End of NARP Hotline?

The NARP Hotline, which has appeared religiously for over 30 years (it used to be on the telephone before computers) seems to be defunct. It has not appeared for two weeks now. Couple this with NARP's passive (non-existent) response to Amtrak's steady downgrading of first class service, it is almost as if NARP itself is defunct. Anyone know what is going on?

Railroader said:

The NARP Hotline, which has appeared religiously for over 30 years (it used to be on the telephone before computers) seems to be defunct. It has not appeared for two weeks now. Couple this with NARP's passive (non-existent) response to Amtrak's steady downgrading of first class service, it is almost as if NARP itself is defunct. Anyone know what is going on?

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As far as I can tell, there were two things that combined:

-Most obviously is the fact that NARP just had their annual conference in DC this week, which took up staff attention both last week and this week. Normally this wouldn't be a major problem, except...

-Less obviously is the fact that NARP has been going through a major (almost frenetic) IT overhaul at the same time (initiated since Jim Matthews took over). I won't get into the nitty gritty, but there have been major issues that are being dealt with now that the conference is over.

Basically...NARP has had a lot of housekeeping to do, and the annual conference coming on top of that has stretched NARP's resources to the limit.

Correct, the NARP hotline began in the early 1980s when there was no better way to disseminate urgent news... no www, no email, and almost no BBS (if anyone remembers what those were). I made the suggestion of a hotline at a national NARP meeting in DC.

NARP was at the 417 New Jersey Av. SE address and had two sequential telephone numbers. The second number, 202 546-1551, was switched to a machine on nights and weekends that played the message usually tape-recorded by Barry Williams, the assistant director. One caller at a time, and callers paid the long-distance charges which were 5 to 20 cents depending on where one called from and the length of the recording. Over the course of a year, it added up. Barry left in 1989 after 10 years of service.

Some years later the telephone arrangement for the hotline was changed, and NARP has moved offices two or three times - with different telephone numbers.

Incidentally, the award that Charlie got was to quite an extent because of the work that he has been doing helping NARP clean up the IT mess that they have on hand.

Wonder if Amtrak would hire him as a highly paid consultant to help bring their IT Dept. into the 21st Century?!!!!

Quite frankly I can't think of any successful project that NARP has been involved in. There is a big difference between good intentions and good results.

Creation of Amtrak comes to mind.

Does that count as a success???

Correct, NARP was founded by Anthony Haswell on May 18, 1967. The idea of a Railpax (as it was then called) floated in 1969 and was greeted with considerable skepticism. The creation of Amtrak was not a sure thing. And throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, the survival of Amtrak was far from assured. Neither Jimmy Carter now Ronald Reagan was keen on Amtrak. Subsequent to the 1980s there has been the ongoing budget battle, of course.

Nobody can replay history and see what would have happened without NARP, but the same can be said of almost any advocacy organization.

It is quite likely that without Amtrak there would be no LD service at all today. Also, many more corridor service would have disappeared increasing the cost of restoring service.

One could conceivably argue that complete destruction of passenger service and then starting afresh may have been better. But one will never know for sure.

I think that the constant threats to Amtrak's existence have forced NARP into a defensive stand, always working to keep the service continuing. Ideally, NARP should be pushing for constant improvements to the trains and to make things better for passengers. Unfortunately, the constant survival battles have made NARP into an Amtrak ally rather than an independent voice. However, if there wasn't a NARP, who would argue on behalf of the Amtrak rider? Some kind of national organization is needed to let Congress know that trains are important. Nothing happens in Washington on its own. Lobbying efforts are a fact of life.

I'm a long-time NARP member and I'm about to send in my membership fees for the next year. Could NARP be more effective? Of course, but it's the best we've got.

I remember sitting in the observation car of the California Zephyr in the early 1960s and reading an article about how by 1980 there would be no passenger trains, cars would drive themselves, and supersonic transports would whisk people around the globe in a few hours, an idealistic future that knew nothing about traffic congestion or pollution. If it were not for NARP, that might have been our world today. Although the US passenger rail system is an embarrassment, its survival is largely due to NARP.

In the late 1960s I received a letter from Anthony Haswell in response to a pro-passenger train letter of mine that had been printed in the NY Times, asking me to join NARP. I did, and have been a member ever since.

With that said, I do find NARPs passivity and impotence frustrating, and I wish they would be less an advocate for Amtrak and one for passenger trains. When Amtrak messes up--as it is certainly doing with the downgrades in first class service--NARP needs to be hard on them.

With the ouster of Ross Capon, NARP is trying to head in new directions. I wish them well in this endeavor, but I really hope the lessons of the past are not forgotten, for as long as passenger rail in any form is used as a political football, NARP faces an uphill 6% grade just to keep service at its present levels. I'm a member, and despite some concerns I have over the overthrow of Ross, I'm hopeful that NARP will become more effective, even though I'm a hypocritical and cynical old person who chose not to attend this past week's events up on The Hill.

The folks I've talked to who participated in last week's NARP Day on the Hill agree that we got a much better reception than we did last year. It's too early to tell for sure, but I'm hopeful that we may be making progress in our quest to improve support for passenger rail. But there's a lot of work yet, so please add your voice: call and email your representatives.

As far as I know, Anthony Haswell is still alive but he's in his 80s. Several years have passed since he said or wrote anything inflammatory about Amtrak. Likewise Joe Vranich.

xyzzy said:

As far as I know, Anthony Haswell is still alive but he's in his 80s. Several years have passed since he said or wrote anything inflammatory about Amtrak. Likewise Joe Vranich.

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Joe Vranich might finally have come to realize that his ideas had a snowball's chance in hell in this country, no matter how brilliant he thought they were.

It seems there are two issues here: first, NARP's effective role in supporting passenger rail (i.e. Amtrak) before Congress, and second, NARP's very weak role in trying to get Amtrak to improve itself, especially in the face of the major downgrades in service that have been taking place. It is interesting that most of the posters here applaud the former and say nothing about the latter.

If one has the patience to read a bit more into past threads on the subject, one will discover that there has been pretty strident criticism of NARP in various discussion threads in this forum. At least I don;t get the sense that NARP has not been beaten to pulp even by me in other threads. The immediate responses were to a claim by someone upthread who said he could not think of a single achievement of NARP.

I just posted a quick report about last week's NARP Day on the Hill here: http://discuss.amtraktrains.com/index.php?/topic/63577-come-to-dc-to-advocate-for-better-rail/#entry597407

Many of us are doing all we can to make NARP a more effective force. It won't happen overnight, after decades of benign neglect. But the new staff is working hard, and I am encouraged by the reception we received on Capitol Hill this year. It won't be easy, with a gridlocked Congress and the struggles to find state funding. But I wouldn't be volunteering my time if I didn't think that there is a good chance for positive outcomes.

Editor's note: due to technical difficulties, the Hotline was not published on Friday, April 24. We apologize for the inconvenience.

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NARP Hotline 908 has now been published.

Maybe someone can verify this, but wasn't Anthony Haswell an original member of Amtrak's board of directors?

oldtimer said:

Maybe someone can verify this, but wasn't Anthony Haswell an original member of Amtrak's board of directors?

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I believe that is right. Haswell more or less turned on Amtrak sometime in the mid-70s as I understand it (I forget exactly what his problem was, but I think he basically felt it was choking out the private sector and being badly run...I think he may have been one of those who actually believed the "Amtrak can turn things around for passenger rail and be sold off in a few years" line)...at which point he ceased being involved in NARP as far as I know.

Yes, Haswell became increasingly strident in his criticisms of Amtrak... an embarrassment to NARP and, like Vranich, not a helpful player in the sense that he put forward no viable alternatives other than simply losing the national passenger rail system and, one would assume, some of the regional services too. He was still at it 10 years ago.

Strident dreams of utopia tends to turn otherwise rational people into strange bigots, unfortunately, as they take complete leave of pragmatism and practicality. There are a few exceptions where dreams of utopia are married with pragmatism, and these can prove to be either very progressive or extremely dangerous.