(The following article by Cathy Woodruff was posted on the Albany Times-Union website on May 19.)
RENSSELAER, N.Y. — Forget the coffee and Danish. Chips are out, too. Soon, it will be BYOB (Bring Your Own Bagel).
Starting July 1, Amtrak no longer will sell snacks on many of its trains between New York City and Rensselaer, leaving peckish passengers to fend for themselves before they climb aboard.
Amtrak estimates that closing the cafe car snack bar on several trains making the 2-hour trip and shutting down a Rensselaer commissary that stocked the cafes will save the struggling rail carrier $1 million a year.
“We are attempting to save cash wherever it’s feasible to save cash,” said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black.
With the railroad’s high-speed Acela trains between Washington, D.C. and Boston still sidelined and other ongoing financial concerns, “we are on a very, very tight budget right now,” Black said.
Not all trains will lose food service.
Cafe cars still will be staffed on longer-distance routes that start or end beyond Albany in cities including Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, Rutland or Niagara Falls. Those include the Adirondack, Maple Leaf, Lake Shore Limited and Ethan Allen runs.
But regulars on several morning runs to New York will have to bring breakfast from home or pick it up at the Rensselaer Rail Station’s Coffee Beanery.
With this move, Amtrak joins many airlines that have scaled back amenities including meals, snacks and even pillows in order to cut costs.
Nonetheless, “we’re very disappointed that Amtrak has chosen to eliminate the food service on the trains,” said Bruce Becker, president of the Empire State Passengers Association, a rail advocacy group. “We feel it’s an important service, and it makes rail travel that much more attractive to current passengers and potential passengers.”
But Amtrak’s Black said fewer passengers are lining up at the cafe counters these days, with some trips between Rensselaer and New York grossing less than $100 in sales. “There’s low demand for on-board food service on some trains,” and food service on many other routes less than three hours long was discontinued years ago, he noted.
Susan Fitzpatrick of Watervliet, who takes the train to New York City and back three or four times a year, said she won’t miss the cafe car.
“I just find that the cafe in the train station has much better coffee, tea, muffins, everything. We just get it there and take it on the train with us,” she said. “The last time, I brought a bagel from home.”
Sixteen Amtrak employees, including 13 cafe car attendants and three clerks, will lose their jobs as a result of the change, but may be able to move into other positions, Black said.
The impact of the commissary closing on 14 employees of Gate Gourmet, an airline catering company that operates the commissary under a contract, could not immediately be determined.