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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.
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