Sunday, April 24, 2005
No way to run a railroad -- (how about a national health care system?)
The NY Times reports on the latest service innovation from Amtrak...
Acela, Built to Be Rail's Savior, Bedevils Amtrak at Every TurnWhich all brings to mind (now op-ed writer) John Tierney's noted Times magazine story of a little while back, Amtrak Must Die.
It was called the American Flyer, and its goals were ambitious: to speed train travel between Northeastern cities, steal customers from air shuttles, provide the model for a nationwide fast rail system and help its deficit-prone parent, Amtrak, earn a profit.
"These trains will enable Amtrak to carry its customers into the 21st century aboard 21st-century trains," said Thomas M. Downs, Amtrak's president, at a 1996 ceremony announcing a $611 million contract for the new trains.
Today that train is called the Acela, and instead of being Amtrak's savior, it has become a frustrating burden. On Wednesday, the company announced plans to sideline all 20 Acelas until summer to replace cracked brakes. It was the third major disruption of the high-speed service since it came on line in 2001...
Before the first train was built, the Federal Railroad Administration required it to meet crash safety standards that senior Amtrak officials considered too strict. That forced the manufacturers, Bombardier Inc. of Canada and GEC Alstom of France, to make the trains twice as heavy as European models. Workers dubbed the trains "le cochon" - the pig...
All told, Amtrak ordered 9,000 engineering changes that increased costs, delayed production -- just selecting draperies for the windows took two years -- and added thousands of pounds of weight, the French-Canadian consortium said in a lawsuit filed in 2001....
But these very same politicians and regulatory operatives who can't run a railroad could certainly be trusted to do a very fine job running, oh, say, a nationalized health care system, right?
