By Andrew Selden, Railway Age Magazine; April 20, 2019
Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson and his chief deputy, Stephen Gardner, have proposed eliminating the company’s interregional trains in favor of a scattering of discontiguous, higher frequency short corridors connecting nearby city pairs. But this reflects a deep misapprehension of the performance of the company’s three primary business groups, and a surprising emphasis on minimizing the returns on investment of the company’s capital resources.
It also amounts to repeating an action while expecting different outcomes. Reducing interregional service in favor of short corridors has all been tried before, and has never had a financially successful outcome.