On Wednesday, Dec. 16, the Senate confirmed President Obama’s nomination of Derek Tai-Ching Kan, the General Manager of the app-based ride-sharing company Lyft, to Amtrak’s Board of Directors. Kan will replace Jeffrey R. Moreland, the Board’s outgoing Vice Chair and former Vice President for Public Affairs at BNSF Railway, whose term had expired. Kan’s addition to the board holds the promise of infusing some of the innovation that has disrupted the ride-for-hire industry into a company that is in great need of outside-the-box thinking.
An Uber driver using the company's app to pick up a passenger and navigate to the passenger's destination in November 2015. Photo by Noel Tock / Flickr.com.While comparing the provision of for-hire rides in automobiles with intercity passenger rail service may be an apples-and-oranges exercise, I thought it would be fun to list several of the defining features of services like Lyft and Uber and speculate as to how they may be applied to Amtrak. Of course, thanks to the greater opportunities for competition afforded by the FAST Act, other firms may bring these types of improvements to passenger trains. But Amtrak is likely to remain the dominant force in intercity passenger rail for the near term, and the national carrier plays the vital role of maintaining a unified nationwide ticketing and reservation system.
Rides on demand: While passenger trains will never be able to reach the level of convenience that a car and driver on demand can offer, it would be possible to configure the Amtrak app or Website so that it feels more like Lyft. Based on your current location and destination, it would come up with an optimal train route, then list the available departure times, accommodation options and prices in a format that’s simple to use and figure out. Of course, true competitiveness with on-demand services requires sufficient train frequencies. Achieving that will require changing more than Amtrak’s corporate mindset.
GPS tracking: In line with the greater flow of information, applying Lyft-like technology to Amtrak would allow you to pull up a smartphone app and see on a map exactly where your train is. The Track a Train feature on Amtrak’s website comes close to this, and the new “Amtrak Connect” homepage that passengers using on-board WiFi see is another positive development. Further upgrades should allow for even more accurate arrival time predictions, and for similar information as displayed on your train to be pulled up for any train. In the not-too-distant future, with greater data openness, one could imagine having access to such information as the train’s consist, how many seats are left in each car, and how much of each menu item is left in the cafe or dining car.
Variable pricing based on distance and time: The price you pay for a ride on Uber or Lyft is calculated based on the GPS tracking of your ride and a formula that combines the distance ridden and the travel time. Of course, both services have what Uber calls “surge pricing” and what Lyft calls “prime time,” where the fare is inflated by a certain percentage if demand is high (as gauged by the number of users who have the app open). Amtrak, taking a page from the airlines’ playbook, already has the equivalent of “surge pricing” in place in the form of fare “buckets,” in which a higher fare is charged for the next block of seats or rooms once a designated block is filled. Thus, the greater the demand for space on a particular departure, the higher the fare will be. Technology offers many possibilities for producing even more micro-variability in ticket and accommodation pricing than currently exists. Ideally, this would result in greater revenue and more reasonable fares than the current system.
Seamless, behind-the-scenes credit card payment: Ride-sharing apps store your credit card information and automatically charge the agreed-upon fare at the ride’s completion. Not much of an update is needed to get Amtrak to this point. It could also be adapted to allow passengers, once on board, to instantly upgrade to Business or First Class or to a sleeper (or from a Roomette to a Bedroom) as space is available, perhaps at a discount compared to pre-departure booking. Of course, unlike ride-sharing companies, Amtrak also has to be able to keep serving those without smartphones or Internet access, and even without credit cards (as is the case with some in the Amish community).
Instant user feedback and driver ratings: Imagine being able to give your conductor, coach or sleeper attendant, or food service staff a star rating based on how close they came to meeting or exceeding your expectations, as you can your Lyft or Uber driver upon the ride’s completion. Having this function built into the app would encourage more passengers to give feedback, giving management a fuller and more real-time picture of employees’ performance than the current system of occasional random surveys and unsolicited feedback provides. Ideally, Amtrak’s Customer Relations department would be as responsive to customer complaints and suggestions as ride-sharing companies’ staffs are.
Tipping: While Uber does not allow for, and actively discourages, tipping one’s driver, Lyft does allow the rider to select a tip amount at the same time as it invites the rider to give the driver a star rating. Perhaps building tipping of car attendants and food service staff into an app would encourage passengers to tip who might otherwise forget or not know that tipping of these personnel is customary.
Extension of the transit system: Lyft’s clever “Friends with Transit” ad campaign positions its service as an extension of the public transit systems of the cities it serves. While Amtrak has made significant strides in partnering with other transportation providers, a lot more needs to be done to help Amtrak passengers solve the first and last mile problem. With Lyft’s GM on the railroad’s Board, perhaps we’ll see a marketing and sales partnership between the two companies, where a Lyft ride to get you to or from the train station could be booked at the same time as one’s train trip (and earn extra Amtrak Guest Rewards points).
Continuous improvement: This is a buzzphrase that is often found in Amtrak’s job descriptions, but from the passenger’s perspective, improvement in Amtrak’s service quality and customer interface seems very gradual, with occasional big leaps. By contrast, ride-sharing apps offer regular updates, and their developers are always tweaking to fix bugs and streamline the user experience. Amtrak is working on a major overhaul of its ticketing and reservation system, which should result in a great increase in functionality and adaptability However, technological updating can only go so far when the biggest aspects of customer satisfaction have to do with on-time performance, ride quality, the condition of the equipment and food quality and variety, all of which require bigger investments and longer lead times to improve.
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