(Un) Happy 49th - Amtrak

This 49th birthday has surely got to be the most distressed that Amtrak has "celebrated" in its 49 years of life.

How many of the "photo lines" out there on A-Day eve and then on A-Day. as well as those taking their "last and first" rides (yours truly MILW 103 to Savanna, BN 10 return; MILW #7 to Milw MILW 305 return - paying to ride my own road) would ever envision Amtrak would be facing its present crisis. I can remember how renowned and published photographer, Bob Schmidt, produced a slide show depicting "The End" set to the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem and for Amtrak's beginning, Beethoven's "Ode to Joy".

But 49 years later it's all different; COVID will end, but the fight to save Amtrak to provide meaningful transportation from a reduced - and not coming back for a long time - passenger base, will only begin.

I can only presume that on this date 9 years ago I was taking my first overnight on Amtrak. They had a little band at the station as we were passing through Olympia-Lacey to celebrate.

I intend to take another thousand mile overnighter as soon as it's safe to do so

To further clarify the point I made originating this topic, the hard fact is that the passenger "base" i.e. those who used Amtrak during FY19 for whatever reason, is never coming back. That's not saying that higher passenger counts will develop in the future, but so much will have changed "post-COVID".

All transportation and lodging companies, will be adversely affected. Airlines and aircraft manufacturers have as good as acknowledged this in the financial press. Don't think too many airlines are saying "where's my MAX" at present.

For example, companies will say, "need we go to this or that conference" when webinars worked during COVID? Higher education could well see web classes the "new normal", and the introduction of 5G will only make such more attainable. As an aside, there goes a reliable passenger base Amtrak has enjoyed.

Telecommuting will adversely affect commuter rail; never mind office space occupancy.

I've only scratched the surface.

I suspect that telecommuting will not grow as much as a lot of people suspect. I for one haven't enjoyed it, and I can't imagine what it's like with kids around. There's a lot to be said for the separation of home and work space

https://beta.amtrak.com/anniversary

Happy A-Day video from the new CEO.

With the specter of Covid-19,it's hard to celebrate Amtrak's 49th,# 50 should prove interesting.

Backshophoss wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 2:16 pm With the specter of Covid-19,it's hard to celebrate Amtrak's 49th,# 50 should prove interesting.

I feel Amtrak should do Heritage Units for their Chargers, ACS-64s, and/or Genesis locomotives for the lines that the services originally run on. For example, a Great Northern Genesis or a New Haven ACS-64, or even an Illinois Central Siemens Charger.
But then again, this is talk for next year and it is hard to recognize any holiday (including St. Patrick's day since Google forgot to mention it) with the pandemic still going on.

bdawe wrote: ↑Fri May 01, 2020 9:35 am I suspect that telecommuting will not grow as much as a lot of people suspect.

I agree, as far as college students go. I'm a professor, my wife's a professor, we have two kids is school, my daughter just finally chose a college today. I hear from lots of people who either hate doing it all online, or who think it's going OK but really want to be in person again. Doing online education well is a lot more work for both parties. A big videoconference isn't the same and sitting in room together; you just don't get the cues back from the other people. ----------------Since I started writing I solved a software setting problem for two students who settled in to chat on email. I think people are going to like being together for school. Will they still ride trains? Dunno. Some might go to school closer to home than otherwise and be in rail distance rather than air. More might choose to drive back and forth -- a big problem for all mass transportation in the next couple years.

BUT I also think that a lot of small business meetings will go online. Those can be really good online. And travel for business meetings is a big part of air travel and probably Acela. Conferences can go either way: the kind where people really go just to see contacts and plan things and be away from regular work to get different stuff done will probably get going again after a while, but ones where you just go to hear paid presenters tell you about the latest new thing might well end up online.

Mr. Arborway, I'm sorry if I "stabbed your (and "The Mrs.") profession in the back".

Will the quality of higher education that you and your colleagues can deliver suffer? I don't know - I've been too long removed from an undergraduate setting to comment (even if 40 class hr X 23yrs CPE to maintain my CPA license means I have an unrecognized Masters degree).

I know kids here in my rather affluent "burb" who are considering "finishing out" on-line at such time their institution offers it. I ask them how is on-line instruction? The consensus I get is "fine" - biggest objection is screen quality "freeze ups and what Col. Perkowski and I call "As The World Turns" (hey Comcast, are you listening?). Just yesterday on my walk, a "Greek" girl (with her Father) shared with me "campus life is expendable if I can still have my education".

This possibly paywalled Journal article lays out what's ahead for the traditional on-campus delivery of higher education.

But I still envision college student travel (OK, maybe not from the six of eight "Ivies" along the NEC) is going to take a hit - and such travel (especially in this new day when "every student wants a car" is history) is clearly part of the "base" I noted earlier.

No worries, Mr. Norman. The other half of the time I predict exactly what you say, especially in the near term and especially among students who are uncertain about college, or shy, maybe less likely among students who want to be chemists or electrical engineers or other hands-on jobs. And the ones who do go someplace to college will probably be less likely to travel around as much during the term. And from some colleges weekend travel is big. I remember seeing the Suburban Express Inc buses lining up at the U of I on Friday nights when I was a grad student there in the 90s and 00s: Some enterprising person who worked I think for Grayhound or Illini Swallow or something had gotten so many students asking whether there was bus to Hinsdale, Northbrook, etc., that he started a company to rent a bunch of buses every Friday and Sunday and run them to suburban Chicago malls. The trains tended to get a few dozen students on Fridays and Sundays, too. This seemed odd to me at first, because I knew hardly any Harvard students who went home on the weekends very often, and some of them walked or took the T. I'm not sure if the two schools had different travel habits, or if it was just a chance of who I knew, or even that the U of I was so big that a small minority of students going home for a weekend could fill a whole train and a dozen buses.

You can call me Sam if you want. Sam Martland, history professor from Roslindale, Mass., now almost 18 years in Terre Haute after 7 years in C-U. But then, I kind of like Mr. Arborway. Some of my earliest memories are waiting in the car for my dad to come out of Forest Hills Orange Line station. No wonder I liked trains: from one spot you could see Amtrak, commuter rail, Arborway PCC cars, and maybe a glimpse of Orange Line cars, if the big RR viaduct didn't block them. Then for seven years I rode a school bus across or along the route of the Arborway trolley line every day, and watched the trolleys and their paint schemes and their numbers. I rode the line once with my mother. The Arborway line was suspended eight months before I would have started riding it every day to get to high school. I sent a lot of letters asking for it back. Now I'm not really convinced it was a good line for trolleys -- very narrow street the last mile or two, with no real parallel alternate routes. And I never needed it for a one-seat ride, because I got that one the bus, too. But I would have liked it. This is all OT.

It would seem to me the airlines will lose the most business. My daughter works for a major company that does a ton of engineering. Everybody hopes the long distance trips to meet clients ends but both management and labor are very down on continuing working at home once restrictions are lifted calling it inefficient and much less productive than working with people in the office setting. I'm sure things like billing and payroll could be continued at home but we're a long way off from everybody closing their offices and having people just work from home from now on.

Mr. Martland, you should have been at U of I during my day. While I always "skimped on the Suds" at Kam's so as to have enough to ride Parlor and have a "traditional railroad" Panama Ltd. Breakfast, others were relegated to the Student Specials. The best description of those were from a Frat Brother who said "this looks like something out of Dr. Zhivago".

But when I went back in '69 to "finish up after Service", the IC Agent said to me "they finish 57 (Onarga-Rantoul gap), and it's curtains for us". But by then, the Panama had been badly downgraded, and I had an auto - and the 47 was my way North.

I know we are drifting off topic, but Suburban express was actually started by a college student I went to high school with. Dennis was contracting with Mid-America out of Elk Grove (near O’Hare) during early 1980’s, and it took Greyhound by surprise.

If I remember, he got kicked out of university housing for running a business from his dorm room, but was making enough by that time that getting an apartment wasn’t a problem.

He also did a lot of domain squatting when the Internet first came out, and the money he made selling web domains to companies essentially is what funded the company in the 90’s to be able to buy their own buses.

They shut down a year ago after the State of Illinois went after them. Probably for the best - COVID would have finished them off as an exclusive university and airport transit provider. 34 years is a good run for a college startup.

Amtrak at 50th will be a shadow of itself, except for NE Corridor, and a few other regionals

Hopefully there will be 50th Anniversary Events all over to celebrate Amtrak. Now that Richard Anderson is working elsewhere, maybe Flynn will have great activities planned.