Sunday, December 16, 2007

Where Should Amtrak Shine?

Everywhere and in every Passenger Rail endeavor, of course!

But let's not wish for too much. Focus is everything and we all know Congress has none.

Where Amtrak should be shining, it isn't. This weekend brings that to the fore when we look at air traffic snarled because of snow in the northeast. Flights in to Chicago are delayed because flights out to the east have to be. This storm should not be delaying Amtrak.

But it is. Looking at the scheduled vs. estimated arrival times for Amtrak in Chicago it appears that the delays for Amtrak are worse than air traffic.

Because we like it, we would certainly rather wait for a train in Union Station, Chicago, than we would wait for a flight at either of Midway or O'Hare. But not everybody likes trains as much.

Amtrak should be shining in the areas where there is no excuse for it to be as shoddy as the shoddy-as-the-passenger-trains-of-old airlines are. Trouble is, not enough people remember the shoddy Passenger Rail 1960s, BA.

Please email us and tell us where you think Amtrak should and could be shining without even one dollar of extra subsidy. Then tell us where the focus of future subsidy should be. As you know, our position is that Amtrak should be as heavily subsidized as roads and air traffic. So don't argure against subsidy. Just tell us something constructive.

©2007 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com

4 comments:

Unknown said...

gottarelocate.com covers AMTRAK schedules and destinations. The site has links to local stations with google maps. Hope this helps someone.

Christopher Parker said...

OK, here's what I think. Spend money on I.T. to come up with a completly new reservations system with seats assigned in advance (and a wait list) and better yield management and eliminating tickets completly. Everybody would travel only on their reservation and ID's would only be spot-checked (80% of passengers would be checked, but not necessarily over time - ticket inspectors would ride randomly and do the entire train at once). High fines would ensure high compliance. Doors - and traps - would be trainlined, eliminating the need for a crew member at each door. Platforms would be lengthened, eliminating the need for double stops. Assistant Conductors and coach attendants would be eliminated. Baggage would be handled by a sleeping car attendant in a car combine sleeper/bag. With all the ticketing tasks eliminated from the conductor's job they could be free to focus on customer service (no more hanging out in the dinner) and the safety of train operations.

All these changes - with would take capital - would make the individual trains cheaper to run.

My plan would be to guarantee that no staff is laid off by these changes. So more equipment would be ordered and service would be increased by 50%.

Result - 50% more service and 100% more ridership with roughly the same operating cost.

Start here, and on making stations into profit centers (with rental car agencies, travel agencies, etc) instead of expenses. Then move on to bigger projects.

mistertrains said...

I love Christopher's idea . . . trouble is it all has to happen at once. Being in the transportation business doesn't apparently make Amtrak a logistics expert. Somewhere in the ebb and flow you are going to have to actually increase employment to avoid having to (even temporarily) lay off people.

Anonymous said...

The quality of passenger services at the present time is rather important. The company should necessarily operate across the whole country to be able to stay on the market. At www.pissedconsumer.com I found out that Amtrak is the National Railroad Passenger Corporation. The company operates passenger service on routes across the continental United States of America connecting hundreds of destinations in 48 states; routes to Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. In addition to the passenger service, Amtrak expanded into freight transportation market and now operates a captive bus service. I think the company is worth trusting.