SACRAMENTO, Calif. — David Gunn steps off a train in Sacramento and it’s as if a rock star has been spotted on the platform, the Sacramento Bee reported.
An Amtrak employee zips up to him in a cart and grabs his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she gushes. “You’re just … awesome.” A passenger in a tan trench coat gives Gunn a good-natured thwack on the back and says, “Don’t let ’em take Amtrak away.” Another voice yells, “Go get ’em!”
Gunn just smiles and says, “I’ll do my best,” a bit embarrassed by all the fanfare.
After all, just last year the plain-talking 65-year-old was chopping wood and shoveling snow in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, trying to enjoy the peace and quiet of retirement.
That lifestyle ended abruptly in May when he accepted an offer to take over operations at Amtrak, an honor some might say is akin to being named captain of the Titanic minutes after it hit the iceberg. The passenger rail company has lost money every year since it was created in 1970, and this summer again threatened to sink into bankruptcy until an emergency $205 million allocation from Congress bailed it out. Now, Gunn must get a reluctant Congress to give Amtrak $1.2 billion out of the upcoming budget in order to maintain existing service.
With Amtrak gasping for breath, many have said it’s high time to kill it once and for all, or at least scrap the long-distance routes that gobble the most money.
But Gunn, a lifelong rail man, has a history of resuscitating ailing transit lines, turning around systems in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and shaping up New York City’s subway line at a time when even the most brazen city slickers were scared to use it.
And he has plans for saving Amtrak, too. Atop his list is persuading states to follow California’s lead and start chipping in money for local corridor service. In the past four years, California has spent $120 million on the Capitol Corridor service from Sacramento to the Bay Area alone, and its total investment in passenger rail — $700 million over the last four years — eclipses that of any other state.
“At one point, California was the most auto-centric state in the union,” Gunn said. “And now they’re one of the most transit-and heavy rail-oriented. That’s saying something.”
So far, people like what they see in the new Amtrak president.
Congress and members of President Bush’s administration have been impressed with his frank assessment of Amtrak’s track record.
And employees say the energetic Canadian is like nothing they’ve seen before.
While other corporate CEOs arrive to meetings in stretch limousines and fly across country in the first-class section, Gunn rides the rails in blue jeans and brown boots and climbs into the lead car to trade train stories with the engineers.
“The other guy before him — I never even knew what he looked like,” said train attendant J.C. Adams, who jokes with Gunn about pitching in and helping make up beds. “He never even got on the train.”
Gunn took the California Zephyr on a trip from Chicago to the Bay Area last week, and will take the Sunset Limited and Crescent routes back to his temporary home in Washington, D.C.
Sitting in the Zephyr’s near-empty dome car as junkyards and pasture land glide by, Gunn said the first step toward solving Amtrak’s problems is to kick the notion that passenger rail service ever will be self-sufficient.
In 1997, Congress gave Amtrak $5.2 billion in hopes of weaning it off federal subsidies once and for all. Amtrak hasn’t come close to meeting that goal, and never will, Gunn said. Instead, he envisions a plan in which states put up 20 percent of capital costs for local projects and the federal government picks up the rest, similar to how transit projects, such as light rail, are funded today. In addition, he would have the states pay for any operating deficits on local routes while Washington, D.C., picks up the tab for cross-country losses.
“The federal government has to treat passenger rail service the same way it treats roads, transit, waterways and airlines,” Gunn said. “It has to provide capital for worthy projects where states are willing to put their money where their mouth is.”
Gene Skoropowski, a friend of Gunn’s for 30 years and managing director of the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, said that plan would be a boon for local rail service, which has relied on state money for past capital improvements.
In January, he said, the Capitol Corridor will add another round trip between Oakland and Sacramento, bringing total round trips to 11 and exhausting the capacity on the corridor.
Skoropowski said he’d eventually like to have 16 round trips a day, providing hourly service between the two cities from 6 a .m. to 10 p.m. Capacity concerns are also the thorniest obstacle for a commuter rail line local leaders want to launch between Auburn and Dixon in 2005.
Gunn’s plan, Skoropowski said, would create funding for new tracks and other infrastructure costs needed to boost capacity. More track would help eliminate current bottlenecks on the route, he said, cutting the time between Sacramento and Oakland by 20 minutes and making it more competitive with an automobile trip.
“It would be a massive opportunity for us,” he said. But Tom Lawler of the National Governors’ Association said other states that have been getting a free ride are not ready to embrace the plan just yet. He said his group will meet with Amtrak after Thanksgiving and come back with a response in February.
“We need to make sure the trains keep moving,” Lawler said. “But (the states) have some pretty significant budget issues of their own. We’re just in the beginning stages of all this.”
California officials say that if Gunn wants a model of success to wave before Congress and state assemblies, he need look no further than the Capitol Corridor.
The service had more than 1 million riders in the last fiscal year, a 133 percent increase over passenger figures from four years ago, and has steadily added trains as ridership has grown.
According to Amtrak figures, the service loses $7.11 per passenger. The average loss on Amtrak routes is $57.67 per passenger and the long distance routes are far worse. The Sunset Limited that Gunn will take back to the East Coast, for example, loses $347 per passenger.
Still, the Capitol Corridor isn’t perfect.
On a recent evening trip east to Sacramento, the train unexpectedly stopped between Emeryville and Berkeley and the lights went out.
“Is this normal?” a woman’s voice called out in the dark. “Yes!” several voices responded in unison.
Pat Breeding used to be a regular rider, taking the train from his home in Roseville to work in Martinez. He said delays — mechanical problems or waiting for slow-moving freight trains to pass — have become so bad that he’s considering returning to highway travel.
“I’ve only ridden the train twice this week,” he said Thursday night. “My boss only puts up with so much. I know a guy who rides to San Jose and he just quit riding completely.”
Gunn said he hears similar complaints throughout the system. On his own trip out West, his train was held up coming out of Indianapolis and again outside Salt Lake City.
The biggest problem, he said, is that Amtrak has to share a limited amount of track with long, cumbersome, slow-moving freight trains. And freight traffic has nearly doubled in the last decade, according to railroad figures.
The railroads should back his plan for state funding for capital projects, Gunn said, because those improvements would help unsnarl freight traffic as well.
“The freight railroads have a big stake in this, too,” he said. “Let’s face it, we’re not going to build separate rights of way across the country.”
Passing by San Pablo Bay, Gunn says the long-distance trips like this one give him an opportunity to tour the facilities he suddenly took charge of in May.
“I want to get a good sense of how things work — or don’t work,” he says with a smile.
He says some passengers offer him feedback — one man tells him the sleeper berths aren’t long enough for tall people — but that the long-distance lines are mostly full of train enthusiasts or people who are afraid to fly.
When they find out the amiable guy in the blue jeans and khaki shirt is the head of Amtrak, they tend to extend their hands and beg him to keep Congress from cutting their favorite routes.
As the Zephyr nestles into its final stop in Emeryville, a voice comes over the intercom reminding passengers to make sure they have all their belongings.
It sends a message to Gunn as well: “We want to thank you for your support. You ride ’em, cowboy!”