United Rail Passenger Alliance

Vol. 2, No. 9 – April 26, 2005

1. Oh, the humanity of it all. The Northeast Corridor somehow seems to continue to lurch along without the assistance of spiffy Wondertrains, otherwise known as Acelas. Some think a crisis is still brewing, since the return date for Acela service keeps getting moved further and further into the future.

   One interesting aspect of all of this is the re-emergence of the staid and dependable Metroliner, which had already been purged from the new Spring timetables prior to the present Acela alleged emergency.

   And, what about the Metroliners? They provided acceptable service for millions of travelers for three decades, yet, somehow, they now are obsolete. This durable brand name, which had even become part of the northeast lexicon as a verb (“I’m going to Metroliner from Baltimore to New York”), seems to have some new life. Perhaps the demise of the Metroliner brand was not only untimely, but unwise.

   News reports are quoting former Acela passengers as saying their new non-Acela mode of transportation is either the automobile, the bus, or the airplane (at last report, no steamships were plying the waters near the NEC). Why have these former Acela passengers abandoned Amtrak completely, just because Acela equipment is now available? Has Amtrak let the NEC Amfleet, which populates the Metroliners and NEC regional trains degrade to such a point that passengers won’t even consider riding the conventional trains as a replacement for Acela? Has Amtrak, yet again, shot itself in the corporate foot, so heavily promoting one service that all others are disdained and labeled inadequate?

   What about the NEC onboard employees? Can an Acela LSA or car attendant do just as good of a job in an Amfleet consist as an Acela consist? What about the food and beverage service? Can’t the commissaries stock the Amfleet equipment with the same goodies as the Acela consists?

   How hard is Amtrak working to make itself – outside of Acela service – presentable to the traveling public? Is Amtrak so very focused on the alleged profitability of Acela service that it is unwilling or unable to reacquaint its customers to Metroliners and regional trains? Where is the Amtrak marketing and corporate communications departments in all of this? Are they working to seamlessly move passengers to the remaining trains, or are they still focused on draining every bit of political pity from this in yet another bid for more free federal money from Washington? Ever since the stewardship of former President and CEO George Warrington, the second of the Transit Trio of Thomas Downs, Mr. Warrington, and David Gunn, Amtrak’s ignominious marketing team has been acting like it was ashamed of the Amtrak brand, and has done everything possible to downplay the company name and brand and replace it with meaningless brands like Acela.

   Now, also and miraculously, the truth has been told. In several news reports, Amtrak spokesmen, when promoting the use of Metroliner equipment over the involuntarily temporarily retired Acelas, has said that the Amfleet Metroliners are just as fast as the Acela trains and cost less to operate. It took all these years, over $3 billion dollars, and a lot of heart aches and headaches to finally discover this bit of wisdom?

2. Does anyone recall that earlier this year, due to the vagaries of Mother Nature, that all Amtrak service north of Los Angeles on the UP coast line in California was completely shut down for several weeks? Crew bases laid off employees, no trains ran, and Amtrak made no efforts to recoup the millions of dollars of lost business in California by trying to run alternative service. The question begs, in California, which has a larger population in one state than the entire nation of Canada, why Amtrak was willing to blow off train service, yet Amtrak is trying to make the loss of Acela service a national crisis?

   Replacement equipment for the NEC is being pulled from all over the country. Considering the slender margins that Amtrak has in working equipment inventories, some trains are being robbed to make up for lost Acela service. Keep in mind that Amtrak is still bunching Acela slot departures within very few minutes of regional service departures to keep the myth of the “haves” being separated from the “have nots.” One wouldn’t want important business people having to mingle with the riff raff in the coaches.

3. It’s a sad time for socialists and Amtrak cultists who are absolutely sure that every Republican both in public and lurking behind bushes and is out for the demise of Amtrak. Here’s the worst news for them: there are Republican proposals from the House of Representatives, the White House, and likely from the Senate, all designed to save Amtrak. Add Amtrak’s own recently released budget request, and you have four proposals about the future of Amtrak. All are different (we don’t know about the Senate one yet, but Montana Senator Conrad Burns dropped some hints something interesting was on the way during subcommittee hearings on Thursday, April 21st), but that is a good thing. It heightens the debate even further, and when wise and intelligent people bring a variety of ideas together, the compromises are often good ones. The saddest new of all for the socialists and Amtrak cultists is that the House proposal, which contains a number of good and interesting items, proposes $2 billion a year for Amtrak, $200 million a year more than Amtrak itself asked for. This is financial starvation by Republicans? Hardly.
4. Amtrak President and CEO David Gunn’s alleged penchant for union busting surfaced again last week in Amtrak’s proposal for funding for FY 2006. It has been suggested by Amtrak that the assistant conductor position be eliminated to save money. This is a foolish proposal, which follows the transit model rather than the long distance passenger train model.

   There are a number of reasons this proposal is foolish, including safety issues for crew and passengers, baggage handling, and the ability to handle a train when the conductor is incapacitated.

   Amtrak has robbed too many safety positions already. Doesn’t anybody realize how very dangerous railroads and passenger trains are, no matter how good of a safety record?

   Passenger trains have an inconvenient way of derailing or crashing at remote, out of the way locations. Every experienced hand is needed. Since most coaches have already been denied car attendants, there are already fewer onboard employees. Dining car crews have also been downsized. When is too few enough?

   Amtrak has also used one engineer in the locomotive cab instead of having an engineer and assistant engineer on runs of four hours or less. This almost immediately had bad results, particularly during runs in the middle of the night. When you need four alert eyes the most, only two were available.

   An assault on the assistant conductors is also an assault on baggage cars and passengers’ luggage. Assistant conductors are baggage masters on the trains, even though Amtrak stations handling baggage are much fewer and farther between than before. Eliminating the assistant conductors would produce the next logical step of eliminating baggage cars, then eliminating all station employees who handle baggage. This follows transit thinking that most travelers are business travelers, and therefore, only carry enough luggage that one person can handle. The long distance trains in the national network are heavily dependant on leisure travelers, which have much higher baggage requirements.

   There are many ways for Amtrak to improve itself and save money. Trying to bust unions and putting the safety of passengers and train crews at stake is not the way to do it. And, this endless notion of trying to apply the transit mentality to long distance trains continues to demonstrate how very little Amtrak’s senior managers understand the business of running a national system.