Is Amtrak Trying To Commit Suicide?

Today when I got home from work I turned on the TV and found it on the local all news channel. One of the big stories they were talking about was the possibility of Amtrak workers walking out on Friday.

If you're an employee in a failing business that is in desperate need of a bailout, what do you do? Do you look for another job? Do you make sacrifices for the company? Or do you threaten to go on strike if the bankers don't give you enough money?

Someone needs to remind the TWU that Amtrak is not fighting for market share or for greater profits, it is fighting for relevance. If the Amtrak workers walk out, will very many people really care? If Amtrak stops operating, is it really going to have a significant impact on our nation's transportation grid?

The answer to both questions is "No."

When Eastern Airlines or Continental Airlines or Pan Am went through strikes there was a measure of sympathy that could be had for these great corporate icons. When the private railroads turned passenger rail operations over to Amtrak in 1971, there was a sense of loss as people realized it was the passing of an era.

If Amtrak suffers a strike that permanently shuts the company down there will be none of those feelings. Amtrak isn't a great company, it's been a ward of the state since inception. It won't lead to the mourning of the passing of an era as that would indicate that people actually felt nostalgic about the Amtrak era. Even among railbuffs Amtrak is referred to derisively as either Slamtrack or AmCrash.

I like riding passenger trains, I really do. I even support the idea that intercity passenger rail service should qualify for public funding as a common good. But Amtrak has been a government boondoggle since day one.

The only reason it has survived this long feeding from the public trough is because of political inertia and pork barrel politics. It operates too many money losing routes and misses the basic point of travel: it rarely takes anyone where they want to go.

There are entire states that have no rail service via Amtrak. There are other states that have only one or two stops. And then there is Florida where, on a good day, you have so many stops it takes at least four and half hours to go from Orlando to Ft. Lauderdale - a three and a half hour drive. No one ever rationalized the Amtrak route structure. No ever looked at real market demand. The trips cost too much, don't go where you want them to, and tend to drop you off in a fairly rough part of someplace you don't want to be when you get there.

And for the most part, they tend to accomplish all this with a surly, don't care attitude.

The TWU is claiming that they fear a major accident or disruption in the next year. OK, but why do they fear that? Excepting the Northeast Corridor, Amtrak doesn't own the rails they travel over. Is the union claiming that there will be some sort of equipment failure? If so, how will increasing the funding help? If it's a major wreck that they're anticipating, that tells me that it is because the equipment is simply worn out and needs replacement - something that most likely cannot be accomplished in one year or for even a billion dollars.

How would the TWU propose that Amtrak spend the extra money? Or are they going to simply propose that their members need to get paid more money so that these types of accidents don't happen?

I hate to say this, but if the workers walk out on Friday, it will almost certainly be the end of Amtrak. And I can't really say that I'll mourn it's passing.

It's long since been time to denationalize the passenger rail network anyway.