On Aug. 20, 2024, The New York Times reported that Amtrak’s recent operational difficulties are the result of poorly maintained infrastructure supporting Northeast Corridor train services. In July, Bloomberg published an opinion piece entitled, “Amtrak’s Failures Are Wired into the System.” Old (variable tension) catenary and supporting components are the culprit. The Bloomberg story reveals a startling fact: “The Connect NEC 2037 Plan issued late last year by the federal/state Northeast Corridor Commission does envision replacing the (electric) catenary between Washington and New York, but not until 2037.”
Amtrak tries to blame all its shortcomings on Congress. Case in point is this sentence in the letter CEO Stephen Gardner wrote to me on March 4, 2024: “[T]he way to solve many of the [problems] Amtrak faces, including with long-distance equipment, is with adequate, ongoing and assured federal funding for intercity passenger rail service.” He continued by outlining Amtrak’s “battle” every year for sufficient annual appropriations.
This is a red herring. No management ever has unlimited resources. A good management knows how to allocate scarce resources to their best use and to adapt quickly to changed circumstances. Under existing circumstances, one can seriously question Amtrak’s spending priorities:
- Amtrak purchased a Wilmington, Del. “trophy” high-rise office building during the pandemic (and, interestingly just ahead of the 2020 Presidential Election) that local reporting suggests was acquired for far more than market value. This structure has largely been empty in the intervening years despite the urgency associated with the acquisition.
- As the electrical infrastructure fails, Amtrak moves forward with the acquisition of Washington Union Station for several hundred million dollars.
- According to compensation data filed with the Surface Transportation Board, Amtrak’s payroll for “Executives, Official and Staff Assistants” totaled $251 million in 2023 compared to the last pre-pandemic year of 2019 which totaled $154 million (a 63% increase). In June 2024, the mid-month headcount for this same group of executives totaled 1,436—double that of the headcount prior to the pandemic.
There have been plenty of ribbon-cuttings associated with renewal of the Boston to Washington Northeast Corridor. North Portal Bridge is one example, the Hudson Tunnels another. But there are no ribbon cuttings for basic maintenance, and the railroad’s sad performance reflects this.
Amtrak’s highly touted Acela II trainsets are promoted as a 160-mph upgrade to the route but meaningful trip time improvements promise to be elusive. The long-distance network is fragile, given the shrinking passenger fleet available to support it. RailInc’s UMLER reports that of 428 bi-level Superliners reported as active in 2018, only 367 have current airbrake tests, suggesting that the balance are out of service. An internal Amtrak planning document developed in 2018 reported that a minimum of 387 are required to support what is, essentially, an unchanged long-distance operating plan.
Amtrak’s board of directors and executive leadership need to take a good long look into a mirror and consider former CEO David Gunn’s rather prescient observation from several years ago: “Congress thinks they’re not subsidizing the Northeast Corridor except on capital, but the NEC is in more trouble than the long-distance trains. If you can’t give Congress a reason for keeping the long-distance network together, then you can’t give them a very good reason to subsidize that corridor.”
