Amtrak Greenwashing

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Chas

Service Attendant
AU Supporting Member
Joined
Nov 1, 2009
Messages
105
Location
Southern Colorado
I took the Cardinal from Chicago to Charlottesville, Va., in December and experienced the "Contemporary Dining" meal service.

What a bunch of bogus corporate greenwashing. You sit there with a table full of plastic trash at the end of your meal, and on top of it is a  card (more trash) that proclaims "Eco-Friendly. A Sustainable Choice."

All because the spoon and fork were made from wood, not plastic. But believe me, you'll have a lapful of plastic. And some kind of fake-cloth bag to put it in.

While the beef ribs for dinner were not too bad, as someone earlier mentioned, the breakfast  was so heavily sugared that it must violate every dietary guideline out there. I would much rather have eggs and grits, etc.

Real food, in other words.
 
I took the Cardinal from Chicago to Charlottesville, Va., in December and experienced the "Contemporary Dining" meal service.
Your environmental comments aside, Contemporary Dining isn't on the Cardinal. It is only on the Lake Shore and Capitol Limited.
 
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Are you sure? It's the box meal in the tote bag. I've seen material on Rail Passengers that made it sound like the same thing. Comments on this article (not just mine) also reference the Cardinal.

https://www.railpassengers.org/happening-now/news/blog/new-dining-options-are-here/

What was served on the Cardinal sounds exactly like what is being served on the Lake Shore Limited, etc.
I don't see anywhere on that webpage anyone saying the Cardinal was serving the Contemporary Dining.  
 
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As far as I could find there were three posts in the Comments referring to the Cardinal. The first is from Joe Versaggi talking about what should be done in the future. The second is your post stating essentially what you state in the OP, and the third is again from Joe explaining the difference between Contemporary Dining as in the LSL and CL and Diner Lite as found on the Cardinal. So none other than you really stated “box in a tote bag” is found on the Cardinal.

Now that may very well be, but none other than you have stated that to be the current service on the Cardinal.
 
1@Chas[/USER] You sure you had this on the Cardinal? Any chance you also took the Lake Shore or Capitol around that time and got it confused with your Cardinal ride? Because I believe you ate that at some point, but I'm really doubtful that it was on the Card...

 
As far as I could find there were three posts in the Comments referring to the Cardinal. The first is from Joe Versaggi talking about what should be done in the future. The second is your post stating essentially what you state in the OP, and the third is again from Joe explaining the difference between Contemporary Dining as in the LSL and CL and Diner Lite as found on the Cardinal. So none other than you really stated “box in a tote bag” is found on the Cardinal.

Now that may very well be, but none other than you have stated that to be the current service on the Cardinal.
I'm seeing a total of four comments that at all mention the Cardinal, and none of them say anything about contemporary dining being on the Card. They are...

Joe Versaggi suggesting that something along the lines of the Cardinal's diner-lite should be implemented ted on the Star, Capitol, and Lake Shore:

...What they should do for the Silver Star, Capitol Ltd and Lake Shore Ltd is Diner-Lite, something like the Cardinal, with a staff of 2 (rather than 1)...


Someone named Chas making some eerily familiar claims:

I took the Cardinal from Chicago to Charlottesville, Va., in December and experienced the "Contemporary Dining" meal service.

...

Real food, in other words.
Versaggi correcting those eerily familiar claims:

Cardinal diner is called "Diner Lite". "Contemporary Dining" is corporate-speak for sleeper-lounge car, which uses a Viewliner dining on the Lake Shore and Superliner 37xxx Diner-Lite car on the Capitol Ltd.


And Versaggi correcting a different person about the equipment used on the Capitol:

I think you meant to say the Cardinal, not the Capitol Ltd. I think the Cardinal's snack bar should instead occupy the currently unstaffed Business-Dinette Amfleet-1 car, and replace the Amfleet-2 Diner-lite car with a Viewliner. Then cascade the freed up two Am-2 Dinettes to the Adirondack with its larger windows.


So as I said in my above post, I think the most likely explanation for what the OP experienced is that he also took the Cap or Lake Shore recently, and got the trains confused.
 
I rode the Cardinal December 15 & 16 from Chicago to Charlottesville and it was business as usual. No contemporary dining.
 
From what I can see the Cardinal, Lake Shore and Capitol Ltd menus are now similar with the exception that  the Cardinal still offers traditional table service, and a slightly expanded menu. Last time we rode the Cardinal there was one FSA food preparer/server with the SCA helping out. The other person in the split dinerlite car was dedicated to snack bar service. The Breakfast Omelets were actually pretty good, the burgers for lunch were OK but dinner was mediocre at best. Overall I wouldn't call it terrible.  If this is the way Amtrak must go, I just hope that they keep this abbreviated meal service only on the single overnight trains. I could not see ourselves going on a 3 day cross country trip dining on this food.

If you give some thought on this whole downgrade of food service; it really didn't save Amtrak that much money. They are still running the dining cars with less staff but those people were all offered positions on other trains.  Amtrak probably saved a small bit of money but perhaps by also alienating and losing some loyal passengers. We did not ride since the box lunch policy was instituted.  Since my wife insisted we do a trip to Kansas City this May we will try it.  I often wonder if this move to an abbreviated meal service is going to hurt ridership rather than help the bottom line?
 
If you give some thought on this whole downgrade of food service; it really didn't save Amtrak that much money. They are still running the dining cars with less staff but those people were all offered positions on other trains.  
It'll still end up with a net decrease, at least in the long run, of staff. Some people won't want to switch to other trains (location, schedule, etc.) so they'll leave versus transfer, and Amtrak can use transferring staff to fill any open positions from people leaving instead of hiring more people from outside Amtrak. I'm sure staff leave Amtrak all the time, just like with any company, and so Amtrak can still cut staff by simply not filling open positions and transferring staff as needed without ever having to lay off an employee that's wanting to stay with Amtrak.
 
It'll still end up with a net decrease, at least in the long run, of staff. Some people won't want to switch to other trains (location, schedule, etc.) so they'll leave versus transfer, and Amtrak can use transferring staff to fill any open positions from people leaving instead of hiring more people from outside Amtrak. I'm sure staff leave Amtrak all the time, just like with any company, and so Amtrak can still cut staff by simply not filling open positions and transferring staff as needed without ever having to lay off an employee that's wanting to stay with Amtrak.
Plus, if they take positions outside of Food & Beverages, that will cut F&B costs which is the whole purpose of the "downgrade" - because Congress has mandated they do so.  
 
Seems to me a familiar story repeated over the years here in Australia and in the USA pre Amtrak. They don't want to run the long distance services so what does management do? Step 1 downgrade Onboard services. Step 2 outsource what you can.Step 3 play around with frequencies and timetables.

President Reid of SanteFe said it best when he explained why he joined Amtrak. It wasn't cost it was Risk. A serious incident with a passenger train has the potential to wipe out the company's earnings in a litigious society
 
Seems to me a familiar story repeated over the years here in Australia and in the USA pre Amtrak. They don't want to run the long distance services so what does management do? Step 1 downgrade Onboard services. Step 2 outsource what you can.Step 3 play around with frequencies and timetables.

President Reid of SanteFe said it best when he explained why he joined Amtrak. It wasn't cost it was Risk. A serious incident with a passenger train has the potential to wipe out the company's earnings in a litigious society
May have been meaningful back in the 1960s, but damages per passenger train crash are limited by statute to a *very* low amount now ($295 million), for everything short of deliberate malice, so that's not an actual reason now.

Hostility to running passenger trains is really just a matter of bad attitude, nothing more.  You can see the difference when you get a host railroad and a passenger operator with a good attitude at the same time (hello, Brightline).

Financially speaking, *some* of Amtrak's so-called long-distance trains are pretty bad (Sunset Limited, with empty space between El Paso and San Antonio, nothing between San Antonio and Houston, and failing to stop at Phoenix, has little hope of financial soundness); but most ofthem are financially better than nearly all the "short-distance" trains, and this includes all the Eastern services and the Coast Starlight.

I actually don't think Richard Anderson has it in for national network services; I think he's being hoodwinked and pulled around by the nose by other crooks within or without Amtrak.  He's easily misled because of:

(1) his airline background and lack of understanding of railroad economics

(2) Amtrak's essentially fraudulent accounting system; he probably didn't realize it was fraudulent when he arrived (unlike Moorman, who knew it was fraudulent)

I don't know who's misleading and lying to Moorman to attack long-distance services.  Some have suggested Stephen Gardner; others have suggested Coscia, otherse have suggested various Congresscritters, but I know of no direct evidence for any of these claims. 
 
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May have been meaningful back in the 1960s, but damages per passenger train crash are limited by statute to a *very* low amount now ($295 million), for everything short of deliberate malice, so that's not an actual reason now.

Hostility to running passenger trains is really just a matter of bad attitude, nothing more.  You can see the difference when you get a host railroad and a passenger operator with a good attitude at the same time (hello, Brightline).

Financially speaking, *some* of Amtrak's so-called long-distance trains are pretty bad (Sunset Limited, with empty space between El Paso and San Antonio, nothing between San Antonio and Houston, and failing to stop at Phoenix, has little hope of financial soundness); but most ofthem are financially better than nearly all the "short-distance" trains, and this includes all the Eastern services and the Coast Starlight.

I actually don't think Richard Anderson has it in for national network services; I think he's being hoodwinked and pulled around by the nose by other crooks within or without Amtrak.  He's easily misled because of:

(1) his airline background and lack of understanding of railroad economics

(2) Amtrak's essentially fraudulent accounting system; he probably didn't realize it was fraudulent when he arrived (unlike Moorman, who knew it was fraudulent)

I don't know who's misleading and lying to Moorman to attack long-distance services.  Some have suggested Stephen Gardner; others have suggested Coscia, otherse have suggested various Congresscritters, but I know of no direct evidence for any of these claims. 
One Andersen interview I Saw he was qouting figures like less than 6% of pax travel from start to end point on long distance services. I can't vouch to the accuracy but he seems to be gradually making a business case for rationalisation. Hi liner cars that need replacing in the2020's, patronage patterns etc etc v concentrating on the NEC and regional runs
 
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