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  • Amtrak Has an Image Problem

  • Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.
Discussion related to Amtrak also known as the National Railroad Passenger Corp.

Moderators: GirlOnTheTrain, mtuandrew, Tadman

 #1535492  by John_Perkowski
 
SouthernRailway wrote: Mon Mar 02, 2020 7:27 am 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.
There's a reason the railroads have not taken the US Government up on that offer. It's called TRUST. The railroads do not have it vis a vis the US Government.
 #1535494  by Tadman
 
First, to directly address the original theme - how can you fix your image if you don't know what the business does?

Is it a public good for transport? Is it a NEC service? Is it a regional service? Should it make a profit or not, and does that include below-rail? If a business cannot answer the key question of "what do we do?", the business can hardly get their image in order. Nor can they address other key issues like employee morale, efficiency, procurement, etc... all of which are serious problems.

Despite the bad PR, Mr. Anderson gets this and is trying to figure out what Amtrak does, in order to get the house in order. Many of us may not like the answer, but that leads to another issue: once the feds get involved, everybody has a finger in the cookie jar and mission drift gets worse, not better. It's the nature of the beast.

So the two biggest apparent stumbling blocks to subsidized private carriers mentioned appear to be liability and profitability. I think they're related.

1. There is liability, but usually the way around that is to create an arm's length subsidiary company that pays the parent company, either Class 1 or somebody like Keolis, as a stockholder. We see this proven technique used more often than we realize. Montana Rail Link, Indiana Railroad, Saint Lawrence and Hudson, Dereco (D&H/EL sub of N&W), Abellio, DB Schenker, et al are all arms length subsidiaries of railroads past and present used to potentially risky bet subsidiaries and provide a firewall to the parent. This technique has worked and continues to be used by major carriers like BNSF and CSX.

2. Profitability is another concern, but there are plenty of private concessions structured so that the parent makes money. There are also some that aren't. Rather than get into the weeds of what works and doesn't, I think it's fair to say that we can learn plenty of lessons from the Europeans on what works and doesn't. Virgin has had some problems in the UK. Thello operates a private sleeper train between France and Italy. There are decades of lessons to be learned here, but it's been working for 25 years now.
 #1535503  by SouthernRailway
 
John_Perkowski wrote: Mon Mar 02, 2020 9:47 am
SouthernRailway wrote: Mon Mar 02, 2020 7:27 am 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.
There's a reason the railroads have not taken the US Government up on that offer. It's called TRUST. The railroads do not have it vis a vis the US Government.
You mean the US government lies and screws over people? Huh.

Excellent point, actually. And US government contracting is such a pain in the neck.
 #1535515  by Tadman
 
There are people that do government contracting, but you have to be set up for it and understand the rules of the game, and be prepared to fight when things go wrong. Somehow Lockheed and General Dynamics print money by mostly selling to our government and others. There are also smaller companies that do quite well working with the government. But it's a much different mindset and model than the usual.

Consider my above example of Dereco. N&W knew they needed to take on D&H and Erie to make the Wabash-NKP merger happen in the government's eyes. Instead of swallowing it whole like PC did NH, they set up a totally separate company called Dereco to hold D&H and Erie. If anything went wrong at those marginal northeastern carriers, the firewall was there to protect N&W. It worked exactly as planned. When Agnes hit and Erie went under, N&W walked away
 #1535516  by east point
 
Engineer and conductor cost would probably be much higher. first training on use of HEP .Second work rules. third much shorter runs for crews. 2 persons in loco per work rules. fifth crews bidding in and out would make for a much higher turn over of operating crews. Seniority rears its ugly head. Persons near retirement would keep retiring making the need for more training.
 #1535532  by Backshophoss
 
Lets see if Mr Flynn gets that HQ puts out 1 uniform message, gets rid of the scattershot approach of Mr Anderson (who still has his hands in the "pie")
Mr Flynn has better relations with the class 1 RR's,hopefully.
Mends fences with the pvt cars owners,for starters.
 #1535537  by mcgrath618
 
Not sure how I should feel about Mr. Flynn. Anyone know anything about him? His bio in the announcement says he was involved with CSX (and of course, the airlines), which makes me hope he'll be a step up from Anderson (who had no past railroad experience).
 #1535783  by wigwagfan
 
I'd rather patronize a restaurant that looks like a dive and its servers wear street clothes, but the food is consistently good, the service is consistently good, everyone's happy, I pay a fair price, and I don't encounter any rats or cockroaches, than a restaurant that looks fancy, that spent a lot of money on hip decor, but the food is lousy and the service sucks.

Likewise, Amtrak - and specifically with my experience with WSDOT/ODOT's Cascades - the fancy $22 million/trainset Talgos don't impress me very much; I'm very content riding in a "rainbow era" Budd or Pullman-Standard coach no matter what the paint scheme is, even if speed restricted to 70 MPH or slower - if I can reliably depend on the service. Those $22 million Talgo trains mean nothing when they crash onto I-5, or have maintenance delays, or the seating arrangement sucks (Got to love riding a train that sells itself on the view, but you get stuck in a seat with a view of the panel between two windows), or the seat assignment and boarding process is worse than getting strip searched by the TSA...
 #1535808  by Tadman
 
Agreed, I have very mixed emotions about the Talgo trains. It's certainly not the panacea they think it is. How much better off would they be with heavily modernized and upgraded Horizon cars or Surfliner clones (or now VIaggio Siemens cars) that don't need a riding tech?

Same for the image and uniform issues. I'd much rather have standard and adhered-to station and on-board procedure than uniform stripes or jackets. That would go a long way to improving passenger and employee morale.
 #1536229  by WesternNation
 
Tadman wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2020 10:50 am Agreed, I have very mixed emotions about the Talgo trains. It's certainly not the panacea they think it is. How much better off would they be with heavily modernized and upgraded Horizon cars or Surfliner clones (or now VIaggio Siemens cars) that don't need a riding tech?

Same for the image and uniform issues. I'd much rather have standard and adhered-to station and on-board procedure than uniform stripes or jackets. That would go a long way to improving passenger and employee morale.
A common station procedure may be challenging given the fact that the stations are typically not the same design. I'm not saying I disagree, but that should be something developed on the division level instead of nationally.

Can you explain what you mean by onboard procedure? All the times I've ridden Amtrak I haven't really noticed any difference in onboard service, announcements, etc, from one ride to the next.
 #1536254  by Greg Moore
 
Oh I've definitely seen differences.

I used to ride the Empire Service trains pretty much weekly.

And when we had delays, the announcements varied from crickets, to fully informational.
You can guess which one had the passengers a bit happier.

Then there was the ride on the Crescent where the car attendant was almost literally screaming at passengers because on the mostly empty car (I think there were 6 of us) one had dared to temporarily move from an aisle seat to a window seat. Even after apologizing and moving back, the car attendant continued to loudly complain about how rude the passengers were, how much tougher they were making her job, etc. I really was shocked by her attitude.

And then there was the time a conductor assaulted an employee of mine. (My employee refused to press any chargers, but would have been fully justified in doing so.)
 #1536255  by wigwagfan
 
WesternNation wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2020 5:55 pm Can you explain what you mean by onboard procedure? All the times I've ridden Amtrak I haven't really noticed any difference in onboard service, announcements, etc, from one ride to the next.
There are major and significant differences between the west coast trains - Coast Starlight, Empire Builder, Cascades, and the various California trains (IMO they tended to be consistent despite being three completely different operations.)

California trains: Go to platform. Wait. Get on train. Sit. Give Conductor ticket when asked. Enjoy ride.

Cascades: Take the worst experience at an airport and make it worse. Stand in a line. Stand in another line. Then stand in another line. When door opens, rush. Deal with people who don't understand their car and seat assignment. Block aisle. Wait for people moving their home to find place for their luggage. Climb over suitcases. Get to seat only to find someone can't read (or you were given a duplicate seat assignment.) Deal with that. Finally sit down only to find your seat is the one between two windows so you have no view. Try to go to Bistro car, only to find every table is occupied for the entire trip by people hogging the tables. Try to order something while standing in line going through turnouts. Return to seat. Now realize why Amtrak does such a brisk business selling alcohol on this train.

Coast Starlight and Empire Builder: Wait in line. When door opens, go. Find car, get in, sit down. Give Conductor ticket when asked. Enjoy ride.
 #1536302  by Tadman
 
Wigwag and Greg are 100% spot on.

I'll add that the differences aren't just train-to-train, there are differences in boarding and seating protocol from day to day (or more accurately crew to crew) on the same darn train, and also across different station.

This kind of BS lead straight to the allegations of racism last month because there is absolutey no rhyme or reason to how onboard affairs are conducted. I'm a railfan and I pay very close attention and I can barely figure it out. How on earth are normal paying customers supposed to figure this out? No kidding they feel targeted, slighted, and usually angered. I disagreed with the Baltimore Sun's analysis, but I don't disagree with Ms. Ifil's anger over the basic hassle of interfacing with officious jerks. She had a right to be frustrated.
WesternNation wrote: Mon Mar 09, 2020 5:55 pm
A common station procedure may be challenging given the fact that the stations are typically not the same design. I'm not saying I disagree, but that should be something developed on the division level instead of nationally.
You're not wrong, but in my travel I've noticed you have a few types of stations:

1. Schizophrenic masterpieces - NYP
2. Big terminals - CHI, BOS, WAS
3. Nice stations - ALB, Anaheim, San Jose
4. Average stations - South Bend, Tukwila, Milwaukee Airport
5. Small stations with short platforms - Lawrence Kansas

Would it be that hard to develop five one-page PDF's that have a ten step procedure on how to do this? And enforce it? Heck you could probably narrow it down to three - Big, Medium, and Podunk.

It could address things like
1. Where to line up for each car and how early
2. How seats are assigned
3. How many doors are opened
4. Why are the cafe attendant and conductor talking over each other on the PA
5. When to use a step box

I know this is possible because the airlines do this over multiple size planes and airports. You can actually see the Delta people reading the procedure off their iphone while speaking over the PA.

It's not that hard if you give a s***.
 #1536314  by John_Perkowski
 
Let me see if I can summarize up to now:

Decide on a very few VITAL messages at the top, disseminate those messages to every employee, and then have management reinforce them consistently.

Train your people in customer service. Reinforce the themes constantly. Develop idiot proof procedures. Use them.

MAKE THE PAYING GUESTS FEEL WELCOME.

Look at activities which make your company money. If they align with your core mission, try to take advantage of them. If they don't, get rid of them.

B-School 101, anyone?
 #1536383  by David Benton
 
Part of the problem is before you get on the train. At least away from the big stations.
Arrive at a station with virtually no information on display , unmanned about 1/2 the time , no food , dodgy shelter, in an industrial area. Passengers tend to huddle by the building if there is one, the train been several times longer than the building means people going in all directions when it arrives and its not a great start.
Plus many passengers are first time (hopefully not last time) or infrequent riders.
Contrast that with Airports. Even bus stops are usually based by a business that will offer some level of surrogate service ( gas stations, cafes. roadhouses).
Turn the running of stations over to the local community , wether businesses or volunteers/ local council.
I wonder how much better ridership is from stations with active friends/ volunteers?