Vol. 2, No. 31 - October 28, 2005
- Hurricane Wilma in Florida was an extraordinary gift to Amtrak, if you’re an Amtrak corporate bean counter. Once again, Amtrak took advantage of a natural disaster to shun its national responsibilities to operate a passenger rail system for the benefit of American travelers.
Essentially, just like in Texas for Hurricane Rita, Amtrak cut and ran, stranding its hundreds of passengers in South Florida.
Hurricane Wilma, a killer Category 5 storm in Mexico and over the seas of the Gulf of Mexico, came ashore in Southwest Florida in the immediate vicinity of the Florida Everglades swamp early Monday morning, October 24th. For all of the previous week, Wilma meandered through the Gulf of Mexico, biding its time to strike. This time, most were prepared. And, Amtrak had a golden opportunity to discontinue running trains and allegedly save a few bucks in the process.
CSX, Amtrak’s sole host in Florida (CSX dispatches trains on its former tracks on behalf of Tri-Rail in Southeast Florida), prudently began shutting its railroad down after 2 P.M. on Friday, October 21st on the Clearwater Subdivision on Florida’s West Coast and South of Tampa on the West Coast. On the East Coast of Florida, Tri-Rail, Southeast Florida’s excellent regional commuter system, offering service from West Palm Beach to Ft. Lauderdale to Miami, shut down service the next day, on Saturday.
Amtrak, however, grossly jumped the gun, and began shutting down service on Thursday, October 20th, a full four days before the storm touched the sandy beaches of Southwest Florida.
The southbound Silver Meteor and Silver Star of Thursday, the 20th terminated in Orlando, in the central part of the Florida peninsular, well out of potential range of the storm. Orlando is a logical termination point due to two facts; Orlando remains the world’s number one tourist destination with millions of tourists a year, and Sanford is Orlando’s next door neighbor, just 30 miles up the track, which is Auto Train’s southern terminus and maintenance base and the Sunset Limited’s (when Amtrak gets around to choosing to operate it) eastern maintenance base.
Here’s the most bizarre part: Amtrak outright canceled Auto Train between Washington, D.C. (Lorton, Virginia) and Sanford on Friday, October 21st. Now, let’s talk basic logic. It was safe enough for the Meteor and Star to go to Orlando, 30 miles further south than Sanford, but it wasn’t safe for Auto Train to operate between Lorton and Sanford? This is logic? Or is this blatantly taking advantage of a not-so-nearby natural disaster as an excuse to annul a train? And, please pardon this obviously flawed non-Amtrak thinking, what about those passengers who were booked on Auto Train and wanted to get out of Florida and away from any storm potential? Do these lost souls mean nothing to the cold corporate conscience of Amtrak? Apparently, not.
Well, if you thought that was bizarre, here’s more. Somehow, Amtrak always manages to exceed negative expectations. On Saturday, October 22nd, Sunday, October 23rd, and Monday, October 24th Amtrak, apparently seeing even more of an opportunity to not serve its unwitting passengers, cancelled all Florida service trains, the Meteor, Star, and Auto Train over their entire routes. Yes, that’s right, the entire routes. The 1,389 mile long route between New York City’s Pennsylvania Station and Miami was outright cancelled, due to a hurricane affecting the southernmost 209 route miles. So, Amtrak was willing to give up all of the revenue for these trains running through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and North and Central Florida because of a hurricane in the southernmost tip of South Florida. How can this be even remotely justified? Does Amtrak have no shame? It must not, because it did all of this with a straight corporate face. It should be noted that a distinguished travel agent in the Orlando area was closely questioned about “storm conditions” in the Central Florida/Orlando area during the worst of Hurricane Wilma. Her succinct response? “Nothing worse than our normal summer storms.”
By Tuesday, October 25th, Auto Train service had miraculously resumed, and the Meteor and Star were again serving Orlando. At least through Saturday, October 29th, Orlando is expected to remain the southern terminus. South Florida is still partly without electric service and other essential services, and it could be another week before enough services are restored for CSX to safely reopen the railroad.
Since Amtrak seems to be more and more becoming the Fair Weather Passenger Railroad, and taking every advantage to not bother to run trains, one Washington wag came up with a list of other natural disasters that Amtrak can count on to help it not run trains at any given moment: hurricanes, Western mud slides, Eastern snowstorms, Midwestern snowstorms, southern snowstorms, terminals located in cities where the temperatures regularly drop below freezing, and the new railroad “blitzkrieg” style track projects using system gangs where the railroad shuts down for short periods of days to quickly perform maintenance track work.
Just in case you were wondering, Amtrak’s well done annual fact sheet for Florida for 2004 (last available) shows that Amtrak has ridership of 70,474 passengers in Jacksonville, 164,273 in Orlando, 197,483 on Auto Train in Sanford, 82,193 in Miami, and 50,895 in Tampa, just as a few examples of the many Florida stations. Apparently, these passengers aren’t important to Amtrak, just as the Texas Eagle passengers in Arkansas and Texas weren’t important during Hurricane Rita earlier in October.
Can anyone still come up with a good reason why this current crop of Amtrak senior management staff should be kept on? Why is Amtrak President and CEO David Gunn (the third of the Transit Trio of Tom Downs, George Warrington, and Mr. Gunn) being allowed to not run his trains at whim? Does he have no accountability? Or, does no one just not know about these shenanigans?
Keep in mind that Amtrak’s owners are the federal government, so there is no imperative to show a profit to shareholders by cancelling trains (which also only sends these trains into a downward revenue spiral). Add to that the healthy subsidy of free federal monies that Amtrak receives to run its trains, and you have to ask how much Amtrak is flaunting the spirit of federal largess by taking money to operate trains, and then not operating them under reasonable conditions.
Perhaps the previous generation of railroad robber barons during the Gilded Age did not perfect their craft to its zenith. Perhaps, Amtrak is now showing those former robber barons how to really fleece the public and public treasury, and smile all the while.
- Several TWA readers have been kind enough to inquire lately why it is important to keep using the term Transit Trio when referring to the current president of Amtrak and his two immediate predecessors. Because, we must never forget these three individuals who have done more collectively than anyone else to wreck our nation’s passenger rail system and bring Amtrak to its knees.
When Mr. Downs arrived, fresh from his dismissal from New Jersey Transit in the early 1990s after a change of political party in the New Jersey statehouse, he implemented the disastrous Mercer Plan, which many eliminated long distance trains, cut others back to non-daily service, and from a negative point proved the value of the late Dr. Adrian Herzog’s Matrix Plan (see URPA’s web site, http://www.unitedrail.org for more details on the Matrix Plan).
When the late Graham Claytor, the last true railroader to be president of Amtrak, retired, he left the company in relatively good shape as opposed to today. Amtrak debt was low, new equipment was being ordered, and long trains were operating to popular destinations.
Mr. Downs and his staff decimated much of this, and Amtrak’s finances went into a downward spiral, with revenues being lost, ridership down, and train miles drastically cut. Some states completely lost their train service, and over a decade later, it is still not restored.
After Mr. Downs wreaked havoc, he left, to be replaced by George Warrington, also late of New Jersey Transit (and now back there in Mr. Downs’ old job). Mr. Warrington took the fledgling Acela program and turned it into the nightmare it is today, all the while still virtually ignoring the national system. He allowed maintenance to be deferred, rolling stock to crumble, and put all resources, including billions of dollars in subsidy and loan monies into Wondertrain Acela which would allegedly save the passenger railroad world.
Instead of prudently listening to Bombardier, the world’s preeminent passenger rail car manufacturer, Mr. Warrington’s Amtrak arrogantly decided it knew best, and forced designs and changes on Bombardier that were doomed from the outset. Regrettably, time, lost fortunes, and huge safety issues have proven this true during the brief time that Wondertrain Acela has operated, not to mention the completely unnecessary sullying of Bombardier’s reputation.
In essence, Mr. Warrington bet the Amtrak farm on Wondertrain Acela, and came pretty close to losing the whole farm by the time he decamped for Trenton and back to New Jersey Transit.
Then, along came David Gunn, Amtrak current president and chief executive officer. Mr. Gunn arrived in the midst of a huge crisis, which no one today probably knows the depths of what he had to face. He dug in, got a lot of things accomplished, and then went terribly wrong, with far too much emphasis placed on transit operations theories from his overwhelming transit background, even though he claims to be a traditional railroader.
Early in his stewardship, he claimed that the national system would stay in place, but there would be no new long distance trains. He’s decimated dining car operations, and downgraded sleeping car operations, even though there is a noble experiment taking place on the Empire Builder route. He has threatened and bullied everyone from Congress to his betters in the United States Department of Transportation and the White House by falsely claiming to bankrupt Amtrak or numerous times to shut the system down if he didn’t receive the free federal monies he demanded for upgrades to the Northeast Corridor.
In short, these three presidents of Amtrak have made every effort to show exactly how running a modern passenger railroad shouldn’t be done. Their collective background is in transit operations, not passenger railroad operations, which are worlds apart both in theory and substance.
No one knows how close our country has come to completely losing Amtrak thanks to the efforts of these three men. We should never forget what can happen when a hapless rubber stamp board of directors of politicos as appointed by President Bill Clinton can do when they hire the wrong people to run a passenger railroad. Hopefully, the current professional board of directors will have the opportunity to hire someone more qualified who understands the importance of Amtrak’s original - and only mandate to operate a healthy and robust national passenger railroad system for the benefit of all Americans, not just those in selected coastal states.
We must never forget the many foibles of the Transit Trio. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.