Where is Amtrak's desire to grow and advance?

An interesting and discussion provoking Blog posted by Malcolm Kenton on the Trains Mag Blog:

http://cs.trains.com/trn/b/staff/archive/2014/08/29/where-is-amtrak-39-s-desire-to-grow-and-advance.aspx

Here is the comment that I posted under the blog:

So let us start by listing three specific things that Amtrak can do immediately within the constraints that it operates under to start moving forward in the abstract direction presented in the blog. My three would be:

1. Stop nickeling and diming services. Removing flowers from Diners? Saves as much as a single steak dinner perhaps, OK maybe three - certainly far less than the normal amount of food wasted in a run anyway, but the negative impact is large. Stop doing these silly things.

2. Just like is done in all EIS's, instead of pre-determining a single plan, produce one with three scenarios - no build/additional funds, 5% additional funding, 10% additional funding ... pick your numbers to substitute for 5 and 10. At present it is more like 10% cut, 5% cut, or no change funding plans driven by the reality of the situation.

3. Start executing on the PIP for LD trains, whatever little is possible under the current constraints to establish credibility regarding LD trains' continuance. As far as I can tell, nothing has been done with the PIPs, which is a shame.

And finally, I was under the impression that I pay my membership dues to NARP to do the battle in Congress. The success or failure of that is clearly visible in each budget cycle, and right now success seems to be far far away.

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I agree with the column that Amtrak appears to be taking a passive altitude to expansion of service. They have been letting the states take the initiative for the corridor services, but on other hand, that is arguably a reflection of the reality of the 2008 PRIIA act, that Amtrak reacts to what the states want.

As for proposing expansion of the LD system, I think the writer does not fully grasp the political reality and climate and outright dysfunction in Congress that Amtrak has to work under. If there is a strategy, it appears to be to improve the cost recovery of the LD trains and keep the LD trains running until there is a more receptive situation on the Hill in both bodies. Much of the nickel and diming that Amtrak is doing may be stupid, but this sort of stuff happens all over the federal government when Congress tries to micro-manage things or inserts odd requirements or rules in bills to score points for various special interest groups.

As for the PIP reports, I guess at this point, the reports have been mostly set aside and forgotten. To be fair, many of the recommendations for the eastern LD trains were dependent on the new Viewliners and to some extent, on improvement projects, many of which have yet to be completed. Other major recommendations such as flipping the departure times of the LSL and CL have been overtaken by events, namely the extreme delays with the EB; the CZ has been having severe delays as well.

The major item for the western LD trains was to take the Sunset Limited daily. The agreement with UP was for 2 years and should have expired by now. And more of the LA to El Paso route is double tracked. Will Boardman and Amtrak have another go at UP for a daily SL? That would show some initiative.

Despite all these complaints about amenity cuts and lack of more assertive planning for expansion, Amtrak is succeeding in reducing its operating losses. In the July 2014 monthly report, the adjusted total loss for the Year-to-Date is only $129 million which is a big improvement over just a few years ago, Even the LD trains are losing less money, although the biggest change is for the AutoTrain and there was clearly major revisions to the cost allocations for the AT to accomplish that.

I'm not sure Amtrak really cares about credibility regarding the long distance trains, they've said that they don't want to fund them anymore and want Congress to provide a specific grant for them after all. Most PIP items were just lipstick on a pig and some having higher overall losses; business class on the Starlight, and quite frankly all long distance trains, should've been implemented by now though.

Would dearly love to know what those costs were for the Auto Train though since they appear to have disappeared into the aether.

Amtrak didn't say that they didn't want to find them; they broke out the expenses and eliminated cross subsidy accounting tricks as required by PRRIA.

afigg said:

As for the PIP reports, I guess at this point, the reports have been mostly set aside and forgotten.

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If true, this is disgraceful. All the plans in the PIPs were pretty darn good. Although the results they'd have on the bottom line were lowballed and should be reconsidered; given the general higher-revenue, higher-ridership environment, most of the ones which were estimated to "cost" small amounts of operating money would probably instead be good for the bottom line now.

To be fair, many of the recommendations for the eastern LD trains were dependent on the new Viewliners and to some extent, on improvement projects, many of which have yet to be completed.

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Well, let's hope they get back to those improvements after some of that is done then, eh?

Other major recommendations such as flipping the departure times of the LSL and CL have been overtaken by events, namely the extreme delays with the EB; the CZ has been having severe delays as well.

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The times should still be swapped. The CL makes a more appropriate "cleanup train" than the LSL. The delays *on* the LSL and CL *themselves* make any schedule changes less viable for now, but this needs to be alleviated soon anyway. I suspect nothing can be done until the NYS track improvements are well along, but Amtrak should have the rescheduling ready to go in 2017. Or, a more aggressive plan would reconsider the proposed reroute via Detroit, which would get the trains on passenger-operator-controlled track and serve one of the biggest unserved market pairs (Detroit-New York). A lot of stuff could be done by 2017 given the effort.

The major item for the western LD trains was to take the Sunset Limited daily. The agreement with UP was for 2 years and should have expired by now. And more of the LA to El Paso route is double tracked. Will Boardman and Amtrak have another go at UP for a daily SL? That would show some initiative.

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Yeah, that would be appropriate. The Tower 55 work is done now, too; the proposed rearrangement of the TE and SL was not very viable while it was ongoing. I would like Amtrak to go after a daily Cardinal as well, of course.
At the moment, I think top management's focus has been on financing the cleanup of the equipment leases, paying off the mortgage, getting new rolling stock and locomotives, and getting the contracts for the ARRA work executed; probably also beating CN at the STB and getting the teeth put back in the on-time standards. This may have led to a little... disregard for the sort of improvements which require further negotiations with third parties. But I hope that there is an agenda in place for refocusing on such improvements in a couple of years.