I see in a Trains Magazine article that Joe Boardman announced his retirement ...
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2015/12/09-boardman-to-retire
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2015/12/09-boardman-to-retire
Nature abhors a vacuum, Dutchman! There is always another resume filler waiting to step in.for what their paying, their not going to get much, unless he is buff like boardman or gunn.
More likely, he is leaving because there is an election next year. There is always turmoil and turnover and he probably would rather just sit it out and let whomever his replacement ease into things.The new legislation could divert $400 million or so of Acela profits to the NEC. That money has been supporting the whole of Amtrak.
Now Sen Schumer says the Acela profits can be dedicated to helping to pay for the Gateway Tunnels. And where will Amtrak get another few hundred million to take the place of the Acela cash flow for the rest of the national system?
I have a notion why Boardman would want to retire soonish. The current fiscal year -- until September 30 -- is set under the old rules. So he can retire before the new rules bite.
Then the President of Amtrak may be asked to preside over the dismemberment of the Long Distance network. He'll have to whack away first at the Zephyr, the Southwest Chief, and one of the north-south routes (pick the City of New Orleans or the Texas Eagle). Other routes will follow the next year and the next until they are all gone.
That's the haters' dream world. Maybe Joe Boardman simply doesn't want to be part of that, and so, "Good night".
Ugh. A beancounter....My first choice would probably be DJ Stadtler. But then I'm kind of conservative about these things...
With the possible exceptions of the Sunset Limited and the City of New Orleans, pretty much all the so-called long-distance routes have unbreakable political coalitions behind them. (I can list the political support for all the others off the top of my head.) No Amtrak President will be able to stop any of those routes barring a natural disaster, regardless of what Congress suggests. Shutting down the NEC would be easier, politically, due to a remarkable lack of support from New Jersey.
It's worth noting that the upcoming legislation authorizes Amtrak to transfer as much of the NEC surplus to the long-distance line as Amtrak wants to. All it requires is an accounting of how much gets transferred. Which is going to be substantially less than the overhead, as any President who can read the accounting can point out; we, and Boardman, know that the net *avoidable* subsidies of the so-called long-distance routes are on the order of $16 million; everything else is an artifact of poor allocation practices.
Maybe Boardman found a successor who the Board is happy with before deciding to retire. That would be good -- avoid a Thomas Downs type disaster.
Could you elaborate a bit on what got you started on that rant, providing the facts that got you going? Just curious.Shutting down the NEC would be easier, politically, due to a remarkable lack of support from New Jersey.
Stadtler's record in operations. Meh. I am not a fan. Beancounter over safety.He's actually been rotated through several departments. That's traditional grooming for running the company. He has a pretty good record in operations, and in negotiations with the states, and in fights with the freight railroads. He's serious about deferred maintenance and committed to the long-distance trains. He is bullish on passenger rail.
Negotations with the states are arguably the most important thing at the moment.
Also, he seems to actually understand and care about the business -- he's not an "cut off your nose to save costs" bean-counter like E Hunter Harrison. He seems to actually recognize the real structure of Amtrak's costs, the importance of economies of scale, the deferred maintenance issues, the value of good service for customer loyalty, etc. He's apparently earned the respect and loyalty of the employees. Rare for someone with a finance background.
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Looking at it holistically, I think Boardman needs to retire for health reasons and wants to put the company in safe hands before he does so -- hands which he trusts. We'll see if he can get his preferred candidate (who he has not named publicly) approved by the Board, but I bet he does. So I'm betting on an insider.
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