Well, I guess everyone saw it coming, but learning this week about Amtrak’s massive reductions-in-force (RIFs) was still a shock. And in my view, it’s another example of Amtrak scoring an “own goal,” cutting the people it needs to manage a growing portfolio of big projects and foolishly focusing on a “profitability” target that is neither possible nor legally required.
I was offsite May 6 representing the Rail Passengers Association (RPA) at an all-day meeting of the Surface Transportation Board’s Passenger Rail Advisory Committee when the texts started buzzing on my phone. Texts from good people, experienced people, smart people, brought in to share their deep knowledge and expertise to start making Amtrak better again. Instead, they were sharing their goodbyes and their personal emails and asking to “stay in touch,” as one often does when you leave your job carrying a cardboard box of mementos instead of a gift and a plaque.
In 2021, President Biden signed a law giving Amtrak more money to invest in infrastructure than it had ever had in its bare-bones history—$22 billion set aside just for Amtrak alone out of $66 billion designated for passenger rail projects nationwide. And for a rail network limping by and underinvested in safe infrastructure for seven decades, it was long overdue.
But, as Amtrak’s Inspector General observed a few months after the Investment in Infrastructure and Jobs Act (IIJA), was signed, “the sheer size of the IIJA’s funding and requirements could strain the company’s ability to manage its current operations while concurrently planning and managing a long-term multibillion-dollar infrastructure portfolio.”
OIG went on to urge Amtrak to pay close attention to “building and deploying a skilled workforce,” noting that the railroad needed to hire at least 750 new managers in Fiscal 2022 with “highly specialized skills,” and that Amtrak’s creation of its new Capital Delivery department—responding to earlier Amtrak OIG findings of weaknesses in capital delivery—needed to “move expeditiously.”
And so it did, as Amtrak executives heeded the Inspector General’s advice and tried to learn from previous procurement and major capital foibles.
A scant three years after the Inspector General flagged the need for a new, smart, experienced workforce at Amtrak to keep all these new projects moving, Amtrak now decides instead to chop roughly 20% of its top-level managers and executives—before it was even required to do so.
Combining actual layoffs with a hiring freeze and pausing promotions, the cutbacks total 450 people, which Amtrak’s remaining leadership expects will save about $100 million in annual costs. The stated reason was “uncertainty” over whether Amtrak would lose support from the new [POTUS 47] Administration, and company officials quoted in press reports this week said it was partly driven by the Sean Duffy-led DOT’s moves to withhold previously awarded grants, casting doubt on whether the fifth year of the IIJA’s funding would even be awarded.
Never mind that so far the new Congress, fully controlled by Republicans, has demonstrated some willingness to continue to support Amtrak funding, passing a continuing resolution that left Amtrak only minimally bruised.
And never mind that the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee just passed out their take on the big reconciliation package, which, again, more or less left Amtrak unmolested.
And never mind that it’s illegal under the Impoundment Control Act to bypass Congress to withhold funds already appropriated and signed into law.
And never mind that cutting the people who are supposed to manage historically large infrastructure projects will create more opportunities for highly visible project failure, legislative rebuke and public ridicule. Nope, let’s just get those costs cut so we can show we can be “profitable,” even though that’s not something we’re expected or required to be.
Bloomberg reported that one of the biggest, but not the only, RIF targets was Amtrak’s Capital Delivery department … the very department that stood up to ease the IG’s concerns about waste, fraud and abuse as Amtrak begins to lead multi-billion-dollar efforts to build new tunnels in New York City and Baltimore, to replace the Susquehanna River Bridge, the Connecticut River Bridge and so many other important projects.
The procurement team also apparently took a big hit. You know, the people who were going to make sure that the next-generation equipment purchases like the new Acela II trainsets, the Airo trainsets and the long-distance equipment replacement order were taken care of.
Those good, experienced, smart people were playing a vital role in managing billions of dollars’ worth of investments that will address Amtrak’s crippling state-of-good-repair backlog. Amtrak is telling us privately that those tunnel and bridge projects should still go forward, just with fewer people running them. I think that’s a recipe for failure and an irresponsible pennywise/pound-foolish approach to a challenge that is largely political rather than programmatic.
Worse yet, if, as is being reported, Amtrak chose to pursue these cuts to achieve operational profitability—a goal not required in any law passed by Congress, during a period of record taxpayer subsidies to the Federal interstate highway system. Well, RPA strenuously disagrees with this decision.
The IIJA represents a meaningful investment in the renewal of our nation’s rail network. However, if we walk away from that investment less than four years after it was passed into law, we will be committing to inefficient and unreliable train service for generations to come.
These cuts have the potential to undermine billions of dollars’ worth of long-term recapitalization efforts, just to save millions in its operating budget. Amtrak only recently announced record levels of ridership and revenue, both nationally and on key State-supported corridors. The American public is best served by Amtrak adopting a strategy of improving its operating ratio by growing service, not by pretending to be a for-profit corporation delivering earnings-per-share at the expense of carrying out the mission Congress set for it more than half a century ago.
That’s why the RPA is calling on Amtrak to provide a high-level explanation to the taxpaying public of why these firings took place at this particular point in time, which departments will be affected, and how these personnel cuts will hurt operations and capital programs. No more hiding behind “proprietary” or “business-sensitive” hand-waving. The taxpayers who found a way after decades to hand over a guaranteed $22 billion in investment capital to this long-suffering, publicly supported institution have a right to understand what Amtrak is thinking. Because in my view, Amtrak, you got it spectacularly wrong.
Railway Age Editors’ Comments
This repeated-throughout-government act of insensitive cruelty based on random, ill-considered, spurious impulses is something Stephen Gardner would never countenance. But, of course, this is why he is no longer there. – Capitol Hill Contributing Editor Frank N. Wilner
“Insensitive cruelty based on random, ill-considered, spurious impulses”? Wilner is being polite. And you thought that thankfully departed Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.), who as Chairman of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee often referred to Amtrak as “Soviet style railroading,” was the torch-bearer for the anti-Amtrak crowd? The current Administration makes the clownishly toupeéd Mica, “an annoying hemorrhoid,” as Wilner tagged him, look like a jolly railfan. – Editor-in-Chief William C. Vantuono
I won’t dispute what Jim Mathews said. He is on target, and other advocates at that Rail Users’ Network (RUN) and elsewhere are saying similar things. What we need now is for elected officials, especially in Congress, to say those things, too.
I would go somewhat further, though. I had gone further in my “Passenger Rail Outlook -2025” column in the January issue of the magazine, which was posted on the web site on January 7. It was the grimmest column I had written to date, and recent events have exceeded my fears; including the newly-announced Amtrak workforce reductions. Jim’s comments are correct about that.
The problem with Amtrak is broader, though. It stems from the blatant politicization of mobility in this country, especially the inadequate amount of same that is accorded to both motorists and non-motorists through Amtrak and local transit. Stephen Gardner is an example. He is the most brilliant political operative I ever met, but he was not a career railroader. Frank Wilner said that Stephen was not intentionally cruel, and I see no reason to dispute that. Still, he did not manage the railroad well, in terms of what the riders need, Under his leadership, Amtrak could have been considered indifferent to the riders’s mobility and uninterested in starting new services and enlarging the riding community.
At this point, I have difficulty believing that Amtrak can obtain new long-distance equipment before the existing 40-year-old cars become inoperable. That would probably mean the demise of those trains over time by attrition. It also appears unlikely that the set of state-supported services will expand, either. With cuts in federal services like assistance for health care, states will have a difficult time affording more routes and more trains on existing routes.
The hostility of the current government in Washington has aggravated Amtrak’s difficulties to a previously-unfathomable level. Our Editor-in-Chief, William C. Vantuono, has articulated that concern beyond reasonable dispute in his inimitable style.
Sean Duffy, Elon Musk, and POTUS-47 himself have all expressed their antipathy toward Amtrak. Can enough members of Congress with some help from the courts hold the line, so Amtrak can survive thIs governmental hostility which, to date, reaches a level unprecedented in adversarial zeal from the government?
Jim seems to hope so, and maybe the rest of us should, too. As many of us know, and as Jim expressed, Amtrak’s act of shedding so many employees and their collective institutional memory reinforces the impression that Amtrak is ready to capitulate to the political forces that could (and likely would) destroy it over the next few years.
Since this spring began, Jim and I shared speaking positions at two conferences, and we both expressed our concerns about Amtrak’s future. Amtrak holds a unique position among transportation modes as the way to go places that is available for motorists and non-motorists alike, and it can provide an enjoyable experience. Some rail transit is like that, too.
Now it’s up to advocates, elected officials, and the public to convince other government officials of that fact. The most difficult part of accomplishing that objective might be to convince Amtrak senior managers themselves. – Contributing Editor David Peter Alan
