by DanD3815
I think Amtrak does a great job with their LD trains, I had a blast on the crescent back in september and do not think contracting out anything is even necessary.
Gilbert B Norman wrote:Now regarding "contracting out' the operation and maintenance of intercity passenger trains with parties other than Amtrak, that is a "could well happen'. For example, I could easily envision 'The Garbagemen' (Veolia; they hold the commercial contract here in my village; Republic/Allied Waste the residential) operating a service such as The Downeaster, which has no physical connection with other Amtrak routes. "Amtrak California", presently as good as marketed as an entity separate from Amtrak, evolving into "Intercity California' (IC; since that service mark could be bought on the cheap from Canadian National) and with a garbageman at the throttle or picking up the trash (whoops; the tickets). The "taboo' of Rules qualifying persons other than those holding seniority was broken by Amtrak with the assumption of Train and Engine employees during the 1980;'s - the Genie is out of the bottle on that one.Didn't PRIIA limit contracting out to entities owning infrastructure that Amtrak operates on (i.e. the freight railroads)? That would appear to exclude Veolia (or Keolis or Herzog).