Amtrak Has an Image Problem

[SouthernRailway]

Florida East Coast was out of the passenger business, so Brightline and FEC have no obligations to Amtrak. I've read on railroad.net that Southern for one figured their deficit running passenger service for a few years until they could cleanly discontinue service without obligation would be less then mandatory contributions to fund Amtrak. I guess if a "legacy" railroad like NS or CSX or BNSF wanted to compete with Amtrak they would need permission.

And the law now gives them permission. Several LD routes are available to be run by a private company, and the private company would be subsidized. No Class I had expressed interest. I don’t get it.

[QB 52.32]

The class 1's are part of the problem with that PSR sickness spreading thru them

Amtrak's own 12/19 Host Railroad Report Card looking back over 2 years prior does not bear this out. It shows solid improvement at PSR railroads CSX, NS and CN, and, no deterioration at any post-PSR-implementation Class 1. In fact, PSR CSX outperformed non-PSR BNSF for much of 2019, a big change from one year to another. Blame Class 1's if you'd like, but not because of PSR.

[Gilbert B Norman]

And the law now gives them permission. Several LD routes are available to be run by a private company, and the private company would be subsidized. No Class I had expressed interest. I don’t get it.

Mr. SRY, I would be extremely interested to learn what provision of what enacted legislation obviates Section 2.1 of the May 1, 1971 Agreement, which holds the party roads are "out" and there is no going back in.

Of course, the barristers call this whole exercise "moot". No road is going to reenter a business that they fought so long and hard for the prerogative to exit.

[east point]

The class 1's are part of the problem with that PSR sickness spreading thru them

Amtrak's own 12/19 Host Railroad Report Card looking back over 2 years prior does not bear this out. It shows solid improvement at PSR railroads CSX, NS and CN, and, no deterioration at any post-PSR-implementation Class 1. In fact, PSR CSX outperformed non-PSR BNSF for much of 2019, a big change from one year to another. Blame Class 1's if you'd like, but not because of PSR.

Really cannot include NS. Crescent and Michigan trains have gotten worse this calendar year. Only reason Crescent not worse is the cancellations ATL - NOL.

[ThirdRail7]

Mr. SRY, I would be extremely interested to learn what provision of what enacted legislation obviates Section 2.1 of the May 1, 1971 Agreement, which holds the party roads are "out" and there is no going back in.

Of course, the barristers call this whole exercise "moot". No road is going to reenter a business that they fought so long and hard for the prerogative to exit.

You're right about the host reentering but they were authorized to bid on Long Distance trains under the FAST act of 2015. This led to the §24711. Competitive passenger rail service pilot program which specifically allowed the host railroad to place bids under part 3:

(3) Eligible petitioners.—The following parties are eligible to submit petitions under paragraph (1):

(A) A rail carrier or rail carriers that own the infrastructure over which Amtrak operates a long-distance route, or another rail carrier that has a written agreement with a rail carrier or rail carriers that own such infrastructure.

(B) A State, group of States, or State-supported joint powers authority or other sub-State governance entity responsible for provision of intercity rail passenger transportation with a written agreement with the rail carrier or rail carriers that own the infrastructure over which Amtrak operates a long-distance route and that host or would host the intercity rail passenger transportation.

(C) A State, group of States, or State-supported joint powers authority or other sub-State governance entity responsible for provision of intercity rail passenger transportation and a rail carrier with a written agreement with another rail carrier or rail carriers that own the infrastructure over which Amtrak operates a long-distance route and that host or would host the intercity rail passenger transportation.

Naturally, no one submitted a bid.

[Gilbert B Norman]

Thank you Mr. Third Rail for the cite.

Having been removed from the industry since 1981, but following its affairs (some even call me a railfan), I had been unaware of the subsequent legislation.

Mr. SRY, I stand corrected.

[ThirdRail7]

And the law now gives them permission. Several LD routes are available to be run by a private company, and the private company would be subsidized. No Class I had expressed interest. I don’t get it.

I'm not sure why you don't get it. One of the first posts I made on this board in 2011 was in response to the thoughts in your Contracting out the long-distance trains thread. I mentioned

Sounds interesting, except for one thing. Liability. The host railroads have been offered the chance to run the trains Amtrak operates on their territory. They remain uninterested because they really don't want the liability of passenger service.

If they took over the service, there would be no shield between them and liabilty.

It's one of the things that saves Amtrak.

Furthermore, you started the Turn ownership and governance of Amtrak over to private RRs? thread in 2013. It was a pretty bold idea but still had a problem that you stated is a valid point:

While your basic line of thinking is honorable, I'm still not sure how you think adding another layer of hands in the pot will increase efficiency. If anything, there is another (possibly) obstructionist layer of muddle to plow through that will still have to answer to the Feds for the subsidies. When you say turn it over to private railroads, which ones are you talking about? The major class 1s or any private railroad that may want to buy stock? What makes you think a freight company will add efficiency to a passenger operation which has far more regulations and moves a different product? If they thought they could do it, why did CSX, who received the full operating costs of providing MARC passenger service say they didn't want the service they provided for years? N&S had the chance to snatch up the VREs and in the end, didn't even put in a bid (which kind of surprised me.)

If operators don't want passenger service on a state level with their costs all but guaranteed, what makes you think they'd want to take on Amtrak's woes, particularly if they have to answer to the ground rules of Congress?

Like it or not, the current CEO has attempted to make changes to the system and operations. Congress has rebuffed a lot of the things that were floated. Why would a freight operator want the increased regulations, increased scrutiny, increased costs, and increased liability to move a product (passengers) that has been proven to be a money loser and still have to answer to the whims of Congress?

Finally, the regulations and requirements keep intensifying, especially if you deal with passengers. I mentioned this in 2018's
Do Amtrak LD trains have a future? thread:

Additionally, freight wants very little to do with passenger services. They don't want the liability or the expense. This particularly true since there are different classes of certifications for passenger and freight.

Class 1s sure seem to operate a pretty substantial number of commuter operations for wanting so little to do with passenger services, including hundreds of trains per day on UP & BNSF Metra service, BNSF Sounder commuter service in Seattle (not a legacy operation), CP operated commuter services in Toronto & Montreal

Conversely, Conrail got out of the commuter rail service. CSX kicked out of their legacy commuter contracts (indeed, charging Maryland an additional million dollars a year if memory serves when they couldn't find an operator by the time the contract ran out) and when NS was offered the VRE service, they declined. They didn't even want the Manassas line, even though it is their territory.

Whatever happened to that provision that would allow a company to operate 3 long distance trains? Did that generate any interest from the freight operators?

I didn't see it mentioned on this board, but another freight operator is attempting to opt-out of commuter service. Behold:

https://www.chicagobusiness.com/greg-hi ... o-readmore]

Attention, Metra riders: UP, commuter rail service are squaring off in court
Union Pacific wants Metra to take over direct operation of lines that carry 100,000 riders a day.

Please allow a few brief fair use quotes:

A contract dispute between Metra and its largest service provider has landed in federal court here, creating uncertainty over who will operate train lines that serve more than 100,000 passengers a day.

The legal battle pits Metra against the Union Pacific Railroad, which Metra currently pays about $100 million a year to operate the UP North (Kenosha), Northwest (Harvard and McHenry) and West (Elburn) lines.

Metra pays UP 100 million dollars per year to operate three commuter lines in the Chicago area. I'm not sure if that covers the entire cost of the operation but I would think it does cover the net cost of the operation.

It doesn't matter since UP wants out!

In a statement, UP makes it clear it wants out of that deal so that it can concentrate on its freight business.

“We are negotiating a new agreement that gives Metra direct responsibility for operating its commuter lines through a services transfer,” the company said in a statement. “This will allow Union Pacific to focus on moving customers' goods in and out of Chicago and across the nation.

The Class 1s do not see the profitability in a heavily regulated operation. You can not do the same things in passenger service that you can do in freight. This leads to more expenses, more costs and a ton of political interference.

Who wants that kind of aggravation?

[WesternNation]

*clip a few posts of banter about Phase this, Phase that, back to back locomotives, etc*

Hey, I got a way to fix Amtrak's image:

* Don't crash so much.
* Run on time
* Stop breaking down all the time.

Nobody gives a crap about how the train looks, or what phase the paint job is, if the above three aren't being met.

To most people outside the railfan world, "Amtrak" brings up images of trains in ditches, late, or broken down. They can barely get the NEC right. Forget about the more esoteric stuff like going faster than 80mph out west...

I covered this in my opening. Amtrak has a lot of problems:

-OTP outside of the NEC is largely outside of Amtrak’s control.
-Crashing has a variety of causes. The Cayce accident was caused by CSX negligence, not Amtrak. I believe the 501 accident was attributed to poor training and instruction on the part of Sounder and Amtrak, but not necessarily the engineer himself.
-Mechanical issues are a frequent occurrence due to the lack of sufficient funding. Again, not necessarily in Amtrak’s control. They’ve been a political football for years.

The uniforms and branding are a relatively simple piece of this puzzle that can be solved in-house without reliance on outside stakeholders. Amtrak HAS to get a unified brand image together if they ever hope to be taken seriously about fixing other things like what you mentioned.

[John_Perkowski]

The branding does not matter if the product is substandard.

Let me be blunt. Amtrak, certainly from my recent experience in the long distance market, offers a substandard product. Trains don’t run on time, the food service is excremental, and amenities offered in due course by the airlines just don’t exist on The system.

[SouthernRailway]

I hadn’t thought of liability making Class Is adverse to running passenger trains. But they could set up subsidiaries to handle passenger. And if Florida East Coast saw a benefit in sponsoring Brightline, surely there’s some benefit to running passenger trains.

I would think that the Class Is, which are invisible to most people, would like the ability to be known by the public and would like to get rid of a third party running on their tracks. But clearly they don’t.

[John_Perkowski]

It’s been 50 years.

There’s also the small matter of significant losses. There’s also the small matter of the government pulling the fiscal rug from under passenger rail by way of the demise of the railway mail service. There was also the matter of the clear and obvious matter of clear competition with auto and air.

No, I see full well why the Class 1s want no part of passenger service.

[TomNelligan]

The branding does not matter if the product is substandard.

That nicely summarizes my opinion on this topic. The average non-railfan passenger doesn't care whether all the paint schemes on a train match, or how the on-board crew is dressed (assuming it's something reasonably professional-looking). He/she just wants to get where they're going on time and in comfort. Unless Amtrak first addresses the chronic issues of host railroad delays and too many mechanical breakdowns, a new visual image isn't going to bring in many new riders.

[Arborwayfan]

Exactly. Run comfortable trains on reasonable schedules at decent prices and people won't care what the staff wear or what's painted on the cars. Beyond that, the only real branding that's needed is to let people know that the service exists in their town. (I flew Delta last weekend and on one plane each of the three flight attendants had a different variant of the uniform (vest over white shirt and dark pants, short sleeve dark shirt over dark pants, dark skirt suit). Somehow we all survived. )

To be fair, it's not just railfans that go overboard on branding. Every so often I get instructions on how I am supposed to format my employer's name in my email signature and on PowerPoint slides. I have a little collection of nametags, on for each version of my employer's name-trademark. From time to time, when such activities seem to be taking energy away from actually doing a better job of our work, some of us get a little annoyed.


By the way, somehow I think that if some class I offered to take over an LD route from Amtrak and cover all the costs without subsidy, and agree to give Amtrak back the right to run the train if the railroad later decided to drop it, Amtrak leadership would at least explore further, given that all LD trains cost Amtrak money to run. In that extremely unlikely situation, even if the law doesn't let Amtrak make exceptions, somehow I think Congress might go along. The law seems to have been written to prevent a railroad from joining Amtrak, shedding its passenger trains, and then restoring one hypothetical profitable route, possibly in competition with an Amtrak train over the same route. (Maybe Amtrak was rough with Iowa Pacific during the IP Hoosier State months, but that IP competing with Amtrak to be paid by Indiana to run a train; unloading a money-losing route might be different.)

[R36 Combine Coach]

The branding issue also applies to the fleet. An Amfleet train with a baggage car would have three different liveries (P40/P42 or ACS-64 leading, the Amfleets and the Viewliner, plus any LD cars (lounge, diner, sleepers).

[SouthernRailway]

The recent law that allows host railroads to run long-distance trains in Amtrak’s place provides for a government subsidy. A Class I or whoever wants to run a LD train would not do so on its own dime; it would be paid to do so.