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Dinner with Alex Kummant

By Rafi Guroian | Sunday, April 27, 2008, 01:01 AM

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One of the fun perks of my job is that I attend the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner each year in Washington, DC. The President and the First Lady usually attend, and it’s often “the place” to see Hollywood stars making East Coast appearances. This year the “big names” were Ben Affleck, Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, and Harvey Keitel, among others.

So what does this have to do with trains? Well, I also get to bring a guest, and for the past few years I’ve extended offers to various figures in the railroad industry. Last year I brought Ross Capon from the National Association of Railroad Passengers, for example. This year, I brought Alex Kummant, President and CEO of Amtrak, and we had a blast.

Alex is just a great guy. He’s down to earth, really easy to chat with, sharp-minded, and has a good grasp on what he feels Amtrak’s direction needs to be. Much of our dinner was pretty much off-the-record (a tradition at these dinners), but Alex did mention some things that he’s already said in public, but may not have gotten a whole lot of attention in the press.

For example, I asked him about the situation with the Sunset Limited not running east of New Orleans, and he basically leveled with me, mentioning that he’s said this in public: It’s not coming back. If anything, service on that line will start to return in the form of short corridor runs, but short of a major investment from someone outside of Amtrak, we’re not going to see the New Orleans-Florida service as a one-seat ride any time soon. He said the same thing at a Congressional hearing this week, which is why I feel comfortable mentioning it here.

We also talked about the general state of Amtrak and where he wants to go from here now that the airlines are looking at some very hard times. He was quite honest in saying that Amtrak needs more cash—badly. He’s very open about that fact and really isn’t afraid to get right to the point: he wants a serious influx of funds in order to beef up corridor speeds across the nation to 110 MPH for long stretches. California, Michigan, Virginia, and the Carolinas all came up in this conversation.

State of equipment is a major concern for him as well. He mentioned that if Amtrak were to start equipment procurement processes tomorrow, it would take 7 years to see it on the rails. The Acela equipment is apparently aging much faster than the Amfleet equipment has, and it’s a major, major concern as to what the condition of the Acela will be 7 years from now. In short, his top priority is to secure Amtrak’s future financially and in terms of equipment.

Anyway, that’s the meat of what we talked about relating to Amtrak. The rest of the night was spent just having a good time, and again, it was a blast.

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Comments

By yoohoo

May 20, 2008 6:52 PM | Link to this

No service from ORL - NOL? Great! So if I live anywhere in between that route, I cant ride the train!

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