A Few Ideas for Amtrak’s New Boss.
It’s been raining like hell for days in our little corner of Maui and the To-Do list that my “supervisor” compiles for me is getting longer by the day. My priorities during this stretch of unsettled weather have been to watch the Red Sox games and to wonder about the future of Amtrak under the leadership of its new boss, Wick Moorman. I now have a list of things I’d like to see happen or start to happen during his tenure. Please try not to laugh.
1. Launch a concerted and aggressive effort with Congress to find a permanent and dedicated source of adequate funding for Amtrak.
2. Fix Amtrak’s accounting system so it provides a clear separation between the Northeast Corridor and the national system in order to put an end to the canard that the NEC is profitable and the long-distance trains are big money-losers.
3. Beg, borrow or steal the money for new equipment for the long-distance trains: coaches, sleepers, diners and lounge cars. And I mean REAL lounge cars, reserved for sleeping car passengers and similar to the Pacific Parlour Cars on the Coast Starlight. Many people—I am one of them—ride that train because of the parlor cars and people will do the same on other overnight trains if similar lounge cars are part of the consist.
4. Improve the dining experience on the long-distance trains by bringing back real china; giving the chefs more latitude to offer regional dishes; and add one or two more staff to make it work.
5. Provide a daily train between New Orleans and Orlando and upgrade both the Sunset Limited and the Cardinal to daily service.
6. As additional equipment and funding becomes available (see item 1), resume service on routes that Amtrak has abandoned (the Desert Wind and the Pioneer); restore some of the popular traditional routes (Chicago-Florida); and add frequencies on heavily traveled routes like Boston/New York to Chicago.
7. Stop making nice and start being aggressive with the idiots in Congress who mindlessly oppose passenger rail. Most especially, stand up to idiot-in-chief, John Mica. We are right and they are wrong!
OK, Wick . . . go getum!
I think & hope, Moorman will do more for the longhauls than Boardman. I knew Boardman & have spoken with in the past. A very nice guy, but very NEC fixated. Like I wrote in a previous post, Wick Moorman worked under Claytor, at Southern or now CSX. Claytor was a no nonsense boss. If he were on the Crescent, as he would frequently ride, (unannounced), the crew had better been on their P’s&Q’s, or you would hear about it, & I mean on the spot. He was hands on, he popped up on many other trains as well, including on the NEC, where I met him. Claytor also knew how to deal with congress, he did that under a tough administration, & in reality which administration hasn’t been for Amtrak. So because of all this, I’m hoping Wick will be more like Graham.
I tend to think it’s a bigger priority to improve the current network, before adding new (or old…) lines again. So yes, I would eliminate the 3/week runs and replace them by daily trains, but would probably go for reasonably small additions, like making the Oklahoma Flyer run to a station on the California Zephyr route, or adding a second train on CHI-NYP/BOS, to give travellers an option to leave both in the morning or in the day, before adding whole new lines. I would love to see the Pioneer back on the tracks, but I wouldn’t make it the highest priority. But that’s my idea…
You’re quite right. Except for my first item–a dedicated source of income–I didn’t prioritize my list.
In addition, add more service levels to trains. Core routes should have economy coach for trips less than 500 miles, standard coach, lay flat seating premium coach, economy sleeper, traditional sleeper, and first class sleeper.
RE Your number 6 above. Not mentioned was Amtrak’s Lone Star train that ran Chicago to Galveston through Kansas City, Wichita, OKC, Fort Worth (and, I think, Dallas) and Houston. That one, along with the Floridian, along with some other routes, were eliminated in the 1979 Jimmy Carter cutbacks.
That Lone Star (previously the Santa Fe Texas Chief) is certainly one route that should be resurrected.
At this point, two of the larger cities in the US that don’t have passenger service are in my neck of the woods: Wichita and Tulsa.
One of the better passenger railroads ever served them both well;
Santa Fe.
In Amtrak’s early days, did they serve Denver to Dallas or Atlanta to Dallas?
A great many trains went away when the private railroads went out of the passenger business. I don’t have the answer to your question, but I’m sure someone will let us know.
Amtrak has never served Denver to Dallas or Atlanta to Dallas.