Volume 4 Number 31
- If you have an advantage over your close or far competitors, why not use it? Amtrak has not figured out that concept, and continues to subscribe to herd mentality instead of the brightness of individuality.
Riding a passenger train, whether it’s a commuter train, regional train, or long distance train comes down to one factor: it is basic transportation of cars on steel wheels traveling over steel rails. It’s not so different from riding a common carrier bus, such as Greyhound, or flying on a jet airplane, such as offered by Southwest or Delta Air Lines.
It’s what can be offered to make the trip unique and desirable that makes the difference.
Passenger airplanes, in the post war days of the turbo prop Constellations, and the early Boeing 707s, offered an unique experience. Well prepared hot meals were served, the Constellations had private sleeping berths similar to the open sections of the Pullman Company sleeping cars on trains, and those employees providing the service to passengers were selected for their smarts, personalities, and good appearance. Through the years most of that has disappeared, and today’s jet airplane travel, including overseas travel, has become a function of seeing how many seats can be jammed into a long metal tube and shot through the atmosphere. Oh, first class and business travel still offers some perks, but they are limited compared to what they used to be and they are expensive enough only the most well-to-do flyers can take advantage of the service.
Bus travel has some improvements over the original open windows and what today we would consider to be a school bus atmosphere. A limited number of long distance bus carriers offer onboard movies, and a very limited food and beverage service on certain routes, but this is not a common practice. All busses have restroom facilities, but those facilities are as cramped as the seats in the busses. There is nothing glamorous about a bus terminal, and many are served by inhouse Burger King fast food restaurants, not exactly most adults’ idea of a good meal.
Passenger train travel is where the potential sits lurking, waiting to be exploited. A passenger train, like a cruise ship, can be a moving city. Trains and ships are the only two forms of common carriage with this advantage. VIA Rail Canada figured out a long time ago (actually, they never forgot) this concept, but Amtrak still often thinks of itself as a Greyhound bus with steel wheels on steel rails.
Amtrak is in love with coaches, and thinks the need by passengers for ingestion of nourishment during travel should be an annoying necessary function, not a profit center. Likewise, the railroad sleeping car has great potential, as demonstrated by GrandLuxe Rail Journeys, but scorned by Amtrak. As we’ve said the past two issues of TWA, Amtrak’s sleeping cars, if only brought up to the level of the old Pullman Company, have great potential. Instead, as Amtrak operates them, they are austere shells with often less than ordinary passenger service.
A well planned train can have ordinary coaches (with excellent passenger service and high levels of coach amenities and comfort), first class coaches with more spacious seating and similar amenities to sleeping cars, sleeping cars that offer many of the same levels of service and comfort as good hotels, dining cars which offer satisfactory meals, and grill and lounge cars which offer a friendly atmosphere and a variety of light food, snack, and beverage items. Add to this a car with a gift shop and entertainment venues such as electronic games and a children’s play area, and you have a full range of passenger services, all designed to pay for themselves, and make a profit in the end. Plus, don’t forget the never-elegant baggage car, where great amounts of passenger luggage can be stored and shipped.
If you’re an Amtrak apologist, you will immediately say these types of things can’t be done without a lot of money. Or, you may say since Amtrak is a child of government, then it should only offer the most basic of services and not cater to upscale passengers. Such piffle. Imaginative management, coupled with a motivated work force can accomplish many of these things. A redirection of some resources away from the constant financial black hole of the Northeast Corridor infrastructure and short distance trains provides plenty of working capital to make this type of train a reality. Amtrak, an a quasi-public entity, has a greater duty to be self-sustaining and draw as little as possible from the public purse; there is no commandment anywhere, written in stone or any other form of writing, that says that passenger trains MUST lose money. That is only a myth that has been perpetuated by Amtrak management and the National Association of Railroad Passengers and other organizations of that ilk which believe in the illogical concept that government is good, and private industry is bad.
As we have discussed before, Amtrak onboard employees and station employees, as well as those in back office functions like reservations and accounting are de-motivated and self-demonized by their employment and work atmosphere. Too many unresolved union contracts for too long, too much negative discipline instead of positive discipline, and the allowance of too many people to stay in jobs for too long they are not suited for have made a complete mess of Amtrak passenger service.
Every passenger boarding an Amtrak train or coming into any type of contact with Amtrak is always making a craps shoot, seeing if their experience is going to be a good one because of a dedicated Amtrak employee, or a bad or terrible one because an Amtrak employee is having a bad day or a bad life. Airlines, cruise line, hotels, and just about every other company in the travel industry does a better job than Amtrak at customer service, because the employees have better motivation, and a greater fear of losing their jobs. Amtrak tends to attempt to run off the good employees, and retain employees that never should have been hired in the first place.
Amtrak has all of the resources it needs to improve its trains, stop being America’s best kept secret, and be a successful company, beyond the measurement of those ill-bred souls who believe Amtrak must be protected in every instance because it’s the only passenger system we have. Those enablers would rather ride a bad train in agony than attempt to create a good system of trains with potential. Those people need to go away and allow Amtrak to flourish and grow, taking whatever painful steps may be necessary to in the end have a healthy and robust American passenger rail system.
- This week’s interstate highway bridge collapse tragedy in Minneapolis will have many positive ramifications come out of the horror of losing the bridge and those lives which were lost or forever changed by injury.
Already, there is talk of rebuilding America’s aging infrastructure, and perhaps giving a closer examination to surface transportation policy.
Add to that the current high prices of gasoline during the summer months, and you would think commuter rail and short distance passenger rail systems all over the country would be booming. Nope, that’s not happening. Those commuter systems and short distance lines which are good and well planned, and do well under any circumstances continue to do well. Those systems which have limited utility to people normally driving their own cars remain as under performers. The bottom line of this is that drivers are not going to abandon their automobiles until two things happen: first, gas prices probably double or triple what they are today, and second, a well planned commuter and transit infrastructure which offers both convenience and choices comes into being.
Of course, it’s a chicken and egg thing. In Dallas, they built a good system, and the public flocked to it. Across the state in Houston, they built a good system, and it has had decent ridership, but political forces have decided not to expand the rail system, and instead rely on busses.
In South Florida, the Tri-Rail commuter system continues to flourish, but at a high public cost and not as high ridership numbers as are desirable. Since Tri-Rail has added a tremendous number of departures, ridership should increase, and plans to more than double the system’s route miles are still going forward.
If highway planners, who are most likely looking at a financial windfall for rebuilding aging and out of date roads and interstates in the next few years, look beyond the fish bowl and realize good, well-planned rail systems can augment their highway plans, then the world will be a better place. Rail will never replace highways, but it can be a vital component in the domestic transportation matrix. The rail component can include commuter, short distance, regional, and long distance trains, with as many operators as there are as many types of rail. Amtrak doesn’t have to be the one-size-fits-all operator, and it won’t offer all of the answers.
Thanks to the Minneapolis tragedy, and the success of systems like Dallas and other cities and regions, surface transportation policy may again come in vogue. We can only hope policy focuses on a salad bowl of all of the components, and not just the pouring of concrete.
- Last week, we briefly discussed the poor results of the Union Pacific’s operations of the California Zephyr and the Sunset Limited on behalf of Amtrak. URPA’s own Russ Jackson of California has been studying the topic of the California Zephyr’s on time performance in depth, and offers a different perspective on the situation.
How is the California Zephyr doing since its schedule was lengthened?
By Russ Jackson
We all know that Amtrak trains 5 and 6, the California Zephyr, have been late regularly. From August, 2006 into June, 2007, the combined on time performance of both trains at their endpoints, Chicago and Emeryville, was 0.0%. On June 21, 2007, after arduous negotiations with the Union Pacific the schedule was lengthened.
The new schedule has train 5 arriving in Emeryville at 7:50 P.M., with very little extra pad from Martinez, and train 6 is scheduled to arrive in Chicago at 4:25 P.M., but with almost 90 minutes of extra pad from Naperville.
Since the 21st of June schedule change trains 5 and 6 endpoint OTP for the year has “improved” and as of July 22 has reached 3.2%, but with July 1 through 22 showing 37% OT and improving almost daily.
The need for the schedule lengthening was the 129 miles between milepost Alazon and Battle Mountain, Nevada, on what is nominally a double track railroad. That stretch encompasses the historic Central Pacific line and the parallel Western Pacific line that are both now owned by the UP. The official reason is “temporary speed restrictions” (slow orders). The UP has plans to repair the tracks in this area over the next two years, and much has already been done. There was little for Amtrak to do, so it chose to lengthen the schedule of the Zephyr running through that area, with No. 5 scheduled to arrive in Sacramento at 5:50 PM instead of 2:15, and train 6 arrive in Salt Lake City at 4:15 A.M. instead of 3:15 A.M. It is this segment that is of interest here, so how has it been doing the past few weeks: (not every date mentioned)
No. 5 Scheduled at Sacramento at 5:50 P.M.
Actual arrival time July 1 1:54 A.M. (Very late) July 12 5:09 (Early) July 14 6:03 July 16 5:21 (Early) July 18 5:03 (Early) July 20 5:23 (Early) July 22 6:16 July 24 5:31 (Early) July 26 6:26 No. 6 Scheduled at Salt Lake City at 4:15 A.M.
Actual arrival time July 3 12:09 P.M. (Very late) July 12 4:00 (Early) July 14 5:08 July 16 3:57 (Early) July 18 3:30 (Early) July 20 3:40 (Early) July 23 5:34 July 24 3:50 (Early) July 26 3:48 (Early)
So, what has happened? The planning for the segment between Salt Lake City and Sacramento appears to have been correct. It is apparent that the train can run on time, but of course the same old factors of freight interference, on board incidents, locomotive failures, and other variables enroute, some UP’s fault and some Amtrak’s fault, and in many cases controllable by neither of them, will continue to cause occasional delays.
Amtrak has said it will restore the shorter running time on the California Zephyr when the UP repairs to the line are finished. We can only hope, because it looks doable. Meanwhile, Amtrak invited cities along the route of No. 5 and 6 to a conference in Denver on July 24 to discuss station improvements and how to get money to improve them. Based on the recent on time performance they had good news to report.
- Here is a blatant, unpaid plug for a commercial product. If you are interested in having a full understanding of passenger railroading, including highly useful information from the past which can serve as building blocks for a vision for the future, you should be subscribing to the new incarnation of Passenger Train Journal, published quarterly by White River Productions.
The magazine is available on many news stands which carry other, less important publications such as Trains magazine, and you can also subscribe to Passenger Train Journal. Look at the White River Productions web site at http://www.whiteriverproductions.com . An important aspect of the magazine is that it is not an automatic cheerleader for Amtrak or anything related to passenger rail, and it often takes a realistic look at the passenger rail products offered today. This refreshing editorial viewpoint makes the magazine a valuable source of information assembled by a professional staff.