[net-gold] This Week at Amtrak; January 5, 2010
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Subject: [Net-Gold] This Week at Amtrak; January 5, 2010
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Date: Tue, 5 Jan 2010 19:13:33 -0500
From: brucerichardson <brucerichardson@xxxxxxxx>
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Subject: [Net-Gold] This Week at Amtrak; January 5, 2010
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This Week at Amtrak;
January 5, 2010
A weekly digest of events, opinions,
and forecasts from
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
America?s foremost passenger rail
policy institute
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203 ?
Jacksonville, Florida
32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail
info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx ?
http://www.unitedrail.org
Volume 7, Number 1
Founded over three decades ago
in 1976, URPA is a nationally
known policy institute which focuses
on solutions and plans for passenger
rail systems in North America.
Headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida,
URPA has professional associates
in Minnesota, California, Arizona,
New Mexico, the District of Columbia,
Texas, New York, and other cities. For
more detailed information, along with
a variety of position papers and
other documents, visit the
URPA web site at
<http://www.unitedrail.org>
URPA is not a membership organization,
and does not accept funding from any
outside sources.
1) Welcome to the seventh year of
This Week at Amtrak, where there is
always the hope, dream, and desire
Amtrak will become a responsible part
of our nation?s domestic
transportation network.
Hope always springs eternal.
Reality always disappoints.
Where are we this January that
we weren?t last January?
We still do not have a permanent
president of Amtrak
(see the next item below).
We still do not have an expected
passenger equipment order
which will expand the fleet.
We still do not have a funded
marketing plan which will
increase ridership nationwide.
We still do not have every train
in the system operating on a
daily schedule.
We still do not have anything
but a bare, inadequate,
skeletal national system.
We still do not have anyone publicly
leading the company with
a future vision or growth plan.
We do have a plan to take the
Sunset Limited west of New
Orleans to a daily operation,
but we don?t have a plan to restore
the illegally stopped service east
of New Orleans.
We do have some executives at
Amtrak who are anxious to make
the company perform better and
provide better service, but they are
hamstrung by the cadre of executives
who seem to be there mostly for the
retirement package.
We do have a desire on the part
of many Americans of all ages
to ride trains, but there are not
many trains to ride.
We do have other competent
passenger train operators in this
country waiting for the opportunity
to move beyond providing commuter
services to real intercity services.
We do now exist in the era of
anticipating coming high speed
rail, but it?s going to be a long,
long process getting there.
We do have visionaries
like former Federal Railroad
Administration Administrator
Gil Carmichael who have developed realistic
plans for the future, but often these
learned and inspiring voices seem
to be talking in the wilderness more
than to receptive audiences in
Washington, no matter how long and
hard they talk and make a great deal
of sense.
We do have people like
Andrew Selden of Minneapolis,
Minnesota who not only understand
the business of passenger railroading,
but are willing to create a vision
and plan for the future.
Where are we in January 2010
versus January 2009? Another
year has gone by without much
major happening in the world of Amtrak.
Keep in mind, that has occurred
intentionally on the part of
Amtrak; it has had a plethora of
opportunities, and it has chosen to
focus on planning for the expected
panacea of high speed rail and ignore
its core business of 79 M.P.H.
conventional trains. Maybe that?s why so
many foreign passenger rail operators,
from across both the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans have expressed an
interest in developing high speed rail
in the United States. These astute
businessmen have looked at Amtrak and
found it wanting in so many ways;
they must figure competing for Amtrak
for a chunk of business is like
shooting fish in a barrel.
2) There is always someone in a
company who has the zest and drive to
make things happen. Eh, not so much
at Amtrak.
The Amtrak Board of Directors,
which will never be mistaken
for a body which takes bold action,
has extended indefinitely the tenure
of interim President and Chief
Executive Officer Joseph Boardman.
The Amtrak board currently
consists of five voting members,
one being Mr. Boardman. There are
four vacant seats on the board, two of
which have nominees awaiting Senate
confirmation. Two seats have no
announced appointees; apparently the
White House and various and sundry
Members of Congress haven?t agreed
upon who gets those seats (If anybody
asks, we can recommend a cadre of
highly competent potential board
members, none of which have the
type of conflicts the two current
nominees have, and each would be
a stellar addition to the board.).
So, in a fit of bold caution,
the Amtrak board extended Mr.
Boardman?s contract and made a
statement saying a permanent president of
Amtrak would not be announced until
the board is more fully populated.
Hmmmm, let?s see. When was the
last time the Amtrak Board of
Directors was fully populated?
Seriously, anybody know?
You have to go all the way back
to the end of the Clinton
Administration to find a legal
quorum of board members.
In the interim during the Bush
years, stars like former board
chairman David Laney and some others
held things together and worked
through a number of problems while
the White House dithered and the
Senate obfuscated about appointing
qualified board members.
So, Mr. Boardman gets to keep
his job a while longer.
Okay, let?s get to the bottom line.
There is certainly a rational argument to
be made about a board of directors hiring a chief
executive, and then new members of the
board arrive and find the chief
executive not to their liking. We?ve
already seen that scenario play out
with the unlamented departure of former
Amtrak President and CEO Alex
Kummant. Even though Mr. Kummant
departed over disagreements about a
number of issues, it was never an
ideal situation to have a CEO hired by
a departed board expected to meet
the needs of a new board.
The big complaint really
centers around the White House.
Guys, it?s been a full year, now.
That is more than enough time to find
and screen political appointees to
the Amtrak board. There are a number
of qualified people just waiting in
the wings, hoping for a chance to
lead Amtrak into a better era and
a more prosperous time. But, the Amtrak
board, always a bottom of the barrel
issue for any White House
administration, remains a sideshow,
and ? highly regrettably ? business
as usual reigns.
In the interim, how about
some leadership from the United
States Department of Transportation
and/or the Federal Railroad
Administration? How about setting
some goals for Amtrak and creating a
true surface transportation policy?
How about SOMEONE doing SOMETHING?
Doing ANYTHING? Dan Pardue
of Raleigh, North Carolina, when
trying to do problem solving with
non-cooperative equipment or
non-cooperative clients, always says ?Do
something, even if it?s wrong.
At least some action is being taken, and
perhaps the right answer will come
along by starting some sort of
process.?
Amtrak, here at This Week at
Amtrak we will gladly provide
you with Mr. Pardue?s telephone number
so you can call him for some
tutoring. Please, start some sort
of process to start doing something ?
anything, please.
In 2009, a year which will go down
in the annuals of history
as a truly misbegotten year, Amtrak
received record amounts of free
federal monies. Stimulus money flowed,
and regular budget money flowed.
While Amtrak did start whittling
away at a backlog of
projects which are nice to have
completed, most of those projects (with
the stark exception of rolling stock
rehabs) will not generate any
additional revenues for Amtrak.
Most of the projects are just things
which needed to be done, and had been
neglected; some for decades.
Again, Amtrak has an unprecedented
opportunity for change and
upgrading itself as a company and
our nation?s domestic passenger
railroad.
But, Amtrak seems to be doing a
bang up job of wasting that
opportunity, instead of taking
advantage of so much manna from the
federal treasury.
We give Mr. Boardman credit for
stabilizing some things, and
he gets a huge ?attaboy? for leading
the company to accepting Brian
Rosenwald?s excellent work of starting
the process of converting the
Sunset Limited west of New Orleans
into a daily ? yet, still a bit flawed
? operation. We?re waiting for some
leadership on what will happen east
of New Orleans, and we keep hearing
whispers the Cardinal, perhaps one of
Amtrak?s most scenic routes, will be
lifted from the doldrums and waste
of a tri-weekly operation.
But, Mr. Boardman, in his interim
post, is still head of the
company, and he still sets the daily
tone and pace of the company. We do
expect some sort of future vision,
even if it?s just a building block to
be used by a permanent CEO. We do
expect some sort of growth plan, and we
do expect an equipment order beyond
the rather paltry announcements which
have been made for replacement
equipment, only.
In short, even if it?s interim
leadership, we do expect
leadership.
Amtrak is an ongoing enterprise,
with a long-forgotten mandate and
mission to provide the United States of
America with a national passenger
train service. Keeping Amtrak in a
state of suspense because the White
House and Members of Congress can?t
decide on political appointees for
the board of directors is not only
wasteful, it?s sinister and displays
an outright prejudice against all of
us who understand and cherish passenger
rail travel.
Mr. Boardman, please start the process.
The Obama White House, please do your
duty and populate the Amtrak Board of Directors.
United States Senate, please fulfill
your advise and consent duties as
outlined in the constitution so the
Amtrak board seats can be filled in
an expeditious manner.
Somebody, somewhere, please, don?t
leave us all hanging.
3) Amtrak ended 2009 battling the
late fall/early winter Blizzard of
2009, with a pretty good record.
Chicago got penalized by one of its host
railroads dumping a freight train
off the tracks, causing a huge traffic
jam, and it took a while to get things
back to normal. No penalty to
Amtrak. On the Northeast Corridor,
while the airlines just threw up their
collective hands and said they weren?t
flying in the bad weather (it?s
kind of tough to blame them when the
weather is that nasty), Amtrak did
mostly fulfill its duty as the
all-weather common carrier and kept a lot
of trains running, as did its host
railroads south of Washington, even
though trains were woefully late.
Too many trains were cancelled during
the busy holiday period
(it?s especially vexing Amtrak chose to cancel
the Palmetto, even though the majority
of its run was south of the
destruction of the storm), but
transportation still was available.
There were too many mechanical
malfunction reports of Amfleet
cars on the NEC with doors which
were frozen open. Gosh, those cars have
only been around for a bit more than
three decades now, in the heat of
summer and the cold of winter, one
has to believe someone in that vast
period of time could figure out how
to overcome Budd?s design flaws of
the vestibule doors freezing in the
open position when the car is full of
passengers traveling at 100 M.P.H.
and the icy wind is tearing through
the interior of the car and passengers.
Going further into winter,
Amtrak has been battling more
weather-related problems and the
country has been battling record cold
temperatures and storms. (It MUST be
all of that global warming; what
other explanation could there be for
such a cold and cruel start of what
most likely is going to be a long,
cold, bitter winter?) Some trains are
running more than a dozen hours late,
other trains just seem to be
disappearing off of the schedule,
and are never being launched out of
their terminals.
This is when Amtrak?s too thin
fleet reserves come back to
bite it. Inbound equipment that
normally turns for the next day?s
outbound train suddenly is stranded
on a siding somewhere on the far side
of nowhere, and there?s no spare
equipment to put on the road. Passengers
and crews are stranded; things spin
more and more out of control, and
eventually system gridlock occurs.
Remember all of that old equipment
that used to sit around, but is gone,
now? Wouldn?t it be nice to have
that for occasions just such as this
winter?
Before the Age of Amtrak, the
private passenger railroads
always kept a slice of their old
equipment fleets around for use in
emergencies. It wasn?t pretty, and
it wasn?t the most efficient stuff in
the world, but it got passengers to a
destination when nothing else
could. Amtrak has scrapped or sold
all of its old equipment; after all,
since it gets lots of free federal
monies from the government treasury it
doesn?t have to worry about keeping
passengers happy by providing them
the transportation they paid for in
advance. Amtrak can just annul as
many trains as it wants, and say
?so sorry, so sad? to its stranded
passengers, and keep totaling up the
tab to be paid for by Congress next
budget year.
What a way to run a railroad.
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where
other rail-related writings of
Bruce Richardson may also be found.
URPA leadership members are
available for speaking
engagements.
J. Bruce Richardson
President
United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.
1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203
Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA
Telephone 904-636-7739
brucerichardson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.unitedrail.org
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