Amtrak Food Service: Down and Down It Goes. And Where It Stops, Nobody Knows.
For years, Amtrak has been under unrelenting pressure from members of Congress to cut costs. Fine. No problem. We’re all in favor of efficient operation. The problem is, the know-nothings and the publicity hounds on The Hill have been focusing their attention on food service. They do it because the general public is reluctant to put any serious effort into actually understanding complicated matters of public policy.
Knowing that, Amtrak critics in Congress don’t even bother looking into things like the high cost of maintaining rail cars built 40 years ago. Instead they make it easy for the voters.
That’s why clowns like Congressman John Mica (R-Florida) call news conferences and hold up a McDonald’s Big Mac as an Amtrak long-distance train rolls by. Mica figures people will agree when he fulminates that there’s something wrong if Amtrak dining cars are selling hamburgers for $9.50 when, he says, the actual costs to the railroad for that burger is 16 bucks.
First of all, that $16 also gets you fries and a drink. And, by the way, it’s all served at your table in a dining car on a train that’s taking you across the country at 60 or 70 miles an hour.
And what would happen to Amtrak’s ridership if the only food you could get on that cross-country journey came out of a microwave in a plastic bag?
But, because Amtrak depends on a miserly federal subsidy every year, executives from our national passenger rail system have to appear before Congressional committees and listen with respectful demeanor while smirking John Mica mocks them and mugs for the cameras.
And then those Amtrak people go back to their offices and do their desperate best to cut still more costs out of Amtrak’s food and beverage operation.
Do you want to know what’s coming next? How bad things have gotten? The coffee urns in Amtrak sleeping cars are now going to be unplugged and put away at 9:30 a.m. instead of making hot coffee available for sleeping car passengers throughout the day until dinnertime.
A veteran car attendant on my recent trip has so far refused to do that. He says he’ll keep on providing coffee for his passengers all day until he’s formally reprimanded for doing so.
Why?
“Because it’s chicken shit,” he said.
Yes, it is. And it’s got John Mica’s name all over it.
Good thought, Adam … sad to say, it’s more complicated than that. All of the food service people on Amtrak trains are union employees and there is the union contract to consider. I’m not familiar with the specific terms or the expiration date, but the change you suggest – and it has been considered – would mean the loss of thousands of union jobs. Even assuming most of those employees would be picked up by the new contractor, it would no doubt be for less pay, so …
At least upon off-the-cuff thought this seems like an area ripe for public-private-partnership; something one would imagine [honest] Conservatives would support?
With all that captive audience (the passengers) is it really not possible to *make* money selling food and beverages? Amtrak couldn’t lease the dining car space to a private operator – it is just a diner after all – it just happens to exist on a train. Or somehow manage a way to support private dining cars – like a Starbucks car or a Chick-filet car – or whatever. If you’ve ever seen one of the US Railcar luxury/dining car… why can’t that just be a restaurant? Obviously there is a lot of overhead and licensing and blah blah [but somehow our predecessors managed].
Especially on the l-o-n-g haul trains, if they are going to continue to exist, it seems some reasonable revenue-neutral way of providing amenities needs to be found.
Let us hope that cooler heads will prevail. In fact, according to the Parlour Car attendant, the wine tastings are going to be restored on the Coast Starlight in 10 days or so. We shall see. Perhaps cooler heads will indeed prevail.
Idiots!