United Rail Passenger Alliance

Volume 3 Number 21

1. Tick, tick, tick, tick … As of this writing, very close to the middle of May, no new Amtrak President and CEO has been named. We all await the choice of the Amtrak Board of Directors with great anticipation.
2. Whoever becomes the next chief steward of Amtrak, there are several daunting tasks that need to be undertaken immediately, above and beyond the financial, mechanical, transportation, passenger service, and operating issues.The Amtrak marketing department needs to be taken apart and put back together with a group of new professionals dedicated to the concept of Amtrak’s mandate to operate a national system of long distance trains. With the new group needs to be a new budget for marketing and advertising, that is more closely aligned with private sector budgets matching marketing performance with company revenues. Amtrak is spending about half now of what it should in this area, and the results demonstrate both a too small budget and a too wrong focus for Amtrak advertising.

   Amtrak has a number of huge growth areas for high revenue passenger mile performance through the proper marketing of long distance trains.

   Amtrak’s public relations efforts are almost non-existent. Amtrak’s public image is so tarnished and its reputation to sullied thanks to years of corporate whining by the company and its shrill echo groups such as the National Association of Railroad Passengers and some state passenger associations that the public, national media, and government officials have no real picture of Amtrak and its potential. The art and science of public relations has been misused and abused by Amtrak for too long for short term tantrums over yearly budget requests and other issues. It’s time to heal the Amtrak image.

   Amtrak did a short and successful experiment in 1999 and 2000 with promotional efforts for three of its trains apart from marketing and public relations efforts. The sole purpose of this successful and low-budget program was to use a common sense approach when working with radio and television stations, groups, travel agencies, and others to promote Amtrak services without large advertising purchases. An example of this included giving away Amtrak sleeping car trips to be used a prizes for radio and television station promotions in exchange for promoting Amtrak. Thousands of dollars of advertising were traded for sleeping car space that otherwise would have gone empty with no revenue potential. Amtrak needs to do more promotional efforts such as this.

   All of this adds up to Amtrak ending being America’s best kept secret. Historically, Amtrak has had a poor marketing department (including the current efforts, which herald new lows in advertising efficiency) that has done little to fill up trains outside of the Northeast Corridor. There is pent up national demand for passenger rail service; Amtrak needs to come the realization it is running trains for the public good as a common carrier, instead of for the convenience of its operating department and because it receives free federal and state monies to operate a skeletal national service.

3. Amtrak’s government affairs staff perhaps makes up one of the last bastions of employees who don’t really know what their employer is doing at any given moment. Constant reports come in about these employees still attempting to portray Amtrak as the poor stepchild of government in Washington instead of as a company with a dynamic purpose and a plan to make itself whole. The choir of Amtrak government affairs staff members is still singing to a congregation that got out of church an hour ago.
4. Amtrak’s corporate communications efforts are always excellent. The corporate communications staff knows how to get on message, and stay on message. Too bad no one has given them a better message to convey to those interested in listening. Like the rest of Amtrak, the corporate communications staffers need to get out of the “woe is me” mode and into the “we’re building for the future” mode. As long as corporate communications puts out a message of doom, the press will continue to write about Amtrak as a ramshackle organization that can’t get its act together.
5. Amtrak has the potential today of being on the verge of greatness. A board of directors that understands how to successfully operate a business is about to choose a new day-to-day leader for Amtrak that hopefully will reflect their acumen. This is not the time for another political hack or another transit refugee. It’s the time for a real businessman that can inject sanity into an otherwise historically out of control company that jolts from crisis to crisis. Tick, tick, tick, tick …