All Aboard!

My office is located just down the street from the Amtrak station and about 50 yards from the tracks. This means that I get to hear the charming rumble of trains pass by several times a day. I also get to hear the not-so-charming blare of the trains' horns, but after a while you tend to tune such things out.

I recently had to work in the office on a Saturday. As usual, the Amtrak train stopped at the Chico station around 10 a.m. I heard the rumble of the train and the clanging of bells at the street crossing and looked up to see the train stopped across the street from my office. The train is usually stopped for about five to 10 minutes while it picks up and/or drops off passengers. I didn't think much of it, and I was pretty engrossed in my project.

I kept hearing a rumble and the crossing bells ringing, though. A lot of trains going through town today, I thought. I looked out the window about an hour later and discovered that it was the same train, diesel engines humming away and crossing bells clanging. About an hour after that, I left the office to meet my wife and son for lunch. The train was still there.

During lunch I mentioned that the Amtrak train had been stopped for about two hours across the street. "Those poor passengers," my wife said. "They must be anxious to be on their way."

When I got back to my office, the train was still there, diesel engines rumbling and the crossing guard bells still clanging. I cranked up my iPod and got back to work.

About two hours later, I got up to take a break and saw that the train was still there, engines still running. This is ridiculous, I thought.

As it turned out, the train sat on the tracks for more than six hours, blocking the street, engines running and, of course, bells clanging. By the way, the passengers weren't allowed to disembark.

The train didn't really bother me. I wasn't stuck on it, and it wasn't blocking my way. But I kept thinking of those giant engines burning through hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel while the train was stopped. As we all know, diesel fuel isn't exactly cheap these days.

I never did learn why the train sat there for six hours. I don't pretend to know the economics of train travel, but I do know that running the diesel engines on two locomotives for six hours, even at idle, is ridiculously expensive when the train isn't moving. I also know that Amtrak is heavily subsidized by the U.S. government (i.e., taxpayers like you and me). The inefficiency was maddening.

And while I'm on the subject of massive inefficiency, two more airlines filed for bankruptcy this month, Delta and Northwest. Just as Continental, America West, United and U.S. Airways have done in bankruptcy before, Delta and Northwest will undoubtedly use the process to wring huge pay cuts from their work forces. What will this accomplish? It will level the playing field between the legacy carriers (American, America West, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United and U.S. Airways) and the discounters (AirTran, ATA, Frontier, JetBlue, Midwest Express, Southwest and Spirit). Big deal. How will all these airlines compete once they can't lower their labor costs any more? The answer is that they won't be able to. The problem isn't high labor costs; it's poor quality and overcapacity. Have the airlines figured out what they'll do once they all have the same labor costs?

Unfortunately, the transportation system in this country is the picture of inefficiency. Our national passenger rail system, Amtrak, is a joke. It's become the very essence of failed bureaucracy. Our airlines (at least the legacy carriers) are so out of touch with the reality of the flying public as to be downright insulting to their customers. They treat their employees like overpaid inconveniences, who in turn treat their passengers like cattle. And the government rushes in to bail the airlines out at the first sign of trouble.

Inefficiency and waste breed poor quality, and poor quality results in dissatisfied customers, which means bankruptcy (and not the kind you recover from). Remember Pan Am? Braniff? Eastern? These airlines had abysmal quality and poor management. They're no longer around, and for good reason.

The U.S. government needs to cut Amtrak off. Let it become self-sufficient. It will either fail or become stronger. If it fails, perhaps another, more efficient private rail system will take its place. The government also needs to stay out of the airline business. Don't bail out the next airline that fails. The system needs to remove capacity. It may be tough on the employees, but they will find work with another airline or with a new start-up.

Private enterprise works. Quality matters. Sometimes you just have to get out of their way and let them work.