United Rail Passenger Alliance

Volume 5 Number 3

1. Where to begin? There are so many choices. — Someone must have successfully been hitting Amtrak with a “stupid stick,” because Amtrak is doing something really stupid and unforgivable. — Amtrak clearly doesn’t take its mission of providing reliable, national passenger rail service seriously. It obviously has no intention of ever being a successful organization. — We’ve been horrified to see what happened to the east end of the Sunset Limited since Hurricane Katrina blew ashore, and now, could we be seeing a repeat performance with the Coast Starlight and the Oregon mudslide? — Once again, we’re seeing the direct result of Amtrak being a child of government, with a mentality of serving its passengers only when convenient for the operating department, and not worrying about maintaining market share, its franchise with the public, or running trains which are already paid for annually by continuing doses of free federal monies. Amtrak just can’t help proving for itself how irrelevant it is in the national transportation marketplace.
2. Here’s the Amtrak service disruption notice that started this whole, unholy mess. Read more…