Midwest coach shortage?

[toddinde]

From a customer satisfaction perspective, I think they're better off having no inventory than putting passengers on cars with "major passenger items out of service".

I disagree. The worst thing you can do is turn business away. Better to use whatever you can get and pass out flyers apologizing for the substitute equipment which is what Amtrak did in the early years. Metra must have cars they could lease since ridership is way down.

 

[toddinde]

This company is imploding. It’s becoming more apparent CoVid has/had very little to do with it. Managements decisions to cut back services/mothball fleets/defer maintenance/offer buyouts/drag feet on hiring all in the face of record bailouts from the government to do exactly the opposite have caused this. The plan was put in motion prior to CoVid during the Anderson/Gardner regime and it hasn’t changed under the surface.

Just think of where Amtrak would be sitting with this windfall if they would have taken the money and used the time with the downturn in ridership to get the house in order. Even in the height of the pandemic the national system was showing glimmers of hope but management continued to plan for cutbacks. For a company that is solely corridor focused they can’t even run the corridors they have. The time for excuses is over. People talk about DeJoy and his issues at USPS, but for those who follow Amtrak, Gardner and the BOD are making a bigger mockery of Joe Biden aka “Amtrak Joe” than DeJoy is.

You’re absolutely right. It’s completely broken. It’s so demoralizing. Moorman and Anderson were brought in to wreck the company. But all these decisions were made by Coscia and the incompetent board. They need to get rid of the whole lot of them.

 

[Amtrak25]

20 or 22 Horizon cars were transfered to Seattle to cover the Talgos that were retired or scrapped.

Metra last rented Gallery cars to Amtrak about 20 or 30 years ago over a Thanksgiving - and said never again. They wanted them back early Monday AM and clean, They got them back late and dirty, and that was the end of that.

 

[joelkfla]

I disagree. The worst thing you can do is turn business away. Better to use whatever you can get and pass out flyers apologizing for the substitute equipment which is what Amtrak did in the early years. Metra must have cars they could lease since ridership is way down.

Not talking about substitute cars; talking about cars with "major items out of service" -- like toilets, lights, etc. A potential customer who can't get a ticket may try again. A first-time customer who rides a car needing repair may say "Never again!"

 

[neroden]

Laying off car maintenance workers early in the pandemic was an appallingly incompetent move by whoever did it (probably Gardner, since I believe Anderson had one foot out the door and Flynn had barely arrived). It's biting Amtrak and the train-riding public hard.

 

[neroden]

Well, what are you gonna do? Gardner has admitted that laying off the maintenance people was a mistake and is trying to hire more. Not much point in making noise when you've already won.

 

[jis]

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