A Rant About Amtrak Service Reductions

This week was the first of three in which Amtrak will make all of its remaining long distance trains outside of Auto Train triweekly. The criteria the company has in place will set these trains to miss the intended targets by June 30—and therefore fail. The horrendous online booking scheme says it all.

Everyone has to deal with the fact that Amtrak's current management simply doesn't care about the long distance system because There are severed connections all over the place among other things.

Even at previous low points, Amtrak at least kept portions of certain long distance routes daily before breaking them into less than daily segments. Consider these examples:

• Crescent daily to Atlanta
• Empire Builder daily to St. Paul
• Texas Eagle daily to St. Louis
• Some type of daily service between Chicago and Salt Lake City

However, with this pandemic the current management didn’t even have the courtesy to even do that outside of the Florida trains. After all, Stephen Gardner and Anthony Coscia have openly expressed their hostility to the overnight trains as did previous president Richard Anderson. When it comes to current president William Flynn, my initial reaction to him being named was justified because he’s going to go along with whatever Gardner and Coscia tell him. If the presidential election goes the way the polls are predicting, then, Gardner may very well get a chance to finish the job he, Anderson and Coscia started, with the overnight trains going away.

·       Amtrak was caught being dishonest about Florida, and this graph put together by RPA (fka NARP) and retweeted by All Aboard Ohio demonstrates just how much management is willing to sacrifice other parts of the country for its beloved Northeast Corridor.

 The rail community has to be very weary of Amtrak management’s pledge of these cuts being “temporary.” History is an indicator:

1. George Warrington was supposed to be a temporary president, but the Amtrak Board selected him over Andrew Selden in 1998. The result was Warrington nearly bankrupting the company after he bet the farm on Acela Express
2. Joseph Boardman was supposed to be a temporary president after the 2008 presidential election, but the Board removed the “temporary” tag at the beginning of 2010. Amtrak stagnated because the expansions that took place were done by the states, not Amtrak itself. The company didn’t show any interest in proactively operating any new routes—its interest was in trying to keep well-established HSR operators out of the country and trying to prevent its commuter competitors from entering the intercity market (the Tea Party wave made the former possible and Congress’s inaction was responsible for the latter)
3. A now ex-CFO went behind Boardman’s back to take the diners off #91 and #92 five years ago. A few months later, the alleged “experiment” was made permanent. The only reason why the diners were put back on the Silver Star was because the Anderson regime downgraded meal service on all long distance trains

MCS Virtual Tour

https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=nhQitTrsuMP&back=1

The Brightline-Virgin alliance is over

So, the partnership between Virgin and Brightline is over as of July 29. It is worth noting that Sir Richard Branson's had a horrible year: Virgin Trains exited the UK at the end of last year after it was stripped of its route over pension issues, and more recently, Virgin Atlantic filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy due to the fallout over COVID-19.

I don't know if this is about Fortress Investment Group wanting to distance itself from Virgin's troubles, a blowup between the two entities over the latter never investing in Brightline or something else, but this could be a blow to the New Passenger Paradigm.

Addendum: Congressional testimony on Amtrak and the states

Trains Magazine last fall
House transcripts 

Revolting Against Amtrak Part II

Is Amtrak the only state option?

To answer the article in the April edition of Trains Magazine: It shouldn't be.

Testifying at a U.S. House of Representatives rail subcommittee hearing on Amtrak operations, [Stacey] Mortenson said she found it "absolutely astonishing" when Amtrak officials told her in a meeting "that service cuts or reducing the number of railcars would not necessarily same us any money."

But yet at certain times, bean counters in Washington go ahead and cut service under the guise of "saving money" anyway.
For all of the flak, NCDOT gets from some rail activists for using refurbished pre-Amtrak era equipment, it looks as if it made a smart move since it only pays Amtrak for Carolinian equipment. For instance, look at all of the trouble the Midwestern states went through with Nippon-Sharyo's double-decker equipment.
Bob Johnston pointed out that advertising and corridor-specific marketing among other things have fallen off a cliff since the late '90s. Here in North Carolina, advertising for the Piedmont and Carolinian are handled by NCDOT, and the only Amtrak presence came in the form of radio ads in the mid '10s.
Amtrak may have the statutory right of access to the host railroads' tracks but if the states had done their homework in the early '10s, they could have dumped Amtrak, used the commuter rail model for AIPRO operators and saved themselves a lot of money. The refusal by the states to consider AIPRO operators means that these DOTs shot themselves in the foot in regards to expansion and using their imagination.

It must be pointed out the reason why the Hoosier State failed was because it was the only corridor route that had less than daily service, Indiana officials were half-hearted with their support--the cities and universities along the route did most of the heavy lifting--and the trains stopped at unmarketable times.

Bennett Levin pointed out to Trains Magazine that Amtrak's liability advantage was eradicated after the Train #188 derailment five years ago when the cap was raised from $250 million for only Amtrak to $294 million for all passenger carriers.

In any case, heightened scrutiny of Amtrak's costs an responsiveness will clearly be a contentious element of upcoming re-authorization discussions.

Congress needs to keep the pressure up on Amtrak because it has gotten away with saddling states with high cost, low revenue studies that all but guarantee no expansion of existing services and no new routes. On top of that, the other states need to stand up to bureaucrats in D.C. who know nothing about their needs and only care about the 457 miles between Washington and Boston.

Bennett Levin's Visit to Pennsylvania Legislators

In the First Quarter issue in Passenger Train Journal, Kevin McKinney analyzed Levin's testimony in the Pennsylvania House Transportation Committee at the end of last year.

[Levin] adds that "SEPTA gives Amtrak attributable to the Harrisburg Line is not being used by Amtrak on the Harrisburg Line, but is being used by Amtrak for other purposes."

Is it any wonder why Levin wants SEPTA to run the trains? A slight variation should result in a new PENN RAIL running the trains instead.

Levin also pointed out just how out of touch the Amtrak Board is with the people who are on it and have no railroading experience. It's worth noting that both Levin and Mortenson told the legislative bodies in question that Amtrak's accounting is absolutely opaque.

Levin is right in that "Amtrak is running on auto-pilot" and the states "are getting shortchanged." The former is due to "America's Railroad" getting all of that PRIIA money from the states and feeling no need to improve the state-supported routes without needless studies.

Florida by Amtrak

In the Fourth Quarter 2019 issue of Passenger Train Journal, Kevin McKinney took a look at the inverse relationship between Amtrak's presence in Florida and the state's population over the past half century. Going even further, the Sunshine State's rapid growth since the dawn of the 20th century should make one weep over how whittled down passenger service has become.

Even when the Seaboard Coast Line reluctantly handed its trains over to Amtrak, the combined Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Air Line entity had more than enough options for travelers. McKinney did a good job in describing the planning of which routes to incorporate into Amtrak. The more I think about it, the more likely that my alternative scenario would have happened had SCL management not been so concerned about ordering new equipment.

Cross-Florida service is something that the FDOT should be responsible for and reminds me of the free ride certain Midwest and Northeastern states were getting prior to PRIIA. Why no one in Congress has moved to rescind ex-congressman Mica's food service provision baffles me (maybe they'll address it in the next rail re-authorization bill but I doubt it).

Advertising has been absent outside the Northeast Corridor for years

The lack of advertising and the failure to recognize winter peak season tells me that Amtrak is has long blown off the state and that it merely tolerates what it already has. The reduced consists speak for themselves

Florida's population has tripled since Amtrak was formed while the the national operator has not only decreased its footprint but is now being lapped by Virgin's Brightline, which has 32 trains even though it's still a glorified commuter route until the Orlando Airport extension is completed. Other metro areas in the state have taken a look at Sunrail and Tri-Rail and are exploring their own commuter systems, and it's up to the folks in Tallahassee to get it together. If the executive and legislative branches do in fact patch everything together by using the Sunrail model and cut Amtrak out of the picture, it may be game over for Amtrak's share.

To be in decline in a booming market is certainly not an impressive feat. To actually be making service less appealing instead of finding ways to improve and grow the business suggests it is time to officially redefine the mission of what a national rail passenger carrier should be, finance it properly, and find management--or a new organization--capable of running a high-quality, growth-oriented business.

Indeed.Amtrak turns 50 next spring and there should be some very hard questions over what a national rail carrier should look like (hint: new operators with new approaches to grow the market). Florida is untapped potential and it's being taken advantage of by Brightline, not Amtrak.

New Amtrak CEO

Richard Anderson is on his way out and his replacement has been named. The only appropriate response to William Flynn succeeding the guy derisively referred to by railfans as "Delta Dick" and "Propellerhead" is A BIG YAWN. 

Charles Sanders was spot on when he hinted that Anderson's personality was his likely demise.

It will be up to Congress to enforce guidelines that force Amtrak to compete with others for intercity routes because its current regime only cares about shaking down states for money while wasting money on vanity projects like new Acela cars.