United Rail Passenger Alliance

Amtrak prints 1.4 million timetables each year, plus the individual route timetables, and various short distance wallet card timetables for use on corridor routes.Amtrak is missing a huge opportunity with all of these printed materials, which are often going to a publishing-world prized audience of loyal readers who refer to the timetable more than once, plus it has an unbelievable shelf life of six months.

One of two things needs to happen. Either Amtrak needs to get further into the publishing business, or it needs to find a publishing partner for the timetables of all sizes and start making some money from the timetables; make them a revenue center instead of an expense center by selling advertising.

While Amtrak continues to untangle its business affairs and starts acting like a real business that (gasp!) thinks about breaking even financially, or even (horrors!) makes a profit (for those in the group unfamiliar with this process, it’s known as higher revenues than expenses, a common occurrence in the real world), a publishing venture not only would pay for itself, but contribute income to Amtrak’s bottom line. This bold concept is not unheard of at Amtrak; along the financial black hole of the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak leases space along its right-of-way for underground communications cables, and it leases space in some of its stations to private businesses that serve passengers.

Amtrak has a publishing deal with McMurry, Inc., which creates the bimonthly NEC passenger magazine Arrive. The magazine is distributed free on all NEC trains and in ClubAcela station lounges.

McMurry says Arrive has 1,778,839 adult readers per issue, or 8.89 readers per copy. There are 200,000 copies per issue printed. Those numbers are audited numbers by BPA, the gold standard of circulation verification. If you’re an advertising agency, these numbers are impressive, especially since you often have a captive market that doesn’t have other publication choices readily available while riding NEC trains. Historically, airline magazines have been strong financial performers for both the airlines and the independent publishing companies for the same reasons. Arrive’s web site lists nearly 50 gold-plated advertisers for the magazine.

Left over from better days, Amtrak also publishes Empire Builder Magazine, the official onboard publication of that named train. New York by Rail Magazine offers a travel guide to destinations from New York City to Canada. Plus, don’t forget Amtrak’s ticket jackets, which have always contained advertising from outside sources and Amtrak promotional partners.

All of this is a good start. Let’s let out imaginations run wild and talk about a national or regional onboard magazines. But wait, there’s more. Tie in regional magazines with the always popular route guides, which Amtrak published long ago. These guides, especially on the western transcontinental trains, went like hot cakes (Speaking from experience, this writer created the last Sunset Limited route guide, which was not only well received, kept disappearing every time they were put on the trains; many passengers kept them as souvenirs.).

Here’s the thought: Amtrak could easily contract with publishing companies which specialize in travel publications, such as state and local tourism guides, or airline magazines, or existing hotel magazines, or any other number of scenarios. These companies would be responsible for not only publishing, but the sale of advertising (see McMurry, above, as an example). Make the package even more attractive for advertisers (thus, creating higher revenue), and bundle a magazine with an accompanying separate route guide (also containing advertising), and round that out with accompanying advertising in the national timetable and/or specific route timetables.

It’s likely the size of the national timetable could double with income producing advertising. Think about producing 1.4 million timetables each year with somebody other than Amtrak footing the bill. In the last fiscal year, Amtrak welcomed 24.3 million passengers onto its trains. Many of those passengers brought their own reading materials, electronic entertainment, or were happy to look out the window at the passing countryside. But, the reality of the situation is there are always passengers who are restless, and want something fresh to read. This concept also provided for a good service recovery vehicle for when trains are late and passengers need to be distracted from their plight.

From this point, let your imagination soar for other similar ideas which would benefit not only Amtrak passengers (the real purpose of Amtrak, in the first place), but contribute to Amtrak’s bottom line.

But wait, you say, won’t this require yet another Amtrak bureaucracy that will cost more to administer than create disposable revenue? Only if some empire creating bureaucrat is allowed to run the operation. This whole operation could probably be administered with a staff of three to five people, with only two in the beginning.

It’s time for Amtrak to open its corporate drawers, check the old file cabinets, and figure out how it can work to become self-sufficient drawing on the assets it has at hand. Every Amtrak passenger is a captive audience that is an advertiser’s dream. Don’t let those dreams die because someone at Amtrak is not creative enough to figure out how to get an advertiser to part with his money.

One of the comments generated by Mr. Coston’s speech came from a former Amtrak manager who has remained in the transportation industry. This gentleman noted two important facts not many people have given serious thought: First, Amtrak’s new best friend needs to be people in the automobile/truck highway industry, and second, most young people under 30 not only have no concept of America without Amtrak, but are highly annoyed Amtrak does not offer a more viable and robust service for them to use as part of their personal domestic transportation matrix.

Little do they know the answer lies in politics more than anything else, plus a stubborn refusal by Amtrak to embrace growth (free federal money has nothing to do with embracing concepts), and figure out how to better itself and make friends with its host railroads.

Observation No. 1: If you boarded an American passenger train 40 or 50 years ago, you saw mostly old people — certainly people above 40, if not actually elderly. Board an American passenger train today — out here in the Heartland, not the NEC — and you see mostly twenty-somethings. They have no problem about riding trains.

Observation No. 2: If you ride one of these trains, as I have ridden the Hiawatha and the Lincoln Service to St. Louis several times in recent months, you notice that most of these younger passengers are occupied with their consumer electronics. Some are talking on a cell phone. Some are working at a laptop. Some are watching a movie on a laptop. Some are playing a video game, either on a laptop, a hand-held device or just a game device. Some alternate devices, putting the laptop movie on hold while they make a cell-phone call. And just about EVERYbody is listening to an MP3 player at one point or another.

Observation No. 3: A 60-something old college buddy of mine — not a railfan, but a sympathizer who eavesdrops on some of my railfan e-mailing — who lives in Indianola, Iowa, tells me he has two sons, both in their 30s, one in the Chicago suburbs, one in Carbondale. The boys have always been close, and they visit each other often. They used to drive but now they take the train. I asked my friend why, so he called one of his sons and asked him to account for the change. The son said, “Well, for one thing, we can talk on the cell phone.” That was the sum-total of his “explanation.”

Observation No. 4: A 50-something friend of mine who works in the Chicago suburbs managing some 700 contract truckers who haul his company’s products, shares the night dispatching desk primarily with 20-something employees. During lulls he spends a lot of time getting to know them and their habits.

He reports

1. The only newspaper they read is the Red Eye, a sassy tabloid published by the Chicago Tribune containing lots of entertainment/celebrity news plus boiled-down, digested versions of serious stories from the grown-ups’ paper. None of these employees reads the big Tribune or its rival, the tabloid Sun-Times.
2. None of them cares much about cars. They all drive, of course, because you can’t get around without a car, but they don’t make a big deal out of car ownership, they do not expect to be judged on what kind of car they drive, they do not judge or select their friends based on what kind of car they drive, and they use transit when and where it meets their needs. They like cars, but cars hold no particular mystique for them, and they do not use cars for “social signaling” as their parents and grandparents did.
3. Consumer electronics have replaced cars as social-status indicators for this group. While they may be indifferent to the type of car they drive, they would die of embarrassment if caught with anything but the sexiest new cell phone, and their hand-helds and video games are expected to be the latest models with all the right bells and whistles. People indifferent to the latest in consumer electronics are viewed as “strange.”

Summary: Changing tastes among young adults are making intercity train travel more socially acceptable among young adults than at any time since World War II. Failure to use a car no longer is stigmatized as evidence of poverty, incompetence, nostalgia or social awkwardness. It simply represents a personal choice that carries no over-arching social meaning. “Social signaling” of one’s status now is done with consumer electronics rather than cars. This does not make train travel positively attractive, but it makes it relatively so because the “repulsion factor” caused by the train not being a car is eliminated. The young traveler is now able to make his choice based on personal convenience unencumbered by negative social baggage his choice may entail.

On the positive — rather than neutral — side, the train actually makes a more attractive choice for these people because they can use their consumer electronics in ways they cannot in a car or airliner. Using a cell phone while driving a car is difficult and distracting, even if you have a BlueTooth device on your face. In some places it’s illegal. On airliners it’s not permitted at all. Even if you’re a passenger in a car, phoning can be difficult, especially if the discussion is supposed to be confidential. Working at a laptop, watching a movie or playing a hand-held game are impossible while driving and not really fun even if you’re a passenger, but an Amtrak coach seat is so huge and roomy that even in a full coach most passengers can do these things without disturbing others.

Finally, lets go back to that cryptic remark my friend’s son made, “Well, for one thing, we can talk on the cell phone.” Why is this an explanation?

I think it’s because cell phones eliminate a major unexpressed dissatisfaction with train travel — disconnectedness from the traveler’s normal environment. We railfans like that. The train ride itself is interesting because we know so much about it’s meaning — not only the operation of the train itself and the infrastructure over which it travels but the elements in the passing scene as well. Most railfans I know are engineering buffs, architecture buffs and economic-geography buffs as well, so they are fascinated by every viaduct and cut the train passes through, as well as by every grain elevator, factory or mill served by the tracks. “Civilians” cannot be expected to thrill at this banausic furniture the way railfans do. For them it only emphasizes that they’re neither at home nor at their destination. They’re in an alien environment, and, unlike the driver of a car, they feel no sense of control over their ability to influence the situation because they are passive recipients of whatever service Amtrak and the railroad can deliver to them. Keeping touch by cell phone solves this problem. It reduces the sense of “passenger victimhood” by empowering him with the ability to interact with his normal environment.

It also solves some more practical problems as well. For example, if the train is late, the traveler can alert the people who are picking him up, repeatedly, if necessary, to update them on the train’s status and location and on what the conductor is telling the passengers. This is a real leap forward in convenience. No longer do people waiting for a family member have to park at an unmanned depot and stare futilely down the tracks, probably in terrible weather, looking for a headlight. They can stay home, run errands, do whatever, knowing that when the train comes they’ll know about it. And they can chat with their friend or loved one at any time.

By removing some of the strangeness and disconnectedness of train travel, consumer electronics bring it well into the circle of normal daily activities, including interpersonal communication, information gathering, amusement, work and play. This is not to be dismissed lightly. Along with the younger generation’s distancing from much of the postwar “car culture,” represents the “normalization” of train travel.

And it’s all happened so stealthily. While we rail advocates have torched the air for decades with debates about the best ways to improve the passenger’s on-board experience and on-board environment, the passengers have solved the problem themselves by bringing their own environments and their own experiences on board with them. While we’ve been talking, the consumer-electronics industry has been solving our problem. Personal technology may be the best friend the American passenger train ever had.

There’s a message in this to rail advocates, of course: We need to get out of our own heads more and do a better job of observing the world around us. If we watch closely enough and reflect appropriately, it will furnish us with the information we need to do our work. As Sherlock Holmes famously said, “You see, Watson, but you do not observe.”

A lot of the controversy over the truth/falsity of the corridor/long-distance-train distinction comes from the amazing willingness of most of the human race to believe in categories and distinctions, regardless of how ridiculous they are and regardless of whether they are based on any kind of meaningful differences.

All you have to do is break a phenomenon down into two or three or four categories, give each one a fancy name and, presto! — each immediately takes on life and meaning in the vernacular ear.

For 2,000 years almost all serious thinkers believed in Hippocrates’ theory that every human being had a temperament that fell into one of four basic types — Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic or Phlegmatic, and that these temperaments were regulated or controlled by the so-called “Four Humors,” i.e., blood, yellow bile, black bile or phlegm. It wasn’t until around the 17th century that philosophers began to question this “system.” It was spurious, improbable, unproven and absurd from Day One, but it had the virtue of sounding learned, so the learned — and everybody else — believed it until the Scientific Method evolved to the point where scientists at least realized it was a bunch of hooey.

But the human itch to believe in categories persists, so the fraud survives by moving into greener pastures. Passenger trains seem to be a very fertile field in which to enchant the credulous with new feats of nomenclature. The only thing about so-called “corridor trains” that makes them appealing to the policy-makers these days is their eligibility to be financed with OPM — Other People’s Money — in this case, a state’s money.

But what happens if you identify a corridor which can’t be confined to a willing state, such as Chicago-Detroit? Just you watch. Somebody at Amtrak or DOT will twiddle the definition dials again, and say, “Oh, you mean a ‘multi-state’ corridor train. That’s not a ‘real’ corridor train. We’ve just decided to call them ‘mini-long-distance trains.’”

• I have a basic distrust for conspiracy theories, not just because hardly anyone can actually keep a juicy secret, but also because most things in life turn out to be more like a long-winded soap opera than a spy thriller. Just for fun, though, let’s invent a fictional “They” for a few minutes.

  “They” say Amtrak never wanted to expand. “They” didn’t want you to remember how Amtrak ran trains to meet real demand even before the Arab oil crisis of 1973. “They” want you to believe that the latent demand for intercity passenger rail is only a railfan’s daydream.

  “They” say you can’t get Americans, especially in the West, to ride trains. “They” say people are too much in love with their automobiles. “They” don’t want you to look at Greater Los Angeles, the epicenter of America’s love of things on four wheels, where every day people board a Metrolink commuter train 42,000 times every weekday.

  “They” say you can’t get the railroads to let passenger trains run over their rails. “They” don’t want you to know about cities like Nashville, whose first commuter line opened last year.

  “They” say it takes decades to start a new commuter train system. “They” don’t want you to know that from the day New Mexico’s Governor Richardson announced his plan to pursue commuter rail to the Rail Runner’s opening day was under three years.

  “They” say it takes billions of dollars and fancy high-speed trains to get people to ride. “They” don’t want you to know how many people have started taking the train in Illinois, with only a modest budget increase, in just one year.

  … Is there a “they”? I doubt it. But if there is, “They” are just plain wrong. “They” say America can’t run passenger trains. “We” can.

• Those of you who hold common stock will know it’s proxy season because your mailbox is stuffed with annual reports. And if you own railroad shares, you will find that one of the inner flaps of that glossy booklet probably contains a route map.

  I happen to have Norfolk Southern’s map before me. Now, NS in 2004 told the State of Virginia it was “eager to let passenger train use its lines,” at least under certain conditions (Roanoke Times, 2 September 2004).What would happen if a national rail passenger company, and a few states, sat down with NS and did what Illinois has done? It’s not too difficult to connect the dots on the NS map. To the current Amtrak route map let’s imagine adding just three new daily trains:

  • Cleveland / Toledo – Columbus – Cincinnati – Lexington, KY – Chattanooga – Birmingham – Mobile
  • Kansas City – St. Louis – Louisville – Chattanooga – Atlanta – Macon – Savannah
  • Richmond – Roanoke – Knoxville – Chattanooga – Memphis

  Suddenly, the whole South and Midwest are connected. By creating a matrix of the existing and these new routes, you can realistically travel between (for example) Florida and anywhere.

  Add one or two more trains from an Atlanta hub, and one or two in the Carolinas, and everywhere connects with everywhere. You won’t have to change trains in Washington, DC or New Orleans to get from Atlanta to Chicago.

  Now if there really is no “They,” then who says it’s not possible?