Senate Committee Recommends STB Nominee, 5 Amtrak Board Nominees for Confirmation

The Senate Commerce Committee has recommended confirmation for one Biden administration appointee to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board and five nominees to the Amtrak Board of directors.

However, Railway Age magazine reported it is uncertain if the nominees will receive a floor vote due to limited floor time and the tradition of pairing Democratic nominees with Republican nominees for the purpose of confirmation.

All six of the nominees are Democrats, including incumbent STB member Robert M. Primus, who was nominated for a second term.

Nominated for the Amtrak board were Anthony R. Coscia, David M. Capozzi, Christopher Koos, the Rev. Samuel E. Lathem and Robin L. Wiessmann.

Railway Age said none of the six nominees appears to be in danger of being rejected if the Senate is able to vote on their confirmation.

President Joseph R. Biden is expected to renominate all six if they do not receive a vote this month.

Of the five Amtrak board nominees, Coscia, is the current board chairman, a post he has held since 2013. Three of the other nominees would replace members whose terms have expired but federal law allows them to continue serving until they or a successor is confirmed by the Senate.

The fifth Amtrak board nominee would fill a long-vacant position.

There are two Republican hold over members of the Amtrak board and another vacancy that must be filled by a Republican nominee.

As for the STB position, the term of nominee Primus expires at the end of this year but federal law enables him to remain in the position for up to year.

Amtrak Expansion Still Far Off

During remarks to the Amtrak Board of Directors last week, CEO Stephen Gardner gave an upbeat view of Amtrak’s future that he then qualified with numerous caveats that suggested expansion of the Amtrak network is still far away.

The board met in St. Louis and heard top Amtrak managers give a snapshot of where the passenger carrier is, which is recovery mode from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ridership is at 85 percent of pre-pandemic levels with 22.9 million passengers handled during fiscal year 2022, which ended on Sept. 30.

Revenue of $2.8 billion was down 15 percent compared with fiscal year 2019.

In the past year fares have been higher and Amtrak’s capacity has been lower due to equipment that was idled during the pandemic still not being available for revenue service due to shortages of mechanical workers and funding.

During fiscal year 2022, Amtrak operated 80 percent of its pre-pandemic schedule.

As for expansion, Amtrak in 2021 released its Connect U.S. plan that called for new intercity rail passenger service to 160 communities.

Funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was expected to be a major down payment on that plan.

“We’re entering a new [era] . . . for passenger rail in America, and Amtrak’s future could never be brighter,” Gardner said.

But then Gardner began issuing his list of caveats. Topping the list is that it will take longer to get new routes up and running than some rail passenger advocates would like.

Just two new routes began in FY2022 and both of those were in the development stage before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although new service between New Orleans and Mobile, Alabama, was mentioned along with development of a corridor between Richmond, Virginia, and Raleigh, North Carolina, no timeline for implementation of those services was provided.

Another key caveat is the network expansion hinges on state and local government financial support.

Gardner noted during his presentation that state and federal financial support is key to new service because the influx of funding made available by the IIJA mandates that just 80 percent of the cost to develop a new service can be provided by the federal government.

“Amtrak is not a unitary actor,” he said. “We cannot tomorrow say ‘we want to stop here and issue an edict.’”

Amtrak Board Chairman Anthony Coscia said later, “There is a meaningful difference between states in terms of their ability to be supportive of passenger rail.”

Amtrak already appears to be pulling back on its ambitious Connects U.S. project.

Executive Vice President Dennis Newman introduced a new map that showed “expressions of interest” that reflects potential new service where there has been significant state and local interest.

This includes a new train between Fargo, North Dakota, and Spokane, Washington, which would mirror the former Chicago-Seattle North Coast Hiawatha that was discontinued in early October 1979.

Also on the map is proposed service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, proposed service between Salt Lake City and Boise, Idaho, and a Dallas section of the New York-New Orleans Crescent.

The Las Vegas and Boise service proposals would revive other former routes of the Desert Wind and the Pioneer, respectively.

During the question and answer session of the meeting, Gardner said Amtrak can’t expand long-distance routes without additional funding from the federal government.

Aside from the open question of whether Congress would agree to provide that funding, long-distance network expansion is hamstrung by equipment shortages that have reduced the capacity of existing trains.

In response to an audience member question, Gardner said some stored equipment that is no longer commercially viable is being used as a parts supply.

“We also have to analyze the dollars available,” he said and then added that additional capital is needed to put equipment back into service.

For now, Garnder said Amtrak is seeking to get more equipment back into service “just to catch up on overhauls and maintain the current fleet.”

Although the audience member was asking about Superliners, Amtrak has found itself short of equipment for corridor services because many of the 60 Venture cars it had expected to be in service this year remain sidelined by production issues and quality control matters.

Instead, Amtrak has only been able to use about 30 of the Venture cars.

New equipment that Amtrak had expected to use for its Acela service in the Northeast Corridor remains on the sidelines. Gardner said that equipment is not expected to begin revenue service until late 2023, which is two years later than originally projected.

New equipment that Amtrak plans to order for Northeast Regional service in the Northeast Corridor won’t be available until 2026 at the earliest.

“There is not an off-the-shelf product, in most cases, that is available,” Gardner said when speaking about equipment issues. “We don’t have the domestic supply base.”

Amtrak Executives Say Attrition, Not Furloughs Led to Shortage of Mechanical Workers

Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner and Board Chairman Anthony Coscia pushed back last week on the assertion that furloughs during the COVID-19 pandemic are responsibility for shortages of mechanical workers at the passenger carrier.

During a public meeting last Thursday in St. Louis of the Amtrak board of directors, both took issue with an assertion by Rail Passengers Association head Jim Mathews that “choices surrounding furloughs and equipment have left Amtrak struggling to accommodate demand surges – both on specific routes and over travel periods, such as Thanksgiving.”

Coscia acknowledged that Amtrak lacks adequate equipment and personnel to “bring back service the way we’d like to.”

Gardner said attrition and not furloughs are the reason for the thin workforce in Amtrak’s mechanical department.

“That’s not true, that’s not what happened,” Gardner said in response to Mathews. “What did happen was that during this period of time [the pandemic] when we could not hire we could not overcome the attrition. So last year we hired 3,600 people or so, but we also lost 1,600 people during that same period to retirements, to a change in job, [and] to relocations” and other reasons.

Gardner said about 90 percent of workers who were furloughed by Amtrak during the pandemic have since returned to their jobs.

Coscia said Amtrak is trying to rebuild a workforce “that had kind of atrophied to a certain degree.”

The question arose during a discussion about how Amtrak has a backlog of equipment idling in shops instead of being placed back into revenue service due to a lack of mechanical staff to bring those cars into operating condition.

Gardner said hiring electricians and machinists is tough to do in some locations, but Amtrak is working with its unions to find new ways to hire and train new workers. One such program is a new apprenticeship program for entry-level jobs.

“We’re working every angle to be able to restore people that make the trains available to serve our customers . . . [and] restore service and then grow,” Gardner said.

Amtrak is seeking to hire an additional 4,000 new employees in 2023, most of whom would work in the mechanical crafts where the need is most acutely felt.

Nonetheless, Amtrak management still expects to fall short of reaching full staffing by the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2025.

The passenger carrier expects capacity on its trains to be less than it was four years ago and forecasts it will carry 28 million passengers in fiscal year 2024, which would be 90 percent of 2019 levels.

Amtrak expects to restore capacity to pre-pandemic levels in FY2024, which begins Oct. 1, 2024. It also expects ridership during FY2025 to exceed that of 2019.

Amtrak Board to Meet in Public in St. Louis

The Amtrak board of directors will conduct a public meeting Dec. 1 in St. Louis.

Although the public is invited, space is limited and requires per-registration by Nov. 23.

The board has said that during the meeting it will review fiscal 2022 results and consider “strategic priorities” and Amtrak’s operating plan for fiscal year 2023.

The meeting will be held at the Hilton Union Station Hotel and run from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. central time. The meeting also will be shown live online.

Committee Reviews Amtrak Board Nominees

The Biden administration has nominated Republican Joel Matthew Szabat to a seat on the Amtrak board of directors.

Szabat, who resides in Maryland, served as Undersecretary of Transportation for Policy in the Trump administration.

Biden has appointed five Democrats to the Amtrak board, with four of them residing at the south end of the Northeast Corridor.

Only Chris Koos, the mayor of Normal, Illinois, resides west of the Potomac.

Three more Republican nominees will need to be appointed to the Amtrak board and by law all of them must be from outside the Northeast.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act mandates that “four individuals shall reside in or near regions of the United States that are geographically distributed outside of the Northeast Corridor.”

The five Democratic nominees for the Amtrak board were nominated early last May.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation held a hearing last month on the nominations.

Two members of the committee, Jon Tester (D-Montana) and Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) expressed frustration during the hearing over the lack of geographic diversity among the nominees to the Amtrak board with none of them residing in a western state.

Tester noted that none of the nominees had been to Montana.

“I don’t plan to stop you, but you guys have a lot of work to understand what is going on,” Tester said in reference to how he would vote on the nominations.

Biden Amtrak Nominees Might Not Get Vote

Although the nominations announced by the Biden administration to the Amtrak board of directors last week have drawn mixed reviews, it may all be a moot point.

Writing in the newsletter of the American Association of Private Rail Car Owners, Ross Capon, the organization’s Washington correspondent, indicated that the nominations may not receive a Senate vote.

Capon once served as executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers – now known as the Rail Passengers Association – and cited the view of The Eno Foundation’s Jeff Davis.

 “If the last few years are any indication, the only way the nominations will move to the Senate floor is if paired with future Republican nominees,” Davis wrote.

Davis said the Senate is unlikely to confirm an all-Democratic slate just as it refused to confirm the all-Republican slate presented by the Trump Administration until mid-2020. 

Even after Trump nominated two Democrats, the Senate still failed to act on the nominations because of objections raised by senators representing states served by Amtrak’s Chicago-Los Angeles Southwest Chief.

Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) placed a hold on the nominations of Democrat Sarah Feinberg and Republican Todd Rokita.

Moran said he wanted to hear more from Feinberg on her views pertaining to Amtrak’s long-distance trains and that Rokita had failed to answer any of his questions on the matter.

Moran said he wanted to hear that all of the board nominees were supportive of Amtrak’s long-distance trains.

Until last year, the 10-member Amtrak board was mandated by federal law to include “balanced representation of the major geographic regions served by Amtrak.”

That changed with approval of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was approved by Congress last fall.

It contained language requiring that two Amtrak board members must reside along the Northeast Corridor and four must be from outside that region.

That is to include two members from states served by state-supported service and two members from states served by long-distance trains. A single individual cannot fill both a state and long-distance slot.

The Amtrak board currently has two vacancies and the remaining members are all serving on expired terms.

The only Biden nominee from outside the Northeast is Christopher Koos, the mayor of Normal, Illinois, who was nominated for the board by the Trump administration but not confirmed by the Senate.

Among the critics of the Biden nominees was Bob Johnston, the passenger rail reporter for Trains magazine.

In a piece posted on the magazine’s website this week, Johnston argued that the Biden nominations largely fail to comply with IIJA language as to Amtrak governing board membership.

Johnston wrote that having four of the five nominees from the Northeast Corridor region is in contradiction of the law’s goal of strengthening the national network.

Capon made similar comments. “Some rail passenger advocates, remembering the near-death experience of long-distance trains in 2018 under [Amtrak] President Richard Anderson, and concerned about limited capacity (and in some cases frequency) of long-distance trains today, are unhappy with the nominations, including their geographic concentration on the south end of the Northeast Corridor.”

One of the Biden nominees is Anthony Coscia, who has served on the Amtrak board since 2010 and been its chair since 2013. Capon said the re-nomination of Coscia can be viewed as an endorsement of current Amtrak leadership. 

Aside from the four Biden nominations, three more Amtrak board members are expected to be put forth by Senate Republicans.

By law the secretary of transportation or his/her representative sits on the Amtrak board. The Amtrak CEO is a non-voting member.

That leaves eight positions to be appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate.

No more than five of the eight presidential nominations can be from the same party. At least one board member must have a disability (as defined in section 3 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (42 U.S.C. 12102)).

The IIJA requires that the disabilities member must have a “demonstrated history of, or experience with, accessibility, mobility, and inclusive transportation in passenger rail or commuter rail.”

The Biden nominees received praise from RPA, which had in the week before they were announced sought to make an issue out of the lack of nominees to the Amtrak board.

RPA head Jim Mathews issued a statement applauding the White House for taking the group’s concerns seriously.

“We look forward to working closely with these nominees to understand their vision for Amtrak’s future,” Mathews said.

However, RPA issued another statement this week calling for Biden to appoint Amtrak board members who represent a broad geographic region.

The statement said Biden “missed an opportunity” to nominate board members from outside the Mid-Atlantic region.

 SMART-TD President Jeremy Ferguson said in a statement the Biden Amtrak board slate “continues to prioritize the concerns of labor as he [Biden] and the DOT pursue an unprecedented and historic transformation of the nation’s passenger-rail network.”

Johnston, though, was not as approving and probably speaks for many rail passenger advocates in saying that none of Biden’s Amtrak board nominees have “hands-on business credentials dealing with inventory pricing, sales management, or hospitality” and that none of them have experience in the passenger railroad industry.

He has a point. The IIJA mandates that Amtrak board members have general business and financial experience, experience or qualifications in transportation, freight and passenger rail transportation, travel, hospitality, cruise line, or passenger air transportation businesses, or representatives of employees or users of passenger rail transportation or a State government.

Johnston’s article can be read at https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/bidens-amtrak-board-nominations-lack-qualifications-demanded-by-congress-analysis/

Biden Nominates 5 to Amtrak Board

The Biden administration has nominated five people to serve on Amtrak’s board of directors.

The nominations are subject to approval by the U.S. Senate. All of the current terms on the passenger carrier’s board have expired.

Among the nominees is current board chairman Anthony Coscia and former board nominee Christopher Koos.

Koos is the mayor of Normal, Illinois, which is served by Amtrak’s Texas Eagle and Lincoln Service trains. He was nominated in 2020 but the appointment was never acted upon by the Senate.

Coscia has served on the board since 2010 and became chairman in 2013.

Other nominees include David Capozzi, former executive director of the U.S. Access Board and former national advocacy director for the Paralyzed Veterans of America; Samuel Lathem, retired Delaware State AFL-CIO president and a former autoworker active in a number of civic organizations; and Robin Wiessmann, executive director and chief executive of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency.

By law Amtrak’s governing board is allocated 10 positions. Also serving on the board are U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner. Senate Republicans can select the other three nominees.

The board is required to include at least two members each from Northeast Corridor, and areas with state-supported routes, and long-distance routes.

Of the five Biden nominees, only Koos resides outside the Northeast. The remainder live in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Rokita Nominated for Amtrak Board Seat

A former Indiana congressman who voted in favor of amendments to reduce or eliminate Amtrak funding has been nominated by the Trump administration for a seat on the Amtrak board of directors.

Todd Rokita was named by the administration to fill a seat being vacated by Derek Kan.

Kan’s term is due to expire on Jan. 3, 2021. Rokita was also named to fill a seat on the Amtrak board whose term will run through Jan. 3, 2026.

It is not the first time that Rokita has been nominated for the Amtrak board.

He was nominated on May 7, 2019, but that nomination was never confirmed by the full Senate.

The Rail Passengers Association said Rokita voted against Amtrak in eight of the thirteen Amtrak-specific amendments during his time in Congress.

Amtrak Board Nominees Move to Senate Floor

Three nominees for seats on the Amtrak board of directors were approved by a Senate committee this week on a 14-12 party line vote.

Their nominations have been sent to the Senate floor for confirmation.

The nominations of Joseph Gruters, Lynn Westmoreland and Rick Dearborn had been languishing for months.

That action followed the Trump administration naming two additional nominees for the Amtrak board, Chris Koos and Sarah E. Feinberg.

Ranking Senate Commerce Committee minority member Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) opposed the advancement of Gruters, Westmoreland and Dearborn because they did not have bi-partisan support.

“These nominees, in my opinion, are controversial and have not appeared before this committee in the current Congress,” she said. “Further, they have been on committee markups multiple times only to advance on party-line votes. I hope that we can continue to work through these issues and questions on a more bipartisan basis.”

Westmoreland is a former Congressman who was nominated in October of 2017.

While in Congress he voted in 2009 and 2015 to end all Amtrak funding.

During his confirmation hearings, Westmoreland said he now understood the importance of government funding to Amtrak.

Dearborn is a former member of the Heritage Foundation, which has consistently called for the elimination of Amtrak.

An earlier nomination of another former Congressman, Todd Rokita, has yet to be resubmitted to the Senate.

Rokita voted a number of times in favor of amendments to slash or eliminate Amtrak funding.

Koos is the mayor of Normal, Illinois, while Feinberg formerly served as administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration.

Previous moves to advance Amtrak board nominees to the Senate floor for a confirmation vote were stymied by Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) who objected to Amtrak’s efforts to separate the Chicago-Los Angeles Southwest Chief into two separate trains connected by a bus service between western Kansas and Albuquerque.

2 Named to Amtrak Board of Directors

The Trump administration announced it intends to nominate Sarah E. Feinberg and Chris Koos to Amtrak’s board of directors. Both are Democrats and would fill seats on the board set aside for that party.

Feinberg is interim president of MTA New York City Transit and previously served as Federal Railroad Administrator and as chief of staff to former Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx.

She also once served as director of policy communications at Facebook and director of Global Communications and Business Strategy at Bloomberg.

A West Virginia native, she is the founder of Feinberg Strategies and received her B.A. from Washington and Lee University.

Koos has been mayor of Normal, Illinois, since 2003. He serves on the advisory board of Transportation for America, is a member of the Uptown Normal Business Association, and, since 1979, has served as the owner and operator of the retail specialty stores Vitesse Cycle Shop and Often Running.

Both nominations require confirmation in the U.S. Senate.