New President of Amtrak

[Ryan]

I think it does take somebody with a deep understanding of how things should be done to look at the company structure point by point and hire the right people and design the right reporting structures and essentially gut it and rebuild everything from scratch. Generic leadership or management skills don't really help very much in such a situation because you are essentially in the salt mine fixing nuts and bolts.

if you're in the salt mine fixing nuts and bolts as the CEO or President, you're Doing It Wrong.

You hire good people that know what they're doing to do it right. But your job at the top of the heap isn't to do people's jobs for them (and in my experience, having a fresh set of eyes and asking people to "explain this to me like I'm a third grader" makes it incredibly easy to spot someone that's BSing your or doing things the lazy way. Just keep asking "why" until you get satisfactory answers. If you can't get satisfactory answers, you've found the problem.

 

[jis]

Do not forget that Gardner was first just President before he became President and CEO.

 

[Amtrakfflyer]

Or maybe we now have a operation focus administrator, so Garden can hang out with Congress friends more.

I really don’t see a downside to this.

Without trying to sound smug. I see it as a positive for the simple fact short of discontinuing trains it can’t get much worse. Operations are a disaster on all levels presently. Cautiously optimistic

 

[Dakota 400]

. Operations are a disaster on all levels presently. Cautiously optimistic

Consistency in operations and consistency in the passenger experience is greatly needed. I am optimistic as well.

 

[JoeZeppyPA]

I agree with the essence of what you are saying. But this applies most of all when things are going fairly well. When all the junior and middle management positions are occupied by people who know what they are doing and you trust them to do it right, and you can see your own job as there to give them what they need to do it even better and give everybody an overall sense of direction and leadership.

When on the other hand you have an organisation that is failing in many respects, not just due to poor direction or leadership at the top but due to incompetence all the way down the ladder with the wrong people being appointed to the wrong jobs, and nobody being any the wiser because incompetence cannot spot incompetence, I think it does take somebody with a deep understanding of how things should be done to look at the company structure point by point and hire the right people and design the right reporting structures and essentially gut it and rebuild everything from scratch. Generic leadership or management skills don't really help very much in such a situation because you are essentially in the salt mine fixing nuts and bolts.

This also assumes that leadership is smart enough to get out of the way and let the team do what they do. This is not always how it works.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

I'm feeling cautiously pessimistic. There is so much regressive news lately that it’s hard to focus on stuff like this.

 

[Amtrakfflyer]

Especially now that the House has proposed Amtraks 2023 budget at a level below what Gardner claims he needs to run the long distance trains. There‘s still a long way to go and the number will have to be hashed out with the Senate but this is where we need management that fights for Amtrak as whole and doesn’t favor one area over another. Not a great omen considering this is a pro Amtrak Congress.

As per yesterday’s RPA hotline.

“Bill Shorts Amtrak Operations”

Further muddying the picture for rail: the House T-HUD bill proposed $2.3 billion for Amtrak in FY23, well below the amount proposed by the White House ($3 billion) and the railroad itself ($3.3 billion).

Amtrak has warned that because “the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect revenue and ridership, robust FY 2023 grant funding is needed to enable Amtrak to continue operating our Long-Distance trains.”

 

[user 14106]

To be honest - with what’s going on at the class 1s these days I’d almost rather airline experience than railroad.

 

[joelkfla]

To be honest - with what’s going on at the class 1s these days I’d almost rather airline experience than railroad.

Haven't you heard what's going on at the airlines these days?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Haven't you heard what's going on at the airlines these days?

My next domestic trip was converted to driving to avoid the mess. I also have an international trip that cannot be driven with the first flight being the last flight of the night. I am not expecting a smooth trip.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

This "airline guy" crap is really tiresome. Executive leadership is executive leadership, and there's nothing magical about trains that requires one to have spent their entire career in trains to make an effective leader of Amtrak.

Once upon a time, in a land far away, I was made the ASW Officer on my first ship. Didn't know the first thing about hunting submarines, but I had 30 well trained dudes that had done this their entire careers to handle that part of the job. My job was leadership, direction, and making sure my guys had what they needed to get the job done, and then get out of the way ant let them do it. 18 months into that tour, with my relief aboard and coming up to speed, the XO pulled me aside and said that I was going to A-gang. The auxiliary division owned everything in the engineering plant that wasn't propulsion, electricity, damage control, or poop. HP and LP air, water makers, chill water, all of the random equipment that makes a ship function,. Didn't know the first thing about that either, but the division was a hot mess, and a healthy dose of leadership was required. Second ship I was the Navigator - actually knew something about that from being a qualified watch officer on the bridge. Admin officer too, and I *really* didn't know jack about that job. The trend has continued in civilian life, jobs of increasing responsibility and scope of control, changing topics every few years. I don't know how to do the job that anyone that I supervise does, but that's what they are there to do. The leadership, direction, and making sure my people have what they needed to get the job done hasn't changed in 20 years.

Give me someone with good skills at the top, and I don't care what their background is. What matters is that they get the job done, even if they are an.... "airline guy"...

If you look at Amtrak’s history, it was, objectively, run best when run by railroaders.

 

[user 14106]

Haven't you heard what's going on at the airlines these days?

That’s a good point. So maybe experience with neither would be best.

If you look at Amtrak’s history, it was, objectively, run best when run by railroaders.

The railroaders you are looking are going to be hard to come by as. Look at the class 1 railroads today. Everything is about catering to Wall Street investors and cutting as much as possible.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

The railroaders you are looking are going to be hard to come by as. Look at the class 1 railroads today. Everything is about catering to Wall Street investors and cutting as much as possible.

Yes. Moorman was possibly the last of his kind hopefully things will turn around one day for both the class I’s and Amtrak.

Not looking good for now though.

 

[MARC Rider]

Especially now that the House has proposed Amtraks 2023 budget at a level below what Gardner claims he needs to run the long distance trains. There‘s still a long way to go and the number will have to be hashed out with the Senate but this is where we need management that fights for Amtrak as whole and doesn’t favor one area over another. Not a great omen considering this is a pro Amtrak Congress.

As per yesterday’s RPA hotline.

“Bill Shorts Amtrak Operations”

Further muddying the picture for rail: the House T-HUD bill proposed $2.3 billion for Amtrak in FY23, well below the amount proposed by the White House ($3 billion) and the railroad itself ($3.3 billion).

Amtrak has warned that because “the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic continue to affect revenue and ridership, robust FY 2023 grant funding is needed to enable Amtrak to continue operating our Long-Distance trains.”

This might just be haggling kabuki. Just like certain other administrations zero out Amtrak appropriations in their budget proposal, and then Congress funds it similar to the previous year. We don't know exactly what the real target is or was, but Amtrak is getting more money than they've been getting in the past 10 years or more.

 

[jis]

Yes. Moorman was possibly the last of his kind hopefully things will turn around one day for both the class I’s and Amtrak.

Not looking good for now though.

Let us not forget that railroad man Moorman is the one that brought in the broken auto dispatcher at NS before leaving it and eventually landing up at Amtrak to find a jewel like Anderson to succeed him. If that is an example of a railroad man heaven save us from such!

In any case Gardner is now Mr. Strategy, so that may be a bit of a problem for LD trains, but not for Corridor trains where most of Amtrak's ridership is. Harris is operations so there is still hope even for LD trains. I don't worry as much about whether someone came from airline or not. There are good airline executives and bad ones, and the good ones often are quick learners. Amtrak has unfortunately gotten arrogant blowhards in the past.

 

[Ryan]

If you look at Amtrak’s history, it was, objectively, run best when run by railroaders.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

This might just be haggling kabuki. Just like certain other administrations zero out Amtrak appropriations in their budget proposal, and then Congress funds it similar to the previous year. We don't know exactly what the real target is or was, but Amtrak is getting more money than they've been getting in the past 10 years or more.

Anyone who still thinks every attempt to destroy Amtrak is just kabuki theater needs to reread last week's news. Amtrak may be low on the list of priorities but their detractors will never give up and at some point important variables will line up in their favor. When that happens Amtrak will be just as protected as everything else we're losing. Thanks to another round of partisan gerrymandering we will not see another congress like this one for at least a decade and probably not in our lifetimes so get ready for more losses.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

Let us not forget that railroad man Moorman is the one that brought in the broken auto dispatcher at NS before leaving it and eventually landing up at Amtrak to find a jewel like Anderson to succeed him. If that is an example of a railroad man heaven save us from such!

I worked on a project that existed only because of Mr. Moorman and he was such a nice man. I’ve never heard anyone who worked directly with him say anything critical about him - and that’s saying something in the world of railroading.

I’m actually saying that I’m very biased toward loving Moorman and the wonderful things he did for NS and Amtrak. I wish he could have stayed around for longer.

The future of Amtrak, as DA just pointed out in the post above, is probably not looking good sadly

 

[Amtrakfflyer]

It really is amazing what one person and a management team as a whole can do. Here we had such high hopes, record funding, a pro Amtrak PTUS, Senate and House. All the cards were (and actually still are) in order for Amtrak to flourish for the first time in its existence. Then we had a horrible once in a lifetime event no one saw coming in the virus. Congress put emergency funding on the table to keep employees in their jobs. Long distance travel and sleeper travel particular seemed to be weathering the storm ok all things considered. Sleepers provided social distancing and were introducing new customers to Amtrak.

In spite of the above management gutted Amtraks infrastructure, laid off employees, cut back capacity and made train travel so expensive it priced out a huge portion of potential travelers. There was a case to be made that the horrible virus provided a niche for Amtrak to market itself as a safer way to travel, Amtrak could have made lemonade out of lemons, to use the old expression.

I think we would all agree if Gunn, Boardman or Moorman were still running Amtrak it’s future and specifically the National Network would not be in question as they are today. It’s made clear every time Amtrak speaks now that the network trains are ran because Congress is requiring them to be and they will be cut if said funding isn’t in place.

I hope Harris truly wants to run the long distance network and is given the chance to from Gardner and the Board. The congressional mandate won’t last forever we need Amtrak management that wants to operate nationwide service.

 

[jis]

Unfortunately it looks like Congress may not be planning to fund the full operating budget. So things are a bit up in the air as they stand.

The Infrastructure Bill is all capital. It cannot be used for operating anything. I would be surprised if there is anything significant left from the COVID recovery funding after a year or two.

Incidentally at least Boardman always said that if Congress does not fund LD operations there will be no LD trains. Congress put up a thick wall between LD, State funded and NEC appropriation accounts in PRIIA Authorization. Transfering money from one bucket to another was possible but involved Congressional action and convoluted reporting requirements. At present the wall between LD and State Supported has been lowered some, but by its very nature there is no huge appropriation for state supported, since... well... they are state supported. OTOH The appropriation for the National Account is considerably larger than the NEC Account on the operations side of things.

 

[Amtrakfflyer]

Since we’re talking about next years funding. Did anyone else notice the subtle remark from RPA Friday in the same article I quoted above that insinuated the long distance trains will always lose money due to having to pay the freight railroads to use their tracks. I’ve never seen that listed as a sole reason for the subsidy. Is that a Gardner talking point? It struck me as odd.

Friday’s hotline

“The LDRs, meanwhile, have proved incredibly resilient compared to Amtrak’s other business lines. While the absolute number of riders isn’t as large, LDR trains have already reached 70% of their pre-pandemic ridership—even in the face of the reduced capacity and connections resulting from service reductions. However, because the track access fees that LDR trains pay to the freight railroads are included as an operational cost, these services are very dependent on annual federal appropriations.”

 

[jis]

Since we’re talking about next years funding. Did anyone else notice the subtle remark from RPA Friday in the same article I quoted above that insinuated the long distance trains will always lose money due to having to pay the freight railroads to use their tracks. I’ve never seen that listed as a sole reason for the subsidy. Is that a Gardner talking point? It struck me as odd.

That claim makes absolutely no sense to me. To avoid COVID strangeness. looking at 2019 numbers, about half the overall expense of operating the service is in personnel cost. The base cost of operating the train taking out personnel cost and trying to guess what part is access cost out of that suggest it cannot be more than around 5% if that, in my reckoning. I need to ask Sean where he got that from. Unfortunately on the expense side there is much obfuscation making it hard to come up with reliable number breakdowns. Of course it also suffers from the hazards of attempting to divide allocated expenses..

 

[user 14106]

Moorman? I heard an interview once with Moorman after he left and he was more directly hostile in his remarks towards long distance service than anyone else I’ve heard. He also praised Anderson’s moves and essentially stated that the long distance business needed to go.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

I heard an interview once with Moorman after he left and he was more directly hostile in his remarks towards long distance service than anyone else I’ve heard.

How so? Was he hostile towards the concept of LD or how Amtrak has handled it.

 

[Amtrakfflyer]

Moorman? I heard an interview once with Moorman after he left and he was more directly hostile in his remarks towards long distance service than anyone else I’ve heard. He also praised Anderson’s moves and essentially stated that the long distance business needed to go.

He did approve the last Parlour car overhauls, ones that never took place since Anderson promptly cancelled them and retired the fleet.

He didn’t seem to agree with the Anderson/Gardner regime at the time.

“Following a Chicago luncheon on May 25, 2017, former Amtrak President and CEO Wick Moorman told Trains that long-distance trains “break even on direct costs.”

From article below.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-rev...distance trains “break even on direct costs.”