This Week at Amtrak 2006-09-28
September 28th, 2006
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- The end of the federal government’s and Amtrak’s fiscal year is just hours away. Looks like Amtrak survived another year to live and provide passenger rail service for another day. Fiscal Year 06 will be remembered as the year that fortunately for Amtrak, former President and CEO David Gunn was shown the door, and a new chief steward of Amtrak appeared on the scene less than a month before the end of the fiscal year.Most notable for FY 06 was the complete absence of the Sunset Limited operating east of New Orleans. Amtrak told its unions the train was not discontinued, but was unable to operate due to a lack of station infrastructure and right of way. CSX solved the right of way problem by releasing the track east of New Orleans to Jacksonville on April 1st for use by Amtrak. The station facilities smokescreen is just that – smoke and mirrors. If Amtrak has the internal will to operate this train, which the State of Florida contributed $7.5 million to in 1992/93 to upgrade infrastructure and build station facilities in Florida’s panhandle, the train will be running. So far, the public or other interested parties have not heard any reasonable excuses, beyond the dog eating Amtrak’s homework, for the train not to be running.
- New Amtrak President and CEO Alex Kummant continues to strike a positive note as he communicates with his employees. Here is what he had to say in the internal employee newsletter, “Amtrak This Week” on Monday: Read more…
Categories: This Week
