United Rail Passenger Alliance

Vol. 2, No. 17 – July 21, 2005

1. Without any gnashing of teeth, unnecessary wailing, grave pronouncements of the end of the Republic from Amtrak apologists and cultists, nor junior high school theatrics from acolytes of the David Gunn school of drama and tragedy, a subcommittee of the appropriations committee of the United States Senate this week voted to give Amtrak $1.4 billion in free federal money for next fiscal year, starting in October. This is a $200 million increase over this year’s appropriation, and a little over $200 million more than the House voted to give Amtrak for next year.

   There are still some more steps and votes to go, plus the distinct possibility of some surprises to come say whispers from Washington, but it looks like Amtrak is getting big bucks again this year, including a substantial increase in funding that many other agencies of the federal government aren’t getting in a tight budget year.

   There is one very silly provision in the bill: the Senate subcommittee wants Amtrak to not spend any higher amount of money for food service than it makes. Either Amtrak is going to have to change its accounting, dramatically raise the already too high hotel-style pricing in the dining cars, or get rid of some of the food service, which is the worst choice. Usually this type of legislative nonsense is stripped from bills by the full committee meeting or in the full Senate voting.

2. Here’s a novel thought: Exactly what is the American taxpayer and Amtrak passenger getting for all of this free federal money? More trains? Certainly not. More dependable service? Most probably not. Bridges repaired or replaced on the Northeast Corridor so wealthy Connecticut boat owners won’t be inconvenienced? Most likely.

   Before the advent of the measurable, avoidable, and tragic decline of Amtrak by the negative stewardship of the Transit Trio of Tom Downs, George Warrington, and current Amtrak President and CEO David Gunn, Amtrak seemed like a much healthier company than it is today.

   Amtrak apologists and cultists and others of their ilk will immediately pipe up and blame a lack of proper free federal money flowing unabated to Amtrak as the core of the problem. Wrong, as usual.

   The problem can easily be traced back to very poor planning on the part of Amtrak, and a rubber stamping of poor plans by past boards of directors of Amtrak prior to the arrival of the current board of professionals.

   When Mr. Downs, the first of the Transit Trio, arrived at Amtrak in the early 1990s, he was handed a company that had enough equipment and resources to run many, many more trains than the company operates today for the national system.

   Gone with the wind and the arrival of the Transit Trio are the Montrealer, the Palmetto to Florida, the Gulf Breeze, The Broadway Limited, the Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited, the River Cities, The International, the Houston section of the Texas Eagle, the Pioneer, and the Desert Wind. These were, by the way, all daily trains. Also, it wasn’t unusual for the Silver Meteor and Silver Star to Florida to daily operate with 18 cars each, and the Crescent often carried 20 cars. Today, the Florida trains and the Crescent average nine to 11 cars each, thanks to poor equipment purchase planning and a bias against long distance trains dictated by transit-oriented policies coming from the top of Amtrak and from the one-note, unwashed socialists in Amtrak’s planning department that don’t understand anything other than ruinous corridors (which even then they don’t fully understand).

   To be fair, since the arrival of the Transit Trio, in the national system the 206-mile long route of the Heartland Flyer between Fort Worth and Oklahoma City has been added, and the Sunset Limited has been extended from New Orleans to Orlando. Even without pressure from the Senate, Amtrak has continually downgraded its onboard food service both on corridors and long distance trains, drastically reduced the number of sleeping cars and diners available, and unmanned many stations. Additionally, Amtrak has eliminated hundreds of necessary safety-related onboard personnel by eliminating many coach attendants, and still wants to eliminate critically needed assistant conductors.

   So, what is the taxpayer buying for next year’s free federal money subsidy in the more than billion dollar range? Not much by contemporary standards. What’s the hope here? That the current board of directors, the most qualified board of professional businessmen in decades for the company, will be able to move beyond the continual bad advice available from inside Amtrak and apply their native good business sense to revitalize and renew Amtrak. The federal government, to the tune of now over $30 billion, has continually voted its confidence in the future of Amtrak, year after year for more than three decades. The Amtrak board of directors can return the favor to the government and the taxpayers by doing what they know is right, not what Amtrak’s hired management help wants them to do.

3. Here’s some of those fun facts to know and tell. Amtrak reports this week that it has approximately 1,410 cars (not including locomotives) on its active roster for all Amtrak brand services.

   The 1963 World Book Encyclopedia, published less than a decade before the advent of Amtrak in 1971 and well into the mid-20th Century decline of passenger rail travel, reports that passenger train cars in use consisted of 12,000 mail and express and baggage cars, 1,342 diners, 5,000 sleeping cars, and 11,900 coaches. This information was presented by World Book as having been prepared in cooperation with the Association of American Railroads, the Pullman Company, and the Milwaukee Road railroad. That’s a total of 30,242 cars. Considering the state of passenger railroading that year, these figures must have included every spare protect piece of equipment, cars sitting in the weeds waiting to be scrapped, and any other piece of rolling stock that may carry human beings.

4. Amtrak results for the fiscal year to date through the end of June include 18,862,546 passengers carried, 266,887 below the projected budget. Total operating revenue was $1,381,683,000, which is $31,199,000 below Amtrak’s projected budget. The one bright spot is that total operating expenses were $2,249,723,000, which was $27,025,000 below the projected budget. The system goal of 85% for on-time performance wasn’t met; the actual was 70.8%.
5. Passenger railroading in 2005 is not what it was even 20 years ago. Many things are different today, including the way that Amtrak’s host railroads on the national system run their businesses.

   As an example, railroads now do heavy track maintenance and upgrading in concentrated clusters of short periods of time, often closing the railroad for hours or days at a time. As a result of this, Amtrak trains are not allowed to operate on their normal schedules, or even not at all. Regrettably, this often occurs during the peak travel summer months.

   Another difference is actually the peak travel summer months themselves. Not all school children have their summer vacation from the middle of June to Labor Day in September. Now, it’s not uncommon for school districts to run summer vacation from the last weeks of May to only the first week of August. Since the United States is no longer primarily an agrarian economy as it was when school schedules were first developed, it’s not inconvenient to redefine summer vacation, particularly with the advent of air conditioned schools.

   Railroads are now not all-weather operations. Before super highways and good roads, “the trains always got through” to keep local economies and communities healthy and prosperous. Now, caution is the word of the day when snow storms occur or tropical storms blow by.

   Continuous welded rail has also changed railroading, beyond eliminating the famous “clickity-clack” that steel train wheels made going over rail joints. With continuous welded rail, there is always a danger of heat kinks in the longer rails due to extreme heat elements. Trains must travel slower over these portions of track, often for mile after mile.

   General freight train congestion on shrunk infrastructure that no longer has alternative routings “just in case” of derailments or other track blockages due to expired crew work times, freight yard congestion, or other reasons for a slowing of travel speeds of trains across the country has also taken a huge toll on Amtrak’s on-time performance.

   So, what should Amtrak do about all of this? The host railroads often want to curtail service for the understandable convenience of their maintenance gangs, safety dictates slow orders over continuous welded rail on hot days, and traditionally defined travel seasons are no longer necessarily applicable for marketing and equipment planning purposes. These are just a few of the problems.

   There is not easy answer right now. Until Amtrak improves its corporate relationships with the host railroads, little is likely to happen to keep trains running on published schedules. Issues such as the changing of the definition of the summer season can be solved through improved marketing. There are many, many issues facing Amtrak and the freight rail industry that will require sober minds and a joint determination at overall improvement to solve. Now is the time to start working on these problems.

6. URPA has updated and upgraded our Internet web site, located at http://www.unitedrail.org. Included in the changes are a section featuring biographies and photos of officers, and also a new section featuring editorial use of materials and a speakers bureau. You are invited to view the changes and updates.