Volume II Number 23 - This Was The Week That Was - An Amtrak Saga
March 22, 2002
We’re exactly one week away from the day Amtrak senior management said it is going to file the legal train-off notices “just to make sure” Congress and the White House came up with the $1.2 billion in extortion payments demanded for next year’s operations. Still no word on whether or not this will still occur. As said before, this will degenerate into a giant game of “chicken.”
- Presidential politics, Amtrak style: Several weeks ago, a dabbler on an Internet passenger railroad discussion list allowed that he had previously been impressed with Andy Selden and supported him as the next president of Amtrak. Alas, but now, he couldn’t support Mr. Selden because he had read something Mr. Selden had written that appeared to the Internet writer to be something from an “ideologue,” which, therefore, made Mr. Selden unsuitable to serve as president. The gentleman then declared his support for Chicago attorney James Coston.
Think about that for a moment. One of the problems of past Amtrak administrations is that Amtrak has lacked anyone with a firm ideology or “system of ideas” when dealing with the long distance national system.
Anyone with anything less than a firm ideology would be a disaster as the next president of Amtrak. It’s going to take a lot more than an annual appropriation for more free federal money to keep Amtrak alive over the next decade.
- More from the keyboard of Andy Selden:
“Amtrak carries about 22 million passengers a year.
“About 13 million are handled in the NEC (Where many are repeat quasi-commuters between Philadelphia and New York City). The rest are scattered across all the other segments of the country.
“About five million are carried on long distance trains.
“To put things into perspective, according to new U.S. Federal Aviation Administration data, in this federal fiscal year (through September 30, 2002) with the sharp reduction in air traffic following September 11, 2001, and a resulting net decline of 5% in air fares, the forecast is for 600.3 million commercial air passengers, down 12% from the year earlier. In 2003, traffic (enplanements) is forecasted to grow 14%.
“Looking beyond that, the industry and the government agree that air traffic (Measured by ridership, not output.) will grow at a compounded annual rate of 4% a year for 10 years, reaching one billion passengers in FY 2013.
“If Amtrak ridership grew at the same rate, it would reach 32.5 million over 10 years, half again what it is today. At that level, assuming constant levels of supply (available seat miles) NEC trains would have reached a consolidated load factor of 76% (Which is just above the MINIMUM that most airlines consider acceptable.) and, because they are statistically already nearly full, the long distance fleet would have had to grow by approximately 250 new Superliners.
“Even at that level, however, the total Amtrak ridership would still represent about 3.3% of domestic air volume and a small fraction of 1% of domestic air output.”
What does all of this mean? Amtrak will have to have tremendous growth to be considered by Washington decision makers to be an important part of the domestic transportation network.
Looking at these cold numbers, it’s easy for federal budget writers to be unimpressed with Amtrak’s ridership and associated public utility, even though the figures are in millions.
Not only will the next Amtrak administration have to take a company that is near death and resuscitate it, but it is also going to have to convince both the traveling public and Congress of the ongoing importance of rail travel. Many things that are done now are going to have to be done drastically different in the very near future.
Of course, the ironic part to all of this, is that if Amtrak were to be treated like some supposedly endangered snail or fish, all types of people would be rushing to aid the situation with money, support, and new legislation.
It’s all a matter of priorities.
- Now We Know Department: With all of the staff cutbacks at Amtrak, it’s not unusual to wonder how the railroad ever got itself into its current position that it can’t even support station agents and onboard service employees.
The answer has been found.
This was forwarded to your humble correspondent by some “insiders” who are in the know.
“Subject: How Amtrak really works
“I finally figured out how AMTRAK really works! Let me tell you the story…….
“Once upon a time, the government took over the passenger train business in this country and called it AMTRAK. Congress said, ‘You need someone to run the station operations’, so AMTRAK created a Station Agent position (SA-01), and hired a person for the job.
“Then Congress said, ‘How does the Station Agent do his/her job without instruction?’ So AMTRAK created a planning position and hired two people: One person to write the instructions (BS-12) and one person to do time studies (BS-11).
“Then Congress said, ‘How will we know the Station Agent is doing the tasks correctly?’ So AMTRAK created a Q.C. position and hired two people, one BS-9 to do the studies and one BS-11 to write the reports.
“Then Congress said, ‘How are these people going to get paid?’ So AMTRAK created the following positions, a timekeeper (TK-09) and a payroll officer (PO-11) and hired two people.
“Then Congress said, ‘Who will be accountable for all of these people?’ So AMTRAK created an administrative network and hired four people: a General Manager (GM-1), an Assistant General Manager (AGM-13) a Service Manager (SM-08), and a Product Line Supervisor (PLS-07).
“After one year Congress told AMTRAK, ‘You have had this command in operation for one year and you are $30,000 over budget. You must cutback overall cost,’ so AMTRAK laid off the Station Agent …
“Did I leave anything out?”
Now we know the rest of the story.
That concludes another week, as Amtrak keepings running up and down the rails of America. Let’s see what happens next week.