and its board of directors of those who just don’t know any better: Even though these cuts were said to affect only four percent of Amtrak’s passengers, that is an irrelevant number. Because Amtrak senior management believes in transit accounting instead of real railroad accounting, they are looking at body counts only, which are meaningless.

   What really counts is how much revenue and revenue passenger miles these station stops generate. Study after study has shown that small and medium sized station often and regularly generate high dollar and high revenue passenger miles tickets. These are cities where less travel choices are available, and the train is a very real option.

   But, after the butchers at Mass Avenue finish, even these small towns that are so critical to revenue flow will be ignored.

   Basically, expect the cash flow and revenue pictures to become even worse after today when these cuts kick in.

   Remember, there will be no one left on the train to help passengers since the onboard crews have been gutted, and, now the station staffs will be gone or nearly gone.

   Here’s a basic lesson someone needs to whisper in a few ears at Amtrak headquarters: NO SERVICES EQUALS NO PASSENGERS EQUALS NO RAILROAD.

   While this rather bizarre concept may seem to be where Amtrak senior management wants to go so it can run its trolley operation between Boston and Washington, the reality is that more and more members of Congress are waking up to Amtrak’s scams and extortion demands and saying, “If I don’t have at least one train in my state, don’t expect me to support funding for the NEC.”

   What could be the harsh reality? Amtrak will WILLINGLY chase away so many passengers, that when they finally want them back, the passengers will ignore them. It’s going to take YEARS to undo the mess that George Warrington & Co. has created. While these unelected bureaucrats that run Amtrak will have moved on to possibly wreak havoc at other jobs, they will leave behind a nearly dead Amtrak that no amount of money will bring back quickly enough. Americans will remember the bad parts, and be hard pressed to believe the progressive parts.

2. If you think that’s bad, try and wrap your thinking around this: Amtrak lower level managers are scrambling to find ways to cut budgets and still run their trains until October 1st. What to do? What to do?

   Well, one less than enterprising business group is considering abandoning all onboard services about five hours before the end of the train’s run. These managers are considering taking all of the onboard services crews (dining car, lounge car, coach attendants) off the train about four hours prior to the end of the run. That means the diner and lounge car will shut down at least a hour before so the crew can prepare to detrain.

   So, passengers, including a healthy dose of sleeping car passengers, will be without any type of onboard service for food and beverage at all, with nothing but a conductor and assistant conductor and sleeping car attendants on the train until the end of the line.

   On the reverse, it means that passengers boarding at the originating terminal will have that long of a wait until they, too, can have any onboard services.

   This is passenger railroading?

   Perhaps these less than enterprising managers could find reasonable positions at one of the freight railroads. Then they can run all of the trains they want without having to worry about basic human necessities messing up their budgets.

3. The House Appropriations Committee heard testimony from three sources on Wednesday afternoon regarding Amtrak.

   George Warrington, Amtrak President and CEO continued to present his failed vision and failed business plan and demanded $1.2 billion of free federal money in next year’s federal budget.

   The interesting note on this is that some of the news media, in reporting on the hearings, has begun to use the term “demand,” instead of “request.” “Demand” is not considered by many to be a pleasant term.

   Ken Mead, from the Department of Transportation’s Inspector General’s Office, testified and said again that Amtrak will not meet it’s business goals for FY 2003 and needs more money because of lots of crumbling infrastructure.

   Gil Carmichael, Chairman of the Amtrak Reform Council, testified and presented the ARC’s plans for a restructured Amtrak and a New Amtrak.

   This pattern of testimony will continue for another few months in Washington as every House and Senate committee will call many of the same witnesses and ask the same questions and receive the same answers.

4. Just to keep a proper perspective: All of these station cuts, onboard staff cuts, and threatened discontinuation of the entire national long distance passenger rail system is all for the benefit of it NEC and its oversized staff of 11,000 employees.

   The second smallest part of the $1.2 billion dollar Amtrak budget request – $200 million – is on behalf of the long distance trains. The smallest request is for mandatory railroad retirement funding, which amounts to less than $190 million. The rest is for capital improvement projects on the NEC, which currently enjoys a minimum of half hourly train service in each direction through most of the daylight and evening hours.

   Amtrak senior management and its board of directors are holding the long distance trains hostage and will discontinue them so they can get the free federal money they want almost solely for NEC projects.

   They are quite willing to say to every state outside of the NEC, that your trains don’t matter, only our trains matter.

   Again, why are these people still drawing Amtrak paychecks? Why is this bunch of unelected bureaucrats trying to make national transportation policy, when they are unable to even run one company successfully?

   When is someone going to stand up and say, “I’m mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore?”

   The day that happens is the day the American passenger train is liberated from the unelected tyranny of George Warrington and his board of directors.