URPA Newsletter

[AmtrakWPK]

A quick check of the Constitution, as outlined by our wise forefathers,does not show any right to, or guarantee of, passenger rail

transportation as a byproduct of government.

That would make a great argument if such a thing as a passenger train existed when the Constitution was written. In fact, the first fare-paying passenger train on Earth had not yet been invented when the Constitution was written. So if this "Constitutional" argument is valid, then all airlines are also unconstitutional, as is NASA and putting a man on the Moon, because they didn't exist either when it was written. Sometimes his flights of fancy allow his own rhetoric to get the better of him. If he wants to make an argument based on facts, fine. The "Constitutional" argument here is completely specious and invalid.

Amtrak is essentially providing a utility, a public transportation system akin to a metro bus service (and I believe those are universally government-subsidized), but on a national scale, providing sometimes the only such service to a lot of in-the-boonies isolated cities and towns, especially since the major bus systems, Trailways and Greyhound, have greatly reduced or eliminated their service to such places. This seems to be something that he refuses to acknowledge or consider. His continual harping and frothing at the mouth gets a bit tiresome.

 

[meatpuff]

A quick check of the Constitution, as outlined by our wise forefathers,does not show any right to, or guarantee of, passenger rail

transportation as a byproduct of government.

That would make a great argument if such a thing as a passenger train existed when the Constitution was written. In fact, the first fare-paying passenger train on Earth had not yet been invented when the Constitution was written. So if this "Constitutional" argument is valid, then all airlines are also unconstitutional, as is NASA and putting a man on the Moon, because they didn't exist either when it was written. Sometimes his flights of fancy allow his own rhetoric to get the better of him. If he wants to make an argument based on facts, fine. The "Constitutional" argument here is completely specious and invalid.

Amtrak is essentially providing a utility, a public transportation system akin to a metro bus service (and I believe those are universally government-subsidized), but on a national scale, providing sometimes the only such service to a lot of in-the-boonies isolated cities and towns, especially since the major bus systems, Trailways and Greyhound, have greatly reduced or eliminated their service to such places. This seems to be something that he refuses to acknowledge or consider. His continual harping and frothing at the mouth gets a bit tiresome.

Oh man, this guy gets me so mad all the time. Sorry if people have made similar comments earlier in this thread, it's huge!!

This guy has fundamental misunderstandings about the market for travel in this country and passenger rail in particular. It's nice to have another guy "on our side", but this guy is so off sometimes he does passenger rail advocates a disservice. AmtrakWPK sums up his misunderstanding pretty well, which centers around the idea that there is a great deal of money to be made in overnight LD passenger trains, it's just that no one has done it right before.

I would elaborate/add that he seems to think that all that is missing from Amtrak gulping up airline market share on >1,000 mile routes is to make a train like a cruise ship. Four days round-trip Chicago to Seattle just isn't going to cut it for business travelers or for the rest of us with 10 vacation days per year. It would make NO DIFFERENCE if the train had a swimming pool, raquetball court and duty-free shop onboard! He doesn't understand how passenger rail works either. He says passenger rail is the single "most flexible form of transportation beyond the automobile." :lol: HA! He seems to think that the ability to add or subtract cars from a train is a miraculous ability that gives the mode unheard of flexibility. Ask the folks in Phoenix, AZ or Madison, WI how flexible passenger rail is to market demands. I am a big supporter of pass. rail for a raft of carefully considered reasons, but flexibility ain't one of them.

This is getting long, but his comparison of the Empire Builder and Capitols shows how he only looks at the facts that support his weekly diatribe. He chooses the "single best perform[ing]" LD route the Builder, and compares it to the money-losing Capitol Corridor because it is one of Amtrak's "best managed short distance corridors," "which is overseen by a professional railroader of repute." Gee, why use the Capitols, which lost $13M last year (reading off the same Sept 2007 YTD figures from Amtrak's website that he's using), instead of one of FIVE short-distance Amtrak corridors that MADE money last year? Then he makes a number of largely irrelevant comparisons based on passenger miles and load factors, and says we should add another Builder. But he never mentions that the Builder lost $35M last year, almost 3X as much! The Builder's cool, but if I could add almost three more Capitol Corridor-type routes/frequnecies carrying 1.45M pax for the price of one more Builder carrying 0.5M pax, I know which I'd pick.

I almost laughed when he said "routes like that of the Empire Builder are much closer to not needing any subsidy at a realistic point in the future" compared to ones like the Capitals. :lol: :lol:

He constantly uses phrases like "Amtrak’s greatest supporters are often ill-informed individuals with no useful understanding of the real potential of Amtrak," and "Very few people understand [the nature of] Amtrak’s value," and "Too bad Amtrak keeps refusing to understand these simple concepts." This gives it away. This guy must get told again and again about his misconceptions, but he shuts it out. Instead of looking at his own thinking, he concludes that most of the other pass. rail advocates he talks to just "don't get it."

Take this guy with a grain of salt.

 

[MrFSS]

This Week at Amtrak; January 5, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 1

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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) Great, wonderful, progress! Amtrak has figured out the high value of

its timetables in the world of marketing, and has started soliciting paid

outside ads. The ads now appear in the Fall and Winter 2007-08 national

timetables. Overall, Amtrak prints something close to a million

timetables a year (including all of the individual route timetables and

wallet corridor timetables), and has been doing so almost solely at its

own expense for years.

One bright spot over the last decade has been the constant upgrading of

the timetables, with each new one bringing a fresher look than the one

before. Now, with both the national timetable upgraded (lots more color

and an impressive presentation) and the route timetables pleasantly

redesigned, Amtrak seems to be taking the relatively inexpensive

initiative to sell advertising space in these timetables and let someone

else pay for part of the printing and distribution cost.

Capitalism is abounding, and is wonderful. For every dollar Amtrak earns

in timetable or other collateral material advertising revenue, it is one

dollar less it needs in free federal money. What a concept.

2) Revisit some real, factual history and look at why Amtrak was founded

at the end of the 1960s.

One of the primary reasons Amtrak was created was to clean up the mess

created by the PennCentral merger and bankruptcy earlier in the 1960s,

and the resulting bankruptcies of most of the other railroads providing

freight and commuter/regional passenger service in the Northeast.

Several hard facts must be considered. Railroading in the 1960s wasn't

much different than railroading in the 1930s, except for diesel engines

and radio-equipped locomotives. Harsh and unbending union rules, which

almost exclusively were based on steam railroading and the days when

railroads were printing their own money desperately needed to be updated.

Rules such as steam locomotive firemen still be required in diesel

locomotives just to preserve jobs were costing the railroads hundreds of

millions of dollars a year.

And, too, the railroads were far too heavily regulated and falsely

treated as public utilities because the railroad robber barons of the

19th Century and early 20th Century had been so naughty. The naughtiness

spawned the beginning of the Interstate Commerce Commission, a federal

agency that probably did more to harm railroads and shippers than any

other single government entity in the history of the Republic. The ICC

was a political agency and it had life and death power over the

railroads. Desperate railroads may petition the ICC for relief from some

immediate problem, but the ICC always responded in its own time and way

of doing things, which was never for the convenience of the public or the

private companies it regulated. If not for the Staggers Act that

deregulated railroads at the end of the 20th Century, the ICC would most

likely have presided over the end of the railroad industry in this

country, and then wondered what it did wrong.

It never occurred to anyone in time the advent of the Eisenhower

Interstate Highway System and the Boeing 707 jet airliner drastically

changed the landscape for the railroads in both the freight and passenger

realms, which called for a whole new set of operating, union, management,

and marketing standards.

Everyone was at fault. Railroad senior executives were for the most part

inflexible, and had begun their railroad careers sometime after World War

I, when the rails were king. They never adapted to the changing landscape

of the 1950s and 60s. Wall Street, always accustomed to reaping huge

profits from blue chip railroad stocks before the Interstate Highway

System, still demanded those same profit levels, without taking into

account the changing landscape. Local and state governments regarded the

alleged deep pockets of the railroads as an extraordinary tax base, where

every foot of rail, every station or depot building, every signal tower,

and every spike plunged into a tie were heavily taxed at premium rates.

Railroads shouldered the burden for many local taxpayers, keeping other

taxes for locals low because the alleged mighty railroads with unlimited

revenues could pay the taxes, instead.

The thought processes of unions during the period was best demonstrated

through the New York City newspaper strikes of the day, where most of New

York's daily newspapers were forced to go out of business because they

tried to modernize with new typesetting and printing methods, but the

unions demanded all jobs be retained, even if there was nothing for the

workers to do. The attitude of the unions was they were rather see the

newspapers go out of business than benefit from new work rules which

favored management and owners. The attitude of the railroad unions was

identical. Everyone thought the railroads were untouchable by strife

because they were so necessary. It never occurred to these people the

railroads may actually disappear until the PennCentral crisis.

World War II wore out the railroads. They had already gone through a

tough time during the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the physical

plant was not a good as it could have been. When wartime demands were

placed on the railroads, like every patriotic citizen, the railroads rose

to meet the demand, and performed magnificently. But, by VJ Day, the

railroads were in ragtag shape because of the heavy demands of use, and

no replacement equipment or infrastructure materials had been available

during the war.

After the war, the railroads placed new orders for all types of

equipment, including passenger equipment. The day of the heavyweight

passenger car was gone, and lightweight streamliners were the order of

the day, trailing behind thrifty diesel locomotives.

Many American servicemen had gone to war by riding a troop train, mostly

equipped with older cars that had seen better days. Short-trip day

coaches were pressed into service on transcontinental trains, and, for

many soldiers who envisioned the grand service offered by the passenger

railroads, the nightmares of troop trains stayed with them for a very

long time.

In the first part of the 20th Century, most of the rail based transit

systems in America were privately run. They, too, became victim of the

bus and the automobile, and private systems disappeared as cities and

municipalities suddenly found themselves in the transit business because

the automobile had stolen the heart of the ridership away from the

streetcars and trolleys. Americans, too, suddenly rejuvenated by winning

a world war, were tired of standing on a street corner in all of the

weather elements waiting for what was now ragged and sad-faced public

transportation. Americans had liberated the world, and they wanted the

freedom to move about unimpeded in their own automobiles at will.

Postwar Detroit stopped making drab and boxy sedans, and starting turning

out eye-catching chrome plated automobiles that were the product of

professional stylists, not automobile engineers. Gas was cheap, highways

were being built everywhere, and the suburbs beckoned with new styles of

homes complete with modern kitchens, supermarkets, and shopping centers.

And, then, Boeing and Douglas got into the passenger jet business. The

former glamour of highly civilized rail travel in Pullman Sleepers and

parlor cars was replaced by the fascination of jet travel, with full hot

meals being served at the seat of each passenger by young and attractive

stewardesses, and alcohol flowing like a river. New and shiny airports

replaced dreary and ominous train stations. People became jet setters,

and a new lifestyle was born and glamorized by Hollywood and the media.

Everything but the railroads had changed.

Railroads still had coaches, diners, lounges, and Pullman sleeping cars,

all manned by all-male Black American crews, harking back to the

undesirable era of segregation. It was tough to compare well-trained,

white-jacketed porters and dining car waiters to young, elegantly suited

and perfectly coiffed smiling stewardesses. Train speeds stayed the same,

or, in many cases, slowed down. Stations and terminals started losing

their luster as trains became passee, and maintenance began to slide.

In short, every factor imaginable was against the railroads in the late

1950s and 1960s, and it's only through a miracle the industry survived.

The railroads with the biggest problems were the railroads which handled

short hauls of both freight and passengers, such as the New England

railroads, PennCentral, the Southern Pacific, Chicago and Northwestern,

Milwaukee Road, and others in a similar situation. Railroads which were

in less danger of surviving were ones with little or no commuter business

and little short haul business, such as the Seaboard Coast Line,

Southern, Norfolk & Western, Chesapeake and Ohio, Union Pacific, Great

Northern, Burlington, Santa Fe, and Northern Pacific. While everyone of

these railroads ended up with at least one merger partner, they did so to

maintain positions of strength, not because they were teetering on

bankruptcy. Also, these railroads all operated heavily regulated

passenger trains, but the nature of the long hauls of the passenger

trains made them much more financially feasible than the other railroads

burdened with the high cost and low revenue commuter services.3) At the

end of the 1960s PennCentral was a financial basket case. It

took a long time for PennCentral's management (which was pretty awful to

begin with) to convince official Washington and the public it was in

danger of having to be liquidated. PennCentral was the Enron of its day

on steroids, and nobody knew what was going on until it was too late.

Finally, some action came from the Nixon and Ford Administrations to

tackle the PennCentral mess and create Conrail. One way initially

PennCentral and then Conrail was helped was the creation of Amtrak as a

child of government.

In a nutshell, someone realized there was still viability in passenger

trains, but not fully at the moment with the competition of the

Interstate highways and jet travel and the way passenger trains had

previously been heavily regulated. But, someone realized if Amtrak

relieved PennCentral of its regulated obligations to run passenger

trains, the railroad could concentrate all of its efforts on its freight

business, and not have to worry about the costs of commuter and regional

passenger trains, stations, and other passenger related capital needs and

infrastructure.

Once you do something for one child, you have to do it for every child.

So, Amtrak became a national, optional program, which the private

railroads could join if they chose to do so.

Again, look at the history. By the end of the 1960s, it was time for the

railroad corporate planners to start thinking about ordering new

passenger diesels and cars. Most of the equipment was nearing 20 years

old, and all of the rolling stock mechanical systems were based on pre-

and post-war technology, not anything new.

Few new stations and terminal had been built since the first half of the

century, and almost all of the passenger depots and stations were built

and operated on prewar traffic loads, not current traffic loads. Major

terminals such as Cincinnati, Jacksonville, New Orleans, Richmond,

Atlanta, and elsewhere were giant, expensive-to-maintain monuments to

railroad egos of a time long gone. The stifling regulatory atmosphere of

the day didn't allow for much change in infrastructure or necessary

downsizing.

The computer age was dawning, and the railroads embraced it, on the

freight side of the house. Passenger reservations were still made on

paper manifests, and stations still communicated with each other by

decades-old teletypes. Conductors and engineers were still working under

the 100 mile rule, which was geared towards steam engine travel, not

diesel travel.

Really, when the government came to the railroads and said "do we have a

deal for you," it was tough to turn down joining Amtrak. So many problems

and capital intensive costs simply went away, and trains that used to be

the responsibility of the railroads became the responsibility of the

government. The railroads were paid to run the trains (although a small

sum, not a fair market price), and suddenly a lot of employees and their

pension obligations went away, too, transferring to Amtrak.

Still, though, two railroads held out, the Southern, and the Denver & Rio

Grand Western. Some railroads, like Seaboard Coast Line, which was

proudly operating still in high style its passenger trains, hesitated,

but took the Amtrak plunge, anyway.

Already, the Pullman Company, which was jointly owned by the operating

railroads, had already gone away before 1970, and the individual

railroads took over the operation of the sleeping cars. The demise of the

Pullman Company is a whole other story, but it occurred at a time when

the day of the Pullman Company was simply over, and its functions could

more efficiently be handled by the individual railroads. Most of the

cream of the Pullman Company business, the overnight business traveler,

had already moved to jet airplane travel. The Pullman Company was left

with mostly leisure travelers, who at the time were more interested in

new and novel roadside Holiday Inns and private automobiles than upper

and lower bunks in a Pullman sleeping car.

4) It's May 1, 1971, and Amtrak rolls into existence. About half of the

nation's passenger rail system disappeared overnight. Lots of promises

were made, some which would be kept, and others that would be quickly

broken. Amtrak had many huge flaws, including sloppy legal language which

created it in Congress. Amtrak was not a public national priority in the

Space Age, and it was pretty well left to define itself with lots of

questionable flexibility which would come back to haunt it in coming

years.

Looking at the history of the private railroads, and the beginning of

Amtrak, the company started with extraordinary benefits.

- Amtrak had congressionally mandated operating rights over every stretch

of main line rail and every two streaks of rust in the country.

- Amtrak inherited a national fleet of equipment at no cost, even though

much of it was nearing the end of its useful life. Henry Christie's

famous "A" and "B" lists of equipment would determine which cars would be

converted from steam heat to head end power and live to roll another

million miles down the track.

- Amtrak was exempt from all local and state taxes of every type (except

diesel fuel taxes) and all federal taxes except payroll related taxes.

- Amtrak had no competition in the rail marketplace, and it could carve

out its own useful niche in the transportation world of jet airplanes and

automobile travel.

- Amtrak had no federal or state regulation, and it could manipulate its

route system nearly at will, but with certain union restrictions for job

protection and severance packages.

- Amtrak shed many of the huge and expensive passenger railroad terminals

in major cities in favor of small, efficient stations that required fewer

employees and had lower operating costs.

- When Amtrak needed money, it went to the federal government for

handouts, often with no strings attached. The private railroads had to be

accountable to stockholders, entities buying commercial paper, banks for

loans, and everyone else in the world of commerce. Amtrak simply was

written a check by the government with no mandate to pay back the amount

or scrutiny as to how it was used. Amtrak had an unending source of funds

that was renewed on an annual basis.

- In the early 1970s, Amtrak tried a bold experiment by today's

standards. It advertised itself to the traveling public, offering all of

the myriad of advantages of passenger rail travel. The public responded

in droves, and Amtrak could not handle the public demand. Instead of

finding a way to meet the demand, Amtrak retreated into becoming

America's best kept secret, and a constant financial ward of government.

5) All of this put together should have made Amtrak a resounding success.

Oops! It wasn't, and still isn't. What went wrong?

- In the early days, too many people tried to remake passenger rail

travel into the image of airline travel, or, even worse, bus travel.

Nobody was content to let Amtrak be Amtrak, and play to the strengths of

passenger rail travel, and not try to imitate another form of travel.

- Many of the original officers of Amtrak came from the few failing

private railroads, especially the PennCentral and its predecessor the

Pennsylvania Railroad, which at one time had advertised itself as the

Standard Railroad of the World. The boys from the Pennsylvania and later

PennCentral pretty well started this whole mess with their failures

(along, of course, with way too much government regulation and a host of

other problems) that created the need for Amtrak. The people who failed

previously were brought in to fail again, whether consciously or not by

the federal government and Amtrak's creators.

- When the Ford Administration, groping for a way to make Conrail viable,

shunted off the Northeast Corridor onto Amtrak to keep it off of

Conrail's books, someone should have just turned out the lights at that

point and told everyone to go home. Expensive, high-cost and low revenue

regional rail, especially Mid-Atlantic and New England regional passenger

rail, were huge contributors to the failure of the private railroads. By

passing the infrastructure and operations along to Amtrak without a

better business plan to operate the regional system, the same problems of

50 years ago still exist today, and are continuing to drag Amtrak down.

- The addition of the black hole of the NEC to Amtrak completely changed

the mission of the company and its business plan. Amtrak's original

business plan was based on operating long distance passenger trains as

the primary function of the company, not glorified commuter trains which

were hopeless money losers and more public utilities than a modern

business. The mistake Amtrak made was concentrating too much of its

resources on rescuing the NEC, and not enough of its resources on

building a strong, healthy, national long distance system which the

public wants.

Here's something that can keep people awake at night wondering: If Amtrak

would have stuck to its original business plan (flawed as it was) of

running a long distance passenger system, and the Ford Administration had

found another place to put the NEC instead of Amtrak (such as the FRA or

USRA), it's highly likely Amtrak today, in 2008, would either be

profitable or very close to breaking even. Without the distraction of the

Northeast Corridor, the Capitol Corridor, the Pacific Surfliners, and

other local services, it's highly likely there would be a daily Sunset

Limited over the full route between Los Angeles and Orlando, there would

be a daily Cardinal between Washington and Chicago, the Pioneer and

Desert Wind would still be in operation, there would be a Broadway

Limited, a National Limited, a Floridian, a Champion, and a North Coast

Hiawatha, along with a few other discontinued trains from the early days

of Amtrak. If Amtrak had remained an operating company, as based on the

successful model of the Pullman Company (pre-jet travel), and not an

infrastructure owner and operator, today's national system would most

likely be a healthy railroad taking full advantage of the resurgent

interest in passenger rail travel in America. Instead, the company is

foolishly bogged down in running short distance, high-expense, low

revenue trains which contribute little to the national commonweal.

- The creation of Conrail and the transfer of the NEC to Amtrak also

created financial havoc when Amtrak did not write new contracts with

commuter railroads it hosted on the NEC. As far back as before the

creation of Amtrak, the Long Island Rail Road, which was a commuter road

that hauled some local freight as an afterthought, was spun off into a

government agency in New York State. Forty years ago, railroaders knew

hauling commuter trains was a losing proposition. When Amtrak took the

NEC (under protest), it never imposed fair operating contracts on its

commuter systems it hosted. Sweetheart deals which benefitted local

politicians and local government at the expense of Amtrak abounded.

Taxpayers in Arizona were paying dearly for commuters in New Jersey to

have commuter rail access into New York City. Instead of locals paying

for local costs, suddenly federal taxpayers were subsidizing local

commuters. This bore no relationship to the federal highway building

projects, where federal, state, and local governments shared the one time

costs of building new roads. Instead, it turned into an annual gift of

solely precious federal resources that deprived entire cities and towns

of even one train a day for basic long distance travel so NEC commuters

could have an easy ride to and from work.

Despite the false information constantly provided by Amtrak and its many

sycophant rail fan support organizations, closing the NEC to Amtrak

commuter trains would not grind the national to a screeching halt. The

relatively few daily Amtrak riders of the NEC, measured by the total

counts of all North-South travelers in the region, would simply switch to

private automobile, bus, or air travel if there were no more Amtrak short

distance NEC trains. The local commuter agencies would continue without

the largess of Amtrak's annual capital improvement budget for the NEC,

and there would be little difference in life in the Northeast.

A reality no one, especially Amtrak and those same sycophant

organizations and the greens want to admit, is that Amtrak is not - and

never will be - a solution to transportation problems, either in urban

areas or in regions. What Amtrak has the potential to be is a good

alternative, for whatever reasons you may choose, and it does bring

balance to our domestic transportation network. Keep in mind Amtrak's

national share of the transportation marketplace is about the same as

motorcycles. Amtrak can be more relevant by growing its system, but the

relevance must be measured in real transportation output, not commuter

and regional trains which operate with annual load factors of less than

50% or even as disastrously low as 35%. Amtrak has always done very well

serving the many small, intermediate stops in its national system. These

smaller station stops often generate the highest revenue tickets at the

lowest cost. To small town America, Amtrak is an essential service. This

is where Amtrak shines the best, fulfilling its original mission to

provide a viable, national passenger rail system.

- Because it has been a government overseen monopoly, Amtrak has never

acted like a real company focused on passenger service. It has become

lazy and complacent, knowing another year's pot full of free federal

money was just months or weeks away.

- Like the blunders of so many railroads, Amtrak has let itself be

dictated to by the operating department, and brushed aside the needs of

the marketing department. Amtrak has often run trains on schedules which

were convenient for crew changes, meshing with commuter operations, or

the needs of terminals, instead of the desires of passengers. Just as the

freight railroads learned the hard way and finally got rid of the

mentality of "if we run a train, we don't care if you put a box car on it

or not," Amtrak has never learned that lesson, and still lets the

operating department make too many passenger services decisions.

- Amtrak continues to have a complex about offering anything other than

Spartan services. Because it is a child of government, many believe

Amtrak should not offer high-dollar, high-profit services, but, rather,

should be a bus on rails with minimal creature comforts. Not only does

this provide a glaring example of why Amtrak should not be a government

entity, it also avidly demonstrates how thinking in terms of government

provided services versus privately provided services warps concepts and

can hide true potential. Amtrak, as a part of government, has a duty and

obligation to provide the best level of service available that generates

the highest income at the lowest cost. That is being a good steward of

taxpayer subsidies. Instead, Amtrak aims for mediocre service levels at

often inconvenient times that will always require free federal or state

monies because its business plan is not geared toward productivity on any

level.

Often, watching Amtrak crews at terminals or station platforms, one can

draw a conclusion there is never a sense of urgency, or desire to make up

time if a train is running late. There appears to be a complacency among

many of Amtrak's crews that when the train gets there, it will get there,

and there will be no extra compensation for the crews, or any penalty for

the crews for being late. While tardiness is often the cause of host

railroads, and often Amtrak itself causes tardiness by lack of equipment

maintenance or lack of adequate staffing, it is rare to see an Amtrak

train crew pushing to get a train into a terminal or the next station in

any particular hurry. These front line soldiers of Amtrak in most cases

have the personal motivation to get a job done well, but the system they

work in does not provide the exhortation necessary to prompt improvement.

- Amtrak's skeletal national system is expensive to operate and does not

provide its potential return on investment. Even though it is easy to

demonstrate the Empire Builder route performs financial circles around

any corridor route, and throws off a positive cash flow (that reads

profits for all of those unfamiliar with the concept) from operations,

the route has the easy potential to double its contribution to Amtrak's

bottom line. This can rationally be accomplished by expanding the length

of the train (the easiest fix), promoting the train heavier (even though

it has one of the best load factors in the system), or negotiate with

BNSF for a second frequency over the line.

Daily passenger trains require stations and personnel on the ground to

run them, including crew bases and maintenance shops. The least efficient

way to use these assets is to have one train a day (or, even worse,

tri-weekly service) in each direction. That's a lot of infrastructure for

one visit a day by passengers in each direction. When route frequencies

increase, the infrastructure costs remain virtually the same (although,

occasionally, some station hours must be lengthened to accommodate other

frequencies), but the revenue potential more than doubles because more

passengers respond to more travel times choices. This is the same all

over the Amtrak system.

Even though the host freight railroads want to moan about track capacity

restrictions (which is often a very real scenario), somehow, when the

price is right and conditions are favorable, space is always found for

another train. Not every piece of rail in every part of the country is

totally congested. There are many opportunities for Amtrak to expand its

system, but someone has to want to do that first, and that doesn't seem

the case with Amtrak.

6) Where does all of this leave us? In a terrible place, with a crippled

passenger rail system with a grossly flawed business plan, a nationwide

demand for passenger service which is not being met, and a glaring hole

in our domestic transportation network.

- Amtrak needs to take more responsibility for itself, and take a serious

inventory of its assets and potential. It needs to realistically look at

the potential of its system, and expand the system where the most

revenues will be generated by spending the least amount of money.

Passengers in the form of high numbers of warm bodies are not the answer.

Passengers in the form of people who generate the most transportation

output for the lowest cost are the answer. Amtrak is not a public

utility, and should never be considered as a public utility. Amtrak is -

startling so to some - a very real business with an obligation to operate

efficiently and effectively.

If Amtrak became financially stronger on its own accord, the annual

charade over free federal money would simply go away. Why do ill-bred and

ill-informed people want the future of Amtrak to always be dependent on

the largess of irresponsible politicians?

Why do some of these same people - and, others, which are wiser and have

more realistic life experiences - always look with envy of what is

happening in Europe and wonder why we can't have the same type of

transportation system, here? Don't they understand how so many of the

dynamics are completely different, and comparing our national needs to

those of Europe are comparing apples to oranges?

- Amtrak needs to become more creative. President and CEO Alex Kummant is

presiding over some much needed changes at Amtrak (see item one of this

column), and he has in place good executive like Richard Phelps, Mike

Chandler, Brian Rosenwald, Tommy McDonald, and Butch Williams. These wise

and personable professional railroaders understand operating Amtrak is

more than just running trains, but it's also all about passenger service

and proper marketing.

The "experiment" of running the Empire Builder like it was always run

prior to the last few years at Amtrak has proven successful, and is being

expanded to other trains, such as the Coast Starlight (really, the Coast

Starlight is just going back to the way it was when Brian Rosenwald

remade it successfully in the 1990s, with a few new twists relevant to

today). The California Zephyr and other trains can't be far behind.

The City of New Orleans has instigated a "revolutionary" new concept, all

day dining. This isn't very new, since highly successful test runs of a

24 hour dining car on the Sunset Limited, under the partial creation and

supervision of this writer, were done in 1999 and 2000. At the same time,

an analysis was done for the City of New Orleans to also host a 24 hour

dining car.

Lots of things have been tried in the past, but were often victim of the

"not invented here" syndrome at Amtrak. There are so many creative things

which can be done at Amtrak to greatly improve passenger service and

revenues, yet the company mimics a glacier when it comes to moving

forward on these items.

- Amtrak needs to come to better terms with its employees, particularly

the union employees. Fears of a strike at the end of this month loom, and

a presidential emergency board is already in place looking at the overall

labor picture and trying to find a reasonable middle ground between

management and labor. Former Chairman of the Board David Laney deserves

much credit for jump starting labor relations and forging new contracts,

but the job now needs to be finished with realistic Amtrak contracts that

meet the needs of both the company and the employees.

- Amtrak needs a better business plan, instead of one always based on

using other people's money, be it on the federal or state level. If

Amtrak needs some help today getting out of the mess it has gotten itself

in to, well, okay. But, at some point, Amtrak needs to realistically

demonstrate it is serious about running a business, and serious about its

own future through a better business plan. There is no one perfect

answer. But, there are a host of answers, all better than the one Amtrak

is using today.

7) The post-war days of the 1950s and 60s are gone. Americans have

rediscovered passenger trains (as much as Amtrak has let them despite

dismal marketing), and they are looking to passenger trains as reasonable

alternatives to air and private automobile travel.

Just as the passenger jet aircraft killed the cruise ship business, it

killed the rail passenger business. But, in a new day with a new

emphasis, both businesses have rebounded robustly in the eyes of new

generations of passengers. Cruise lines are making more money and profits

today than they ever have in their histories. Amtrak has the same

potential as the cruise lines, if someone will just allow that to happen.

The things that smothered passenger rail, such as heavy government

regulation, and the treatment of passenger trains as God-given public

utilities, are gone. Cost everywhere have been slashed, from property

taxes to staffing huge station facilities. Bi-level and efficient

Superliners have replaced low density single-level coaches, sleepers, and

diners. Modern reservations systems have made access to Amtrak available

to everyone.

There is no rational reason to say passenger trains in America can never

make money. There is no rational reason to say Americans don't want to

ride a train, when demand is so high when properly marketed and

reasonable frequencies are available. There is no rational reason why

Amtrak can't be relevant as an integral part of our domestic

transportation network, with a transportation market share greater than

that of motorcycles. Amtrak only has to have the confidence to meet its

true potential, instead of unhappily being a ward of a government that

doesn't truly understand what it has on its hands.

8) Finally, it is important to note the passing of former Amtrak

President and CEO George Warrington. After leaving Amtrak, he rejoined

his former employer, New Jersey Transit as its head man, and ran the

system until earlier in 2007. He abruptly left NJT, saying he wanted to

spend more time with his family. What most people didn't know was he had

been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and it took his life on Christmas

Eve at age 55.

As one former Amtrak senior manager said, "I didn't always agree with

everything he did, but he was a force to be reckoned with." That is

perhaps the best way to sum up his service to Amtrak. He was a strong

personality, and he believed in his convictions. Right or wrong, he did

try to bring change to Amtrak, even if the end result was bad. Everyone

who tries to make a difference deserves to be admired.

Our sympathies are extended to his family and friends on their loss of

George Warrington, an American who believed in what he did.

If you are reading someone else's copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can

receive your own free copy each week by sending your e-mail address to

[email protected]

You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state

where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet

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confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than the

distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.

All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe, should be

addressed to

[email protected]

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

[email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

_______________________________________________

TWA mailing list

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[MrFSS]

This Week at Amtrak; January 21, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 2

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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) EVERYONE involved in the process should hang their heads in shame.

Some people may be smiling on the surface, but that only covers the

long-lasting damage which has been done.

Of course, we're referring to Amtrak's recent agreement with the 12

unions which represent the majority of its contract workers.

2) The Presidential Emergency Board appointed by the White House should

hang its collective head in shame for going along with the demands of the

unions without any major concessions on work rules.

Any reasonable person recognizes that any living, breathing industry,

such as the railroad industry, is going to be subject to changing

conditions due to technology advances and finding better ways of doing

things. By freezing employee work rules at decades-old levels based on

backwards thinking, no one prospers, because the company remains married

to the past, and unable to advance into the future with bright prospects

of modernization, a better way of doing things, and a better shot at

prosperity based on modern requirements.

3) The collective union leadership should hang it collective head in

shame for allowing these contracts to fester since 1999. Clearly, union

leadership bought into the "woe-is-me" mentality of Amtrak leadership

that conveniently blamed many problems on union workers instead of

themselves, who were really the people responsible for making Amtrak a

viable concept. Too many Amtrak leaders for too long have completely

bought into the emotional and financial crutch that Congress will always

bail Amtrak out with free federal money year after year, and, therefore,

don't have to be fiscally responsible for any facet of their work life.

This mentality has spilled over into dealing with the unions, "Oops!

Congress won't give us the money, so you union workers have to take the

hit," instead of trying to find better ways of doing things and more

paying passengers creating revenue passenger miles.

4) Rank and file union workers should hang their collective head in shame

for allowing their union leaders to bamboozle them into thinking there is

good reason it's taken since 1999 to get a new contract. These union

workers seemed satisfied year after year to work without a raise or

significant change in benefits while their union leadership bought into

Amtrak management's lame excuses. In the real world, where else has it

ever taken eight years without a contract for things to come to a final

conclusion?

5) Amtrak executives and its board of directors should hang their

collective head in shame for allowing their union employees - the very

heart of Amtrak's operations - to work without a contract since 1999.

Unhappy employees translate into unhappy passengers. Unhappy passengers

translate into the "never again" passengers Amtrak has accumulated so

many of these past 36 years. As said above, why couldn't Amtrak senior

management solve this problem before? Obviously, it took the strong

leadership of immediate past board chairman David Laney to get the ball

rolling, and it took the day-to-day leadership of former Union Pacific

Railroad Vice President and now Amtrak President and CEO Alex Kummant to

bring these contracts to a conclusion. Say what you may about the Union

Pacific Railroad, but it's a pretty good guess that ANYONE working at the

UP which dragged out labor contracts for this long would be history, and

never even invited back to an employee-sponsored picnic. Mr. Kummant's

sense of the real railroad world readily paid off in this instance, and

he will receive credit the contracts were finalized during his

stewardship of Amtrak.

6) The news media should hang their collective heads in shame for

covering the story of an impending strike by Amtrak union employees in

near-hysterical terms, and treating the story as an apocalyptical event.

By beating the impending-strike horse to death in the first two weeks of

the month-long deadline for a contract resolution, the news media managed

to continue to fan the flames of a woebegone Amtrak near extinction. One

has to wonder where this same news media is with the same amount of

concern about Amtrak and rail passengers when other stories are written

about peak travel times or storm-ravaged travel times, and passenger rail

is given nary a mention. Could the news media be collective opportunists?

7) What do the new contracts mean for Amtrak? Better pay for contract

workers (but, still below freight railroads in general for the same work

performed), promised raises, and back pay averaging a little less than

$13,000 per contract employee to cover the years the contracts were not

negotiated. No work rules changes are made. The lack of work rules change

is the most damaging part of the contracts. For the life of these

contracts, Amtrak will be unable to institute time-saving and

money-saving changes, and must cling to what in some cases is an outdated

way of doing things.

While the contract employees are receiving back pay (in two lump sums

over a two year period), they are really receiving only a Band-Aid for

their problems. No work rules change translates into no progress for the

company or movement towards Amtrak being a more self-sufficient

organization. The contracts do nothing to help guarantee Amtrak's future,

or orderly growth.

8) All in all, it turns out that contract negotiations since 1999 have

accomplished nothing that could not have been accomplished at any point

in time for the past eight years. It took three Amtrak presidents, and at

least three different groups on Amtrak's board of directors to get

something done that could have been done at any given moment during the

Clinton administration, an administration that considered Amtrak a labor

issue in the political world, yet did nothing to help labor achieve a

contract with Amtrak before it left office in January of 2001.

9) Has anyone noticed the irony of Union Pacific's long, handsome, and

much photographed business train? The armor yellow trains, spiffed up in

the best traditions of the City of Los Angeles and a number of other

famous Union Pacific transcontinental trains, sports sleepers, lounges,

diners, domes, and all sorts of other equipment, pulled by revved up

F-unit passenger diesels. The train is a sight to behold, and is

constantly photographed. Union Pacific proudly shows off its extensive

rail system by inviting shippers and other executives on these train

trips, and entertains them well.

So, if the UP is so excited about offering such top-notch passenger

service to its senior employees and best customers and potential

customers, isn't it ironic that UP is considered by most to be Amtrak's

most contentious host railroad? Apparently, what is good for the UP goose

is not good for the Amtrak gander.

If you are reading someone else's copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can

receive your own free copy each week by sending your e-mail address to

[email protected]

You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state

where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet

connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from

[email protected]; we are unable to go through any individual approvals

processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly

confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than the

distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.

All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe, should be

addressed to

[email protected]

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

[email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

_______________________________________________

TWA mailing list

[email protected]

http://lists.unitedrail.org/mailman/listinfo/twa

 

[frj1983]

"Has anyone noticed the irony of Union Pacific's long, handsome, and

much photographed business train? The armor yellow trains, spiffed up in

the best traditions of the City of Los Angeles and a number of other

famous Union Pacific transcontinental trains, sports sleepers, lounges,

diners, domes, and all sorts of other equipment, pulled by revved up

F-unit passenger diesels. The train is a sight to behold, and is

constantly photographed. Union Pacific proudly shows off its extensive

rail system by inviting shippers and other executives on these train

trips, and entertains them well.

So, if the UP is so excited about offering such top-notch passenger

service to its senior employees and best customers and potential

customers, isn't it ironic that UP is considered by most to be Amtrak's

most contentious host railroad? Apparently, what is good for the UP goose

is not good for the Amtrak gander."

I believe that you can "bet the farm" here and expect that this train will always get priority

over UP freights!

 

[saxman]

Wow....so whose he blaming? The unions for coming out with a good/same contract? Or management for agreeing with it. I think this guy needs to "hang his collective head in shame."

 

[MrFSS]

This Week at Amtrak; January 28, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 3

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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) 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.

[begin quote]

January 23, 2008

4:30 pm PST

Due to massive mudslides over railroad tracks north of Chemult, Oregon on

January 19, Amtrak Coast Starlight service will be disrupted January 24

through January 31, with no alternate transportation provided. The Union

Pacific Railroad has suspended all railroad traffic through the area.

As a result, the following operation plan is in effect:

The northbound Coast Starlight (Train 14) is canceled from Los Angeles to

Seattle from January 24 through January 31*.

The southbound Coast Starlight (Train 11) is canceled from Seattle to Los

Angeles from January 25 through February 1*.

*These dates may be extended.

Although the Coast Starlight is canceled in its entirety between Los

Angeles and Seattle during this period, Amtrak does offer service on

other trains and motorcoaches between Southern California and the Pacific

Northwest. For travel throughout California, passengers may make

motorcoach connections at Los Angeles Union Station to the San Joaquins

train service for travel between Bakersfield and Sacramento/Oakland.

Passengers may also take the Pacific Surfliner trains between Los Angeles

and San Luis Obispo. At San Luis Obispo, they may take a motorcoach

connection to the Capitol Corridor train service in San Jose for travel

to Sacramento/Auburn and points in between. Amtrak offers a motorcoach

connection between Sacramento and Medford, Ore.

For travel throughout the Pacific Northwest, passengers may take the

Amtrak Cascades service from Eugene, Ore. to Vancouver, BC.

Amtrak regrets any inconvenience. This information is correct as of the

above time and date. Information is subject to change as conditions

warrant. Passengers are encouraged to call 800-USA-RAIL or visit

Amtrak.com for schedule information and train status updates.

[End quote]

Looking at the Union Pacific Railroad (owner and operator of the track in

Oregon) shots of this mess from a helicopter, it's amazing no person was

hurt, and one can only hope as much wildlife as possible was spared. This

is rugged, mountain territory; the mudslide took place on the side of a

mountain and slid down onto the Union Pacific tracks which host the daily

Coast Starlight. Cleaning up this mess is taking some serious planning

and logistics, and the workers who get this vital north/south rail line

reopened in winter weather conditions will be nothing short of heroes.

3) Paul Dyson, long time URPA member and currently President of the

Railroad Passenger Association of California and Nevada, wrote the

following letter to Amtrak President and CEO Alex Kummant upon the

announcement of Amtrak's plans for annulling the Coast Starlight along

its entire 1,377 mile route, traversing nearly the entire Left Coast of

the United States from Seattle to Los Angeles.

[begin quote]

RAIL PASSENGER ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA

22nd January, 2008

Mr. Alex Kummant

President and Chief Executive Officer

NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION

60 Massachusetts Avenue NE

Washington DC 20002

SUSPENSION OF COAST STARLIGHT SERVICE

Dear Mr. Kummant:

After our meeting last March in Los Angeles rail advocates on the west

coast felt optimistic that there is a new, more businesslike attitude at

Amtrak, and that we could look forward to a new era of customer service

and a determination to protect the franchise. I am therefore very

distressed to learn that your company proposes to suspend Coast Starlight

service throughout its entire length because of a mudslide in central

Oregon. Although your managers may be telling you that there is an

opportunity to save operating cash during this off peak season, you are

making a very big mistake by suspending service in California.

The California Transportation Commission meets February 14 to decide,

amongst other issues, whether to fund a menu of rail projects approved by

the voters last year with Proposition 1B. Included in this list is $25

million for signal and track improvements on the Coast line, as well as a

number of investments in the state-supported corridors. In view of your

stated objective to build partnerships with the states, the timing of

your demonstration of the unreliability of passenger rail on one of your

most popular routes could not be worse.

I have just spent this past 4 days in San Luis Obispo at a meeting of the

Coast Rail Coordinating Council and at a RailPAC sponsored public

meeting. At the CRCC, representatives from all the counties between L.A.

and the Bay area continue to express support for expanded rail service.

They plan to lobby the CTC meeting in favor of the $25 million for the

Coast. The RailPAC meeting attracted over 50 residents who came to learn

about how passenger rail can provide improved mobility for residents and

attract tourists and their dollars. I was guest on a local talk radio

station Friday evening and the callers were unanimous in their support

for rail, with one caveat; poor reliability. All the goodwill generated

by the efforts of our group and of those public officials who support

passenger rail will be devalued by your opportunistic decision to save a

few operating dollars.

This should be a busy season on the Coast Starlight, at least in

California. The weather is temperate and there are hotel rooms available

especially midweek. You should be promoting midweek packages especially

for overseas tourists, not canceling trains. And don't let your people

tell you that trains 798/799 provide a substitute. These ghastly trains,

with their sad Horizon equipment, third world schedules, leaving L.A. too

early to make a San Diego connection, and bus service north of San Luis

Obispo, are NOT an acceptable substitute for the Coast Starlight.

I strongly recommend that you review this decision. I realize that

reconfiguring schedules in these circumstances takes time and effort.

That's why you have managers. I realize that some passengers will cancel

their trips and you will lose some revenue. But you will lose far more in

goodwill and credibility if you take the easy way out and cancel the

trains. So do some low cost local advertising on the Coast, with coupons,

suspend the reservations only requirement, and use this as an opportunity

to introduce your service to some new customers.

I hope to hear from you soon that you have reversed your decision.

Yours faithfully,

Paul J. Dyson, President

[End quote]

4) Let's get some basic facts into play. The track-blocking, Coast

Starlight-stopping mudslide is located approximately at Chemult, Oregon,

only 432 miles into the southbound run of the Starlight. Regional Amtrak

Cascades daily service extends south from Seattle (it actually begins in

Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada) 310 of the 432 Starlight route

miles to Eugene, Oregon. It's about a 10 ½ hour run from Seattle south to

Chemult.

Coming north, Chemult is a full 945 route miles from the Los Angeles

terminal. That part of the run takes 23 ½ hours, and includes such

heavy-hitter stations in California as Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo,

Salinas, San Jose, Oakland, Emeryville (both Oakland and Emeryville

handle passengers transferring to San Francisco across the bay),

Martinez, Davis, Sacramento, Chico, Redding, and Dunsmuir (Mount Shasta).

In Oregon, Klamath Falls is also south of Chemult.

By blanking the entire run of the Coast Starlight, Amtrak is

automatically saying how unimportant these stations are to the

functioning of its national system, and substitute regional service will

have to make do.

Harrumph.

As much as Amtrak would like us to, we can't ignore the financial aspects

of this sophomoric and moronic decision to shut down the Starlight.

For fiscal year 2007, the Starlight generated:

Revenue - $29,171,300

Revenue passenger miles - 205,891,000

Passengers carried - 343,500

Average length of trip - 600 miles

Average of passengers per train mile - 203

Train miles - 1,012,000

Seat miles - 353,293,734

Load factor - 58%

Impressive numbers for two trains each day, one in each direction.

The Cascades, Capitols, San Joaquin, and Surfliner regional services

combined together, which serve as partial substitutes for the Starlight,

generated the following figures for FY 2007:

Combined revenue - $97,296,400

Combined revenue passenger miles - 543,315,000

Combined passengers carried - 5,636,300

Combined average length of trip - 113 miles

Combined average of passengers per train mile - 106

Combined train miles - 5,061,000

Combined seat miles - 1,557,911,085

Combined average load factor - 36%

The Cascades, Capitols, San Joaquins, and Surfliners each day operate a

combined total of 75 trains per day, including each direction.

How does the one long distance service, which includes sleeping cars, a

diner, two lounge cars, coaches, and a baggage car compare with the

combined regional services which offer coaches, cafe/lounges, and a first

class coach service, and baggage service (not all of these services are

available on all trains)?

Coast Starlight percentage comparison of four other combined services

(Two daily departures versus 75 daily departures)

Coast Starlight Revenue - 30% of combined services

Coast Starlight Revenue passenger miles - 38% of combined services

Coast Starlight passengers carried - 6% of combined services

Coast Starlight average length of trip - 530% of combined services

Coast Starlight average of passengers per train mile - 191% of combined

services

Coast Starlight train miles - 20% of combined services

Coast Starlight seat miles - 23% of combined services

Coast Starlight load factor - 161% of combined services

Look at the astounding strength of transportation and financial output of

two daily long distance trains departing opposite terminals each day

versus a total of 75 daily short distance and regional trains departing

opposite terminals each day.

Amtrak is willing to throw away this kind of financial and revenue

passenger mile strength, hoping passengers purchasing sleeping car

accommodations, and passengers purchasing coach accommodations expecting

full lounge and dining car services are somehow going to accept a lower

level of service on a regional train?

It is impossible to make a rational argument for not running the

Starlight north from Los Angeles at least to Sacramento, then provide a

bus-bridge to Cascades service and a stub-end, northern end Starlight

from Eugene to Seattle.

Rational people have to ask, "what is Amtrak thinking?".

5) Here is what one Amtrak wag has said.

[begin quote]

Despite the questionable legality of this erstwhile train-off (which

SMACKS of the Sunset's discontinuance east of NOL, and scares me to

death!), I think it starts us down a much more slippery slope. More than

one Amtraker today said "We already have corridor service over most of

the route; people can just ride the corridor trains." Never mind that

[Train no.] 11 does a very good business SEA-EUG, and [Train No.] 14

could do well as the ONLY afternoon/evening train running EUG-SEA, if

they'd start selling tickets on it again. And I know darn well how robust

the business is in California, in spite of poor timekeeping.

But it seems that Kummant and the Board are intent on transforming this

company into a contract operator for State corridors (on a cost-plus

basis, of course. Who needs financial discipline when you're reimbursed

for all your costs plus a percentage?), and paying lip service to the LD

trains. The only problem is, if all we do is run trains for states, then

what do we bring to the table that's unique among rail operators? Why

couldn't Herzog or some other company run trains for a state for much

less cost (due to about 10 fewer layers of middle management and much

lower overhead), and probably do a much better job than us at mechanical

and customer service issues?

You see, my real fear is that we're going to marginalize ourselves right

out of business. And absolutely stupid decisions like the Starlight

annulment further cement that fear in my mind. We have absolutely no

vision for the future. No plans, no cohesive strategies. We're just going

to take whatever business the states throw at us. In short, we have no

mission any more.

[End quote]

Along those lines, here is what two other wags outside of the company had

to say.

[begin quote]

WAG ONE: [The Starlight annulment] "Puts Kummant right in the camp of the

Downs/Warrington school of management."

WAG TWO: "At least Downs and Warrington had a mission, a 'vision for the

future,' no matter WHAT [anyone] thought of it!

"Kummant looks more and more like one of those 'dull grey men' who get

chosen as a 'safe' selection for CEO, when a company doesn't know where

it's supposed to go. Sometimes this happens when a strong CEO departs

without having groomed a successor, such as at American Airlines after

C.R. Smith retired, and years later after Bob Crandall retired. But at

Amtrak there is no 'strong,' only 'rudderless.'

WAG ONE: "Absolutely. Kummant's career path pre-Amtrak screamed that out,

but the Board had told the search firm (or the search firm had convinced

the Board) they needed to hire a candidate with a rigidly-defined set of

criteria, and that's what the search firm produced: a resume that fit the

criteria, rather than a leader with a vision for success with the

business. This is a classic failure mode. The evidence so far suggests

Kummant is not experienced enough, and not inherently bright enough, to

see past what his staff is feeding him. The fact he got rid of a few of

the worst nitwits in management says nothing about Kummant's vision,

analytical skill, or leadership. He looks more and more to me like a

classic empty suit. The good news is that unless THIS represents his

"level of incompetence" and he sticks around because he can't get hired

anywhere else, his entire career history suggests he will move on to

something new after wandering around the desert for a few short years

with Amtrak."

[End quote]

Here is a union communique from union leadership to union members.

[begin quote]

Date: Jan 22, 2008 10:13 PM

Subject: Calif. Respond to Coast Starlight Suspension

Brothers and Sisters,

For those of you who don't already know, a major slide in the Oregon

Cascades has blocked rail service between Klamath Falls and Eugene. As a

result, Amtrak plans to suspend operation of the Coast Starlight on the

entire route between Los Angeles and Seattle, perhaps until mid-February.

Historically, the Corporation has run stub trains, with or without bus

bridges in similar circumstances, but this time management seems to think

it would not be cost efficient.

The sensible thing to do in the Northwest would be to operate an

abbreviated Seattle to Eugene section running on the Coast Starlight

schedule. We have the crews and the equipment. We also have a marketing

department, right? While service is suspended over the Cascades, have

them push a replacement train, complimenting the already busy Seattle to

Eugene Corridor. Offer two for one tickets, or other incentives to help

fill seats. A similar strategy could be employed in California with their

own section.

I know many of you have contacted your State Representatives and Senators

and voiced your concerns over the temporary elimination of the Coast

Starlight run. If you have not, I ask all of you to help our affected

Brothers and Sisters by doing the same.

Meanwhile, I will continue to coordinate with our General Committee and

Legislative Boards in California, Oregon and Washington, and our National

Legislative Office in DC, in an ongoing effort to pressure the

Corporation to reverse its hasty decision.

I have also copied a link to a letter sent to Amtrak President Kummant by

the California Rail Passenger Association. Their message is clear and

right on point. Washington and Oregon should be no different.

I will keep you advised as the situation changes and sincerely appreciate

all your help.

Fraternally,

Dave Estes

Local Chairman, BLET Division 60

[End quote]

6) Let's take a roll call. Amtrak west coast management made a decision

to annul the Starlight. This was a regional decision that had an impact

on two Amtrak divisions, the Pacific Northwest and the Southwest. Amtrak

senior management in Washington apparently went along with the decision.

- Amtrak lower level management employees don't like the decision. They

are paid to run trains, and that's what they want to do.

- Amtrak operating level employees don't like the decision (see

immediately above).

- Amtrak unions don't like the decision (see immediately above).

- Amtrak outside observers don't like the decision.

- Amtrak passengers don't like the decision, because there is no train to

ride.

- Politicians don't like the decision, because

voters/passengers/observers/union members are unhappy, and that makes

politicians unhappy.

This is a tough decision for Amtrak management to defend. This bad

decision loudly demonstrates how little Amtrak itself thinks of the

service it provides; if there is no service, that's okay with Amtrak,

because it is more convenient to not run trains. Perhaps it would be much

more convenient for Amtrak to completely eliminate all trains, then

everyone could just to go work each day, collect a paycheck based on free

federal monies, and then go home without having to make any inconvenient

decisions, or actually create and put into action contingency plans. What

are these people thinking?

7) There is one very important point to remember about the Amtrak

managers who made the decision to annul the Starlight. Amtrak managers

and employees are evaluated and rated based on how much money they save

in expenses for the company. They are not evaluated on how much money

they make for the company. Therefore, from a personal standpoint for

these managers making decisions, any trains they deem to annul for any

reason, is considered a good move. Any train that is kept moving, no

matter how much money it makes, has no impact on their personal

performance ratings (which impact promotions, raises, bonuses, etc.).

Amtrak managers have a personal motivation to cancel trains, not keep

them running.

8) On the other side of the country on the Right Coast, a similar

scenario will be playing itself out along the route of the Crescent,

which runs from New York City to New Orleans, via Atlanta, Georgia.

For four weeks in February and March, Amtrak is annulling the Crescent

between Atlanta and New Orleans four days a week to allow host railroad

Norfolk Southern to perform track maintenance and upgrades. The Crescent

will only run its full 1,377 mile route Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Mondays through Thursdays it will terminate and originate in Atlanta.

That means 518 route miles between Atlanta and New Orleans, which

includes stops in Birmingham, Alabama along with Meridian and Hattiesburg

Mississippi will be without train service and no alternative

transportation, such as a bus-bridge will be offered.

(Sigh) Without going into all of the obvious arguments about this

yet-another bad decision by Amtrak management (see above for a complete

list of the arguments), again, how can Amtrak management be so callous

about its future?

Maintenance blitzes have become common in the railroad industry. The idea

is to minimize track time interference while maximizing maintenance

resources to get the job done as quickly as possible. While this is often

favorable to freight train operations (which can take detour routes, or

the company can simply notify its customers it is not accepting freight

for movement on those dates due to understandable maintenance, or more

trains can be run at night when maintenance crews are not working), this

technique is not favorable to passenger train operations. As of yet, no

one has made a serious attempt to solve this problem.

However, Amtrak could at least make an effort to accommodate its

passengers by providing a bus bridge or operate two stub-end trains

instead of completely annulling service along a portion of a route which

stretches for over 500 miles.

Also, figure into the equation the plight of New Orleans, which is served

by two daily trains, the Crescent and the City of New Orleans, and the

tri-weekly Sunset Limited. Amtrak's abandonment of the Crescent route for

four days a week for four weeks does nothing to assist New Orleans in its

rebuilding efforts. For all Amtrak did in the initial time of crisis and

rebuilding, it now seems to be regularly turning its back on New Orleans.

It has stripped away much of the New Orleans maintenance facility, taken

management positions out of New Orleans, and otherwise downgraded its

operations there. Don't forget, this comes at a time of year which

includes the beginning of the Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, one of

the major tourist draws for the city. As many cities and town across the

nation will attest, Amtrak - at best - can be considered a fair-weather

friend.

9) Between the lack of service between New Orleans and Florida after the

what seems to be permanent end of the Sunset Limited after Hurricane

Katrina, the annulment of the Starlight and Crescent, Amtrak is more and

more making itself automatically irrelevant in the national

transportation picture. It will become increasing difficult for Amtrak to

justify itself to anyone in Congress outside of the Northeast Corridor

when it comes time for annual free federal money hearings. How could

anyone with a straight face address Congress and say Amtrak is meeting

its original mission of providing a nationwide rail passenger system?

The type of thinking which allows Amtrak managers to annul the Starlight

and Crescent harks back to the dark days of the 1990s and the Mercer

report train offs, where it was supposed passengers would continue to

ride trains anytime Amtrak deemed it convenient to run trains. That

disaster took a toll on Amtrak's credibility, and still today cities and

towns have been without Amtrak service because of the audacity of the

report that ignored public demand and political realities.

The type of corporate hubris it takes to make such annulment decisions

speaks volumes about Amtrak's mind set and lack of vision to serve its

passengers, or honor its bankers and owners by making the best use of

free federal monies and state monies. For too long, Amtrak has had a

complete lack of accountability to the American public. The few times a

federal administration has attempted to hold Amtrak accountable, there

have been howls of protest (including from this writer) because the

attempts have been so misdirected and have tried to solve all of the

wrong problems. When is anyone going to "get it right"?

10) Amtrak's settlement with its unions have spawned the expected

conspiracy theories. Most of them have been centered on the Bush

administration and how the conspiracy theorists believe the uncontested

union claims recommended by the Presidential Emergency Board (appointed

by the White House) are designed to bankrupt the company, and, therefore,

put an end to Amtrak once and for all.

Such hogwash. The relatively minor amout of money the unions settlement

is going to cost the company in the overall scheme of things is hardly

enough to even give Amtrak a light shove towards bankruptcy court.

Besides, Amtrak has more than enough annual free federal monies flowing

into the company that it can simply convert some of those funds from the

perpetual upgrades of the black hole of finances on the Northeast

Corridor to pay the costs. For the future, Amtrak can easily plead its

case to states which fund operations that higher labor costs equal higher

state subsidy costs.

While it is a complete wonder to informed observers as to why the PEB

rolled over on so many issues (especially the work rules changes, which

could have been easy fixes), it's difficult for rational people to accept

any type of conspiracy theory on the part of the White House.

11) Here in Florida, everyone in the state is a-twitter over presidential

politics, since Florida Republicans will go to the polls on Tuesday and

help nominate a presidential candidate.

Naturally, in some quarters, presidential and congressional politics

revolve around what each candidate will or will not do to Amtrak, which

is a relatively minor issue to most politicians.

Think about this: If Amtrak would only take the initiative and use its

resources to the best results and make itself as strong as possible,

whoever becomes president every four years would have little or no

bearing on the future of the company. Only as long as Amtrak remains a

crippled child of government will presidential and congressional politics

come into play. Why go through this agony when the real solution is just

to make Amtrak a better, more self-reliant company that doesn't need

large levels of outside financial help?

12) One final note. In the last issue of TWA, a "throw-away" item was at

the end of the column about the Union Pacific business train, and the

locomotives which pull the train. The locomotives were inadvertently

identified as "F" units, when, in reality, they are "E" units. Very

little correspondence was received about the meat of the column about the

union settlement, but a flood of correspondence was received about the

misidentified locomotives. It's imperative to get the really important

facts straight.

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J. Bruce Richardson

President

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739

[email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

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[had8ley]

You know Tom, I thought I was the only one who had bad dreams about cutting the Coast Starlight up. Seems the king pins in DC really, really want state supported trains of mediocre length rather than anything over 500 miles.

 

[frj1983]

You know Tom, I thought I was the only one who had bad dreams about cutting the Coast Starlight up. Seems the king pins in DC really, really want state supported trains of mediocre length rather than anything over 500 miles.

Much of the discussion on this whole issue rings true to me, but there is one other thing sticking in my craw and no-one has said anything about it! What is UP's position in this whole thing??

I wonder if it's possible that UP may also have played into the decision?? Is it possible that Amtrak may have suggested running the CS up to Redding or Klamath Falls for that matter and then bussing around and up to Eugene to connect with the northbound CS and vice-versa southbound? Is it possible UP simply said "no, we'd rather not worry about that train at all," or something to that effect?? I can't prove it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that UP is somehow involved here as well...but they're not coming off as the bad guy! I'm sure they're more than happy with Amtrak's decision!!

 

[AlanB]

You know Tom, I thought I was the only one who had bad dreams about cutting the Coast Starlight up. Seems the king pins in DC really, really want state supported trains of mediocre length rather than anything over 500 miles.

Much of the discussion on this whole issue rings true to me, but there is one other thing sticking in my craw and no-one has said anything about it! What is UP's position in this whole thing??

I wonder if it's possible that UP may also have played into the decision?? Is it possible that Amtrak may have suggested running the CS up to Redding or Klamath Falls for that matter and then bussing around and up to Eugene to connect with the northbound CS and vice-versa southbound? Is it possible UP simply said "no, we'd rather not worry about that train at all," or something to that effect?? I can't prove it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that UP is somehow involved here as well...but they're not coming off as the bad guy! I'm sure they're more than happy with Amtrak's decision!!

I too have both wondered about UP's involvement in things, and have hinted at UP's involvement in a few other posts. While it is nothing concrete, I'll throw out the following two statements. The first is from the original bulletin in Arrow.

FOLLOWING A MUDSLIDE SOUTH (SIC) OF CMO, AND SUBSEQUENT LINE CLOSURE TRAIN 11 & 14 WILL BE SEVERELY DISRUPTED OVER THE NEXT FEW WEEKS. BELOW IS A SUMMARY OF THE PLAN AGREED BY AMTRAK AND UPRR.

The second is from Amtrak's press release to the public.

The Union Pacific Railroad has suspended all railroad traffic through the area.

Now that said, and assuming that UP did play a big role in the decision to cancel the trains, I still don't think that should absolve Amtrak of all blame from doing things like it did to Yarrow. I can see blocking out future reservations. But Amtrak should have done something more than just giving out refunds to those already holding reservations, and especially for those who were mid-journey.

 

[PRR 60]

There is no evidence that the Union Pacific was a factor in Amtrak's decision to cancel the Starlight except to the extent that they informed Amtrak of the serious nature of the slide. The "agreement" reached with the UP was the original plan to operate stub trains for a day or two following the slide. The curtailment decision, right or wrong, was based on Amtrak business factors, not the UP.

(from another site)

Jonathan Hutchison, Amtrak Director of Government Affairs, West, says several factors went into the decision to suspend all Starlight service. These include late January / February being a low ridership time-of-year, the cost of operating a southern-end stub section, the availability of alternate Amtrak California services at all stations from Sacramento south (though some trips include a bus portion), and the uncertainty of the opening date of the line.
Amtrak is awaiting a solid route-opening date estimate from Union Pacific. Amtrak will evaluate options for its strategy for the Starlight route beyond February 1 as soon as a more precise reopening date for the line is known.

From the standpoint of the UP, the slide has all but curtailed traffic on the I-5 line. They could probably handle the Starlight better than normal. Why would they care if Amtrak was running stub trains or not?

By the way, scuttlebutt now indicates the slide area will remain closed until at least February 17.

 

[PRR 60]

Here is a detailed expaination for the cancellation from Alex Kummant sent to RailPAC:

January 28, 2008

Mr. Paul J. Dyson

President

Rail Passenger Association of California

1008 – 10th Street, Suite 217

Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Mr. Dyson:

Thank you for your letter of January 22 regarding your concerns with the temporary cessation of the Coast Starlight service. As you are aware, the Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) mainline across the Cascade Range has been closed because of a significant landslide at Coyote Mountain, which is between Chemult and Eugene, Oregon.

The Coast Starlight is one of our premiere services and ranks highly among our long-distance services in terms of ridership and revenue. That said, this time of year, late January and February, is in relative terms the seasonal low point for ridership on this train. When the landslide at Coyote Mountain occurred on January 19, it was difficult to obtain from UPRR a reliable estimate of the extent of the damage and the duration of track closure, for reasons outlined below. In fact, the duration of track closure is still unclear at this time.

Initial reports from UPRR on January 19 indicated that an area about 0.8 miles in length was covered with 4-10 feet of debris, but that the line might reopen within two or three days. We immediately instituted a bus bridge between Klamath Falls and Portland to accommodate passengers who already were enroute. On January 19, this resulted in a 9 hour delay for northbound passengers and a nearly 6 hour delay for southbound passengers, though delays caused by the bus bridge were reduced over the following days.

Late in the day on January 20, UPRR provided Amtrak with an updated track repair estimate of two or three weeks. The damage report was more significant that earlier reported, covering parts of a segment 14 miles in length, with areas of track buried in 15 feet of debris, and with continued movement of the soil in the area. The location is in a very remote, steeply sloped area with minimal road access. On January 21, the bus bridge resulted in a 1 hour delay for northbound passengers and a 19 minute delay for southbound passengers. We decided to continue the bus bridge for three more days (January 22, 23 and 24), but then annul the Coast Starlight in its entirety, including the bus bridge, through February 1.

This decision was made after careful consideration of projected passenger counts and revenues, compared to bus bridge costs and added employee-related expenses, particularly, the relocation of mechanical forces to Klamath Falls to turn and service the train set that would terminate there is service continued to operate during this extended track outage. The bus bridge costs are not insignificant, approximately $12,000-$15,000 a day. We also considered that, as stated above, usage of the Coast Starlight in late January is less than at other times of year, and the challenges presented by running stub trains and bus bridges, especially in winter.

We carefully evaluated all of these factors and looked at every opportunity available to us, including talking to BNSF Railway, which has a potential detour route via Wishram, Washington, and Bend, Oregon. This detour route proved not to be practical due to its 49-mph top speeds and the many UPRR freights already diverted to it because of the track outage.

After this evaluation process, we came to the decision of annulling the train through the area for two weeks in order to give the UPRR a chance to give us an informed timetable for reopening the line, which then would allow us to go back and determine what future steps we can take, and when we can take them. In the end, the cost of running stub trains and a bus bridge far outweighed the revenue benefits of running the train during these firs two weeks of the track outage.

We also considered whether to operate stub trains on the northern and southern extreme of the route. Again, given the season and other factors, we found that running the stub trains made no sense for the period through February 1. In the north, parallel Cascades service has ample space this time of year to carry additional passengers. Also, the northbound Coast Starlight carries no local passengers north of Eugene.

In the south, we found that ridership on the Coast Starlight that is local to the Los Angeles-Sacramento segment is light during this season and could be diverted temporarily to the State’s network of corridor trains and thruway buses for the period through February 1. For example, there is the Pacific Surfliner service from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo and the Capitol Corridor service from San Jose to Sacramento, also connected by thruway bus service. Also, passengers to and from Los Angeles can use connecting thruway bus and the San Joaquin train service via Bakersfield. During this current two-week period, we will have the chance to talk with Caltrans about other bussing options to bridge parts of this route. You raised a number of arguments in favor of marketing a stub train along the coast route within California. However, keeping in mind that our decision was made on January 21 with a hope of restoring service early in February, a process of prudent planning and analysis of the sort of service that you have suggested would likely have taken as long as the service outage lasted.

That said, UPRR has not yet given us a firm indication of when the line in Oregon will reopen. February is a relatively weaker period for the Coast Starlight, but ridership historically increases heading into March and April. You can be assured that we want to reinstitute the service as quickly as possible. Given the information available to us, we believe that the decision we made was the correct one. We expect within the next two weeks, the service options available to us will become clearer, and that a more definite path to full recovery will be found. We will keep the public informed as we make any such determinations.

Sincerely,

Alex Kummant

President and Chief Executive Officer

 

[AlanB]

So Alex as much as admits that Amtrak's decision to cancel service was strictly financial and nothing more. The only problem is that his numbers don't justify the decsion as he's outlined it.

Last year in January the CS carried 22,120 passengers, a number that according to Alex is lower than the rest of the year. March however according to him is a good month, but last March shows that the CS carried 24,792, so apparently it only takes about 2,500 more passengers to make it a good month vs a bad month. Please Alex, next time at least make sure that your staff is feeding you good information before you respond.

And in the meantime Amtrak is potentially stranding as many as 10,000 to 15,000 customers, maybe more depending on the length of the outage.

 

[AlanB]

Just as a follow-up to my post above, there was a time in the not to distant past prior to both UP and Amtrak having done things to hurt ridership on the CS, when January was actually busier than March. Ridership in Jan of 2004 31,511 as compared to March of '04 with 30,658 riders.

 

[MrFSS]

This Week at Amtrak; February 1, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 4

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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) When we last left our thrilling story, we were all breathlessly

waiting to hear whether or not Amtrak would reverse its stance on the

annulment of the Coast Starlight on its entire 1,377 mile route because

of a winter mudslide in January in a remote part of Oregon.

We have an update.

But, first, a review.

2) Here's the Amtrak service disruption notice telling the world Amtrak

was throwing in the towel temporarily on the Coast Starlight.

[begin quote]

January 23, 2008

4:30 pm PST

Due to massive mudslides over railroad tracks north of Chemult, Oregon on

January 19, Amtrak Coast Starlight service will be disrupted January 24

through January 31, with no alternate transportation provided. The Union

Pacific Railroad has suspended all railroad traffic through the area.

As a result, the following operation plan is in effect:

The northbound Coast Starlight (Train 14) is canceled from Los Angeles to

Seattle from January 24 through January 31*.

The southbound Coast Starlight (Train 11) is canceled from Seattle to Los

Angeles from January 25 through February 1*.

*These dates may be extended.

Although the Coast Starlight is canceled in its entirety between Los

Angeles and Seattle during this period, Amtrak does offer service on

other trains and motorcoaches between Southern California and the Pacific

Northwest. For travel throughout California, passengers may make

motorcoach connections at Los Angeles Union Station to the San Joaquins

train service for travel between Bakersfield and Sacramento/Oakland.

Passengers may also take the Pacific Surfliner trains between Los Angeles

and San Luis Obispo. At San Luis Obispo, they may take a motorcoach

connection to the Capitol Corridor train service in San Jose for travel

to Sacramento/Auburn and points in between. Amtrak offers a motorcoach

connection between Sacramento and Medford, Ore.

For travel throughout the Pacific Northwest, passengers may take the

Amtrak Cascades service from Eugene, Ore. to Vancouver, BC.

Amtrak regrets any inconvenience. This information is correct as of the

above time and date. Information is subject to change as conditions

warrant. Passengers are encouraged to call 800-USA-RAIL or visit

Amtrak.com for schedule information and train status updates.

[End quote]

As of Thursday, January 29th, Union Pacific is still saying it will

reopen the line within a three week period. This is a monumental

undertaking. However, alert readers will recall how fast and efficiently

the UP replaced the burned bridge in California last year. UP has the

will and knowhow to get this done. But, it appears the Starlight will not

run in any capacity until the mudslide is cleared and the track is

repaired in Oregon.

3) As reported in the last issue of TWA, Paul Dyson, long time URPA

member and currently President of the Railroad Passenger Association of

California and Nevada, wrote the following letter to Amtrak President and

CEO Alex Kummant upon the announcement of Amtrak's plans for annulling

the Coast Starlight along its entire 1,377 mile route, traversing nearly

the entire Left Coast of the United States from Seattle to Los Angeles.

[begin quote]

RAIL PASSENGER ASSOCIATION OF CALIFORNIA

22nd January, 2008

Mr. Alex Kummant

President and Chief Executive Officer

NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION

60 Massachusetts Avenue NE

Washington DC 20002

SUSPENSION OF COAST STARLIGHT SERVICE

Dear Mr. Kummant:

After our meeting last March in Los Angeles rail advocates on the west

coast felt optimistic that there is a new, more businesslike attitude at

Amtrak, and that we could look forward to a new era of customer service

and a determination to protect the franchise. I am therefore very

distressed to learn that your company proposes to suspend Coast Starlight

service throughout its entire length because of a mudslide in central

Oregon. Although your managers may be telling you that there is an

opportunity to save operating cash during this off peak season, you are

making a very big mistake by suspending service in California.

The California Transportation Commission meets February 14 to decide,

amongst other issues, whether to fund a menu of rail projects approved by

the voters last year with Proposition 1B. Included in this list is $25

million for signal and track improvements on the Coast line, as well as a

number of investments in the state-supported corridors. In view of your

stated objective to build partnerships with the states, the timing of

your demonstration of the unreliability of passenger rail on one of your

most popular routes could not be worse.

I have just spent this past 4 days in San Luis Obispo at a meeting of the

Coast Rail Coordinating Council and at a RailPAC sponsored public

meeting. At the CRCC, representatives from all the counties between L.A.

and the Bay area continue to express support for expanded rail service.

They plan to lobby the CTC meeting in favor of the $25 million for the

Coast. The RailPAC meeting attracted over 50 residents who came to learn

about how passenger rail can provide improved mobility for residents and

attract tourists and their dollars. I was guest on a local talk radio

station Friday evening and the callers were unanimous in their support

for rail, with one caveat; poor reliability. All the goodwill generated

by the efforts of our group and of those public officials who support

passenger rail will be devalued by your opportunistic decision to save a

few operating dollars.

This should be a busy season on the Coast Starlight, at least in

California. The weather is temperate and there are hotel rooms available

especially midweek. You should be promoting midweek packages especially

for overseas tourists, not canceling trains. And don't let your people

tell you that trains 798/799 provide a substitute. These ghastly trains,

with their sad Horizon equipment, third world schedules, leaving L.A. too

early to make a San Diego connection, and bus service north of San Luis

Obispo, are NOT an acceptable substitute for the Coast Starlight.

I strongly recommend that you review this decision. I realize that

reconfiguring schedules in these circumstances takes time and effort.

That's why you have managers. I realize that some passengers will cancel

their trips and you will lose some revenue. But you will lose far more in

goodwill and credibility if you take the easy way out and cancel the

trains. So do some low cost local advertising on the Coast, with coupons,

suspend the reservations only requirement, and use this as an opportunity

to introduce your service to some new customers.

I hope to hear from you soon that you have reversed your decision.

Yours faithfully,

Paul J. Dyson, President

[End quote]

4) Let's further review the facts, as present in the last issue of TWA.

The track-blocking, Coast Starlight-stopping mudslide is located

approximately at Chemult, Oregon, only 432 miles into the southbound run

of the Starlight. Regional Amtrak Cascades daily service extends south

from Seattle (it actually begins in Vancouver, British Columbia in

Canada) 310 of the 432 Starlight route miles to Eugene, Oregon. It's

about a 10 ½ hour run from Seattle south to Chemult.

Coming north, Chemult is a full 945 route miles from the Los Angeles

terminal. That part of the run takes 23 ½ hours, and includes such

heavy-hitter stations in California as Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo,

Salinas, San Jose, Oakland, Emeryville (both Oakland and Emeryville

handle passengers transferring to San Francisco across the bay),

Martinez, Davis, Sacramento, Chico, Redding, and Dunsmuir (Mount Shasta).

In Oregon, Klamath Falls is also south of Chemult.

By blanking the entire run of the Coast Starlight, Amtrak is

automatically saying how unimportant these stations are to the

functioning of its national system, and substitute regional service will

have to make do.

5) Amtrak President and CEO Alex Kummant replied to Mr. Dyson's original

letter on January 28th. Here is Mr. Kummant's reply.

[begin quote]

Mr. Paul J. Dyson

President

Rail Passenger Association of California

1008 10th Street, Suite 217

Sacramento, California 95814

Dear Mr. Dyson,

Thank you for your letter of January 22 regarding your concerns with the

temporary cessation of Coast Starlight service. As you are aware, the

Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) mainline across the Cascade Range has been

closed because of a significant landslide at Coyote Mountain, which is

between Chemult and Eugene, Oregon.

The Coast Starlight is one of our premier services and ranks highly among

our long-distance services in terms of ridership and revenue. That said,

this time of year, late January and February, is in relative terms the

seasonal low point for ridership on this train. When the landslide at

Coyote Mountain occurred on January 19, it was difficult to obtain from

UPRR a reliable estimate of the extent of the damage and the duration of

track closure, for reasons outlined below. In fact, the duration of track

closure is still unclear at this time.

Initial reports from UPRR on January 19 indicated that an area about 0.8

miles in length was covered with 4-10 feet of debris, but that the line

might reopen within two or three days. We immediately instituted a bus

bridge between Klamath Falls and Portland to accommodate passengers who

already were en route. On January 19, this resulted in a 9 hour delay for

northbound passengers and a nearly 6 hour delay for southbound

passengers, though delays caused by the bus bridge were reduced over

following days.

Late in the day on January 20, UPRR provided Amtrak with an updated track

repair estimate of two or three weeks. The damage report was more

significant than earlier reported, covering parts of a segment 14 miles

in length, with areas of track buried in 15 feet of debris, and with

continued movement of soil in the area. The location is in a very remote,

steeply sloped area with minimal road access. On January 21, the bus

bridge resulted in a 1 hour delay for northbound passengers and a 19

minute delay for southbound passengers. We decided to continue the bus

bridge for three more days (January 22, 23, and 24), but then annul the

Coast Starlight in its entirely, including the bus bridge, through

February 1.

This decision was made after careful consideration of projected passenger

counts and revenues, compared to bus bridge costs and added

employee-related expenses, particularly relocation of Mechanical forces

to Klamath Falls to turn and service the train set that would terminate

there if the service continued to operate during this extended track

outage. The bus bridge costs are not insignificant, approximately

$12,000-$15,000 a day. We also considered that, as stated above, usage of

the Coast Starlight in late January is less than at other times of the

year, and the challenges presented by running stub trains and bus

bridges, especially in winter.

We carefully evaluated all of these factors and looked at every

opportunity available to us, including talking to the BNSF Railway, which

has a potential detour route via Wishram, Washington, and Bend, Oregon.

This detour proved not to be practical due to its 49-mph top speeds and

the many UPRR freight trains already diverted to it because of the track

outage.

We also considered whether to operate separate stub trains on the

northern and southern extremes of the route. Again, given the season and

other factors, we found that running the stub trains made no sense for

the period through February 1. In the north, parallel Cascades service

has ample space this time of year to carry additional passengers. Also,

the northbound Coast Starlight carries no local passengers north of

Eugene.

In the south, we found that ridership on the Coast Starlight that is

local to the Los Angeles-Sacramento segment is light during this season

and could be diverted temporarily to the state's network of corridor

trains and Thruway buses fo the period through February 1. For example,

there is Pacific Surfliner service from Los Angeles to San Luis Obispo

and Capitol Corridor service from San Jose to Sacramento, connected by

Thruway bus service. Also, passengers to and from Los Angeles can use

connecting Thruway bus and San Joaquin train service via Bakersfield.

During this current two-week period, we will have the chance to talk with

Caltrans about other bussing options to bride parts of this route. You

raised a number of arguments in favor of marketing a stub train along the

coast route within California. However, keeping in mind that our decision

was made on January 21 with a hope of restoring service early in

February, a process of prudent planning and analysis of the sort of

service that you have suggested would likely have taken as long as the

service outage lasted.

That said, UPRR has not yet given us a firm indication of when the line

in Oregon will reopen. February is a relatively weaker period for the

Coast Starlight, but ridership historically increases heading into March

and April. You can be assured that we want to reinstitute the service as

quickly as possible. Given the information available to us, we believe

that the decision we made was the correct one. We expect within the next

two weeks, the service options available to us will become clearer, and

that a more definite path to full recovery will be found. We will keep

the public informed as we make any such determinations.

Sincerely,

Alex Kummant

President and Chief Executive Office

Amtrak

6) As of 2 P.M. PST, Thursday, January 31st, this was Amtrak's service

disruption notice on its web site.

[begin quote]

Service Alert: Coast Starlight Service Disruption Continues - Train

Service Suspended Due to Massive Mudslides Across Railroad Tracks North

of Chemult, Oregon

January 31, 2008

2:00 pm PST

Due to massive mudslides over railroad tracks north of Chemult, Oregon on

January 19, the Amtrak Coast Starlight service continues through February

15, with no alternate transportation provided. The Union Pacific Railroad

has suspended all railroad traffic through the area.

As a result, the following operation plan is in effect:

The northbound Coast Starlight (Train 14) is canceled from Los Angeles to

Seattle through February 14*.

The southbound Coast Starlight (Train 11) is canceled from Seattle to Los

Angeles through February 15*.

*These dates may be extended.

Other Amtrak trains and Thruway Motorcoaches operate between Southern

California and Northern California and in the Pacific Northwest.

For travel throughout California, passengers may take the San Joaquins

service between Los Angeles and Sacramento/Oakland. Passengers may also

take the Pacific Surfliner trains between Los Angeles and San Luis Obispo

and the Capitol Corridor train service from San Jose to Sacramento/Auburn

and points in between.

For travel throughout the Pacific Northwest, passengers may take the

Amtrak Cascades service from Eugene, Ore. to Vancouver, BC.

Passengers can contact Amtrak for alternate schedule and travel

information.

Amtrak regrets any inconvenience. This information is correct as of the

above time and date. Information is subject to change as conditions

warrant. Passengers are encouraged to call 800-USA-RAIL or visit

Amtrak.com for schedule information and train status updates.

[End quote]

7) Mr. Dyson, never one to stray from a spirited discussion, immediately

dashed off another letter to Mr. Kummant. Here is Mr. Dyson's reply to

Mr. Kummant.

[begin quote]

January 29, 2008

Mr. Alex Kummant

President and CEO

National Railroad Passenger Corporation

60 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E.

Washington, DC 20002

Via fax

COAST STARLIGHT SUSPENSION

Dear Mr. Kummant:

Thank you for your letter of yesterday replying to my concerns about the

Coast Starlight. While your response is an excellent tour d'horizon of

the circumstances leading to your decision, it contains no real response

to the key issues. What is more important to Amtrak, preserving your

franchise, providing transportation in accordance with or substituting

for your advertised schedules, and preserving thirty years of

painstakingly accumulated political goodwill, OR saving a few thousands

of dollars each day in operating expenses? It is facile to state that

ridership is light, with the inference that therefore providing service

is not very important. One could well argue that such light loads should

be rectified by better marketing and pricing, but in any event that is

beside the point. The point is you have an obligation to provide service,

or at least as much service as you possibly can, and I have no doubt that

your line managers are capable of rising to the occasion.

On the political front your people will no doubt have told you that ALL

expenditure, including the intercity rail budget, is under severe threat

here in California. Whether we agree or not your announced policy is to

develop "corridors" in partnership with the states. California is the

poster child for this process having spent over $1 billion of California

tax dollars on its rail programs. Over the next few weeks lawmakers will

be fighting over the budget, the end result of which may well be cuts in

the state rail corridor services. How can you have been so ill-advised as

to annul the state's premier north-south long distance train at just the

time when rail advocates and pro-rail policy makers are trying to sell

the state rail program as having relevance to our transportation needs?

If you lose California as a corridor partner your entire policy is in

shambles.

Regarding diverting passengers to the state rail and bus network, the

irony is that for 36 hours I-5 was closed north of Los Angeles, meaning

that the Bakersfield/San Joaquin service was not an option. In any event,

rail passengers regard buses as a poor substitute for a one-seat train

ride. I cannot accept that the "prudent planning and analysis" required

for a one train a day service should take more than day or two, nor do I

accept that "the challenges presented by running stub trains and bus

bridges, especially in winter," are so much greater than normal

operations. You sell your people short by saying so. Indeed you give the

lie to that statement by reporting that the bus bridge bedded in quite

well on day two. Probably the bus ride between Eugene and Klamath Falls

is measurably quicker than the train.

Given what is happening with the Sunset, the Crescent and now the Coast

Starlight, RailPAC will inevitably come to the conclusion that there is

once again a concerted attempt to shut down the long distance network by

driving away passengers with these extended annulments. You are either in

business to run these trains and provide the advertised service, or not.

The public deserves an honest answer.

Yours faithfully,

Paul J. Dyson

President

RailPAC

[End quote]

As of press time for this edition of TWA, no response from Mr. Kummant to

Mr. Dyson has been forthcoming. As developments warrant, we will keep you

informed.

8) One important note: If you purchase your Amtrak tickets through a

travel agency (If you can find a travel agency which still sells Amtrak

tickets), be sure to inquire about purchasing an independent trip

insurance package, which covers interruptions of trips and other events

which may affect travel. Amtrak is no longer a sure bet for reliable

travel.

If you are reading someone else's copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can

receive your own free copy each week by sending your e-mail address to

[email protected]

You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state

where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet

connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from

[email protected]; we are unable to go through any individual approvals

processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly

confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than the

distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.

All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe, should be

addressed to

[email protected]

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

[email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

_______________________________________________

TWA mailing list

[email protected]

http://lists.unitedrail.org/mailman/listinfo/twa

 

[wayman]

So Alex as much as admits that Amtrak's decision to cancel service was strictly financial and nothing more. The only problem is that his numbers don't justify the decsion as he's outlined it.
...

And in the meantime Amtrak is potentially stranding as many as 10,000 to 15,000 customers, maybe more depending on the length of the outage.

The money quote--quite literally--is just this sentence: "In the end, the cost of running stub trains and a bus bridge far outweighed the revenue benefits of running the train during these firs two weeks of the track outage." The calculation weighed these two things and nothing else... because Amtrak is not, evidently, interested in helping passengers reach their destinations. Going on to justify this, he talks about how the northern part of the route is just like the Cascades, and the southern part of the route really is just an extension of the California Service. It's as if he doesn't even realize these two halves of the route are connected and carry some passengers from one end to the other. I'd go so far as to guess that it carries most of its passengers from one end to the other (at least between points "north of the mudslide" and "south of the mudslide"), because passengers staying within one side presumably do already opt for more local services when they're available.

Up until the mudslide, my impression was that Alex was a good (passenger- and railroad-friendly, less "bottom-line justifies all cutbacks") president. Was that a completely wrong impression--is he now showing his true colors? The more I read, the less I can find any fault with UPRR for Amtrak's moves, and the more I see clear evidence that Amtrak (upper management) doesn't care about its passengers, if it even realizes they exist as anything more than numbers in a spreadsheet.

 

[yarrow]

So Alex as much as admits that Amtrak's decision to cancel service was strictly financial and nothing more. The only problem is that his numbers don't justify the decsion as he's outlined it.
...

And in the meantime Amtrak is potentially stranding as many as 10,000 to 15,000 customers, maybe more depending on the length of the outage.

The money quote--quite literally--is just this sentence: "In the end, the cost of running stub trains and a bus bridge far outweighed the revenue benefits of running the train during these firs two weeks of the track outage." The calculation weighed these two things and nothing else... because Amtrak is not, evidently, interested in helping passengers reach their destinations. Going on to justify this, he talks about how the northern part of the route is just like the Cascades, and the southern part of the route really is just an extension of the California Service. It's as if he doesn't even realize these two halves of the route are connected and carry some passengers from one end to the other. I'd go so far as to guess that it carries most of its passengers from one end to the other (at least between points "north of the mudslide" and "south of the mudslide"), because passengers staying within one side presumably do already opt for more local services when they're available.

Up until the mudslide, my impression was that Alex was a good (passenger- and railroad-friendly, less "bottom-line justifies all cutbacks") president. Was that a completely wrong impression--is he now showing his true colors? The more I read, the less I can find any fault with UPRR for Amtrak's moves, and the more I see clear evidence that Amtrak (upper management) doesn't care about its passengers, if it even realizes they exist as anything more than numbers in a spreadsheet.

i know nothing other than what i learn on this forum, what i read elsewhere and my own experiences. it will interest me to see what, if any, reply i get from mr kummant to my letter about the cs situation. it seems that since we encouraged our congresspeople to support amtrak funding and since it was approved that mr kummant has become less friendly to amtrak as a passenger railroad and to those of us who pay his salary

 

[MrFSS]

This Week at Amtrak; February 4, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 5

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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) Half of a train is better than no train. Amtrak has reversed its

decision on annulment of the Coast Starlight due to the mudslide blocking

the Union Pacific mainline tracks near Chemult, Oregon.

Here is Amtrak's press release.

[begin quote]

News Release

National Railroad Passenger Corporation

60 Massachusetts Avenue NE

Washington, DC 20002

www.amtrak.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

ATK-08-008

Contact: Media Relations (510) 238-4360

February 1, 2008 Amtrak Restoring Partial Coast Starlight Service

Service Available Between Los Angeles and Sacramento

OAKLAND - Amtrak is restoring service on a portion of the route of the

Coast Starlight, beginning Wednesday, February 6. Following discussions

with the Union Pacific Railroad, service on the route was suspended

between Los Angeles and Seattle on January 19, due to massive mudslides

over the railroad north of Chemult, Ore. All railroad traffic through

that area has been suspended and is not expected to resume for many

weeks.

The first northbound departure of this version of the Coast Starlight,

Train 14, will leave Los Angeles on February 6 at 10:15 a.m., making all

regularly-scheduled stops and arriving in Sacramento later that night at

11:59 p.m. The first day of service in both directions will be Thursday,

February 7, when the southbound Coast Starlight, Train 11, will depart

Sacramento at 6:35 a.m., making all regularly-scheduled stops and

arriving in Los Angeles at 9:00 p.m.

Cascades trains between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver, B.C., via Portland

and Seattle, are operating.

During this partial service restoration, only Coach class will be

offered. No sleeping car accommodations will be available. Food and

beverage service will be available in a lounge car. The more formal

dining service usually offered on the regular Coast Starlight will be

suspended until the resumption of full route between Los Angeles and

Seattle. The Coast Starlight will continue to operate as an all-reserved

train and passengers will be able to check bags at stations that normally

offer that service.

About Amtrak

Amtrak provides intercity passenger rail service to more than 500

destinations in 46 states on a 21,000-mile route system. For schedules,

fares and information, passengers may call 800-USA-RAIL or visit

Amtrak.com.

[End quote]

2) Now, before everyone gets all warm and fuzzy about this partial

service restoration, let's ask some adult questions.

- The announcement was made on Friday, February 1st, and the service will

not resume until Wednesday, February 6th, from Los Angeles, the

maintenance and crew base for the train. What's taking so long? The

Starlight is a daily train; it takes four days to resume service over a

regularly scheduled route, with regularly scheduled crews, using

regularly scheduled equipment?

- The best money-making features of the Starlight route, the sleeping

cars are not being offered, even for daylight service. The scenery along

that route is pretty spectacular any time of the year, and Amtrak seems

to be ignoring the desires of many passengers who may wish to travel in

more comfort than is offered with only coach service. Couldn't Amtrak run

at least one sleeping car for those willing to pay the extra fare?

- Why is the dining car being eliminated for this shorter run? Don't

people on a nearly 14 hour run still get hungry? Passengers accustomed to

riding this train between Los Angeles and Sacramento and points in

between will want to know why they are being denied basic food service

which has been replaced with lounge food. Amtrak dining cars are already

short staffed with quick preparation food; how much money is Amtrak

generating in false savings by not offering dining car service?

7) Paul Dyson, president of RailPAC in California deserves high praise

for his correspondence with Amtrak President and CEO Alex Kummant, and

his refusal to "say die" on the ability of Amtrak to provide some type of

Starlight service to keep the route open during the calamity of the

Oregon mudslide and UP's ongoing effort to reopen its rail line.

In the past two issues of TWA we have published the correspondence

between Mr. Dyson and Mr. Kummant, and where we last left the situation,

Mr. Kummant had not replied to Mr. Dyson's second letter. The reply came

Friday in the form of the press release from Amtrak printed above. For

review, here is Mr. Dyson's second letter to Mr. Kummant as a response to

Mr. Kummant's letter listing all of the reasons leading up to the

decision to annul Starlight service over the entire 1,377 mile route of

the Starlight.

[begin quote]

January 29, 2008

Mr. Alex Kummant

President and CEO

National Railroad Passenger Corporation

60 Massachusetts Avenue, N.E.

Washington, DC 20002

Via fax

COAST STARLIGHT SUSPENSION

Dear Mr. Kummant:

Thank you for your letter of yesterday replying to my concerns about the

Coast Starlight. While your response is an excellent tour d'horizon of

the circumstances leading to your decision, it contains no real response

to the key issues. What is more important to Amtrak, preserving your

franchise, providing transportation in accordance with or substituting

for your advertised schedules, and preserving thirty years of

painstakingly accumulated political goodwill, OR saving a few thousands

of dollars each day in operating expenses? It is facile to state that

ridership is light, with the inference that therefore providing service

is not very important. One could well argue that such light loads should

be rectified by better marketing and pricing, but in any event that is

beside the point. The point is you have an obligation to provide service,

or at least as much service as you possibly can, and I have no doubt that

your line managers are capable of rising to the occasion.

On the political front your people will no doubt have told you that ALL

expenditure, including the intercity rail budget, is under severe threat

here in California. Whether we agree or not your announced policy is to

develop "corridors" in partnership with the states. California is the

poster child for this process having spent over $1 billion of California

tax dollars on its rail programs. Over the next few weeks lawmakers will

be fighting over the budget, the end result of which may well be cuts in

the state rail corridor services. How can you have been so ill-advised as

to annul the state's premier north-south long distance train at just the

time when rail advocates and pro-rail policy makers are trying to sell

the state rail program as having relevance to our transportation needs?

If you lose California as a corridor partner your entire policy is in

shambles.

Regarding diverting passengers to the state rail and bus network, the

irony is that for 36 hours I-5 was closed north of Los Angeles, meaning

that the Bakersfield/San Joaquin service was not an option. In any event,

rail passengers regard buses as a poor substitute for a one-seat train

ride. I cannot accept that the "prudent planning and analysis" required

for a one train a day service should take more than day or two, nor do I

accept that "the challenges presented by running stub trains and bus

bridges, especially in winter," are so much greater than normal

operations. You sell your people short by saying so. Indeed you give the

lie to that statement by reporting that the bus bridge bedded in quite

well on day two. Probably the bus ride between Eugene and Klamath Falls

is measurably quicker than the train.

Given what is happening with the Sunset, the Crescent and now the Coast

Starlight, RailPAC will inevitably come to the conclusion that there is

once again a concerted attempt to shut down the long distance network by

driving away passengers with these extended annulments. You are either in

business to run these trains and provide the advertised service, or not.

The public deserves an honest answer.

Yours faithfully,

Paul J. Dyson

President

[End quote]

If you are reading someone else's copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can

receive your own free copy each week by sending your e-mail address to

[email protected]

You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state

where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet

connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from

[email protected]; we are unable to go through any individual approvals

processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly

confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than the

distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.

All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe, should be

addressed to

[email protected]

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

[email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

_______________________________________________

TWA mailing list

[email protected]

http://lists.unitedrail.org/mailman/listinfo/twa

 

[meatpuff]

The money quote--quite literally--is just this sentence: "In the end, the cost of running stub trains and a bus bridge far outweighed the revenue benefits of running the train during these firs two weeks of the track outage." The calculation weighed these two things and nothing else... because Amtrak is not, evidently, interested in helping passengers reach their destinations. Going on to justify this, he talks about how the northern part of the route is just like the Cascades, and the southern part of the route really is just an extension of the California Service. It's as if he doesn't even realize these two halves of the route are connected and carry some passengers from one end to the other. I'd go so far as to guess that it carries most of its passengers from one end to the other (at least between points "north of the mudslide" and "south of the mudslide"), because passengers staying within one side presumably do already opt for more local services when they're available.
Up until the mudslide, my impression was that Alex was a good (passenger- and railroad-friendly, less "bottom-line justifies all cutbacks") president. Was that a completely wrong impression--is he now showing his true colors? The more I read, the less I can find any fault with UPRR for Amtrak's moves, and the more I see clear evidence that Amtrak (upper management) doesn't care about its passengers, if it even realizes they exist as anything more than numbers in a spreadsheet.

This gets to the heart of Amtrak's unclear mandate: is their job to provide transportation where it is most needed, or where it makes the most economic sense to do so?

The choice is more clear for a bus company, that must strive for profits over any route. If over the long-term they can't make money going Eugene to San Francisco, they will stop running the bus. But what do you do when you're Amtrak, and you already lose money running the train, and you have to choose whether to suspend service or run it and lose more money than usual? I don't know that there's a real blueprint for how to make a decision like that.

Part of me (probably most of me) agrees that suspending the Starlight is short-sighted on the part of Amtrak, and shows their clumsiness as far as customer focus, which handicaps them on the revenue end that could help their cause. But another part of me has sympathy, knowing that Amtrak must go before Congress every year and explain that the money-losing on-board dining they offer drives revenues overall, and still some Congressmen demand it be canned.

I find the stub trains and bus bridge kind of clumsy, when other options are available, like intercity bus. Would many people book a trip from OR to CA knowing they'd be changing vehicles twice and riding a bus for 4.5 hours? Or would they choose another mode of travel? It sounds like the extra cost per passenger invloved in the bus bridge would be amplified because I can't imagine many people would pay the fare for the Coast Starlight for a trip like that. Would you?

One other thing this episode really demonstrates is how Amtrak is hampered by just not enough rail infrastructure. I read somewhere that a BNSF line can be used to get around the mudslide, but all the UP trains are being diverted there and so it's now hopelessly clogged and impractical for Amtrak. When all the lines nation-wide are running near capacity and something (anything) goes wrong, Amtrak racks up hours of delays. By comparison if a mudslide wiped out a mile of Interstate 5 in southern OR, a Greyhound going Eugene-San Francisco would probably be delayed 5 or 10 minutes taking an alternate route around the disaster.

In conclusion, I don't find their temporary (current, as of today) solution of the LAX-SFO only train that unreasonable. But if they were going to do it they should have gotten it going at least a week ago instead of letting service lapse for I think 17 days. And they will pay in customer opinion for not taking on the extra cost of keeping the entire route running with the bus bridge.

 

[MrFSS]

This Week at Amtrak; February 11, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 6

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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) (Yawn) It’s that time of year when all sorts of ill-informed people

run amuck over Amtrak’s free federal money request. (Gasp!) President

Bush, in his final budget request to Congress has requested $900 million

for Amtrak, as opposed to the $1.3 billion Amtrak received during the

current budget year from the national money trough. While various

organizations which support Amtrak for all of the wrong reasons and in

all of the wrong ways cry "the sky is falling and the Earth is rushing up

to meet it" the wrong headline is being used.

The real – and most important headline – is "White House recommends

enough annual subsidy to keep Amtrak’s national system running as is, but

may imperil Northeast Corridor upgrades."

2) There is an incorrect presumption, mostly made by the Northeast news

media, that all monies flowing to Amtrak must first be applied to the

financial black hole of the Northeast Corridor, and then, any leftovers

may be parceled to the several other of these united states which

constitute the rest of the country.

Does anyone have a good reason why this is so? Is it written anywhere the

aggregate population of the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware,

Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode

Island and Massachusetts have first dibs on federal money before Florida,

Texas, California, Ohio, Illinois, and all of the rest of the states

which host Amtrak’s national system?

The breakdown of the White House’s budget recommendation is $300 million

for train operations, $500 million for capital projects, and $100 million

for development of new state partnerships.

3) Let’s look at the numbers, straight from Amtrak. If you were a staffer

in the White House Office of Management and Budget, you would be looking

at Amtrak’s financial reports, which are made available to us in the

great unwashed public via Amtrak’s web site. Figures taken from the

September 2007 monthly report to Congress as available on the web site

(Total figures in the September report are cumulative for the fiscal

year, as September is the last month in Amtrak’s fiscal year) show this

information.

Financial Performance of Routes - Strategic Business Line format,

September 2007 YTD Unaudited

Northeast Corridor (Acela/Metroliner, Regional, NEC Special Trains, NEC

Bus Route)

Total Revenue – $885.2 million

Total Attributed Costs – $626.8 million (these in the real world are

expenses)

Contribution/(Loss), Excluding Depreciation and Interest – $258.3 million

(Amtrak doesn’t use the word "profit," but instead uses the word

"contribution.")

So, before depreciation and interest costs, Amtrak says the entire

Northeast Corridor made the company $258.3 million dollars.

State Supported and Other Short Distance Corridor Trains (All other

trains outside of the NEC which are not classified as Long Distance

trains, including Illinois and California corridor trains)

Total Revenue – $491.6 million

Total Attributed Costs – $619.2 million

Contribution/(Loss), Excluding Depreciation and Interest – ($127.6

million)

Before depreciation and interest costs, Amtrak says all of its Short

Distance trains cost the company $127.6 million more to operate than they

take in via revenue and state payments.

Long Distance Trains (All other trains)

Total Revenue – $416.5 million

Total Attributed Costs – $856.9 million

Contribution/(Loss), Excluding Depreciation and Interest – ($440.4

million)

Before depreciation and interest costs, Amtrak says all of its Long

Distance trains cost the company $440.4 million more to operate than they

take in via revenue

Company Totals

Total Revenue – $1,793.3 billion

Total Attributed Costs – $2,103.0 billion

Contribution/(Loss), Excluding Depreciation and Interest – ($309.7

million)

Which brings us to a difference of a mere $9.7 million between what the

White House is recommending for train operations and what Amtrak says it

spent in FY 2007 for train operations. What’s the problem, then? The tiny

sum of $9.7 million is negligible to be arguing over in the global

picture of Amtrak. Why all of the gnashing of teeth and predictions of

doom and the end of the company?

If Amtrak says it takes $309.7 million to run its trains for a year, why

isn’t the National Association of Railroad Passengers and anyone else

believing them? The White House allocated an additional $500 million for

capital improvements, most of which automatically goes to the NEC, so

that keeps any modernization programs on schedule (Amtrak executives have

made statements in the past it would be difficult for the company to

manage more than approximately $500 million in capital projects a year,

so, again, why would it need more?).

4) Last week, on February 8th, respected Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black

told a reporter from Media General News Service Amtrak lost $480 million

last year. One has to presume that is based on a full allocation of

interest and depreciation, plus Amtrak’s annual contribution to the

Railroad Retirement System, which funnels huge amounts of money annually

into the system as a conduit of system funding.

Even with Mr. Black’s statement, the additional $180 million beyond what

Amtrak says it lost in FY 2007 is a relatively small amount which is

likely to instantly be made up by Congressional budget writers.

Again, this is not the crisis those seeking to gain from membership

drives would like everyone to believe. And, again, this is the sort of

annual bad publicity Amtrak receives which tends to draw more people away

from Amtrak instead of to Amtrak because they fear Amtrak won’t survive

and their money will be wasted buying tickets in advance for vacation

travel. While NARP and its minion state organization may gain from this

annual silliness, Amtrak suffers at the expense of NARP’s membership

drives by promoting alleged Amtrak grievous woes.

5) Let’s look at a few realities. Here is what one Florida wag has to say

about Amtrak.

[begin quote]

Here's a truth I've learned along the way:

A. No matter how much money Amtrak gets, it doesn't improve.

B. No matter how much money Amtrak doesn't get, it doesn't go away!

[End quote]

That sage statement has been true all of Amtrak’s corporate life. Amtrak

always survives, and the NEC always receives the lion’s share of Amtrak

funding.

Regular readers of TWA know a $480 million shortfall in operating

expenses is not insurmountable, if Amtrak put to use all of its assets

and resources, including an improved national marketing program. Every

piece of rolling stock which sits in the weeds on some siding instead of

being used on the road is one more poor example of Amtrak squandering its

it resources and ignoring its future. Every marketing program which

ignores the national system where space is available on a daily basis for

sale is one more poor example of Amtrak ignoring its greatest potential

for success in favor of short corridors which cost more money to operate

and produce less revenue for the company than long distance trains.

And, lets look at the greatest reality of them all. The figures above

from Amtrak are wrong, and Amtrak’s cooks its books. As National Review

Online staff reporter David Freddoso wrote on November 1, 2007:

[begin quote]

Amtrak’s routes in the Northeast Corridor, many will argue, make money.

This claim is actually false, the result only of Amtrak’s shady

bookkeeping. The northeast routes have made $272 million this year, but

only if you completely exclude $414 million in depreciation losses, $88

million in debt service, and $211 million in nationwide losses, none of

which Amtrak allocates by route. If the company actually kept honest

books, we would likely see that Amtrak loses some money even in the

Northeast Corridor.

[End quote]

Mr. Freddoso’s quote partially explains the difference in Amtrak’s

figures used at the beginning of this column, and Mr. Black’s figure of

$480 million in losses for the year. Mr. Freddoso also doesn’t make

mention of the hundreds of millions of dollars Amtrak spends annually to

keep the NEC infrastructure in operating shape, which should be charged

against any and all trains operating over the infrastructure, but is not.

All of this is confusing. What are the real numbers? Nobody knows for

sure. What we do know is in the short run, Amtrak does need an annual

infusion of free federal money, which the company, as it has done in the

past few years since the departure of former President and CEO David

Gunn, is quietly and professionally asking Congress for in a separate

budget request.

Everyone seems for forget that no matter who is in the White House, a

White House suggested budget is rarely what comes out as an end product

from Congress, which is the ONLY governmental body which can ultimately

authorize expenditures from the federal treasury. It’s never mattered

what the White House has recommended, be it in the day of David Stockman

during the Reagan Administration, or today’s George Bush Administration,

Congress always makes the last call for Amtrak funding based on its own

findings, not the White House OMB recommendations. Everyone forgets the

OMB budget is just a recommendation, not a mandate.

6) Here’s a less than clairvoyant prediction, but an almost guaranteed

prediction: Amtrak, by the time the final budget is written and signed by

the White House, will have an annual free federal monies amount close to

the $1.3 billion it had for FY 2007. No trains will go away, but no major

changes will be made in the way Amtrak conducts business. The NEC will

continue to reap the lion’s share of money, while the rest of the country

languishes with pent up demand for passenger rail service. NARP and

related organizations will pat themselves on the back for allegedly a job

well done preserving Amtrak funding for another year, and the membership

rolls and incomes of these organizations will have increased slightly as

they "fight" to preserve passenger rail from evil forces which don’t

exist.

7) Going back to National Review’s David Freddoso, in the same article as

mentioned above from National Review Online (Money Train – Another

subsidy, no real reforms for Amtrak), another quote must be featured.

[begin quote]

Another false claim is that Amtrak does not get its "fair share" of

transportation subsidies. Airline passengers pay taxes and fees at every

turn and receive a subsidy less than one-thirtieth of Amtrak’s

per-passenger mile. Motorists receive no subsidy at all, once they have

paid tolls and gasoline taxes.

The fact that Amtrak hemorrhages money is not the only things that makes

it so awful. There’s also the maddening inefficiency of a system that has

no competition and practically no accountability.

[End quote]

If you are reading someone else’s copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can

receive your own free copy each week by sending your e-mail address to

[email protected]

You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state

where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet

connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from

[email protected]; we are unable to go through any individual approvals

processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly

confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than the

distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.

All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe, should be

addressed to

[email protected]

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

[email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

_______________________________________________

TWA mailing list

[email protected]

http://lists.unitedrail.org/mailman/listinfo/twa

 

[MrFSS]

This Week at Amtrak; February 20, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 7

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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.

COAST STARLIGHT LATE UPDATE: The Los Angeles Times reported at 10 P.M.

EST February 19, 2008 Amtrak officials said they will provide coach

service between Sacramento and Portland, Oregon, starting February 29th.

>From Portland, riders can connect with the Cascades service to Seattle

and Vancouver, British Columbia. Only coach-class service is available,

with no dining service provided.

The story does not make clear if this coach service is train service or

bus service, and at press time, Amtrak has not posted a press release on

its web site. However, some sources have told TWA Amtrak employees have

made mention of a motorcoach connection in the works between Sacramento

and Portland, a lengthy distance of 637 route miles by rail which takes

the Coast Starlight 16 hours to traverse. Google Maps shows the distance

of the trip via Interstate 5 to be 579 miles, taking travel time of 9

hours, considerably shorter and sooner than Amtrak's rail route. Union

Pacific Railroad, owner of the tracks which hosts the Coast Starlight,

now says the mudslide over its tracks in Oregon which originally caused

the annulment of the Coast Starlight earlier this year, will not be

cleared until sometime in April, much later than originally thought. The

next TWA will provide further details.

1) Richmond, our beloved capital, is under siege for the second time in a

scant 143 years by another horde of ill-bred, marauding, bloodthirsty,

Yankees. This time, the Northern riff raff are not using cannons, but

instead are trying to steal the key to the Commonwealth of Virginia's

treasury.

The Commonwealth made inquiries to Amtrak about creating a second

frequency on the Norfolk Southern Crescent route between Washington and

Lynchburg. An inquiry has also been made about adding a second frequency

between Washington and Newport News (Hampton Roads/Norfolk). Amtrak, just

like the Yankees during the Late War, is trying to ransack Richmond, this

time in the form of too high costs to run trains on a state contract.

Amtrak told the Commonwealth it could add one round trip passenger train

daily along the Norfolk Southern route of the Crescent, running from

Washington to Lynchburg via Alexandria, Manassas, Culpepper, and

Charlottesville, with one-way route mileage of 173 miles, adding up to

346 route miles round trip.

Today's Crescent departs northbound from Lynchburg at 6:07 A.M. and

arrives in Washington at 10:10 A.M., and the southbound from Washington

departs Washington at 6:30 P.M. and arrives in Lynchburg at 10:06 P.M.

Virginia Railway Express, the Northern Virginia regional commuter

service, already serves part of this route from Manassas to Washington. A

one-ride trip from Manassas to Washington (or reverse) is $7.20. That

same ride on the Crescent, on the same day, costs $22.00. It's safe to

say unless someone specifically wants to ride the Crescent with its

broader array of amenities, then most riders are going to choose VRE.

To adequately compute ridership and revenue passenger miles for this

train, an average length of trip must be established. Currently, the

Crescent has an average length of trip of 520.1 miles, over a route

length of 1,377 miles, so that measurement can't be used. Considering

known traffic patterns, and the availability of VRE service between

Washington Union Station and Manassas and all points in between, the

likeliest length of trip of the Virginia portion of the train is going to

be 125 miles, just a bit more than the 112 mile distance between

Charlottesville and Washington. Since the train will provide service all

the way from Lynchburg to New York City, the average length of trip for

passengers over the entire route will be much longer. We are calculating

income and expenses here for the Commonwealth of Virginia based on the

North Carolina model, where the state/commonwealth only pays for the

portion of the train which operates in the state.

Charlottesville currently enjoys daily service on the Crescent at

marketable hours, plus tri-weekly service on the Cardinal, which also

serves a parallel route between Charlottesville and Washington (all the

same station stops, even though part of the route between Charlottesville

and Orange, Virginia is different). In addition, two popular daily Amtrak

Thruway Motorcoaches serve Charlottesville.

Boardings and alightings are strong for Lynchburg, Charlottesville,

Culpepper, Manassas, and Alexandria. Washington Union Station alone

serves 3.7 million passengers a year for all services combined.

Here are the individual station numbers, of all passengers boarding and

detraining.

Alexandria - 97,734 (Does not include VRE, but does include trains on CSX

line to the south)

Manassas - 8,178 (Does not include VRE)

Culpepper - 4,151

Charlottesville - 48,190

Lynchburg - 18,744

There are some assumptions which are generally true when additional train

frequencies are added. While the numbers do not automatically double,

it's reasonable to take a high percentage of the original numbers for the

second train because the increase in frequencies opens a wider matrix for

potential passenger travel. While someone may not want to travel from

Charlottesville to Washington on the Crescent and return that same day on

the Crescent, they may want to travel to Washington on a new frequency,

and return on the Crescent. Any number of combinations become possible.

We also cannot use raw numbers from the Crescent stations because many of

the travelers are not traveling exclusively between those stations and

Washington, but are traveling anywhere to and from other stations on the

Crescent's 1,377 mile route.

It is unlikely the Crescent will have any revenue passenger miles losses

to the new train, but, rather, will have an increase of revenue passenger

miles. Because many of the "shorts" (riders traveling a short distance

between Charlottesville and Washington, as an example, traveling only 112

miles of the 1,377 mile route) most likely will migrate to the new train,

this will open up space on the Crescent for travelers traveling a long

trip length - and, therefore generating higher revenue passenger miles -

for new riders on the Crescent from other stations outside of the new

train's route.

The new train, since it is an added frequency, will also gain ridership

based on the travel choices of the Crescent, Cardinal, and the new train.

Every time more choices are added, an entire new dimension of riders is

added, too, because travel times become more flexible.

We do know Amtrak plans to take an existing New York to Washington

Northeast Corridor regional train and extend it to Lynchburg. This will

help the train in many ways, including a larger city pair matrix, plus by

putting NEC equipment to better use by making longer runs.

Here's a summary of what we know about Amtrak and the Commonwealth and a

new train between Washington and Lynchburg.

- The train will begin in New York City and turn in Lynchburg for the

return trip. Each one way trip will be about eight hours. This will

require no extra passenger equipment, but will require on extra diesel

locomotive for the run between Washington and Lynchburg. No extra onboard

services personnel will be required, but an additional set of train and

engine crew (engineers and conductors) will be required between

Washington and Lynchburg.

- All of the stations on the Crescent route south of Washington are

already open during daylight hours, seven days a week, so no additional

station personnel will be required.

- Some type of wye or turn facility will have to be in place in

Lynchburg, unless the train becomes a push-pull operation.

- Other than the possible cost of a turn facility in Lynchburg, and the

addition of a small crew base in Lynchburg, no other infrastructure

capital investment should be required. No additional signaling or sidings

will be necessary along the Norfolk Southern route.

Amtrak says it needs $1.9 million dollars to subsidize this new train

annually.

- Train mile costs to Norfolk Southern will likely be $1,010,320 for the

year.

- Eight additional train and engine crew members will likely cost

$515,000 for the year (actual operations may require fewer crew members).

- Miscellaneous operating costs (cost of the locomotive, fuel,

maintenance on rolling stock, etc.) will likely cost $1,768,000 for the

year.

Total - $3,293,320 for the year, not including any corporate overhead or

reservations expenses, or splitting the cost of stations between the

Crescent, Cardinal, and the new train.

Assumed ridership of 85,000 passengers a year, traveling an average

distance of 125 miles per passenger (using the North Carolina formula

where Virginia would only pay for the Virginia portion of the train, not

the NEC portion, plus all passengers using the train in Virginia would

accrue the largest portion of fares to the cost of the train in Virginia)

at 17.73 cents per passenger mile equals $1,883,812 in revenue for the

Virginia portion of the train only. That leaves a need for subsidy of

$1,409,508, not $1,900,000 as Amtrak suggests, a difference of a half a

million dollars a year.

Keep in mind, too, north of Washington - as does the Carolinean - this

new train becomes just another NEC regional train, with all overhead

already accounted for in the cost of NEC operations, plus revenues of

41.20 cents per passenger mile for those passengers traveling between

Washington and New York City.

We do know in the past, with current contracts like Amtrak's with the

State of North Carolina, Amtrak charges North Carolina approximately

$100,000 a year for one station agent to serve a station part-time along

the route of the Carolinian. Who knows what Amtrak has padded into the

Commonwealth of Virginia's contract?

2) The southward extension of the NEC into Virginia has long been on the

agenda of United Rail Passenger Alliance. On the CSX route to Richmond

and Hampton Roads, this has already occurred, mostly made possible by the

expansion of the old RF&P line between Richmond and Washington to handle

more capacity. That capacity continues to expand, and such lucrative

tourism markets as Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown are on this route

south of Richmond on the Hampton Roads branch.

An expansion of service down the Norfolk Southern line to Lynchburg is

long overdue. There has been unmet demand in Charlottesville for

additional train service for decades. A new frequency on this route is an

almost guaranteed success from a popularity standpoint, and stands a

chance of financial success with some further tweaking, such as bringing

the State of North Carolina into the deal, and extending this train all

the way south to Charlotte, providing a second North

Carolina-Washington-New York frequency over a different route. An

extension of Lynchburg to Charlotte is only another four and a half

hours, making this train a convenient 12 to 14 hour run, depending on

station dwell times. This fits nicely into equipment and maintenance turn

cycles, as well as train and engine crew turns. The larger mathematical

matrix which would be created by making this a longer run, coupled with

the dynamic growth along with the more western route in North Carolina

could easily provide a break-even or profitable train if all expenses and

revenues were correctly and honestly applied to the train instead of

using Amtrak's current accounting system.

3) Here's a challenge for TWA readers. In the midst of an exciting

presidential election year, incredibly many rail fans are planning to

make their choice for voting for president just based on how the final

nominees of both major political parties feel about Amtrak.

So, here's your challenge. Of the four remaining political candidates, do

some objective research on your favorite political candidate. Write a

brief position paper (500 words or less, preferably much less) on why

your favorite candidate will be the best steward of Amtrak. You must use

the Queen's English, and your paper must include rational thought, not

knee-jerk reaction. Anything you say for one candidate or against another

candidate must be able to be verified through studious research.

The best submissions will be published in TWA; there may be more than one

selection for each candidate if the quality of writing and quality of

argument merits. Your name and city and state where you reside will be

published, too, along with you e-mail address so others may congratulate

or castigate you for your opinions. Submissions will only be accepted by

e-mail. You may write in either Microsoft Word or WordPerfect, sending

those files as an e-mail attachment, or using your e-mail program.

Please try to have all submissions to [email protected] sent

prior to March 4, 2008. We look forward to selecting the most rational

submissions for publication.

3) Here's a closing thought, thinking primarily about the Florida service

long distance trains, but this really applies to every long distance

train in Amtrak's national system.

In March of 1999, just eight years ago, URPA published a white paper,

Suggested Rationalization of Amtrak Florida Service (This paper is

available on the URPA web site, www.unitedrail.org).

Here are some important ridership numbers from that paper. Unfortunately,

at that time, revenue passenger mile numbers were not available from

Amtrak as they are today.

At the end of 1998, the same two daily passenger trains which come into

Florida today, the Silver Meteor and Silver Star, both carried 18 car

consists, including a crew dormitory, three sleepers, a diner, buffet

diner, full lounge, nine coaches, and two baggage cars. Auto Train, the

combined passenger and auto carrying train, carried a crew dormitory,

five sleepers, two diners, one buffet diner, two lounges, and seven

coaches, totaling 18 cars, plus the car carriers. The Palmetto and Sunset

Limited also served Florida at that time.

Today, the Meteor and Star are the only two trains serving Florida, with

one train carrying two sleepers and one train carrying three. Since no

crew cars are on these trains as were on the 1990s consists, revenue

sleeping car space is assigned to train crew members, blocking revenue

income. Four, sometimes three coaches are used, along with one dining car

and one lounge car. The Auto Train has been converted to bi-level

Superliners, with slightly higher capacity than when it was a single

level train.

While tourism in Florida is down, Florida remains one of the healthiest

tourism destinations in the nation. New hotels are still being built, and

attendance at major attractions such as Walt Disney World remains strong.

More cruise ships are sailing from Florida ports, and airline service

into Florida has remained overall healthy.

Now, look at the numbers for Amtrak, based on total boardings and

alightings at Florida stations.

1993 - 1,262,059

1994 - 1,167,838

1995 - 1,125,571

1996 - 1,002,009

1997 - 928,252

1998 - 976,301

2006 - 764,363

2007 - 840,095

This begs the question, why has Amtrak artificially constrained capacity

in and out of Florida? While there has been an admirable bump from 2006

to 2007, why isn't Amtrak adding equipment and/or extending the Palmetto

back to Florida from its truncated southern terminus in Savannah (Done

entirely for the convenience of Amtrak's operating department for easy

crew turns.)? Most glaringly, why hasn't Amtrak brought the Sunset

Limited back to Florida, or at least replaced it with similar service?

The difference in numbers between 1993 and 2007 is almost 422,000 annual

riders, all generating high revenue passenger miles and long average

lengths of trips because most trips begin and end outside of Florida.

Why is Amtrak trying to fail in Florida instead of winning in Florida?

Florida's tourism numbers are good. The overall health of the state

economy is good (lots of guaranteed retiree money here keeps things

humming along). Why isn't Amtrak licking its corporate lips and thirsting

for more Florida passengers? Does Amtrak care?

If you are reading someone else's copy of This Week at Amtrak, you can

receive your own free copy each week by sending your e-mail address to

[email protected]

You MUST include your name, preferred e-mail address, and city and state

where you live. If you have filters or firewalls placed on your Internet

connection, set your e-mail to receive incoming mail from

[email protected]; we are unable to go through any individual approvals

processes for individuals. This mailing list is kept strictly

confidential and is not shared or used for any purposes other than the

distribution of This Week at Amtrak or related URPA materials.

All other correspondence, including requests to unsubscribe, should be

addressed to

[email protected]

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

[email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

_______________________________________________

TWA mailing list

[email protected]

http://lists.unitedrail.org/mailman/listinfo/twa

 

[MrFSS]

This Week at Amtrak; February 28, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 8

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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) This came floating over the This Week at Amtrak transom from an Amtrak

employee, and it's too important to ignore. This message clearly

demonstrates how very dedicated so many Amtrak workers are to their jobs

and good passenger service, but are unable to perform because their own

company - which demands much from them - will not provide them with the

right tools and environment to do their jobs.

[begin quote]

I was asked to give my thoughts and ideas on the new Cross Country Café

[Operating on the City of New Orleans between New Orleans and Chicago,

train nos. 58 and 59]. So keep in mind these are my personal views on

this, but I'm sure if you talked with some of the other employees, you

will find most have the same concerns as I do. While I think the idea and

menu changes are very good, I believe the actual planning and execution

for the new diner/lounge car was not done properly and still is not to

this day even after being redesigned. I will talk about this more later.

So here are some of my concerns and a few ideas that will hopefully be

considered and looked into are at the very least talked about.

First, the positives of the new Cross Country Cafe.

- Nice menu selection. I feel we have a very good selection of food items

now, with some changes needed.

- Good food item pricing. With the lower pricing more customers are

eating from the coach cars, and that's good. After all, our goal is to

sell more.

- Nice looking new diner/lounge car. The new cars are nice looking, but

they are not practical for what they are design to do. This will be

explained in the negatives.

Now, the negatives of the new Cross Country Cafe.

- New diner/lounge car not big enough. With this diner/lounge car, we do

not have enough room for the customers to come in and enjoy their dinner

or appetizers and snacks, and no room for overflow passengers. Case in

point - we've had customers come in from the coach car and order over $40

worth of food, and did not have room for them to sit in the Cross Country

Cafe. Now, I ask you, who wants to pay that much or more for food and

have to go back to their seat and eat? And, this happens more often then

you might think. Also our overflow passengers used to be able to sit in

the sightseeing lounge car when no other seats were available, but now

there is nowhere for them to go if the Cross Country Cafe is being used.

- Too many items downstairs [in the kitchen] for one person to handle

safely by themselves, when the passenger counts are high. The chef has to

run from the freezers back to the grill and ovens, over 25 feet, almost

constantly in order to get the appetizers and main dishes out. And, then,

in the middle of the meal period while preparing entrees, the chef has to

start running to the freezer to get ice cream for desserts. This takes a

toll on the chef and to me is a safety issue. Sooner or later someone is

going to hurt themselves running back and forth like this. ...

- Not enough help in diner/lounge car. When we are busy, and with just

one lead service attendant (LSA) serving, ... sometimes ... food [is]

setting on the elevator for longer periods of time then it should, and

this causes the food to cool down some. Because the dining car LSA is

busy giving service to other customers, they cannot at times get to the

food fast enough. I myself want to give the customers the best service

and the hottest and freshest food possible, but we can't always do that

with this setup. And, customer service suffers because of having just one

LSA trying to do everything in the diner during these busy meal periods.

- Too hard to get extra help when needed. This should be a no brainier,

even when the passenger counts call for it, it's like pulling hens teeth

to get help on our trains when needed. There is always a shortage on the

extra board, or at least that's what we hear. But, in order for us to do

our part in trying to make this new car work in a safe and efficiency

manner, we sometimes need help. And, it should not be so hard getting it.

And, not just an SA [service attendant/waiter], as this does nothing for

the chef; it needs to be both, waiter (SA) and chef assistant (formerly

food specialist). Help is really needed.

To expand on this extra help point for a second: During the first month

or so when these cars first started running, we had onboard managers

riding with us to see how this would work. During this time every manager

that rode with us had to help out either in the dining car, lounge or

kitchen at some point of the trip. So, it was clear from the very

beginning help was needed with this new car set up. Even the onboard

managers said help was needed and they would state that fact in their

report at the end of the trip. But, nothing happened, no help. What

happened to the reports? Did they really report this? Something does not

add up here. I think this needs to be looked into further.

I know there are slow trips and it's really not a problem at these times.

But, the thing is, the passenger count can change anytime. Like coming

back from Chicago, our passenger counts can go up to where we need help,

but no one is available. Also, since there is only one elevator in the

new diner car now, if it breaks, (and it happens frequently) we have to

carry the trays of food up the steps. Having an extra person to help

would be a blessing when something like this happens. Even if we had a

permanent Memphis turn job put into service, this would help the crews

out tremendously.

At this time I would like to talk about a few things I think should have

been done from the beginning. Not to hurt anyone's feelings, but, to me

the training class we had for this new diner/lounge was nothing short of

a glorified pep rally. I've been in the food service industry for over 24

years, and whenever you make a change as big as this, there should have

been hands on training with everyone actually doing their jobs as to the

new car procedure. This way everyone would have known what - and how - to

do their part.

I get the feeling this was not fully thought out, and the onboard service

crew (OBS) was put out here in order to find a way to make this new car

work. Now, the problem with this is you have all the crews doing

something different, and, because no one in management wants to be

accountable for anything, as I see it. No one seems to have the backbone

to make a decision, document that decision, and then stand by that

decision. We get new rules and procedures all the time, but nothing in

writing. You know it's very easy to say, "Oh, I don't recall telling you

that," but not so easy to do when it's documented.

So we have one crew doing things one way, and another crew doing things

another way. So, later, if it is said we are doing something wrong, we

have no recourse, no one we can hold accountable. We need procedures in

writing. We need to know in writing what each of our jobs consists of

with this new Cross Country Cafe car. And, no blanket statements such as,

"just do the best you can." That's not enough. Because, it seems these

days OBS crews are the only ones being held accountable for anything. We

need accountability from management, too, on what is being said to us

about how to do our jobs. Give it to us in writing!

I always get the gut feeling something underhanded is being pulled on us

(OBS) from talks I sometimes have with upper management. Especially with

something new like this Cross Country Cafe. And, I'm hearing things now,

if it's true, proves this point once again. Such as when this car started

out, it was said there would be no more debits, that Amtrak was going to

run this like a restaurant would run. And this was a big selling point at

the training meeting. But, now I hear the debits or coming back. So, was

this done under handed just to get the new car running and all the while

knowing that the debits was coming back? Is this how Amtrak gains trust

in its employees?

This brings up another case in point about trust, back when the food

specialist job was abolished. It was said we would not be doing items on

the grill; no steaks, and a lot of other things would be cut out because

just one person was in the kitchen, to reduce the work load. Well, guys,

guess what, we now do more items then before, the steaks are back, and we

have a larger menu than before, but still just one person in the kitchen,

no food specialist. Everything slowly worked it's way back, except the

help. Do you think this was an underhanded deal? I feel it was! And it's

things like this, that make the employee's have a natural distrust for

what is said to us. I'm sure you can see why.

Now, in our safety meetings, management talks about the Customer Service

Index (CSI) scores. To be 100% truthful, I do not worry myself with this

number, and I know a lot of others who don't, either. I just do the best

job I can while trying to work as safe as I can. How does Amtrak expect

us (OBS) to raise our CSI scores when the company itself is making it

harder for us (OBS) to give good service to our customers? By having us

do more and more work with less help, which directly affects the level of

service that we can give to our customers? And, the thing is, most of us

(OBS) want - and try - to give excellent service, but [management is]

making it impossible for us to do.

I would like to talk a little here about staffing on our train. Okay,

hypothetically for a moment, let's say we have a derailment or other

accident on the train. And, let's say the sleeping car attended has a

lower level handicap person on board. How is he/she supposed to assist

the passengers off the train if he/she has two sleepers to take care of?

This goes for the coach attendant also, with two - and sometimes three -

coach cars to attend to. There would be no way possible for our

passengers to get the help needed in this hypothetical situation. And,

therein lies a huge safety issue to me. Has anyone even thought of this

situation? And, what would we do? At least with one attendant per car the

passengers would have a better chance of getting help. Not to mention

better service.

For a quick comparison, lets just look at the staffing crew from the time

I was hired to now. Which is just over four years. Then, we had in the

dinning car, an LSA, chef, food specialist, SA No. 1, SA No. 2, and

sometimes a second food specialist to help out when numbers were high.

Now, we have a chef, and two LSA's - and keep in mind one of the LSA's in

the dining car now, use to be in the lounge car. From a five man crew to

three, and the third person is from the other lounge car. And, the only

difference is, we don't use real china anymore. Now, how can we be

expected to give A+ customer service with a staff reduction like that?

Also, we had one coach attendant per coach car, now we have one attendant

per two - sometimes three - coach cars. Same for the sleeper attendant -

we used to have an attendant per sleeper, now we have one sleeper

attendant for two sleepers. As anyone can plainly see, there is no way we

can be expected to be able to give A+ service to our passengers under

these conditions.

Therefore the CSI scores are meaningless to many of the workers. All we

can do as Amtrak employees is give the best service we possibly can in a

safe manner, and hope the customers accept this, and don't put in a bad

report on us at the end of the trip.

I can't tell you how many times the OBS crew have left the station with a

heavy train, and management telling us they know it's hard on us, but

just do what you can, as there is only so much each person can do. That

sounds all fine and good, but we are the ones out on the rail that have

to deal with the passengers; they see US when they don't get the

attention or service they need, they see US when they have no place to

sit in the dinning car or we have to rush them out to make room for the

next seating. We, the onboard service crews, are the face of Amtrak to

them. We don't need blanket statements. We need solutions.

Our customers really miss the observation [lounge] car. On just about

every trip since this new diner/lounge car has be on, we get passengers

telling us they want the observation car back, and ask us why Amtrak took

it off. A lot don't like the layout of the new diner/lounge car. This

sentiment can be confirmed just by asking the workers and conductors of

this train.

I really like my job ... with Amtrak, and my work history and standards

with Amtrak speak for themselves. I want Amtrak to be the best that it

can be, and my hope is everyone that rides with us has a very enjoyable

and memorable experience, and our customers receive the best service

possible while doing so. This is my number one concern. I want the

customer to want to use us (Amtrak) again and again.

Now I know a lot of times people complain, but never have any solutions

or ideas. Well, I would like to suggest a few things here.

1. Evaluate the new menu items to see what's selling and what's not, and

make changes accordingly. Such as the shrimp, a high dollar cost item

that does not sell well.

2. Check dollar savings/cost to see if it would be feasible to put the

Sightseeing observation car back on - no staff - just to have a place for

overflow passengers, and others wishing to use computers, phones, eat

snack foods, etc, as this would take a lot of pressure off the seating

situation in the diner/lounge.

3. Set standard procedures (documented), as to what food items are serve

out of the kitchen and what is served upstairs.

4. Look into setting up regular Memphis turn positions. Chef assistant

and SA. This would enable us to handle high passenger counts and help in

case of equipment failure. Plus, enable us to give far better service to

our customer.

5. Maybe putting help on the trains Thursday, Friday, Saturday and

Sunday.

Well that's my thoughts and ideas, Thank you very much for your time.

[End quote]

2) It is important to note Amtrak has been in the passenger train

business since 1971, and has had diners, lounges, sleepers, and coaches

since Day One. What has Amtrak management learned, and discarded, and

learned again, and discarded again, and tried to learn yet again about

the management and operation of these various types of cars and providing

good passenger service? Why does Amtrak seem to have no institutional

memory, and is always reinventing the wheel, often ending up with a

square wheel?

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J. Bruce Richardson

President

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739

[email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

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[WICT106]

This Week at Amtrak; March 3, 2008

A weekly digest of events, opinions, and forecasts from

United Rail Passenger Alliance, Inc.

1526 University Boulevard, West, PMB 203

Jacksonville, Florida 32217-2006 USA

Telephone 904-636-7739, Electronic Mail [email protected]

http://www.unitedrail.org

Volume 5, Number 9

Founded over three decades ago in 1976, URPA is a nationally known policy

institute that 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, and New York. 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) Amtrak’s well respected Inspector General, Fred Weiderhold, Jr., needs

to act swiftly and decisively. A mess has been dropped in Mr.

Weiderhold’s lap that isn’t pretty, and it may involve fraud and other

criminal acts. Mr. Weiderhold is the only one who can get to the bottom

of this and clean up what has become an unholy confusion where

reputations are on the line.

We implore Mr. Weiderhold to act impartially and decisively at the

earliest possible moment.

All of this relates to the January annulments of Amtrak’s Coast Starlight

due to snow and mudslides in Oregon along the Union Pacific Railroad

owned route of the Starlight.

Paul Dyson, President of the Rail Passenger Association of California,

wrote two letters to Amtrak President and CEO Alex Kummant about the

situation, seeking Mr. Kummant’s assistance in restoring as much of the

Coast Starlight route as soon as possible.

Mr. Kummant replied to Mr. Dyson’s letters, and a reply was also received

by RailPAC from who appears to be J.W. Deely, Amtrak’s General

Superintendent in Oakland, California. Amtrak says the letter allegedly

from Mr. Deely is a fake.

Mr. Dyson has made all of his correspondence to an from Mr. Kummant

public information, and has posted everything on RailPAC’s public web

site, www.railpac.org.

Included in the correspondence posted was this letter which appeared to

be from Mr. Deely, which arrived in Mr. Dyson’s hands on Amtrak

letterhead with an Oakland return address, and with a pen ink on paper

signature.

Here is the letter from Mr. Deely to Mr. Dyson which Amtrak says is a

fake.

[begin quote]

January 24, 2008

Mr. Paul J. Dyson

President

Rail Passenger Association of California

1017 L Street – PMB 217

Sacramento, California 95814

Mr. Dyson:

This letter is in response to your e-mail message to Amtrak President

Alex Kummant dated January 22, 2008 wherein you expressed your concern

over Amtrak’s decision to annul Coast Starlight service between Seattle,

Washington and Los Angeles, California indefinitely pending cleanup of a

mudslide which severed the Union Pacific mainline near Frazier, Oregon.

The decision to completely suspend all service was not an "opportunist

decision to save a few operating dollars" or a "seemingly reflexive jump

to no alternative service" as stated by Mr. Ross Capon [Executive

Director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers in

Washington] in his e-mail message of January 22. Rather, it was a sound

business decision based on several factors ranging from economics and

service impacts to passenger inconvenience and political fallout.

However, in considering all factors, it is still in the best interests of

the corporation to move forward with our original plans to suspend

service over the entire route. Furthermore, given the recent award handed

down from the President’s Emergency Board-242 which allows for

retroactive pay to agreement covered employees, Amtrak must consider all

possible avenues with regard to cost savings. Additional service cuts are

also presently being considered to accommodate the award on a system-wide

basis.

With regard to your recommendation for maintaining a truncated service

featuring midweek packages catering to overseas tourists, the logistics

and complexities involved far outweigh any potential revenue or repeat

ridership which may result. I have enclosed a copy of the e-mail

correspondence between my office and Messrs. Kummant, Crosbie and Phelps

regarding the Coast Starlight service disruptions for your review.

Hopefully this information will provide additional insight to this

important matter.

Sincerely,

/s/

J.W. Deely

General Superintendent

cc. R.H. Phelps

[End quote]

The Mr. Crosbie referred to is William Crosbie, Amtrak’s chief operating

officer, and R.H. Phelps works directly for Mr. Crosbie in operations,

and is considered by many to be one of Amtrak’s most able and honorable

executives. Mr. Crosbie reports directly to Mr. Kummant, and Mr. Phelps

reports directly to Mr. Crosbie.

The e-mails enclosed with the letter in question from who Amtrak claims

is not Mr. Deely seem to be genuine, with return Amtrak e-mail addresses.

They are routine internal communications, more or less confirming in

writing whatever oral conversations had taken place.

2) As readers of TWA know, despite what was or wasn’t said by Mr. Deely

and what was originally said in writing by Mr. Kummant, partial daily

service was quickly restored between Sacramento and Los Angeles. The

service offers no sleeping or dining cars, but does maintain the

Starlight’s schedule for coach passengers. By the end of February, Amtrak

had also announced the commencement of an overnight bus bridge between

Sacramento and Portland, Oregon, which passengers could continue up the

Starlight route to Seattle using daily Cascades regional service in place

of the annulled Starlight service north of Sacramento.

Union Pacific Railroad, known for its corporate grit and determination to

fix trestles which have been destroyed and track that has been covered by

mudslides, continues to work diligently to get its railroad line reopened

in Oregon, so its freight trains and the Coast Starlight may again

traverse the Left Coast from Seattle to Los Angeles unimpeded. At this

point, April is the earliest anyone is predicting for the line reopening.

3) On February 20, 2008, the following letter from Amtrak was received by

RailPAC’s webmaster regarding the letter on the RailPAC web site

supposedly written by Mr. Deely, reproduced above.

[begin quote]

Bill Lindley

Webmaster

Rail Passenger Association of California & Nevada (RailPAC)

1017 L Street – PMB-217

Sacramento, CA 95814

[email protected]

Mr. Lindley:

I am writing to you regarding posting of a letter on your website,

http://www.railpac.org, allegedly authored by Joe Deely on Amtrak

stationery. Please be informed that the letter is a fake and not created

by Amtrak. Accordingly, please immediately remove it from your website

and provide a retraction. As you are aware, the letter holds Amtrak in

unfavorable light and is defamatory. We anticipate your prompt compliance

with our request so that legal action may be averted. Thank you.

Sincerely,

/s/

William Herrmann

Managing Deputy General Counsel

Litigation

Amtrak

[End quote]

As requested by Amtrak, the alleged letter from Mr. Deely was immediately

removed from the RailPAC web site, and a retraction was posted.

4) Note the phrase used by Mr. Herrmann, "As you are aware, the letter

holds Amtrak in unfavorable light and is defamatory."

What unfavorable light is Mr. Herrmann referring to? What is defamatory?

Is Mr. Herrmann just throwing around legal jargon to intimidate the

officers of RailPAC?

Could Mr. Herrmann be referring to the part of the letter where

supposedly Mr. Deely says, "it was a sound business decision based on

several factors ranging from economics and service impacts to passenger

inconvenience and political fallout. However, in considering all factors,

it is still in the best interests of the corporation to move forward with

our original plans to suspend service over the entire route. Furthermore,

given the recent award handed down from the President’s Emergency

Board-242 which allows for retroactive payt to agreement covered

employees, Amtrak must consider all possible avenues with regard to cost

savings. Additional service cuts are also presently being considered to

accommodate the award on a system-wide basis.

With regard to your recommendation for maintaining a truncated service

featuring midweek packages catering to overseas tourists, the logistics

and complexities involved far outweigh any potential revenue or repeat

ridership which may result."?

5) Inquiring minds want to know, if this letter is found to not be a fake

and actually did originate from Mr. Deely, why was this gentleman writing

a letter in answer to Mr. Dyson that had already been eloquently answered

by his boss, Amtrak President Alex Kummant? Why would internal company

e-mails between high-ranking company officers be included?

Why was a reference made to "political fallout"?

Especially, why, was the reference "recent award handed down from the

President’s Emergency Board-242 which allows for retroactive pay to

agreement covered employees, Amtrak must consider all possible avenues

with regard to cost savings. Additional service cuts are also presently

being considered to accommodate the award on a system-wide basis." ever

made, and is this a harbinger of highly unpleasant things to come

throughout the Amtrak system? Was no one supposed to know Amtrak may or

may not be planning service cuts in retaliation to its employees wanting

a union contact settled that had been in suspense for eight years? Did

this phrase somehow undercut what Amtrak has been telling Congress in

Washington what it needs to pay for the new union contract?

Did Mr. Deely act impulsively and out of school, and then try to cover up

his impulsiveness by saying he did not write this letter? Is there a

special relationship of the "good old boy network" going on between Mr.

Deely and Mr. Herrmann, and one is acting to protect the other? Has Mr.

Herrmann been duped into acting by someone before he made a sound legal

decision based on facts rather than a breathless request for help from

Oakland?

There are so many unanswered questions to this whole mess, and only

someone well respected like Amtrak Inspector General Fred Weiderhold can

get to the bottom of this situation.

6) Of course, RailPAC has felt its credibility has been injured in this

whole affair, and has also made a formal request to Mr. Weiderhold. Here

is Mr. Dyson’s letter to Mr. Weiderhold on behalf of RailPAC.

[begin quote]

Rail Passenger Association of California

28 February, 2008

Mr. Fred Weiderhold, Jr

Inspector General

NATIONAL RAILROAD PASSENGER CORPORATION

P.O. Box 76654

Washington, DC 20013 6654

Via FAX to 215 XXX-XXXX

CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN RAILPAC AND AMTRAK RE-COAST STARLIGHT SUSPENSION -

CLAIM THAT LETTER FROM J. DEELY IS FAKE - REQUEST FOR INVESTIGATION

Dear Mr. Weiderhold:

Our organization, Rail Passenger Association of California (RailPAC) is a

non-profit advocacy group staffed entirely by volunteers. We have

recently been in correspondence with Amtrak President Mr. Kummant over

the suspension of "Coast Starlight" service. Here’s a chronology of

events to the best of my knowledge. Please note that RailPAC has a P.O.

Box in Sacramento, I am domiciled in Burbank, and so letters to me may be

delayed depending on when one of our members can pick them up and forward

them to me.

1/22/08: I faxed my first letter to Mr. Kummant urging reinstatement of

the Coast Starlight with a bus bridge.

1/24/08: A letter was sent to me from Amtrak’s Oakland office over the

signature of J. Deely expressing why Amtrak had suspended the service.

The letter included attachments which are reprints of internal e-mail

documents including my letter to Mr. Kummant.

1/28/08 A letter was sent from Washington signed by Alex Kummant

explaining the Coast Starlight decision.

2/11/08:I wrote a second letter to Mr. Kummant objecting to the Amtrak

decision, and also referencing Mr. Deely’s letter.

2/15/08:A reply was sent from Mr. Kummant.

2/15/08:Correspondence was posted on RailPAC website for our members and

supporters.

2/20/08 An e-mail was sent from Mr. William Herrmann, Deputy General

Counsel, alleging that the Deely letter was a fake and requesting us,

under threat of legal action, to remove it from our web site. The letter

was so removed immediately.

We at RailPAC feel that we have been the victim of a fraud. Based on the

representations of Amtrak’s Mr. Herrmann the fraud was perpetrated by a

person or persons unknown. The letter we received over Mr. Deely’s

signature is on Amtrak stationary with the correct Oakland address. It

was written so quickly after my first letter was sent to Mr. Kummant and

before I published the contents and before it was posted on our website

that it must have come from inside Amtrak. No one has denied that the

attached e-mails are genuine. By being forced to withdraw this letter and

publish a retraction we have had our credibility questioned.

Mr. Weiderhold, in the interest of preventing a recurrence of this most

regrettable incident I request that you carry out a full investigation to

discover beyond doubt whether the "Deely" letter is indeed a fake, and if

not, then who is responsible for sending it and the accompanying Amtrak

e-mails. If you need any more information or assistance with this

enquiry, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Yours faithfully,

/s/

Paul J. Dyson

President

Rail Passenger Association of California

Cc RailPAC Board

Richard Silver, RailPAC Executive Director

[End quote]

7) Mr. Weiderhold, it’s up to you and your staff. If one of your general

superintendents wrote a letter out of school and later regretted it, then

the honorable thing to do would have been to appeal to RailPAC to remove

the letter and apologize for speaking in an unauthorized manner. If this

is merely someone trying to save their corporate skin at the expense of

others inside of Amtrak, then this is a highly shameful affair which must

be exposed and dealt with appropriately by Amtrak. If this is a

conspiracy by more than one person to force a private group of citizens

to do something which puts them in an adverse light to try and cover up

something done by an Amtrak manager, then we’re on the road to Amtrak’s

own Watergate. If this is the result of someone writing a letter using

Amtrak stationery and forging the signature of an Amtrak manager, then

this is now a case for the United States Postal Service criminal

inspectors and the criminal courts for appropriate prosecution and

punishment.

No matter how this sad episode end, the truth must be made public and

RailPAC must have its reputation restored.

 

[yarrow]

someone please explain to me what the fake letter business is about. thanks

 

[GG-1]

Aloha

I also feel more information is necessary, If I received a hand signed letter why would I consider it to be fake, Something smells here.