According to The New York Times, Amtrak’s management “knew
for years that they would have to replace large sections of deteriorating track
in Pennsylvania Station in New York City.”[1]
The management instead had engineering crews apply “short-term fixes to rows of
rotted ties, crumbling concrete and eroded steel.”[2]
Incredulously, the management was putting off replacing the tracks in part “to
give work time to a nearby passenger hall renovation.”[3]
Additionally, the management sought to minimize taking tracks out of service even
on weekends so as not to disrupt service. In 2017, three accidents at the
station finally got the management to commit to undertake an emergency repair
program that “cut back service through the summer for thousands of passengers
daily.”[4]
Even by the objective of minimizing impaired service, prioritizing a hall
renovation and putting off needed track
repairs are problematic. The deeper problem is that of seriously misjudging
utility.
The utility gained by passengers from a renovated hall is rather
superficial, whereas the disutility from derailments at a station could result
in passengers deciding to no longer travel by train. Put differently, limited
service disruptions on weekends pale in comparison to having trains derail coming
into, or leaving a station. Even if the latter are mistakenly deemed low-probability/high impact events, the
business calculus that favors short-term fixes over long-term stability is
problematic.
I suspect that Amtrak’s management had a hypersensitivity to
passengers’ sense of utility because of basic impairments in the routine
conduct of the trains. The route between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, for
instance, has been severely impacted as Amtrak trains must wait for other
trains to pass because of track ownership. The prioritizing of freight over
passenger trains is itself problematic, so the ownership of the tracks that
Amtrak uses is as well. Barring outright ownership of the tracks, Amtrak should
insist on contracts giving priority to the passenger trains.
I suspect that Amtrak’s management (including on the train
level) has looked too tolerantly on delays. Traveling between California and
Arizona on an overnight train, I was surprised (and dismayed) to learn that the
train stopped somewhere in the desert because a man had been smoking marijuana
in a bathroom. The conductor could have waited until the next station stop. A
car’s designated employee even woke up all of the passengers in that car by
shouting at the man in spite of the fact that he was no longer smoking. I was
also surprised when an employee on the train arrogantly informed me that wifi
is only for those passengers who had purchased sleepers. That customer service,
and thus utility, can be so misjudged is itself a red flag on Amtrak’s
management.
Besides having to put up with delays between station-stops
and bad on-board service, having too many such stops on a given route can also
be distressing to passengers. Why not have express trains run between San
Francisco and L.A., for example, two or three days a week? Also, passengers have
often had to accept traveling at slow speeds. To be sure, the local laws and bad
track conditions go beyond the company’s control. Even so, that the company’s
management decided to market its Acela train running between Boston and New York
City as “high speed” nonetheless set up passengers to be less than satisfied. I
think only twenty minutes were cut by the “high speed” train between the two
cities.
In short, the utility of the product in this case may itself
be so bad that the company’s management became distorted on just what
constitutes real passenger utility. The management’s attention has not been on
core matters, whether they be track replacements or the very functioning of the
trains on the tracks. The lesson for all companies is that attention should be
primarily on the basic quality of the products or services themselves.
