Rail Passenger Future Gains Some Clarity

With the signing of legislation this week granting another round of federal stimulus funding and giving final approval to federal spending for fiscal year 2021, we now have some clarity on what the nation’s rail passenger system will look like over the next several months.

It is likely to look a lot like it does today, meaning it will be more Spartan that it was a year ago with long-distance trains continuing to operate on less-than-daily schedules and reduced levels of corridor service trains.

Amtrak was granted $1 billion in pandemic emergency funding, which Amtrak CEO William Flynn characterized as a band aid that will get the passenger carrier through to the spring when he said additional funding will be needed.

That’s the same level of emergency funding Amtrak received from the CARES Act adopted last March in the early weeks of the pandemic.

The latest emergency aid given Amtrak bans it from furloughing additional workers or reducing services further, but that is not the same thing as a mandate to restore service that has already been suspended or recalling workers who have been furloughed.

In a statement, Flynn tied service restorations, employee recalls and moving ahead on capital projects to Amtrak receiving additional funding next year.

As for FY 2021, Amtrak received $2.8 billion of which $1.3 billion is for the national network and state-supported corridor services.

That is not much more than the $2 billion the passenger carrier sought back in February before the pandemic began and well short of the $4.9 billion for FY2021 that it sought last October.

The legislation contained a policy rider expressing the sense of Congress that Amtrak is to operate long-distance routes in order to provide connectivity throughout the intercity passenger carrier’s network and provide transportation to rural areas.

That is far from being a mandate to restore daily operation to trains that shifted to less-than-daily operation, primarily tri-weekly, last October and July.

The rail passenger advocacy community may be united in believing that less-than-daily long distance trains are a bad idea, but Amtrak management is doing it anyway.

The downsides of less-than-daily service have received a lot of ink and bandwidth from railroad trade publication and railfan magazines, but that hasn’t moved the needle of Amtrak management’s behavior much if at all.

Amtrak has shown some sensitivity to the accusation that reducing long-distance trains to less-than-daily service is part of a larger plot to eliminate those trains.

In interviews and congressional testimony Flynn has tried to frame the service cuts as a temporary response to plunging ridership triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic that has also devastated ridership of airlines and buses.

He and Amtrak Chairman Anthony Coscia have sought to underscore that Amtrak is committed to having a national network.

That is not necessarily a commitment to operating that network at the same level of service that existed at the beginning of 2020 or even operating that network in perpetuity.

Flynn’s most recent statement about the latest emergency aid said nothing about when daily service will return to long-distance routes.

He told Congress in October that daily service might be restored in May “when financially possible.” That is hardly an ironclad promise.

In looking back at the fight over the past few months over rail passenger service cuts a couple of conclusions come to mind.

First, without public funding there are not going to be passenger trains of any kind. That particularly has been illustrated by the service cuts in state-supported corridor service.

The Chicago-Detroit corridor went from three trains a day to one, which reduced service to the lowest level it has been in the nearly 50 years of Amtrak operation.

Other corridors that had multiple daily frequencies saw service cuts as well and a few state-supported corridors that were suspended have yet to resume operations.

Second, passenger train advocates continue to lack the political clout needed to realize their visions of an expansive intercity passenger rail network.

Advocates have done well at keeping Amtrak funding at a suitable level to maintain a skeletal level of intercity rail passenger service but have failed to prevent Amtrak and its state partners from making service cuts when ridership and revenue plunged during the pandemic.

Congress has not shown a willingness to unlock the federal piggy bank to open-ended levels of financial support for intercity rail passenger service.

Getting intercity rail passenger service back to where it was in early 2020 is going to be a long, hard slog.

The end of the pandemic may be in sight, but it might take much longer to get there than many want to believe.

Although it seems likely that significant numbers of people will want to travel again, airline industry observers have talked about a four-year time frame to get air service travel back to where it was before the pandemic took hold.

It is not unrealistic to think intercity rail service might be operating under a similar time frame.

It may be that pent up demand will move that up slightly in the next year or two but that is going to hinge on how quickly the economy grows and how soon larger numbers of people feel confident that traveling and unfettered social interaction are safe again.

Rail Advocates Get Steamrolled by Congress

Back in early summer when Amtrak President William Flynn told Congress that the carrier was eyeing operating all of its long-distance trains but one on less than daily schedules the reaction of the rail passenger advocacy community was nearly unanimous that that was a bad idea.

Opposition quickly formed and Amtrak’s plans were widely panned on social media and in articles in national magazines serving the railroad and railfan communities.

I remember thinking, though, that more than likely those advocates were going to get steamrolled by the very political process they were banking on to bail out their beloved long-distance trains.

But I didn’t write that because it also seemed there was a fighting chance that maybe, as Trains magazine correspondent Bill Stephens wrote, Amtrak would find a way to avoid pulling the trigger, perhaps citing Congressional action.

But this past week it became apparent the fix is in and less-than-daily service long-distance service seems a foregone conclusion.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved by a wide margin legislation extending the surface transportation law – known as Fixing America’s Surface Transportation – that authorizes spending money on Amtrak and other transportation programs for a year.

That legislation also continues federal funding through December at fiscal year 2020 levels.

This means, in essence, that Amtrak will not receive additional funding to maintain daily operation of all but two long-distance trains.

It’s still possible Amtrak might get emergency funding in another COVID-19 pandemic relief package, but such legislation is mired in partisan bickering and pre-election posturing.

In any event there is no assurance that extra money for Amtrak would be part of that package.

So, those rail passenger advocates who vociferously opposed Amtrak’s tri-weekly service for all but the Auto Train are getting steamrolled.

All of their emails, letters and phone calls to Congress have netted little to nothing.

This didn’t happen because Congress decided tri-weekly long-distance passenger trains are a good business practice.

It happened because Amtrak funding got swamped in larger political tides.

The rail passenger advocates had their say but in the end their arguments proved to be just so much more noise in an already noisy environment.

There are powerful political forces in Congress that do not believe as rail passengers advocates do that public funding for rail passenger service is money well spent.

That has kept Amtrak’s federal funding constrained and at times led to the discontinuance of some trains due to lack of adequate funding.

At the same time there are political forces in Congress who have been willing to continue funding Amtrak just enough to keep the existing network going more or less.

A political scientist would say Amtrak is a typical example of a government program that was created to address a specific need at a given moment but then developed a vocal constituency that is able to apply just enough political pressure to keep it funded under the guise that it provides an essential public service.

In Amtrak’s case, the public service is often expressed as public transportation to largely rural regions and less populated areas.

Senators and House members have often cited the paucity of public transportation to rural regions for supporting continued federal funding of Amtrak’s long-distance trains.

But when it came time to commit to making federal funding decisions for fiscal year 2021, which begins Oct. 1, Congress punted that job into the post-election period.

The House passed a budget that contained additional funding for Amtrak to maintain daily service on its long-distance routes, but the Senate engaged very little in the budget-writing process.

Even if it had, there is no guarantee the Senate would have agreed to more than double Amtrak’s federal grant for FY2021 or that such funding would have survived a conference committee formed to reconcile differences between the House and Senate.

It’s still possible that once the elections are past that additional funding for Amtrak will be slipped into a spending bill and the less-than-daily service will be short lived.

But it’s also possible less-than-daily service will be around for a long time.

In the 1990s, some long-distance trains operated three or four times a week for two years before reverting back to daily operation.

Rail passenger advocates have seized upon the lessons of the 1990s in support of their assertion that less-than-daily service is a bad idea.

They’ve noted that ridership fell precipitously and the hoped for savings never materialized because of high overhead expenses, lack of management will, and unexpected costs.

What the advocates have glossed over, though, is that when the less-than-daily service was reversed there were two fewer long-distance trains with the Pioneer to Seattle and the Desert Wind to Los Angeles being discontinued.

At a time when thousands of small businesses have closed or are barely hanging on in a down economic climate triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the question of whether the Capitol Limited operates seven or three times a week might not seem all that important to those who are not passenger train advocates.

At least all of the long-distance trains are still operating, but Joe’s Diner is closed permanently and the local orchestra hasn’t played a live concert at its home venue since March.

It might seem to many Americans that less-than-daily service is a prudent move given that patronage of all public transportation has fallen off a cliff.

Rail passenger advocates have tried to play up the fact that long-distance patronage has only fallen by 65 percent compared to the 88 percent reduction in patronage of Northeast Corridor trains.

But losing 65 percent of your ridership is still a substantial loss.

The larger picture is the market for public transportation of all types has plunged and there remains much uncertainty as to when or even if demand for rail transportation will return to previous levels.

It therefore might seem reasonable that Amtrak reduce service levels until ridership recovers to more normal levels.

It may be that operating long-distance trains three days a week will result, as advocates say, in even more ridership losses and not save as much money as Amtrak claims it will.

It also may be that that might result in irreversible damage to the long-distance network. It also might be that Amtrak management is using the COVID-19 crisis to transform itself into a more corridor-oriented operation despite its insistence of being committed to the national network.

Even if these things are true, does that justify more than doubling spending federal spending on Amtrak? That is a fair question to ask.

It might be that on social media sites and in the pages of Trains or Railway Age authors are not required to choose between funding rail passenger service versus funding other wants and needs.

But members of Congress are required to make those choices even if of late they’ve done it largely through indecision.

Of course rail passenger advocates think spending $5 billion for Amtrak in FY2021 is worthwhile. Some might even argue that the economic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic justifies opening the federal checkbook to bolster the economy. There is a case to be made for that. There is also a case to be made for being fiscally constrained.

Flynn Expects Job Cuts, Tri-Weekly Trains

Amtrak expects to furlough employees in fiscal year 2021 and expects long-distance trains to operate twi-weekly its president told Progressive Railroading magazine in an interview.

William Flynn

The job cuts and reduced service are likely because the carrier expects ridership to continue lagging into 2021.

William Flynn, who took over as Amtrak’s CEO on April 15, said ridership is now 18 percent of what it was in fiscal year 2019.

He said ridership rose between late May and early July, but has since hit a plateau due to outbreaks of COVID-19 in some parts of the country.

Although Flynn did not elaborate on how many workers might lose their jobs, he said the carrier has yet to furlough anyone in the current fiscal year, which extends through Sept. 30.

Flynn spoke in the interview as though the move to tri-weekly service by all of Amtrak’s long distance trains except the Auto Train on Oct. 1 will occur.

An FY2021 budget approved by the U.S. House of Representatives contains funding for daily service of those trains and a mandate to Amtrak not to furlough employees.

The Senate has yet to act on its own FY2021 budget proposals and the fate of the House budget proposal is uncertain.

During the interview, Flynn did not address the congressional action and continued to defend Amtrak’s plans to reduce the frequency of service of long distance trains.

“We remain fully committed to the long-distance service; that I want to make clear,” he said

“But at this point in time, the levels of ridership we expect to see in November, December, January, February and March indicate to us that moving to three-day-a-week service at that period of time is the right thing to do for [Amtrak] and for our owners, the government.”

Flynn said Amtrak will review the performance of the long-distance trains early next year, examining such things as future bookings and whether those justify restoring service to daily operation in late May or early June of 2021.

Currently, Flynn indicated that most Amtrak travel has been those traveling for personal reasons, including families. The carrier is seeing very little business travel.

Amtrak’s marketing department has been surveying its customer base to try to get a handle on what its prospective travel plans might be, including when they might travel again, how often they expect to travel and what the purpose of their travel will be.

Flynn said the carrier has been experimenting with pricing and has been able to gain many first-time customers in the Northeast Corridor.

In the meantime, Amtrak has delayed some capital projects to conserve cash and is seeking to eliminate discretionary spending as much as possible.

“We do need to resize the company to reflect the level of ridership that we anticipate in 2021, and no one has great visibility into what 2022 might look like,” Flynn said.

When asked what capital projects Amtrak has deferred, Flynn said, “It wasn’t necessarily larger projects around infrastructure.”

He said the carrier has made “huge progress on our key engineering projects on the Northeast Corridor.”

But it has put off some projects in information technology that it plans to take up later.

Flynn insisted that Amtrak’s long-term vision remains unchanged and that includes network growth.

He repeated the goals expressed by his predecessor, Richard Anderson, that Amtrak wants to provide new service or additional service to major metropolitan areas that have grown substantially in the past 40 years.

“So, it remains our strategy that we can double ridership on Amtrak over the next 20 years,” he said.

“There are key corridors that exist — many of which exist on long distance routes — that aren’t served today that would absolutely benefit from, and rightly demand, high-quality passenger-rail service.”

Long Distance Trains Could Vanish in October

Rail passenger advocates have had much to say about Amtrak’s plans to convert all long distance trains except the Auto Train to less than daily service on Oct. 1.

Some of what advocates have said has struck me as hyperbole, particularly assertions that it is the first step toward the elimination of the long-distance trains.

However, given the general hostility by former Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson and current vice president Stephen Gardner toward long-distance trains, such assertions cannot be dismissed out of hand.

But it wasn’t until I read a column in Railway Age by David Peter Alan that I began thinking that maybe there is something to the notion that making long-distance trains operate tri-weekly is an ominous development.

If Alan is correct in his interpretation of federal law, the situation could be one in which operating the long distance trains tri-weekly is a near best-case situation.

The crux of Alan’s argument is the meaning of the federal law that authorizes Amtrak.

Alan notes that 49 U.S. Code §24706(a) states that Amtrak must give 180 days’ notice before “discontinuing service over a route.”

However, another section of the law, §24706(b)(1)(A), allows Amtrak to discontinue service during “the first month of a fiscal year if the authorization of appropriations and the appropriations for Amtrak are not enacted at least 90 days before the beginning of the fiscal year.”

This might explain why Amtrak CEO William Flynn wrote a May 25 letter to Congress seeking a $1.4 billion supplememental appropriation on top of the regular requested appropriation for fiscal year 2021.

The letter warned that long distance trains were “at risk” without the supplemental appropriation.

Even if Amtrak receives every penny it has requested, Flynn wrote, all long distance trains except the Auto Train would operate on a reduced schedule.

It may be that what Flynn meant is that if the passenger carrier doesn’t get its requested additional funding it will invoke federal law to suspend long distance trains completely during October.

Alan writes in his Railway Age piece that given the way the law is worded “it may already be too late for Congress to increase Amtrak’s appropriation to cover daily operation of the L-D trains and be sure that those trains will, indeed, operate every day.”

He goes on to say Congress has the authority to change or override this law and mandate that Amtrak continue daily operation on long distance trains.

This is what rail passengers advocates are hoping will happen but that is not guaranteed.

There likely are discussions going on between Amtrak and congressional staff members regarding Amtrak funding for FY2021 including the fate of the long distance trains.

It may be that less than daily service of long distance trains is simply a political strategy by Amtrak to maximize its funding in FY2021.

Then again it could be part of a larger strategy to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to do what management has discussed doing in the past couple years.

The pandemic has severely depressed ridership and Flynn’s letter to Congress projects that ridership will continue to be below half of normal through FY2021.

There is, of course, a difference between ridership declines that occur naturally and those that are induced by management actions, such as in the name of safety reducing the capacity of trains by half.

It may be noteworthy that at least one major airline, American Airlines, has said it will cease reducing the capacity of its planes even though it pledged to take other steps to protect its passengers.

Alan, who is an attorney and chairman of the Lackawanna Coalition, believes Amtrak’s objective is to rid itself of the long distance trains and transform itself into a series of disjointed corridors with those outside the Northeast funded by the states they serve.

But even those corridors are in peril. Flynn wrote in his May 25 letter that without the supplemental funding, some state services will be suspended or operate at skeletal levels.

In fact that began happening early on during the pandemic and continues to be the case today even if some services have been reinstated this summer.

Amtrak wants the federal government to underwrite some of the payments that states would have made for corridor services.

The appropriations process is highly political and it remains to be seen what will emerge from Congress for FY2021.

Lawmakers have in past years missed the Sept. 30 deadline to approve a budget for the fiscal year that starts the next day but kept the federal government running through continuing resolutions.

It is unclear how that would affect Amtrak’s long distance trains. Congress could mandate keeping the status quo, but Amtrak management might do what it wants to do anyway.

What we do know is that Amtrak launched a preview of coming attractions today when it implemented less than daily service by the Silver Star and Silver Meteor between New York and Miami.

Amtrak is itself a political creature. That became clear when Congress shut down the carrier’s desire to replace the middle of the route of the Chicago-Los Angeles Southwest Chief with an 11-hour bus connection.

Rail passenger advocates may have “won” that battle but that doesn’t mean they have yet to win the greater war.

More often than not management gets its way and if Amtrak management is determined to get rid of the long-distance trains it will continue seeking ways to do that even it if claims to not be doing any such thing.

If you want to read Alan’s article, you can find it at https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/intercity/first-in-a-series-has-amtrak-declared-war/https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/intercity/first-in-a-series-has-amtrak-declared-war/

Some Amtrak Service Cuts Take Effect in July

Amtrak’s plans to reduce the frequency of operation of its New York-Miami trains will mean there will be no connections to and from Florida on some days in Washington  and New York.

The passenger carrier plans on July 6 to begin operating the Silver Meteor four times a week and the Silver Star three times a week.

It is the first step of a larger plan to reduce operations of all long-distance trains except the Auto Train to less than daily service on Oct. 1.

The Silver Meteor will depart New York Monday through Thursday, and Miami Sunday through Wednesday.

The Silver Star will operate Friday through Sunday southbound and Thursday through Saturday northbound.

The New York-Savannah, Georgia, Palmetto will for now continue to operate daily.

The July schedule changes will preclude connections on some days to Florida from the Capitol Limited, Lake Shore Limited, and Cardinal.

Cross-Florida travel and service to South Carolina’s state capital, Columbia, will only be possible on different days around weekends.

A Trains magazine analysis noted that during May the combined ridership of the Silver Star and Silver Meteor was 7.2 million passenger miles generating $1.4 million of revenue.

That compares to 5.2 million passenger miles and $2.4 million in revenue for all Northeast Corridor trains between Boston and Washington.

Amtrak has said it it reducing the frequency of operation of its long distance trains due to steep ridership declines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The carrier also projects that ridership during federal fiscal year 2021 will be half of what it normally would be.

1,400 Griped About Amtrak Dining Service in 2019

A handful of passengers are ready to enjoy dinner aboard the eastbound Capitol Limited as it rolls through Chicago in March 2014.

Business Insider magazine reported on Wednesday that Amtrak received more than 1,400 complaints last year about its “flexible dining” service aboard overnight trains.

The complaints filled 125 pages that the magazine obtained from Amtrak through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Many of the complaints said Amtrak’s meal service has resulted in lesser quality food.

“We did not take the train to save money, we took the train for the experience,” one complaint said. “The dining car is a huge part of the rail experience.”

For its part, the carrier contended that passengers like the flexible dining service more than the complaints might indicate.

The initial version of flexible dining was implemented on the Capitol Limited and Lake Shore Limited in June 2018. It was extended to other eastern long-distance trains more than a year later.

Prior to 2018, most long-distance trains had full-service dining cars with meals freshly prepared onboard.

Meals were included in the price of a sleeping car ticket and available for sale to coach passengers.

Flexible dining has placed full-service dining cars with a limited selection of meals that are prepared off the train.

It is called “flexible” dining because passengers can eat at their leisure during a broad set of hours in either the dining car or in their sleeping car rooms.

The flexible dining meals are not available to sale to coach passengers. Amtrak said several months ago it was studying making those meals available for sale to coach passengers but has yet to do that.

Although full-service dining cars continue to operate on western overnight trains, flexible dining was extended to those trains in April during a steep ridership decline during the COVID-19 pandemic that cost long-distance trains about 85 percent of their ridership.

Business Insider characterized most of the complaints as passengers saying the flexible dining meals are unsatisfying and low-quality.

“It seems the new direction of food service resembles that of air travel,” wrote one passenger.

“Your attendants seemed actually embarrassed [sic] to serve this stuff.”

Many complaints said flexible dining resulted in a lot of waste because the plates and packaging used to serve the meals was largely thrown away.

“The commingling of all waste does not seem to be environmentally sound when all forms of recyclables are combined with food in the trash,” said one passenger.

Several complaints described the water containers in the dining car as unsightly.

Amtrak changed the packaging in October 2019 to reusable trays and said it was “reviewing a plan to use service ware that is more sustainable such as reusable or biodegradable.”

In a statement, Amtrak took issue with the notion that flexible dining was disliked despite the high volume of complaints.

“While there were approximately 1,200 customer service cases on flexible dining over the specified period of time, ridership on these six routes during this period exceeded 800K,” Amtrak said. “On each route with flexible dining, at least 80 percent of customers selected a top range score in customer satisfaction surveys.”

The Amtrak statement said that it is paying attention to passenger comments and making improvements base on those comments.

It cited as an example changing the service in January 2019 to include more hot entrees and additional breakfast options. More hot entrees were added in October 2019.

“We have also adjusted menus to reflect customer’s nutritional and special meal requirements,” the statement said.

Amtrak has said it introduced flexible dining to cut costs. Former Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson said the passenger carrier was responding to a Congressional mandate to lower its losses on food service.

Anderson said the easiest way to do that would be to offer a single food car and then have meal choices for passengers.

Amtrak did not initially do. It continues to offer one type of food service for sleeper class passengers while operating a café car service for coach passengers.

On some trains since the pandemic hit, it has offered one food service car.

Amtrak said the removal of full-service dining from Western long-distance trains was temporary and going to last through May 31.

However, the carrier has yet to reinstate full-service dining on Western trains and in the meantime Amtrak CEO William Flynn has said the carrier expects ridership in the 2021 fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 to be half of what it would normally be.

Flynn said Amtrak is seeking to pare its workforce by 20 percent, offering incentives for workers to retire or leave and, if needed, furloughing some of them.

Amtrak is also seeking a $1.4 billion supplemental appropriation for FY2021 on top of the more than $2 billion regular appropriation for that year.

Even if it gets that money Amtrak has said long-distance trains will operate on a less than daily level although it has not spell out what that means.

If it doesn’t get the additional money, the carrier has said all long-distance trains except the Auto Train are “at risk.” Presumably that means of being discontinued or suspended.

It would seem to point toward “flexible dining” being the norm for all overnight trains in the future.