Amtrak, as an example, has to weigh the cost of generating the data, i.e. equipment status information, against the utility of the information. Who is going to use it? For what? How will the data impact management decisions? Is making the information public relevant to the operation of the business?
What got this all started was the statement/assertion/inference/insight I am going to pin on Don Oltmann that Amtrak has a fairly substantial pool of bad-ordered or perhaps in cases simply removed-from-service Amcoaches on a dead line somewhere at Beech Grove, Indiana or other place along with perhaps a smaller number of Superliners. The conjecture is that Amtrak is not receiving enough money from fares and from Congress for restoring and operating these cars, even in the face of increasing Amtrak ridership and crowded trains.
We got off on this tangent that Amtrak should be making public its consists and equipment utilization patterns, which as far as I am concerned is going beyond the original concern.
You betcha this information is important. It is important to Wisconsin DOT trying to get a fifth coach for the Hiawatha; it is important to WisARP, which has made adding a second Chicago-Minneapolis train a priority and needs to have something intelligent to say about feasibility to the politicians who could make this happen. It is important to Illinois, which expanded its in-state service using existing Amtrak equipment. It is important to California, where there was talk of CalTrans coming up with the money to refurbish such cars to expand the Amtrak California service.
It is important for making the case for Amtrak funding from Congress. If a modest increase in Amtrak's appropriation could provide enough money to get those Amcoaches out on the road in a time of gas price-driven demand, this is something the public should know.
If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?
Paul Milenkovic wrote: Amtrak, as an example, has to weigh the cost of generating the data, i.e. equipment status information, against the utility of the information. Who is going to use it? For what? How will the data impact management decisions? Is making the information public relevant to the operation of the business?You betcha this information is important. It is important to Wisconsin DOT trying to get a fifth coach for the Hiawatha; it is important to WisARP, which has made adding a second Chicago-Minneapolis train a priority and needs to have something intelligent to say about feasibility to the politicians who could make this happen. It is important to Illinois, which expanded its in-state service using existing Amtrak equipment. It is important to California, where there was talk of CalTrans coming up with the money to refurbish such cars to expand the Amtrak California service.
If the request for information comes from a source that has some skin in the game, e.g. Winconsin DOT, then Amtrak should make it available if they have it. If it incurrs an additional cost to produce it, the requester should pay for the information.
If the request comes from a fan group, Amtrak has no obligation to provide the information. It might be good public relations, but if Amtrak responded to every request for information from fan groups, it would probably incur a significant incremental cost to do so.
One way to test the legitimacy of a request for information is to ask the requestor to pay the incremental cost associated with assembling and producing it. This is what we did on "nice to know" requests. Amazingly, many of the requests died when the requirement to pay for the information was put on the table.
I have been posting to this forum long enough to realize that very few people stay on the originating topic. No worries!
I agree that if there was an incremental cost to Amtrak in generating roster information, then anyone wishing it should have to bear that burden.
However, surely roster status information is at the fingertips of the management folk, and producing it would be as simple as printing it off someone's computer. I'll bet if I were on the House or Senate Transportation Committee and asked for it, the response would be "do you want us to messenger it over, or should we e-mail it?"
Also we're in the internet age, aren't we? Even if there's a signifigant cost to produce the information, AMTRAK probably has a business need already to have that information, and probably is producing it anyway. I'm willing to bet a dollar or 2 that the cost to disseminate it via internet is not signifigant.
Now that's not to say that AMTRAK has to convert it from their proprietary format to one that I can read, although I'm also willing to bet that AMTRAK's distributing it internally in some Bill Gates product. I don't see that the intent of these comments is to require AMTRAK to make something new, but somewhere Mr. Beech Grove AMTRAK must be sending Mr. Washington DC AMTRAK a report of what junk equipment Mr. Chicago AMTRAK sent him last week. And I'm sure willing to bet a dollar or 2 that they didn't use an old fashioned typewriter to produce the report. I'm sure the number of cc's is a fixed cost for AMTRAK's email bill.
Now we will look a little bit foolish if it turns out that AMTRAK's already supplying it to some rail advocacy group or government agency who is posting it on a website somewhere and we just didn't google properly.
Patrick Boylan
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For May 2008, 12.4 per cent of the Amtrak passenger car fleet was out of service. For the fiscal year to date 14.3 per cent of the passenger car fleet, on average, was out of service.
Clearly, Amtrak has a list of bad order cars, or it could not have come up with the number of cars out of service. And it could make it available to "need to know persons" or the public for little incremental cost. But as frequently is the case there is more to the issue than meets the eye.
As we learned in the electric utility industry, once information is released, it tends to generate a slew of follow-up questions. People might want to know the work order status for all of the bad order cars, i.e. which cars are being repaired, which cars are slated to be junked pending insurance settlements; how were the cars damaged; how much does repairing a car cost compared to replacing it; how much will the insurance cover; who is performing the work, etc. Believe me, once the information is released, the recipients will come up with thousands of questions about the initial data. This begs the next issue!
To what extent should Amtrak respond to follow-up questions? If it refused to do so, some people, undoubtedly, would complain that it was not fulfilling its responsibility to keep the public informed of its internal operations, even thought it has no obligation to share this information with the general public.
Like most organizations Amtrak uses contractors to perform some of its work. In many instances it solicits competitive bids from contractors to perform the work. Some of the car work is contracted or sub-contracted. If it inadvertently released information regarding the cars that were the subject of competitive bidding, it could violate its policies and procedures, as well as generally accepted purchasing and contracting practices, associated with its bidding processes. Before it released the information, it would have to cull it to make sure that confidential information that could impact the bid process was not being released.
If the information is e-mailed to interested groups and persons, Amtrak would have to keep a list of the recipients. Periodically, it would have to edit the list to determine if the recipients still wanted the information. Or if they are still alive! Moreover, people frequently change ISPs without notifying others of their new e-mail address. This results in an undelivered message. The sender (Amtrak) has to delete the undelivered message or more likely take the time to determine why it was not delivered. Maintaining mailing lists can be expensive. And if they are not culled periodically, they can take up a significant amount of server space. And server space costs money.
If Joe Congressman asks Amtrak for a list of bad order cars, he may get it. If the Chairman of the House Infrastructure and Transportation Committee asks for it, he will likely get it.
If Joe Doaks from Timbuktu asks for a list of bad order cars, he probably will not get it, unless he can demonstrate a need for it. But Joe can write to his federal representatives and ask them to sponsor or endorse legislation to enable Amtrak to buy more equipment.
If the head of a state DOT asks for car information, in conjunction with a current or anticipated Amtrak contract, he will probably get it because he has a legitimate need to know. However, if his state has a contract with Amtrak, with a car shortage, he can discuss with Amtrak the need for additional capacity without knowing how many units are in Amtrak's bad order car inventory, although the issue may become relevant when the conferees turn to discussing the source of additional equipment.
Last year the California DOT told Amtrak that it needed additional capacity on the Surfliners between LA and San Diego. The parties discussed several options, including whether Amtrak had any cars that could be repaired and returned to service. As it turned out it had four Superliners that could be repaired. California agreed to pick-up the tab. The cost was more than $1 million per car. I know, because I rode one of them in March when I was in California. But making this information available to the public had no impact, as far as I can tell, on Cal DOT's need and the choice it opted for to obtain additional equipment.
As a northeast corridor rider of Amtrak, I regularly take the Acela Express between Boston and NYC and sometimes down to DC as well. The service is very timely, generally on time and the service levels are better than the airlines without the hassle of security or transportation to and from the airport.
That said, the long distance trains or trains that have to continually compete with freight traffic will never improve in terms of efficiency, speed, etc until there is a concerted effort to force the freight RRs to give passenger trains priority class scheduling regardless of circumstance similar to how it was back in the 30s-50s when the private RRs actually cared about their passenger service. So blaming Amtrak will go nowhere, everyone needs to female dog and moan to our inept congressional reps and senators and our dysfunctional president to effect further change as Amtrak cant do anything that will have any sustained effect without long term financial commitments.
As far as extra cars and refurbishing, there are probably 20-30 Amfleet I's at Wilmington, DE shops as we fly by them everytime I venture down to DC. They are just sitting on the tracks and dont seem to ever go anywhere...so I would add those to the list of available cars as well...
Hopefully after November, things may improve though doubtful from either party.
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