What a difference the 48th parallel makes!

International Railway Journal, Nov, 2004

COMPARISONS, as a number of notable literary figures have said, are odious. So let's be odious, courtesy of the United States' United Rail Passenger Alliance (URPA), which thinks very highly of Canada's VIA Rail passenger operations but rather less so of the United States passenger rail operator, Amtrak.

VIA trains sparkle despite their great age, enthuses URPA, everything is in superb running order, while employees are not only happy to be working for the company, they also genuinely like serving passengers.

According to URPA, Amtrak, on the other hand, has poorly maintained equipment, non-motivated employees, horrible on-time performance, and throws up its collective hands in surrender to the weather every winter. Why, asks URPA, can a country with less population than the state of California run a first-class passenger rail system, while the richest nation on earth runs a system as if it were in a third-world country. Money, it concludes is not the answer. The difference lies in management at all levels.

"First, VIA is not a gigantic federal jobs programme as Amtrak still is today. VIA overtly discriminates in who it hires--only employees who are both qualified and want to work for the railway. VIA managers are hired for their competence, not as agents of social change and hired to fill a gender or racial quota. VIA simply hires the best people, of whatever gender or race they may happen to be, in a country that is even more politically correct than the United States," says URPA, which concludes that most of Amtrak's problems are self-created and not the result of lack of funding or political support.

It quotes a former Amtrak product line director as saying: "Amtrak needs to have the courage to fire the employees it never should have hired in the first place." URPA says that Amtrak will only become a viable organisation when it understands the width and depth of its problems in-house. End of odiousness!