AMTRAK - SAVING LABOR COSTS with VOLUNTEERS by David S. Lawyer, 2002-2005 Amtrak can't seem to make a profit and a major problem is high labor costs. By using volunteer crews, Amtrak could drastically reduce its labor cost. Instead of operating trains with highly paid crews, trains would operate with mostly unpaid crews. Why would the crew work for free? Because the crew would consist of non-revenue passengers who are getting free transportation as "payment" for their helping operate the train. This idea is not new. It's been done for centuries on ships carrying freight where someone joins the crew temporarily in order to get free passage. It's done in van-pools where someone drives a van to work and gets free transportation since the van is also carrying paying passengers. But it hasn't yet been tried for railroads. Can the whole train crew be replaced by free volunteers? Possibly. Amtrak could furnish a free computer simulation program to the world to teach people how to drive a train. After mastering this, one would be qualified to ride in the locomotive cab as an "engineer-trainee". After such experiences and after passing an examination, the "engineer-trainee" advances to the position of "assistant-engineer" and later is promoted to full "engineer". It's not quite as simple as this since there are different layouts of cabs and and different signalling systems so an engineer would be qualified to work with just certain equipment. However, efforts towards some standardization are needed. Trains need to also have electronics to prevent overrunning signals. But the signalling system on US railroads needs modernization as computers have made obsolete the system of discrete signals located along the track. While electronics would be a big help in preventing accidents, a driver scanning the track ahead for problems is still needed. While no one would be allowed to drive a train without a locomotive driver's license, some jobs would have minimal qualifications. Almost any person should be able to clean the inside of the train. Since labor is free, why not clean a train when it's moving rather than at the end of its journey. The volunteer conductor job would require some training to qualify. Many railfans would likely volunteer in various capacities. What happens if there is a chronic shortage of volunteers? In this case some volunteers could be paid but the pay would be far less than for an ordinary employee since the volunteer is getting a free trip out of it. Also, a list of volunteers willing to work for full pay would be maintained. If no volunteer can be found for an essential position for a trip, then someone from this paid-volunteer-list could be called. If worst came to worst, AMTRAK personnel could be used. Since railroads compete with airlines, crew costs need to be competitive. Since the airplane goes about ten times faster than the train, the crew costs per passenger-mile is about ten times as high for rail as for air. This makes it almost imperative for rail to use volunteer crews to reduce crew costs. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Under what system of management and labor could train crews be replaced with volunteer crews? It would be difficult to implement under the current situation. One scenario would be for the government to own AMTRAK where all employees would be civil servants without the right to strike. Under government ownership, AMTRAK should become profitable yielding a reasonable return on the investment in AMTRAK made by the government. How should a governing board for AMTRAK be selected? A small (say 3-persons) full-time, salaried board might be best. Two of these could be elected by the revenue passengers and one appointed by the US President. The vote of each passenger would be weighted by the amount that the passenger spent on fares during the past year, etc. Unpaid volunteers could also vote, with their vote weighted by their amount of volunteering. Most of the public knows almost nothing about AMTRAK. So letting only passengers vote seems reasonable since they should know somewhat more about the subject. There should also be e-mail lists for the passengers to discuss rail issues. The passengers could use these lists to nominate candidates for the board. Candidates could make limited announcements on these lists and have their own websites. But the websites would not be allowed to be two faced, displaying different pages based on the political orientation of the viewer. Now how can AMTRAK management be motivated to keep AMTRAK highly profitable? I think profit incentives are the answer. The base wage of management should only be the minimal (sub-poverty level) wage. If there are no profits, they would only get this wage. As profits increased, then profit incentive payments would be paid. By "profit" I mean not just profits on operation but profits after depreciation to pay back the costs of capital equipment (locomotives, cars, rails, etc). Most of the profit from AMTRAK should go to the government towards reducing the national debt :-).