By J. Bruce Richardson, Corridor Rail Development Corporation; January 26, 2021
Word has come that, indeed, someone did die and they made you King of Passenger Trains in the United States. You have many decisions to make. How will you start?
The first decision to make is who you will assemble on your inner-circle team to determine what the future of American passenger trains will be: keeping Amtrak, as is, or dumping it and starting over fresh?
From where will you draw your team of visionaries and experts? Who is around these days capable of out-of-the-box thinking, and has the ability to simultaneously think globally? America is a very big place, and one-size-fits-all thinking is wrong.
Most importantly, “because we’ve always done it that way” is perhaps the greatest stumbling block to current best practices and innovative thinking.
Who is not available and who do you not want?
The youngest of the private railroad passenger guys who were only in their 20s when Amtrak was formed half a century ago are all now in their 70s and 80s. They will be good for consulting in some areas, but most likely will not be your core group.
Current Amtrak management is made up of people who only know Amtrak or have been late-in-their-careers brought in from an airline. They have the capacity to do some dreaming and “what if” concepts, but their experience is limited to a monolithic company that has no competition. There is a reason Amtrak has been referred to by some as “the carrier of last resort.” The current president of Amtrak had an early-career smidgen of short-line freight railroad experience, but spent the majority of his pre-Amtrak career as a political staffer hire on Capitol Hill.
Other passenger railroaders are mostly commuter railroad experts. They do know operations and maintenance well, but they have little-to-no experience with onboard comforts, amenities, and food service. When your biggest choice for passenger comfort decisions is what color of plastic the seats should be, that somewhat disqualifies you for upscale passenger railroading planning.
Are more airline folks the answer? No. This has been tried more than twice, now, and each time it has resulted in Amtrak losing its soul. The one positive thing for Amtrak’s current former airline cadre is Amtrak’s marketing – as painfully little of it as there is – has never looked better or been more professional. It took airline outsiders to figure out one of Amtrak’s strongest points is it has private accommodations for sale, which are selling nicely, and most likely will continue to sell nicely. Long steel tubes with rows of seats shoulder-to-shoulder are not the answer in these modern travel times.
Freight railroad executives may be the answer? Only if you are interested in running trains over tracks that haul inanimate objects. Many freight railroaders to this day follow the lead of their recent ancestors and disdain passenger trains as inconvenient, burdensome, and general nuisances which should be banished to the history books. Freight railroaders in the 1970s were the inventors of the cancel culture when it came to passenger trains. As an example, in 1990 when VIA Rail Canada moved the Canadian from its historic Canadian Pacific route to today’s Canadian National route, CP almost immediately removed all of the potable water facilities used to water trains at its former passenger stations. They wanted to make sure bringing back passenger trains was as difficult as possible.
If we look to the two private passenger rail carriers under development, we discover they each have their own distinctive approach to senior staffing. One, Texas Central Partners, has looked to Europe and Asia for expertise and advice on developing their high speed product between Houston and Dallas. Most likely the only thing of American origin in the end will be the ground the trains run on in Texas.
Brightline has taken an interesting multi-group approach. The operations side – running the trains up and down the tracks and maintenance – has been handled by former major commuter railroad managers, along with Siemens who has been directing the maintenance on their Siemens-built passenger cars and locomotives.
The best part of Brightline’s original planning was they brought in former Disney and hospitality industry executives to create the station and onboard passenger experience. While some old-hand railroaders have griped modestly about some of management’s seat color selections, the Brightline attention to passenger convenience and comfort details has been extraordinary.
There is one other industry that too few are looking to for recruiting the next generation of passenger railroaders: the cruise industry. Before you pronounce cruise executive and managers as Philistines, consider a few of the bright points about them: The cruise industry is 100% focused on providing passenger travel, and operates as private businesses in a free market industry. Each of today’s cruise ships is what a passenger train used to be, a moving hotel which features comfortable accommodations, good food, some form of entertainment, and a healthy lounge business.
The cruise industry, prior to the pandemic, was overall tremendously healthy financially, even with the high level of worldwide competition. Cruise Market Watch predicts at the end of 2021, ocean cruise capacity will be 581,200 passengers on 323 ships. The big names in the industry all own/control far more ships than most people realize. Various Carnival brands total 98 ships, Royal Caribbean brands total 50 ships, Norwegian brands total 28 ships, and all others total to 147 ships. The predicted capacity represents a 7.8% reduction from pre-pandemic numbers; the worldwide cruise industry is a $37+ billion industry.
Naysayers may declare good cruise line executives may not want to sully their reputations on things as mundane as passenger trains. There is no requirement that well-designed and well-operated passenger trains have to be mundane or money-losers.
The amount of completely private investments in Texas Central Partners and Brightline is the beginning of the now-lost realization passenger trains, when not operated under a Stalinist model as Amtrak now operates, can be both appealing and profitable.
For those who wish to cling to disproven theories or the concept that only government can create and maintain passenger rail at taxpayer expense, they are just not paying attention to what is going on in the real world.
If you are the King of Passenger Rail, you have an obligation to prove the viability and desirability of modern passenger trains in the 21st Century.