Taking Amtrak apart

Amtrak's recent announcement that it would auction or otherwise sell off 48 pieces of equipment, including vintage passenger cars and locomotives, reflects, in my opinion, the disconnect between Amtrak management and Amtrak's mandate to provide rail transportation services on a nationwide network.

Seeking a bottom line is all well and good, but Amtrak is not a private enterprise in the normal sense of that term. Amtrak does get pressure from Congress and constituent groups to turn a profit, which it has technically never done without fancy accounting practices. Amtrak does not have the normal pressure from stockholders to turn a profit. And, in modern terms, pressure from stockholders means pressure from investment funds that not only hold the majority of stocks in large corporations but also have the financial power to take them over and run them with their own boards and managements.

As a consequence of "normal" pressures, major corporations sometimes give in to stockholder demands by taking the company apart. This means they do one or more of either curtail services, terminate workers, or sell off assets. Seems to me that current Amtrak management is confused as to whether Amtrak is a "normal" corporation. So far, current management has done all of the above, and shows no signs of stopping, in some misguided quest to get to a better bottom line to please... who exactly?

I suppose the results will be the same as they are when a major corporate entity does it. Like Sears, Amtrak will pare down to a few essential "stores/routes," dismiss loyal workers and lose its institutional memory, and sell off assets that could otherwise be used to build the business rather than tear it down. Perhaps there will be a black bottom line, but the more likely result, in my opinion, will be a bankruptcy. Will there be golden parachutes? Probably. One hopes they will land on the tracks in front of the last Amtrak train on the route to oblivion.

©2018 - C. A. Turek - mistertrains@gmail.com