Volume II Number 25 - This Was The Week That Was - An Amtrak Saga
No, you didn’t miss an issue of TW3 on Good Friday, March 29th. Your humble correspondent took the holiday off from writing.
Now, back to business.
- The Giant Game of Chicken: It looks like tomorrow, Thursday, April 4th will be the day the train-off notices for almost the entire national system will be posted. Amtrak, which originally said it would post the notices on Good Friday, instead issued a notice that it would post notices on Thursday. Did you notice that?
A lot has happened since that fateful Friday on February 1st when Amtrak first issued its extortion demand for $1.2 billion in free federal money next year, mostly for use on the Northeast Corridor. Its plan, of course, is if Congress and the Bush administration do not cough up AT LEAST $1.2 billion EXACTLY on October 1, 2002 or before, then Amtrak will kill 18 routes in the national long distance system.
Since that less-than-golden day there has been great gnashing of teeth, wringing of hands, and calls for immediate acquiescence so Amtrak - such as it is in its current pitiful state today - can be saved.
Just over a month later, George Warrington announced that he was leaving Amtrak for greener pastures as head of New Jersey Transit, thus freeing to company of the burden of his stewardship. No replacement has been named, but also since February 1st, Mayor John Robert Smith of Meridian, Mississippi was named Chairman of the Amtrak Board of Directors to replace departed chair Tommy Thompson. Mayor Smith has now rightly so become the new face of Amtrak until a new president is named.
Also since then, bellicose words have come out of various halls of Congress saying that Congress, and not Amtrak, will determine next year’s funding levels.
In the middle of all of this, Amtrak is up for Congressional reauthorization and a determination of what shape the company will take in the future.
Oh, and don’t forget about the always lovable Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware, one of Amtrak’s greatest supporters. He’s in a snit because Congress and the Bush administration have not coughed up $1.8 billion for “security and safety” upgrades to the NEC, so he put a hold on two of the Bush administration DOT appointments to make his point that he wanted his $1.8 billion NOW or he would hold his breath until he turned blue. The Bush administration called his bluff by appointing the two undersecretaries as recess appointments, thus avoiding the Senate confirmation process until the end of the current Congress.
And, Senator Fritz Hollings, the junior Senator from South Carolina and the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee has brought out a plan to shovel multiple billions of dollars into Amtrak starting next year. The plan has already received bipartisan support, even though it is doubtful the full amount will go through. What is important is that ALL parties have said more money will have to be invested in Amtrak for the future.
What most of those parties are saying is that this money will NOT be given to the current Amtrak administration and board of directors, who have already proven their lack of business skills all around.
Whew! Makes you dizzy, doesn’t it, just keeping up with all that is going on?
So, with the Hollings bill merrily working its way through the legislative process, Amtrak is going to continue to post the train off notices? What planet are these people from? How many MORE members of the Senate and House does Amtrak want to alienate? Don’t these people realize they got what they want? To quote a wag from the west: “The kidnapped child has had the ransom paid. Why don’t they turn over the child to the parents?”
That would be too easy. It seems Amtrak wants to hit itself on the head with a hammer some more, probably because it feels so good when you stop.
- The Oliver Stone, We Need You Department: The Hottentots clearly have run amok amongst our union friends.
The Transport Workers Union has breathless announced that it has caught the late Amtrak Reform Council RED HANDED using the work of others to kill Amtrak.
The TWU alleges that the final ARC report was mostly copied and purloined from previous publications of the Discovery Institute, of which ARC member Bruce Chapman heads as the institute’s president.
Horrors! Will the Republic stand? What have these dastardly ARC members done?
What the ARC did was take input from a variety of sources, including United Rail Passenger Alliance. The ARC gathered together materials and input, digested it, and came out with an unique document.
Anyone who thinks otherwise is being silly.
Amtrak senior management and its board of directors and the unions have been trying every avenue possible to discredit the work of the ARC.
Keep in mind that the one group that cooperated the LEAST with the ARC in its fact finding was Amtrak itself. Amtrak either withheld information, refused information, or blocked the use of good information throughout the entire ARC process. Then, it tries to debunk the report that it refused to participate in, because it was afraid of the outcome.
Also, it is probably safe to say that very few of the appointees to the ARC did not arrive on the council without some type of agenda. It would have been useless for the various appointers to the ARC to choose members who did not have some type of strong background in the passenger rail area.
To slam the ARC at this late date with such trivial accusations speaks volumes about the agenda of those doing the slamming: keep the status quo and keep shoveling untold amounts of free federal money into Amtrak to maintain it as is - which is broken.
Gil Carmichael, Paul Weyrich, Jim Coston, Bruce Chapman, Charles Moneypenny and the other members of the ARC deserve much better treatment that they have been given by both Amtrak and its minions. They were appointed to do a job (at no pay), and they did it with great aplomb. Those taking shots at them should be ashamed of themselves.
- If you’re an Amtrak union employee west of the Allegheny Mountains, are you not worth as much as a union employee on the NEC? That seems to be the case.
While Amtrak has merrily been slashing union jobs in station after station west of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and south of Washington, D.C., it is increasing jobs on the NEC.
Once again, the travel needs of your grandmother and Aunt Alice on the national system are not near as important and those of well shod businessmen traveling on the NEC.
The Baltimore Sun reported on Monday (and it was not a cruel April Fools Day joke) that new checked baggage service was now available at all existing stops in the state of Maryland except for Rockville (not an NEC station).
Barbara Richardson (again, no relation to your humble correspondent) was quoted as saying, “this is a positive step in light of regrettable but necessary cutbacks of recent weeks. While we could no longer justify baggage service in small markets in the West, we wanted to show the public that Amtrak remains committed to serving our valued guests in the successful Northeast Corridor.”
So, once again, Amtrak is thumbing its corporate nose at leisure travelers that carry large amounts of baggage and buy expensive tickets, but is catering to business travelers who often travel with a briefcase and one carryon piece of luggage.
These people still don’t get it.
By the way, one of the original “West” locations that Amtrak sliced baggage service from was Tampa, Florida (it is though, on Florida’s west coast), a city in the middle of a metropolitan area of more than three million residents. Service has since been restored. Makes you wonder though, what Amtrak considers a “small” market.
- And, finally, it is noteworthy to point out that Trains Magazine published an article titled “Cross-subsidy or long-distance double-cross?”
This normally staid magazine seems editorially annoyed at the possibility of Amtrak cooking its books to make the NEC and other corridors look good at the expense of the national long distance system.
It’s good to see all of that missionary work so many have been doing for so many years finally paying off and the scales continue to fall from many eyes concerning Amtrak.
What everyone can collectively hope is that the next president of Amtrak will be able to instill a genuine sense of confidence in his or her skills as a business person and as a leader of a national passenger railroad. For too long, Amtrak has suffered from less than stellar leadership that has, decade after decade, missed opportunities, acted in an obstructionist way, and left the railroad worse than when that particular administration arrived.
Think of this concept: A broad examination of Amtrak shows that the “golden years” of Amtrak, as measured from May 1, 1971 until today, probably took place in the very late 1980s and early 1990s, during the last years of the Claytor administration. The route system was expanding, new equipment was being tested and ordered, and ridership was reaching an all time high.
The sad part, of course, is that even in those heady times, Amtrak still was miles away from being efficient, employee friendly, or passenger friendly. By most standards it was still a candidate for great improvement. Still, though, if only Amtrak still had some of those managers of that time today …
That’s it until Friday. Let’s see what Thursday’s giant game of chicken will bring.