PSU1980 posted:The last person to be running Amtrak is an airline executive. They, the airlines executives are despised by their leadership. Just look at the merger of Continental Airlines with UA. UA was a complete train wreck, no pun intended, publicly traded the they participated an employee buyout that was draconian in nature. Bankrupt, sticks, then some group of genius's decided to merge with Continental where new UA management practices and contracts were forced upon a once very happy set of employees who won JD Power awards regularly. The merger proved to be an absolute disaster including Customer Service, which by far, though they do not have a monopoly on it, the worst Customer Service. A far cry when Continental was a great company. These so called Airline CEO's have no idea what customer services is much less how to run a railroad.
One thing that Amtrak does not need is CEO like Anderson. I doubt he has every ridden Amtrak nor is he even close to being prepared to manage Amtrak and deal with freight companies.
Let's award the job to the airlines instead of a proven RR Executive. Maybe he can squeeze a few bucks from Congress. I expect fare increases, baggage fees, higher food prices and more system wide delays.
I guess Anderson won't be able to use the excuse that the delay to Newark is because of weather, hear that all the time, sunny, no wind, beautiful day - but weather delays are the standard answer.
Does he even know where the NE Corridor is?
What a disgrace.
IIRC when United went into bankruptcy to break the unions, all the UA management team was going to be given stock in the "new" reorganized United because of their outstanding abilities while the regular shareholders lost everything. When they "merged" with Continental it became United Airlines in name only. Run as and by Continental with Continental ticket software, management and policies, etc. And we can see where that new railroad CEO has gotten United, just one bad headline after another...
Why shouldn't Amtrak be run poorly? Didn't some railroad honcho in Chicago (Metra?) commit suicide after it was discovered he was paying himself for days off or something into near a million dollars? And the board "was shocked and unaware" when it came out. The financial recovery was dropped after his death. Just more of the same.
