Richard Anderson replacing Wick Moorman as Amtrak CEO

[jis]

(Another correction to my thinking: I had thought that the upgrades to Amtrak in NJ [the 160 or 165 MPH tracks] that have been incessantly delayed were part of one of the two rounds of funding...but apparently not...)

The money for the NEC project came from the money returned by Wisconsin and Florida. The story goes that one fine morning Amtrak got a call from Obama DOT that if they could dig up a shovel ready project to take some money there was a bunch available, but the project proposal must be at the DOT in some completely unreasonably short time. Amtrak scrambled to cobble together the $450 Million proposal the best they could and made it to the DOT, and they were given the grant. We already know what has happened after that. I heard this story from a gentleman who was a long time Amtrak employee at a relatively high position in NEC Projects office, who has since left Amtrak and moved to Parsons, but is still working on Gateway.

Since part of the funding came with the original deadlines from the bill which appropriated the funds, Amtrak had to carefully make sure that those funds were spent within the deadline, failing which they possibly even had to ask for some remediation. I am not quite sure how that whole thing went down. But clearly the entire project was not completed within the funding deadline.

 

[Anderson]

*facepalms*
Considering the laundry list of projects that were tendered in '09 (and that a bunch of stuff would have potentially been doable with the '10 money that, IIRC, was the pot not needing a match)...wow.

(And I'd forgotten about that timeline, too...)

 

[west point]

CAT rehab certainly could have been shovel reedy in short order.

 

[toddinde]

Walker was unable to get the legislature to fund the maintenance facility (originally planned for Madison, then switched to Milwaukee) for the Talgos which was required by the agreement with Talgo. No maintenance facility, no Talgos on the Hiawatha.

Spare me. Walker is no innocent victim of the legislature. Vos, Fitzgerald and Walker were all in cahoots. Vos gave him top cover. It was all about the Kochs, Bradley’s, and Hendricks imposing an extreme, fossil fuel based agenda on Wisconsin.

 

[neroden]

Spare me. Walker is no innocent victim of the legislature. Vos, Fitzgerald and Walker were all in cahoots. Vos gave him top cover. It was all about the Kochs, Bradley’s, and Hendricks imposing an extreme, fossil fuel based agenda on Wisconsin.

Walker ran on a "kill the train, send the federal money elsewhere" PLATFORM. And he won! The voters eventually realized that electing a crook who hated Wisconsin was a mistake and voted him out. They also voted to throw the Republicans out of the legislature but gerrymandering has kept them in control. Totally corrupt...

 

[toddinde]

Walker ran on a "kill the train, send the federal money elsewhere" PLATFORM. And he won! The voters eventually realized that electing a crook who hated Wisconsin was a mistake and voted him out. They also voted to throw the Republicans out of the legislature but gerrymandering has kept them in control. Totally corrupt...

Yes! That is the truth and sums up exactly what happened. I know people that ride the Hiawatha every day, and they just shake their heads at the Walker shenanigans while they ride the decrepit Horizon cars. It is total corruption.

 

[bretton88]

Speaking of corruption, we also all forget that the Talgos occurred because of a no bid contract the previous administration gave out along with some generous tax credits for Talgos factory. The whole thing was completely mishandled from start to finish.

 

[Anderson]

Walker ran on a "kill the train, send the federal money elsewhere" PLATFORM. And he won! The voters eventually realized that electing a crook who hated Wisconsin was a mistake and voted him out. They also voted to throw the Republicans out of the legislature but gerrymandering has kept them in control. Totally corrupt...

He got two terms in office, which isn't exactly a bad record electorally-speaking, and he got booted amid rather negative sentiment towards the GOP by 1.1%. I don't think that qualifies as the voters having "eventually realized" anything; the voters gave him bigger margins in the '12 recall and '14 re-election than they did in '10.

Edit: To be fair, the recall was probably a strategic error on the Dems' part. I've noticed a general trend around the world that if an election's results are clear, trying to explicitly reverse them by other means later (even by an early election) doesn't go over too well.

 

[toddinde]

Speaking of corruption, we also all forget that the Talgos occurred because of a no bid contract the previous administration gave out along with some generous tax credits for Talgos factory. The whole thing was completely mishandled from start to finish.

That’s a very misleading narrative. Talgo was part of an economic deal to bring Talgo’s North American manufacturing facility to Milwaukee and the former AO Smith manufacturing facility. It was quite a coup because, at that time, Talgos might have had an in for Midwest corridors, and were already wildly popular in the Northwest which might have landed that facility. Talgos were selected by Wisconsin because of their tilting capability. That is particularly important because they were intended for the Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Minneapolis corridor which has many miles of curves, particularly along the Mississippi River. It’s easy to just repeat fake, campaign spin, but the facts don’t support it.

 

[jis]

I was about to comment that just because a contract is "no bid" does not implicitly mean it is corrupt. One has to see the context around it. OTOH some contracts entered through lowest bidder have been spectacularly disastrous too.

 

[Thirdrail7]

Next Wednesday, Mr. Anderson steps down as CEO and works in an advisor role until the end of the year. I'm thinking he won't necessarily miss the job. At the end of the day, how will he be remembered?

Members of the private car industry need not reply.

 

[Acela150]

Next Wednesday, Mr. Anderson steps down as CEO and works in an advisor role until the end of the year. I'm thinking he won't necessarily miss the job. At the end of the day, how will he be remembered?

Members of the private car industry need not reply.

Well, let's be honest, he sure as all heck didn't win over any "buffs" or "advocates" with several of his decisions. I'll be honest, I'm one of them to an extent. But as Jis has mentioned, his orders came from the board. But with that being said he did make some good decisions as the boss. One of them was working on continuing to improve Amtrak's Safety Record. And his most recent "good move" was a simple one, doing everything that he can to prevent Furloughs for Unionized Employees during this CoronaVirus situation. In a post on Trains Magazines webpage Mr. Flynn joined in on a Employee Town Hall Call recently and stated that he is going to aim for no Furloughs. I give both of them credit for that. I really do.

We shall see what will happen starting Next Wednesday.

 

[Ryan]

T-T-TRIPPPLE POST!!!

 

[AmtrakBlue]

T-T-TRIPPPLE POST!!!

But did he get his point across?

 

[Acela150]

T-T-TRIPPPLE POST!!!

For some odd reason AU was painfully slow for me for a period of 30 minutes and it just now got back to normal.

 

[Bob Dylan]

For some odd reason AU was painfully slow for me for a period of 30 minutes and it just now got back to normal.

It caught a Virus!

 

[railiner]

I couldn't even log on to AU at about the time the post was made....I just gave up, and got back on this morning with no problem...

 

[IndyLions]

There’s a lot I didn’t like - but there are a few things he did ok. Seemed to get new equipment orders off dead center. We’ll see what happens there.

 

[fdaley]

Next Wednesday, Mr. Anderson steps down as CEO and works in an advisor role until the end of the year. I'm thinking he won't necessarily miss the job. At the end of the day, how will he be remembered?

Members of the private car industry need not reply.

He'll be remembered by me as the guy who killed dining service on all of the eastern overnight trains, thereby making it unlikely that I'll ride any of them again other than for short distances.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Good riddance to a Really Bad Fit Executive!!!

 

[AmtrakBlue]

He'll be remembered by me as the guy who killed dining service on all of the eastern overnight trains, thereby making it unlikely that I'll ride any of them again other than for short distances.

For the umpteenth time, CONGRESS killed dining service, not Anderson.

 

[fdaley]

For the umpteenth time, CONGRESS killed dining service, not Anderson.

Congress dictated that Amtrak should not lose money on food service, which is a boneheaded requirement that wasn't Anderson's fault. But Anderson chose to meet this requirement by implementing a service model that showed zero comprehension of what Amtrak's most loyal, high-revenue customers value about the experience of long-distance train travel. So, even before C-19, bookings were down as lots of us decided we would rather stay home than spend hundreds of dollars a night for a "first-class" experience that was anything but.

Then there was the idea of a bus bridge to replace much of the Southwest Chief route. This was a leader who had no interest in or understanding of the service that much of his company was devoted to providing.

 

[Qapla]

prevent Furloughs for Unionized Employees during this CoronaVirus situation

What about any non-unionized employees? They need their jobs, too.

 

[Ziv]

Now that Mica is not the Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and hasn't been for some time, what are the chances that a future funding bill for Amtrak could remove the requirement that dining cars pay for themselves? I have seen completely crazy stuff end up in Omnibus Acts, what are the chances that something positive could be done to reverse the "profitability" order? DeFazio is the new Chair, his district includes both Springfield and Eugene OR.
On edit: I just realized that I asked a very similar question less than a year ago, maybe without Anderson around the answer might be different?

 

[toddinde]

Congress dictated that Amtrak should not lose money on food service, which is a boneheaded requirement that wasn't Anderson's fault. But Anderson chose to meet this requirement by implementing a service model that showed zero comprehension of what Amtrak's most loyal, high-revenue customers value about the experience of long-distance train travel. So, even before C-19, bookings were down as lots of us decided we would rather stay home than spend hundreds of dollars a night for a "first-class" experience that was anything but.

Then there was the idea of a bus bridge to replace much of the Southwest Chief route. This was a leader who had no interest in or understanding of the service that much of his company was devoted to providing.

You summed it up very well. He didn’t understand the product, the politics, or the realities of the operation. Many of his decisions were union busting efforts like the dining cars and the call center outsourcing.