Link for thpse numbers
Amtrak October momthly performance
According to Amtrak ridership for October FY 2019 compared to prior year was as follows:Northeast Corridor +19,000
State-Supported +26,200
Long Distance - 20,600
Overall +24,600
NKP guy Well done, Mr. Anderson and Board. What brilliant, successful businessmen you are.
I think you will find if you check against the histogram of Amtrak ridership. Amtrak ridership declines when gas prices fall beneath a specific level. I think you will also find that Amtrak is experiencing ridership declines across the system not just on the trains that Amtrak management has made changes to. Ridership on the Lake Shore Limited is down 13%. Ridership is down on most of the Long Distance Trains. Some of the Western states Amtrak is traversing are also seeing driving increase by 5-10%. The increase in driving is comming from transportation alternatives.
I think the thread about Amtrak fire sale prices on sleeper accomodations is rather humourous since it was started by TRAINS Magazine staff and of all people the publishers of TRAINS shouldn't be living in a vacuum. Amtrak management should be concerned about this because it has to submit RFP's for the first tranche of LD Equipment next year. Good luck selling that to Congress when your ridership is in a nose dive......hence the panic and the fire sales.
Maybe what Balt says is true? "Delta Dick" Anderson wasn't hired to run Amtrak, he was hired to kill it.
Looks like it's going to be "death by 1,000 cuts."
If the Congress wanted it gone, they could do it overnight by a vote, but that would mean putting their names on record and taking responsibility for something serious and not "feel-good" legislation.
I traveled from NYP to Cleveland on #49 on a Tuesday in the middle of last month. Being a habitue of the Lake Shore Limited since its very first trip in November of 1975, I have a pretty long and reliable frame of reference to support two points that this thread raises.
As is my custom, I entered the brand-new dining car as the train departed Albany at 7 PM. Unlike past trips where the dining car steward would book reservations so as to minimize the always-crowded (and progressively understaffed) diner, I walked into a nearly empty car. One lone British couple on holiday had finished their boxed food with a disappointed reaction. While in Albany I had purchased some indifferent clam chowder and a poor microwaved hamburger to serve as my dinner aboard #49 that evening. Although I was only the third person in the car, the Lead Service Attendant had to examine his conscience before deciding he would look the other way as I ate my lousy substitue for dinner that night in the brand-spanking new dining car we Lake Shore patrons have been waiting for for five years. One other couple entered the putative dining car before I returned to my room as we neared Utica.
At 10 PM my personal thermometer was showing my bedroom temperature to be 64 degrees and dropping. When I discovered the other sleeper was nice and warm, I effected a transfer from one room and car to another. Consequently, I walked the entire length of the train to find the conductor and get his (forthcoming) permission. But here was my takeaway: In 43 years, I have never seen the train anywhere near as empty as it was that autumn evening/night. One coach was entirely empty, the others just sprinkled with passengers. I found myself, for the first time since 1975, fearing for the future of this train I like and have supported. By the way, in my second bedroom the temperature, instead of being an unadjustable 64, was now an unadjustable 79.6; from the igloo to the sauna.
I'm not the only contributor on this forum for railfans who is lately minimizing his Amtrak LD travels because it just isn't much fun at all any more. No wonder Amtrak has sales on first class rooms when its trains ought to be, as they were for over 40 years, bursting with passengers glad to find space during the busy holiday season.
Well done, Mr. Anderson and Board. What brilliant, successful businessmen you are.
BaltACD until the person is in the new job for a period of time you still don't know if he is worth two turds, and even then they may set the wheels in motion so that they are gone before the full effect of their misfeasence falls on their successor. Management games are fun to observe from a distance.
My experience is a lot closer to your experience....
I have personally seen that outside the railroad industry with Hewlett-Packard, IBM, General Motors, etc.
Here is what I think is rather humourous example about being an Executive. anyone reading this can claim to be an Executive and hook-up with an Executive Recruiter and eventually become one.....period. Yes, it happens that way. Both examples I witnessed were hired by a Verizon subsidiary and then later fired for being fairly useless (one CEO and one Marketing President). Now I watched once after the Marketing President was fired. She did not mention the dismissal on her later resume, instead she became a "management consultant". Then she started her own management consulting company and walla.........she was an Executive Candidate again. Thats how some gain experience and entry as an Executive with not a whole lot of prior experience. I watched her off and on and in less than three years she was back in a Executive Position. Hopefully she trully learned the job by then.
Now having said that. I have worked with Senior Executives at large companies and sometimes I see an intelligent person, other times I see a moron that should not be a CEO. Some of the Executives have been delegating all their lives they are quite stupid in any area other than picking people and delegating. I can name the head of a major trucking firm as one example.
He had his college degrees on the wall (one was a MBA from Marquette University......not easy to get). I started to talk about his network setup and IT infrastructure and his response was. "We got a lot of stuff......we got a lot of good stuff but it's expensive stuff". After hearing that from a CEO I was a little taken aback and then asked how they grew into such a setup. He then realized he was out of his league and introduced his chief IT guy. In walks this guy in a $200 Sears Roebuck Suit......and I almost laughed when he told me he used to work for Sears IT. Now granted his skills could be in an area I did not observe like in crunching numbers but I had to gasp at someone so clueless on technology in a technology driven society.
This trucking company was making money despite it's Executive "talent" in my opinion because they had decent subordinates that were covering most of the bases. It's IT Infrastructure sucked though and was a hodge podge of different systems......looked like someone didn't know what they were doing but was experimenting piece by piece with outside help at times. In other words it was pretty horrible. The employees were working their butts off to bridge the various failures of their IT infrastructure. This was a well known and major trucking firm.
I can give more examples I have seen personally as well but the post would go on and on for pages.
PJS1 BaltACD Management qualification is in the eye of the beer holder. No two people have the same idea of what 'qualified' actually means. What may be qualified to you, may be disqualified to me and vice versa. There is nothing more subjective than 'qualifications' when it comes to management. Most large corporations, at least the ones that I worked for, have sophisticated management succession programs. They were based on relatively objective criteria that were heavily weighted by past performance. And they were put together with the help of some of the nation’s premier consultants. Our management succession programs were not based mostly on subjective criteria, although it played a minor role in some instances. Since you did not work for the Fortune 200 corporations that I was associated with; how would you know?
BaltACD Management qualification is in the eye of the beer holder. No two people have the same idea of what 'qualified' actually means. What may be qualified to you, may be disqualified to me and vice versa. There is nothing more subjective than 'qualifications' when it comes to management.
No two people have the same idea of what 'qualified' actually means. What may be qualified to you, may be disqualified to me and vice versa. There is nothing more subjective than 'qualifications' when it comes to management.
Most large corporations, at least the ones that I worked for, have sophisticated management succession programs. They were based on relatively objective criteria that were heavily weighted by past performance. And they were put together with the help of some of the nation’s premier consultants.
Our management succession programs were not based mostly on subjective criteria, although it played a minor role in some instances.
Since you did not work for the Fortune 200 corporations that I was associated with; how would you know?
No. I was only associated with a Fortune mid-to-low 200's corporation that got hoodwinked by Mantle Ridge's promise of looting the cash register - which threw out any succession plan that had been in place. No matter how much care is placed in the succession plan - until the person is in the new job for a period of time you still don't know if he is worth two turds, and even then they may set the wheels in motion so that they are gone before the full effect of their misfeasence falls on their successor. Management games are fun to observe from a distance.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
The Fortune 200 Corporations that I worked for – three – had robust management succession programs. They were based on relatively objective criteria that were heavily weighted by past performance. And they were put together with the help of some of the nation’s premier consultants.
Our management succession programs were not based mostly on subjective criteria. Most of the people that got to senior management or executive positions had extraordinary skills. Most of them worked hard to produce the results that helped them stand out. In addition, they learned how to play the game, which involves some political skills, but if they could not deliver the results, their political skills were for naught.
Since you did not work for the Fortune 200 corporations that I was associated with; how would you know what criteria were important for advancement?
Rio Grande Valley, CFI,CFII
PJS1 Overmod Something I can't really figure out is this: "Also, what doesn’t help Amtrak is how it has lost its most experienced management from buyouts and layoffs, thus paralyzing the operation, as it pays top-dollar salaries to new entrants to learn the business and the industry." Can someone explain how this relates to the Amtrak we all know and love? Precious little of any of this in what actually seems to be happening there. A key point, which an outsider would not know, is the depth of Amtrak's management bench. Sometimes the departure of the old dogs produces a better outcome than if they stayed. Oftentimes people get stale in a job, and their departure benefits the organization. The large corporation that I worked for was talent rich, in no small part because we were paid very well. We had 3 to 5 qualified people for every senior professional and management position. Replacing people who left - few did - with equally well qualified or better qualified people was not an issue.
Overmod Something I can't really figure out is this: "Also, what doesn’t help Amtrak is how it has lost its most experienced management from buyouts and layoffs, thus paralyzing the operation, as it pays top-dollar salaries to new entrants to learn the business and the industry." Can someone explain how this relates to the Amtrak we all know and love? Precious little of any of this in what actually seems to be happening there.
"Also, what doesn’t help Amtrak is how it has lost its most experienced management from buyouts and layoffs, thus paralyzing the operation, as it pays top-dollar salaries to new entrants to learn the business and the industry."
Can someone explain how this relates to the Amtrak we all know and love? Precious little of any of this in what actually seems to be happening there.
A key point, which an outsider would not know, is the depth of Amtrak's management bench. Sometimes the departure of the old dogs produces a better outcome than if they stayed. Oftentimes people get stale in a job, and their departure benefits the organization.
The large corporation that I worked for was talent rich, in no small part because we were paid very well. We had 3 to 5 qualified people for every senior professional and management position. Replacing people who left - few did - with equally well qualified or better qualified people was not an issue.
Management qualification is in the eye of the beer holder.
Something I can't really figure out is this:
https://www.railwayage.com/passenger/amtraks-second-fire-sale-in-a-year/
An interesting opinion piece from Railway Age.
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