This Week at Amtrak 2006-08-18
Volume 3 Number 33
- Whither the Sunset Limited, again? America’s only transcontinental passenger train still only covers half of a continent. When will it return? When will Amtrak keep its obligation to the American taxpayers who are helping pay for this train, and resume running it? When will Amtrak keep its obligation to its employees who worked to make this train successful, but have been rewarded by being out of a job for over a year, now?Amtrak has offered excuse after excuse, to union leaders, its employees, and others. Publications such as Trains magazine, which should be monitoring this situation, have instead blithely accepted many excuses including Amtrak’s all-time-most-successful excuse: “The dog ate my homework.”
Here is what has been independently determined:
- Amtrak has blamed CSX for the delay, because the railroad hasn’t released the track for passenger service. Not true. The track was restored (and improved) over its original pre-Hurricane Katrina condition months ago. CSX is operating a full schedule of freight service over the line, with no extraordinary restrictions. In an impressive display of the will and might of private enterprise, CSX restored a completely destroyed infrastructure in record time at enormous cost to its shareholders to resume critical freight shipments in and out of the devastated areas of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. No public money was used to put the railroad back in place, which has served as a vital artery for the flow of goods as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama continue to heal from the wreckage of Hurricane Katrina.
- Some have blamed the lack of qualified Train & Engine crew availability, saying there is no one to operate the train. Not true. Crews who were qualified when Katrina hit are still qualified until August 26, 2006. To continue their qualification, Amtrak merely needs to operate one single deadheading train (a locomotive and two coaches, as an example, with no passengers) over the route between New Orleans and
Jacksonville, Florida with the crews aboard. Crews south of Jacksonville to Orlando are already qualified since this route is used daily for the Florida service trains. - Amtrak has continually cited a lack of usable stations on the Gulf Coast. Here is a rundown: While local officials in each of the towns are eager to have Amtrak service return, there are some problems with permanent structures. However, Amtrak’s own undistinguished past has proven that Amtrak has been more than willing and able to substitute portable trailer stations when actual station structures become unavailable due to decay or reconstruction, or new building construction. Examples of this include Memphis, Tennessee; St. Louis, Missouri (the station there, a “portable” building for over a decade, was referred to by its old initials of SLUT, originally standing for St. Louis Union Terminal, but it morphed into St. Louis Union Trailers); Tampa, Florida; Rocky Mount, North Carolina; and a host of others. Many Amtrak “unmanned” stations in remote parts of the country, such as on the Empire Builder line or the western end of the Sunset Limited line, are merely wide spots in the ballast of the tracks, some with, and some without concrete or asphalt platforms.The Bay St. Louis, Mississippi station is in excellent shape; it was used as a temporary medical facility after the hurricane. The concrete train platform is intact.
The Biloxi, Mississippi station never had a building for passengers. It only consists of a concrete platform, platform roof, and parking lot, all of which are in place and fully functional.
In Gulfport, Mississippi, perhaps the most badly damaged station building, which is also a museum, on one side of the building part of the roof is missing. However, the museum in the building is back open and operating. So, the building is usable, and the concrete train platform is intact.
The station building in Pascagoula, Mississippi (home of one of Amtrak’s best supporters in the United States Senate, Trent Lott, who certainly must be wondering where his train is that he’s fought so long to preserve) has a long, wooden walkway. Some of the walkway is uneven, but there is plenty of intact concrete platform, away from the damaged station building, which is surrounded by a fence.
Mobile, Alabama is the most troublesome. CSX has abandoned the building (perhaps the world’s ugliest building in all its 1950s glory) and the property has been sold to a condominium developer. However, city officials are working on a solution to still provide a passenger train station.
- In a recent letter to a union official answering a query as to why the train is not running, Amtrak said the train has not been slated for discontinuance.
- As said last week in TWA, even without the nocturnal Gulf Coast stops of the Sunset Limited if it was restored on its previous schedule, there is enough overhead traffic between New Orleans and Florida destinations, particularly connecting traffic in Jacksonville with the two Florida service trains, to justify running the train. Keeping the present schedule out of Los Angeles, even allowing for a two or three hour dwell time in New Orleans, a train east of New Orleans would stop at Gulf Coast stations during the early and middle evening hours.
TWA readers will recall that exactly a year ago, during the 2005 hurricane season, Amtrak was cancelling trains for what was considered hurricane conditions, but in reality, the railroad was simply cancelling trains to save budget money and/or aggravation for the operating department. This occurred both on the Texas Eagle and the Florida service trains. Could this same sad situation be happening, again? Is Amtrak not living up to its contract with the American people by leaving this gaping hole in its national long distance train system just because someone on a division level wants a higher personal performance bonus? Is the money normally spent on the Sunset Limited being used to buy diesel fuel for other trains because of the increase in fuel prices? Much money was spent by the states on the Sunset Limited in 1992/93 when the route east of New Orleans was created. Most of the money was spent on track upgrades, such as in Florida, and station and parking facilities. Never in its life, has the Sunset Limited been a state supported train from an operations standpoint, so no argument can be made that cash-strapped state governments are supporting any of the train’s operating costs. Did the dog really eat Amtrak’s homework?
One very disturbing aspect of this is whether or not lower level Amtrak managers and executives are providing senior executives and the board of directors with accurate information. The right decisions can only be made if the right information is provided to those making the decisions. Amtrak has a proven, nearly unmovable bureaucracy which has thwarted many good plans in the past. Are we experiencing this, again? Is the company still that much out of control? Does this yet again point to the need to almost completely clean house of many of Amtrak’s long time managers that are more interested in their personal comfort than what is good for the company?
The cleanup after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina was a fascinating look at corporate responsibility and how private companies respond to a need of a devastated region. Norfolk Southern was the first railroad in the heavily damaged area to have service restored to New Orleans, and indeed, even helped by hosting CSX trains too, while CSX finished its own track rehabilitation. CN crews raced to restore the former Illinois Central line from the north. CSX took the longest simply because it suffered the most damage. All of these railroads had one thing in common — an urgent need to restore their businesses to good operating condition, to get the assets in the damaged areas back into production and back into a positive cash flow, and to serve their customers and the public good by providing critically needed heavy transportation services.
Amtrak followed suit, at a much slower pace, allowing some of the pent up freight congestion to clear before passenger service was restored. Most passenger service is now restored, with the glaring omission of the Sunset Limited east of New Orleans. Amtrak tries to make the case for not enough business on the line. This is a senile marketing mentality that forgets the real purpose of Amtrak is to provide passenger transportation for all reasons, beyond business travelers in the Northeast, or leisure travelers on the California Zephyr or Empire Builder. People still have a great need to travel to and from the devastated Gulf Coast towns and cities, which Amtrak is ignoring. Our national passenger service is saying, “you’re not important to us, we have other things to do.” While so many other railroads, corporations, relief agencies, and private citizens all lend a hand to help in the Gulf Coast, even one year after the hurricane hit, Amtrak is simply ignoring the problem and demonstrating an arrogance that is unfit for a quasi-governmental agency that has a federal handout of over $1.2 billion a year.
Inquiring minds still want to know when the Sunset Limited will operate again east of New Orleans.
- In another sign of some internal improvement at Amtrak, the company has redesigned and renamed its employee newsletter, making it easier to read as well as presenting better information. The relaunched publication has been named Amtrak This Week. Clever name, don’t you think?
- Continuing his practice of communicating with employees, passengers, and public officials in a calm, responsible, and professional manner, Amtrak Acting President and CEO David Hughes wrote in the July 31, 2006 issue of Amtrak This Week about CSX on-time performance:
CSXT OTP
Dear Co-workers:
The on-time performance of the long-distance network is nowhere near what it should be and steps to improve it are being taken. I’m writing today to bring employees up to date on our effort, especially those who personally shoulder the burden of late trains, like OBS and Mechanical - I know what you’ve had to put up with.
Roughly speaking, we own 15% of the problems: locomotive failures, late turns and the like. The rest of the troubles come from the host railroad, such as freight congestion, failure to remove slow orders and poor dispatching.
We can and will make improvements on our own, but much more must be done by the freights.
Earlier this month a number of developments took place that may help begin to turn the tide, especially with our poor performance over CSXT between Florida and Washington, D.C. Senior Vice President/Operations Bill Crosbie and I sat down to talk about the problems with CSXT’s Chief Operating Officer Tony Ingram and Chief Transportation Officer David Brown. As you know, our trains operate mostly over CSXT track in the Southeast and in New York state. We emerged from that meeting with a commitment for change, but the proof, of course, will be in the results.
On-time performance has become a matter of concern to other interested parties. The National Association of Railroad Passengers recently asked the Surface Transportation Board to investigate why the host railroads were not getting our trains over the road on time. Additionally, an amendment was added to federal legislation working its way through Congress directing the Department of Transportation Inspector General to investigate this problem.
The host railroads must be our partners in operating an on-time railroad. It’s that simple, and I’d gladly trade all the investigating and legislating for simply that. The bottom line is that Amtrak has an obligation to its passengers to run an on-time railroad. In the coming weeks, I will continue to update you on developments.
Sincerely,
David Hughes
Acting President and CEOThis brings up the problem of yet another summer, and yet more delays due to main line track maintenance by a host railroad. Some railroads today, such as CSX, do massive all-at-once maintenance projects where short parts of the railroad are shut down either for a period of days, or hours at a time so the track and bridge work can be done as quickly as possible. When the track is reopened for service, either for a short service window or overnight until work resumes the next day, a flood of trains is uncorked, and the line becomes congested, trapping Amtrak trains in the process. There is no easy solution to this problem. The railroads, many of which are running at high capacity on their main lines, must maintain their physical plant, or there will be no railroad left, and conditions will revert to the way things were in the 1960s and 1970s on many freight lines. Yet, Amtrak must continue to operate its trains as part of its obligation to passengers, especially in high traffic summer months.
Railroads plan maintenance will in advance. Amtrak knows when this maintenance will occur; it needs to have better planning to work around these problems. Conversely, the host railroads also have an obligation to serve paying customers, and both sides need to have some flexibility.
On the West Coast, socialist passenger groups are screaming about the horrible timekeeping for the Coast Starlight, which operates between Los Angeles and Seattle, Washington, mostly over Union Pacific tracks. There is a modest campaign afoot to try and pressure West Coast state governors to intervene in this problem, and try and force Union Pacific to solve the problem.
The reality of the situation is that Union Pacific allowed some main line track to deteriorate (which is what CSX is trying to prevent on the East Coast), which resulted in multiple slow orders for train movements, some derailments, and other adverse conditions. The Coast Starlight quickly was re-labeled the Coast Starlate, with trains often running as much as 12 or more hours behind schedule, causing havoc in every venue.
The odd thing is that Union Pacific, earlier this year both announced and commenced a track rehabilitation program on the very piece of track in question which causes so many delays on the Coast Starlight. The railfan organizations began their public drum and breast beating AFTER the commencement of the problem-solving track upgrading. They are demanding of the governors to solve a problem that is already in the process of being solved. It’s true, that timing is everything.
- Another hot topic addressed in Amtrak This Week is the United States Department of Transportation Inspector General’s report on the reform initiatives which have resulted in the dismal Diner Lite program. Here is the story, from Amtrak This Week:
August 7, 2006
DOT Inspector General Report on Reform Initiatives
While noting that Amtrak has achieved $46.3 million in savings from its reforms this fiscal year through May, a report issued by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Acting Inspector General Todd Zinser added that “…Amtrak must continue to seek out and implement all opportunities to reduce its costs.”
Required by Congress, the report served as the DOT IG’s third quarterly assessment of the savings the company has achieved as a result of the implementation of strategic reform initiatives. Congress requires the DOT IG to certify that Amtrak has made operational savings by July 1, as mandated in the FY ‘06 Appropriations Act. Operational reforms including food and beverage initiatives, such as the long-distance dining service model, and reductions in corporate overhead expenses were among those that contributed to the DOT IG’s analysis. Acknowledging that Amtrak’s financial performance through May of this fiscal year was better than expected, it added that the company must build on that progress to make it through the end of the fiscal year. Half of the improved performance through May was attributed by the DOT IG to savings from strategic initiatives.
Beyond this fiscal year, the DOT IG report cautioned that “sustained reform over the next several years is needed to continue reducing Amtrak’s operating subsidy,” citing changes needed in the areas of food and beverage service, sleeper car service, route restructuring, state payments, and labor contracts.
Zinser concluded his report by writing, “Incremental operating savings over the next 5 or 6 years will not be sufficient to fund the significant increases in capital investment required to return the system to a state of good repair and promote corridor development. As we have said in the past, the current system needs to be fundamentally restructured. A new model for intercity passenger rail that ensures greater cost effectiveness, responsiveness, and reliability is critical.”
The entire report, which was issued on July 28, is posted on the DOT Office of Inspector General site, http://www.oig.dot.gov.