Amtrak audit faults D.C. station project
Amtrak will improve its project management processes concerning a series of projects at Washington Union Station following an audit by the Amtrak Office of Inspector General (OIG) found the projects were at
Amtrak will improve its project management processes concerning a series of projects at Washington Union Station following an audit by the Amtrak Office of Inspector General (OIG) found the projects were at
Amtrak plans to double its engineering efforts on the Northeast Corridor with the purchase of $370 million of new equipment over a three-year period.
A reliable rail industry source who wishes not to be named related this story to me from on board a recent trip on Amtrak 19, the long-distance Crescent. The words speak for themselves. They are unedited:
Watching Washington, July 2018: When everybody owns something, nobody accepts accountability or responsibility. Such is the circumstance of Amtrak, a near-50-year-old orphan wandering in a public policy wilderness, dependent on grudgingly provided public assistance often provided with conditions and objectives so conflicted as to suggest a Marx Brothers comedy.
What does a deflated balloon look like? That is becoming an apt metaphor for travel on an Amtrak interregional train. The regime of CEO Richard Anderson is eliminating services and amenities as fast as they can think up items to ditch.
The end may be in sight for an aged mainstay of the national passenger car fleet.
Amidst extravagant accusations of inhospitable dispatching by host freight railroads of its long-distance passenger trains, taxpayer subsidized Amtrak is aggressively manipulating its privileged position in contravention of a congressional intent to expand private-sector operation of passenger trains. Amtrak’s strong-arm tactics also serve to squeeze monopoly rents from state and regional transit authorities, whose commuter trains share Amtrak-owned facilities.
With no panache in any prior media announcement, nor even a tip-off to its diehard advocacy supporters, Amtrak launched on June 20 a unique sale of roomettes through only June 26, and good for travel between Aug. 20 and Feb. 15, 2019 (https://www.amtrak.com/roomette-sale-buy-one-get-one-free). Based upon the prior atmosphere of Amtrak and certain airlines, this surprise sale actually gives the impression of simmering issues behind the iron curtain of transparency deep within the Amtrak bunker.
One of Southern California’s busiest railroad towns will be a whole lot quieter a year from now.
HARTFORD, Conn. – If it takes money to make money, then Connecticut has pushed all its chips into the rail transit pot.