United Rail Passenger Alliance

Volume 3 Number 6

1. The Oxford University Press dictionary teaches us that a rumor is “a currently circulating story or report of unverified or doubtful truth.” Okay, now that the explanation is out of the way, let’s get down to the actual rumors floating around about Amtrak.
   • There are reports that all long distance trains will transition to the new Diner Lite concept by June 30th, including the recently upgraded Empire Builder.
   • If sleepers and diner can’t become profitable by the end of the year, they will be gone, leaving some type of lounge/snack service in their place.
   • The railroad is looking at more ways to cut services at manned stations that are not outright destaffed, including more automated Quik-Trak machines.
   • There will be new onboard supervisory jobs, as yet undefined what the positions will encompass, and how they will be staffed.
2. A United Rail Passenger Alliance reporter, attending a public meeting in Sacramento last week with Acting President David Hughes, directly asked Mr. Hughes about the Diner Lite program. An affable Mr. Hughes responded that he was very familiar with it and explained his thoughts at length. Mr. Hughes does not like the idea, but feels they have to “do something.”He’s “waiting for someone [a passenger] to tell him he likes it.” They will do a full evaluation before they proceed with it on other routes. Mr. Hughes recognized the problems ahead for Amtrak if there are too many cutbacks in areas such as diners.

   This sounds like good news about food service, but all of the rumors are very perplexing, and at odds with signals which have come from the Amtrak Board of Directors. Here is what one Washington wag had to say about all of this:

   “If what was floated in the rumors comes from the top, then the Board’s actions are highly incoherent. I am a bit baffled why the Board would mandate changes (like a new management information system and setting up the NEC subsidiary) in an effort to figure out the ‘real picture’ about the company, while at the same time signing onto precipitous actions based on business-as-usual ‘old-school’ thinking that the long distance trains are the root of all evil. It doesn’t make sense.

   “[Vice President, Customer Service Emmett] Fremaux (alumnus of such stellar customer service machines as the DC Election Board) and the whole rotten Amtrak ‘planning’ apparatus (if I may use so grand a term) needs to be run off the property immediately. Right now we need to buy some time. The new MIS mandated in the FY06 appropriations bill and the NEC subsidiary scheme need to have time to show results. If Amtrak withers to corridor-only and a few coach-only junkers, the NEC subsidiary will be rather pointless.

   “What we’re seeing now is the typical Amtrak old-school reaction. Don’t bother trying to make it work, just throw up your hands and cut, cut, cut. Amtrak has no-one to blame but themselves for bringing down the latest round of Congressional micro-management vis-a-vis sleeping cars, dining cars and limits on discounts.

   “In moments of desperation, a part of me really wants them to shut down the long distance trains. Then we’ll finally know for sure where Amtrak’s losses come from. Apparently no one has paid much attention to what happened to Amtrak’s bottom line following the 1979 and 1995 cuts.

   “Why not freeze everything in place until the accounting changes can have some impact and the Board and its new management team can get a grasp on things? Once that’s in place, let the chips fall where they may.”

3. Here is what one Central Florida wit had to say about the same rumors and Amtrak management: “My initial reaction likewise was that with the Amtrak board concentrating on finding a new CEO, perhaps some faction near the top of the Amtrak [staff] organization was seizing an opportunity to kill or mortally wound the long-distance network. I have long suspected a pent up hatred on the part Amtrak [staff] management (meaning specifically those partisans of their corridor) toward anything that benefits flyover country. Yes, hatred is not too strong a term, a seething, visceral hatred.”There is no question that the next permanent president and chief executive officer of Amtrak needs to quickly deselect just about the entire cadre of Amtrak senior executives, most of which have an ingrained transit and corridor mentality and strong allegiance to the failed concepts of the last three Transit Trio presidents of Amtrak. They are wedded to the faults of the current accounting system, and wedded to transportation concepts that are proven to be wrong for Amtrak. Not until new people without old allegiances are brought in, will Amtrak begin to move towards internal healing and the fulfillment of the company’s original mission to provide a robust national system of long distance trains.

   Since there seems to be separate signals coming from Mr. Hughes, the Acting President, and Mr. Fremaux, the Vice President, Customer Service (with backup from others on the vice presidential level), one cannot help but wonder if Mr. Hughes is fighting an internal battle for control with an entrenched and smug bureaucracy that is accustomed to winning internal political battles. Perhaps, what this bureaucratic group has forgotten, is that Mr. Hughes was selected for the acting president job by the current board, who, for the first time, are definitely in control of the company (as it’s supposed to be; all executives work at the pleasure of the board of directors in corporate America). We have already mercifully witnessed the departure of the Vice President, Transportation, Ed Walker, a long time, entrenched Amtrak executive bureaucrat. While Mr. Hughes cannot run the company alone if too many top level executives are expunged, there is certainly a deep enough bench of next level executives at Amtrak to step into place on an interim basis to keep the company running, such as we saw with Jon Tainow taking over for the departed Ed Walker. At this point, no one at Amtrak should feel they are indispensable.

4. If Mr. Hughes is looking for validation from passengers about the new Diner Lite program, here is what one passenger sent to TWA:
   

   “Just finished reading your article of 1/24/06 and was dismayed to hear that ‘diner lite’ has already gone into effect on some trains. I had heard about it but thought if ever used, it was something way off in the future. When I travel I always get myself a sleeper and in fact have a trip coming up in June where I’ll be riding trains #3; #14; and #8 [Southwest Chief, Coast Starlight, and Empire Builder]. Dinner in the Diner has always been big part of my experience while on the train.

   “This new ‘Diner Lite’ doesn’t sound like something that will add to the joy of riding a train.

   “… In my opinion; part of the high price I paid for my ticket would include restaurant style meals in the Diner and feel that if I’m not going to get that, Amtrak owes me a partial refund.”

5. At the Sacramento meeting last week mentioned above, it was also noted that the California Zephyr, which runs between Chicago and Oakland, California (San Francisco) will be the next train to receive an onboard services upgrade similar to the Empire Builder treatment.
6. For everyone who believes that corridors are the future of passenger rail because of high ridership and high revenue passenger miles, here’s something to ponder. Late evening on Tuesday, January 24th, the U.S. Coast Guard notified Amtrak that it had received a bomb threat concerning an unspecified bridge in the vicinity of Portland, Oregon. Amtrak held southbound train 509 at Portland, waiting on permission to release the train to continue south across the Steel Bridge (across the Willamette River, immediately south of Portland’s depot).In the meantime, because of the uncertain delay, Amtrak taxied all of the NINE passengers aboard train 509 onward to Oregon City, Salem, Albany and Eugene.

   Meanwhile, the eastbound Portland section of the Empire Builder on Friday, the 27th suffered a derailment between Portland and Spokane, Washington, (with only minor injuries) where the two sections of the train are combined. The Portland section of this daily long distance train had 86 passengers onboard, compared to the nine on the daily corridor train. Please, draw your own conclusions.

7. It was announced last week that United States Department of Transportation Inspector General Kenneth Mead has resigned after nine years with the DOT. Last year, Mr. Mead released a controversial report suggesting that all Amtrak dining and sleeping car services, along with baggage service and other amenities should be stripped from the company, essentially creating busses with steel wheels on steel rails. One of the results of this silliness was the insertion into Amtrak’s free federal monies appropriations for this year mandating improvements in sleeping and dining car revenues – to be presented to the IG for analysis and approval – or the loss of the services (see above).Mr. Mead’s timely departure created few tears among those who understand passenger railroad operations and marketing.
8. The saddest note of last week was the death of George Isaacs, streetcar historian, model railroader and tireless advocate for light trail transit. Mr. Isaacs, a resident of the Minneapolis, Minnesota area, was 83.Reporter Laurie Blake of the Minneapolis Star Tribune said in the paper,
   

   “By profession, Isaacs was an electrical engineer for the Onan Corp. in Fridley. He was every inch an engineer: organized, prepared, intent on getting results, but he was best known for his volunteer community work.

   “He worked first on the successful grass-roots campaign to stop the construction of a freeway on Hiawatha Avenue in south Minneapolis in the 1960s. Next, he advocated for a light-rail line to replace the freeway. Taking it upon himself to educate Minnesotans about the benefits of rail travel, Isaacs put together a slide show of his own photographs of rail lines here and overseas and showed it to more than 200 civic groups.

   “‘He always said, ‘How can people be for it, if they don’t know what it is?’ ‘ said his son, Aaron Isaacs, a transit planner for Metro Transit.

   “While pushing for new rail lines, Isaacs also tended to the historical record of the old Twin City Lines streetcar system, which closed in Minneapolis in June 1954 with the advent of buses. In 1962, he helped found the Minnesota Transportation Museum, which saved and restored Streetcar 1300, one of the last in use here. And he helped open the restored car to the public in 1971 as a rolling museum on a track in south Minneapolis.

   “‘George has his stamp on virtually everything we’ve done,’ said Louis Hoffman, a director of what is now the Minnesota Streetcar Museum. The museum now has eight streetcars and a second line operating in Excelsior.

   “‘Our museum is the way it is because George had a vision for it.’

   “‘He volunteered until within the last year as long as his health permitted it,’ Hoffman said.”

9. A regular rider on Amtrak Empire Service into New York City everyday had this to say as a followup to last week’s customer service item:
   

   “Item #6, [about the Cascades service notice to passengers] in particular, struck me. The single thing that Amtrak could do to generate the greatest improvement in overall customer satisfaction at the lowest expense would be to just communicate better with its riders. It never ceases to blow my mind how awful this company is at telling its riders what’s going on.

   “Want an example? As you know, cafe car service on the Empire Service was cut almost six months ago now, although the physical diner car is still a required part of the consist to provide business-class riders at least the nicer seats they have paid for, even if they don’t get their free coffee and tea anymore. Could Amtrak be bothered to buy some little sign stands, print out a few signs apologizing for the lack of cafe car service, and place the signs on the bar? Of course not. That would be good customer service, which is out of conformance with Amtrak’s corporate culture. Even after six months, we still get a dozen or so passengers on every trip who arrive in the cafe car in search of a snack. They stand in front of the bar looking perplexed until informed that service has been cut. Sometimes the conductor is not in the cafe car at the time, in which case this aspect of Amtrak’s customer service is DIY, meaning that we riders deliver the bad news. It would be funny if it weren’t sad, but even the little electronic signs in all the Amfleet 1 cars on the Empire Service, to this day, still cheerfully suggest that we “treat ourselves” to the offerings from the cafe car.

   “And 1-800-USA-RAIL turns out to actually be worse than useless in the event of any extenuating circumstance. One time about a year ago when an automobile had tumbled down onto the tracks from an overpass in Harlem, cancelling several evening Amtrak trains, I made the mistake of calling that number (I never learn, do I?), to find out what the plan was. First, both ‘Julie’ (the automated system) and an actual person I spoke to insisted that the scheduled 5:45 P.M. was going to leave on time. But there was one little problem: it was already 6:30 P.M. at the time I called. Even the human I spoke to couldn’t seem to fathom my issue with this discrepancy between the reality I was seeing and what she was saying. I foolishly called again a while later, and was informed of what to do: take a Metro-North train to Yonkers, and an Amtrak consist out of Albany would meet us there and take us home. So I and a few others did just that, arriving at Yonkers sometime around 8:00 P.M.. To nobody’s great surprise the promised consist from the great white north was nowhere to be seen. And by then, the blockage in Harlem had been removed. So the next two extremely-late, fully-packed Amtrak trains blew right past us, either because they don’t normally stop at Yonkers or because they were so full that they couldn’t have picked us up anyway. If I hadn’t bothered with their ‘customer service’, choosing instead to just DIY and seek out an Empire Service conductor (which I happen to be able to do because I recognize them all) or a fellow passenger on the grapevine, I would have gotten home hours sooner than I did. When a collection of cell-phone wielding passengers form a better customer service network than the official customer service department, this is an indication of a corporation that just doesn’t have customer service in its blood.

   “So we have DIY food service, and DIY customer service … at this rate it won’t be long before we’ll be operating the locomotive ourselves, too.”