Texas Rail Advocates

Copy of Amtrak letter to UP

August 4, 2006

Mr. Dennis Duffy
Executive Vice President Operations
Union Pacific Railroad Company
1400 Douglas Street
Omaha, NE 68179

Dear Mr. Duffy:

I am writing to seek your immediate assistance in correcting the chronic unacceptable performance of Amtrak trains operating on the Union Pacific Railroad, particularly Amtrak's long-distance trains.

It's sobering to look at how bad long-distance Amtrak train performance on UP has become. In July, 97% of the 211 long-distance trains operated primarily on UP arrived late (see Attachment 1). Even more amazing is the degree of lateness: 84% of long-distance trains arrived more than 2 hours late, 74% more than 3 hours late, and 66% more than 4 hours late.

To further put this into perspective, over 67,000 Amtrak passengers traveled on UP long-distance trains that were over 4 hours late...in the month of July alone! The resulting damage to Amtrak's brand, reputation, and repeat business is immense.

The vast majority of delays are from causes attributable to UP--nearly 90% of all delays incurred by Amtrak trains operating on UP in July. As high as these UP-responsible delays are, they continue to increase (see Attachment 2).

Amtrak has tried to work with UP to improve this situation. Our cooperation has ranged from adding over three hours of scheduled recovery time and changing the scheduled slot of the Sunset Limited, to repeatedly rerouting the California Zephyr away from the ridership-producing Rocky Mountain scenery for weeks at a time each summer to assist with UP trackwork, to modifying the schedule of the Coast Starlight last month on extremely short notice to support UP trackwork in Oregon.

In return, overall long distance train performance has continued to worsen. UP's encroachment on Amtrak's contractual and statutory rights reached a point this Spring where Amtrak had to initiate a contract arbitration over our right to operate, in which Amtrak prevailed by a unanimous 3-0 vote of the arbitrators.

A primary root cause of this unacceptable performance is UP's chronic violation of the slow order limits in our UP-Amtrak operating agreement. Each of the four Amtrak long distance routes operating on UP is in violation of these clear contractual obligations.

UP is making investments in some of these slow order areas, and Amtrak appreciates that step in the right direction. However, these investments cover only a portion of the route-miles where slow orders exceed contractual limits, and have not been enough to bring slow orders into compliance with the operating agreement.

Clearly, we cannot continue like this. Tom Schmidt has requested a meeting with Joe Santamaria. I trust that Mr. Santamaria will be prepared to discuss with Tom a program for immediate corrective action, to be taken while simultaneously working to correct the chronic slow order contractual violations on all Amtrak routes where they exist.

The responsibility for operating Amtrak trains with minimal delay over UP rail lines is clear in both federal law and in UP's operating agreement with Amtrak. The magnitude of Amtrak's performance problems on UP has begun to attract significant public attention. If our two companies cannot improve Amtrak performance on UP, it is an invitation for government to solve our performance problems for us, an outcome neither of us wants to see happen.

Sincerely,

William L. Crosbie
Sr. Vice President, Operations
Amtrak

Attachments

cc: David J. Hughes
Amtrak Board of Directors