Amtrak's 15th president, Roger Harris, is due to step down from the railroad on July 31, after only four years as head honcho. The Amtrak Board of Directors, nine folks nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate, is in charge of hiring the company's president and CEO. Presently, seven of the board positions are held by people chosen by President Biden — only two are serving at the request of President Trump: Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and Robert A. Gleason. Given that the Amtrak board serves five-year terms and all of the Biden people were brought on in 2024, President Trump won't have much of an opportunity to fill any of the seats.
It is easy for right-of-center Americans to write Amtrak off as a progressive pet project, mostly because rail's most vocal legislative champions are also entirely on board with climate change, energy consumption, and unionized labor. However, I encourage taxpayers of all persuasions to consider why we must make Amtrak great again.
The current situation
If Amtrak is the national rail operator of the United States, then it should serve the United States. Not just the Northeast Corridor. Not just the West Coast. For too long, the national agency has been serving only a handful of our population: people who live and work in major coastal cities and rely on rail for daily commuting — you and I both know the dominating voting demographic there. Having lived in Southern California, I can tell you that Amtrak is the best way to get between San Diego and Los Angeles unless you enjoy wasting away in traffic. When we lived in Fredericksburg, Va., Amtrak was a fantastic option for stress-free trips to D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. All of that said, relegating Amtrak to mere commuting purposes is a disservice to the rail and the taxpayers who fund it.
When we consider the 15 men who have been in charge of Amtrak since its founding in 1971, they all come from legacy railroad or aviation careers. The only exception to this is Joseph H. Boardman, who came from big government transportation roles, such as the Commissioner of the New York State Department of Transportation and Administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration. Everyone loves the feel-good story of the guy who started at the bottom and worked his way all the way up to the C-suite, but please, Amtrak Board of Directors, I implore you: don't do this again!
For 50 years, we have watched Amtrak prices go up and customer service plummet. After five decades of decline, maybe it's time to try something new — that is, look for fresh ideas, new energy, and someone uninterested in taking the next step forward in their career. Remember, good leaders do not want to make it about themselves. The 16th Amtrak president and CEO should lean on the well-stocked corporate leadership for their expertise and then rely on the talents and tools from the Board to pursue a shared vision.
Why legacy rail and air will not work again
The problem with legacy railroad personnel is that they are almost purely driven by nostalgia, and I get it. Railroads have built and rebuilt America for nearly 200 of its 250 years. The Golden Age of Rail is worth remembering. Men who got involved in rail work in the '60s saw the decline of their industry as airlines scooped up passengers. The solution has been to stand in the gaps planes can't fill (New York City to New Jersey, for example) and focus on that, and it has worked for decades, but that mentality is insufficient for the next 50 years. We can no longer lean on "do what works."
The problem with looking to aviation executives to lead the railroad is — and I'm going to say this very clearly — the airline industry is not the competitor of the railroad industry. In other words, trains should not be trying to directly compete against planes. It's apples and hammers. If an airline president thinks he can translate his success into a rail company, he is woefully overconfident and misguided. When have you ever been able to tell a CEO anything? Exactly, they already know it all.
And this is the trouble with the Amtrak presidential hires over the last 55 years: railroad folks aren't open to radical ideas because they've never been tried before, and airline people aren't open to new ideas because they've seen what has worked for them before and believe it can be done here. The only solution is to take the Steve Jobs approach: start with the ultimate customer experience and work backward until you have a clear idea of what it's going to take to make it work.
Amtrak's true competitor
When Amtrak started competing with American Airlines and Delta, it lost sight of what makes it entirely different: the experience. We went from riding the rails to admire the natural beauty, connect with our travel companions, and allow the travel to be as much of the experience as the destination. Airlines are all about loading a bunch of people in a tube and getting them from one place to another as quickly as possible. Trains will never be able to outperform planes if those are the metrics of success. Rather, the ultimate customer experience for Amtrak makes the journey the highlight. Amtrak's true competitor is the cruise industry.
People pay thousands of dollars to board a ship and sail from place to place. They only get a few hours in each port before it's back on the ship and off to the next destination. Everything is on the ship: food, indoor and outdoor entertainment, shopping, spas, and specialized programming for children. The goal of cruising is to take people on something of a loop with a few stops on the way and deposit them a week later, happier than they were before.
I priced out a seven-day Caribbean cruise from Miami to the Dominican Republic and St. Thomas for my family of four. $7,534 just to have a place to sleep with a window, not even a balcony — I haven't even gotten into the drink packages ($798 per stateroom), specialty dining for three meals ($120 per stateroom), the airfare to get to and from Miami, insurance, or any add-on excursions. Go ahead and bank on $10,000 for my family to take a cruise vacation.
I priced out a seven-day Amtrak vacation from Denver to Salt Lake City with stops at Rocky Mountain National Park and an overnight at Yellowstone National Park. For the Family Room accommodations, it's $6,356, and that includes meals (and one alcoholic beverage per person), a personal room attendant, two picture windows, and convertible furniture for togetherness during the day and sleeping at night. Add flights, the Yellowstone hotel room, add-on excursions, snacks, and insurance and we're nearing the $10,000 mark for my family to take an Amtrak vacation.
A good CEO could change the game
Plenty of people love cruising. In fact, our parent company, Salem Media, is sponsoring a Gulf of America cruise this November where guests can meet and mingle with like-minded passengers and their favorite media personalities, such as Larry O'Connor, Mike Gallagher, and Scott Jennings. Click here for reservations because this experience will sell out!
But if you're like my husband and the idea of a cruise makes your skin crawl, then cruises aren't going to appeal to you. You could, of course, get on a plane and fly across an ocean and give your vacation money to the fine folks in Rome, Paris, or Tokyo. You could definitely pile the kids in the car and set off on a Great American Road Trip, but that would require you to primarily focus on the drive and logistics of stopping every hour so someone can pee. There's also the fly to a new-to-you domestic city and hunker down to explore the local scene, but what if you want to do more? Rent a car? Take another flight?
Imagine a vacation conversation that honestly includes trains. You can see how gorgeous our country really is and spend less time worrying about getting there. The only cortisol release you'd really have to endure, depending on where you live, would be flying to wherever you needed to go, and that's assuming you'd have to do that. The next Amtrak president could lean on the corporate team for operations expertise and the Board of Directors for mission guidance, then use his or her own skills to change the narrative, build bipartisan support (there are plenty of reasons Republicans should support rail travel), and shift the Amtrak employee culture to something people actually enjoy. Looking at it that way, there is no reason the rail's CEO needs to have any technical experience in trains or airplanes.
The closing argument
To conclude this unsolicited advice, I will argue that inexperience in this case is a feature, not a bug. If I were the CEO, I'd come in curious about literally everything. By the end of my first week, everyone around me would know that I'm going to ask, "Why?" until I get a satisfactory answer. For example, "Why are dining cars not open more hours?" Because they're expensive to operate, and we lose money. "Why do we lose money?" Because no one wants to pay $4 for a can of soda and a snack cake. "Why don't we serve them something worth eating and charge $7?" Because then it would be even more expensive to operate. "Yes, but we would have a higher volume of sales, so why haven't we done that?" Because that's the way it's always been. "Not anymore. Get me a meeting with culinary services and make sure someone with the numbers is there. Now, why have we been using the same company for 14 years to stock the crappy lavatory soap?"
Someone who can ask questions honestly and be open to the answers is someone who can challenge the status quo. If something can't be justified, let's cut or phase it out. If something could be better, let's figure out how to make it work. If something is awesome, get marketing to the table and let's run an ad campaign. Amtrak's next president and CEO should have a revolutionary vision, curious nature, and bold spirit. Anyone who can't admit they don't know what they don't know doesn't need to be in a position of leadership.
Plenty of you are Chief something or another, and I'm not saying this to belittle your positions; you got to where you are because you take risks, work hard, and know your stuff. If President Trump has taught us anything, it's that a real estate mogul can be a great Commander in Chief and a competitive lumberjack can be an effective Secretary of Transportation. We live in a bold age of unexpected leaders and innovative ideas. A group of teenagers in India developed a stick made out of tamarind seeds that acts like a magnet for microplastics in drinking water! If we used the Amtrak brand of hiring a president here, the only people who should be able to do that are professional and experienced chemists, engineers, or biologists — not teenagers! Unexpected participants can generate truly remarkable outcomes, including American railway travel.
I have loved trains my entire life. In fact, one of my most cherished memories is the week my mom took my brothers and me on Amtrak from Fort Worth to Chicago and back. My dad was traveling for his profession, and Amtrak made it possible for her to take three kids in the mid-'90s to Chicago by herself. We played Uno in our little room and ate dinner in the dining car. I felt so grown being able to sit in the observation car with a book by myself. That was the first time I'd ever been north of Arkansas City, Kan., and I was struck by how beautiful the plains and Mississippi River Valley were. America's 250th birthday is a great time to book a trip and see America the Beautiful for yourself.
In this era of making America great again, let us not lose sight of our railway heritage and commit ourselves to bringing it back to something worth saving.
Editor's Note: President Trump is leading America into the "Golden Age" as Democrats try desperately to stop it.
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