Even though Colfax County was successful in its recent TIGER Grant application in obtaining $17.5 million, there are signs that the current Amtrak Board and CEO, Richard Anderson, are making decisions that are jeopardizing the future of long-distance train routes, including the Southwest Chief.
Even though the US Supreme Court has ruled unanimously that Amtrak is a government entity, many recent decisions have been implemented without taxpayers or stakeholder input or advance warning and have eroded the passenger experience for long-distance rides. This has raised red-flag warnings that Amtrak is moving toward elimination of these routes.
Following is a letter written by Mayor John Pritchard of Galesburg, IL outlining some of the current concerns.
In his letter, Pritchard raises eyebrows with some of the recent actions and his, and our recommendation, is to contact our US Senators and Representatives to make them aware of this serious situation.
This is a bad decision to shut down Amtrak. I live in Raton, NM and some of us depend on the train. The SW Chief runs here. Please reconsider. Every time I have ridden the train, it has been full to capacity; so I don’t understand why you would even think about closing any of the lines.
I fully agree with the above comment! I used to travel Amtrak often but since the fairly “new” C.E.O. took over at Amtrak, things have changed for the worse regarding Amtrak. I understand the station in Lamy (Santa Fe) will be unstaffed in July. I also understand, Amtrak will NOT be staffing the station here at least for this season. Amtrak doesn’t seem the least bit interested in improving it’s performance on it’s long distance routes, instead opting to put big money into their highly profitable routes like the northeast corridor. If the above information is correct, the ONLY staffed station in the State of New Mexico will now be in Albuquerque. Let’s do this the New Mexico way. Why don’t we bring the N.M. “Rail runner” up here? If Amtrak can’t do the job, let’s show them N.M. can!