OFF THE RAILS: Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner

Can you describe your route into rail?

I was a typical kid that loved big things that moved and got a chance to be an intern at Amtrak where I had a great experience learning about rail, in which I was always interested. I love the complexity of the railway and its impact in building communities and defining geography. Being surrounded by many people at Amtrak with tons of experience and a passion for the job was also key. This is a company full of “true believers” who are extremely dedicated, which I think this is generally true of railroaders all around the world. They were eager to share and I tried to soak up every piece of information. From there, the rest is mostly luck and hard work – I feel incredibly privileged to be leading Amtrak at this moment.

What are three characteristics that you believe are integral to a successful rail employee?

Our values of ‘Do the Right Thing, Excel Together and Put Customers First’ are at the heart of what matters most to us, and our Core Capabilities define what every employee needs to know and do to be most impactful at Amtrak. We are always looking for the right combination of experience, skill, perseverance, and creativity, but perhaps most importantly, we need good communicators, excellent collaborators and life-long learners. Railroading is a massive team sport and as a private company created by the government to serve a public mission, we have broad objectives that transcend the normal profit and loss metrics. The only way to reach those is through collaboration and partnership – with our colleagues, with our partners that fund our services or own the railways we operate over, the communities we serve, and, of course, our owners.  

Amtrak operates large parts of the Northeastern Corridor. How important is the network regarding connectivity?

The NEC is the mainline of North America – with over 2,000 daily trains – and its importance to our overall network can’t be overstated. It connects a region that produces roughly 20% of the national GDP and houses nearly a quarter of the nation’s top universities and a fifth of the Fortune 500 company headquarters. Our railway lies at the heart of this with nearly one-third of the region’s jobs located within five miles of an NEC station. We recognise that we have a very important responsibility to steward this asset and advance reliability and capacity, which is vital to our 12 railway tenants and our intercity services, which already create half our train operations revenue and a third of our ridership. As impressive as it is that we get so much out of a 19^th century, classic mixed-use railway, we know that the Northeast Corridor can do so much more, with nearly unlimited passenger demand if we can create the capacity, reliability, and trip time to capture it. This is why we are investing so much of our largest annual capital investment ever into NEC assets and new fleet.  

Of course, I see opportunities like we have in the NEC in various regions all over the U.S. The great service we operate today with our partners in California, around the Chicago hub and the southeast proves this point. We are dedicated to working with our various partners to expand our network to the right markets and create more value for the nation. Of course, where we can offer high-quality, frequent, trip-time competitive service, there are plenty of takers. 

Amtrak recently awarded a contract for the regeneration of the Frederick Douglass tunnel and is currently planning several megaprojects. How are these important to the growth of ridership?

We have several mega capital projects planned along the NEC as well as other locations around the country. This includes building new state-of-the-art tunnels in Baltimore and New York, replacing and rehabbing other tunnels and bridges, renovating and redeveloping stations to improve passenger flow and support additional service, and much more. In Baltimore, we’ve kicked off work on the Frederick Douglass Tunnel Program to address the biggest rail bottleneck between Washington, DC and New Jersey. This project will modernise and transform a 10-mile section of the NEC by replacing a 150-year-old tunnel with two high-capacity electrified tunnel tubes. We’re fortunate to have received historic funding through the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to not only bring our assets into a state of good repair and improve reliability but also increase capacity and improve travel times – these are the things that allow us to drive ridership.

Amtrak is embarking on a series of megaprojects. How are these integral to the growth of ridership?

Amtrak is undertaking a generational effort to replace nearly all our major inherited assets with new, 21st century infrastructure. This includes our trains, stations, tracks infrastructure, and everything else that helps support the network to deliver safe and reliable service to our customers. Amtrak ridership nationwide has reached pre-pandemic levels and we’ve identified an ambitious goal of doubling annual ridership by 2040. This will require transforming how we operate as a company in order to improve service with more frequencies on new and existing corridors across the country, while attracting more riders to make a difference for safety, climate and congestion.

The USA is currently in an election year. How does this affect rail planning?

Rail planning is inherently a long-term process: big plans can take years to execute, and they need strong, sustained support from many partners. This means that planners have to look beyond near-term conditions. We decide whether a route or project makes sense based on factors like current and projected demand; interest and engagement from states and other partners; available funding; and the mission and goals that Congress has set for us. None of that changes because we are in an election year.

Has Amtrak implemented Artificial Intelligence to any of their safety or asset management procedures?

We are already laying the groundwork in the Operations space. This includes condition-based and predictive maintenance, augmenting visual inspections and leveraging AI to improve safety on our trains and in our stations.

Has Amtrak seen a shift to leisure travel with their passengers?

Amtrak ridership continues to set post-pandemic records thanks to our customers who are excited to travel and attracted to the many benefits we offer compared to flying or driving. We’re inspired by the soaring demand for Amtrak service and are eager to continue connecting more people and places. Certainly, we’ve benefited from the increase in leisure travel the market has seen over the past couple of years, particularly in our overnight, Long Distance trains, which offer iconic journeys across incredible landscapes. But, we’ve also been negatively impacted by the loss of business travel in certain markets. Across all markets, we have succeeded in attracting new customers to replace those we lost and are taking advantage of some of the new live-work patterns which have meant some customers have traded their daily subway commute from the suburbs to a weekly Amtrak trip to downtown from a distant city.   

Does Amtrak offer any schemes for new talent or training for those interested in the rail sector?

Whether starting a career, looking for new opportunities or an experienced career professional, Amtrak’s goal is to connect talented people to exciting Amtrak opportunities. We are committed to fostering an environment where diverse ideas, backgrounds and perspectives thrive as part of our big team, which is so essential to growth and transformation. We also aim to support a range of professional and personal development and enable a sustainable work/life balance so that employees can build long-term careers with us. Of course, I’m a big fan of internships too! We even pay nowadays, which wasn’t the case back in 1993. We offer these and co-ops for both undergraduate and graduate students as well as Apprenticeship Programs for those looking for entry-level learning opportunities. I know personally what these can mean to early career employees.

This year is Global Railway Review’s thirtieth birthday, our pearl anniversary. Do you have a pearl of wisdom for the industry?

Here in the U.S., the interstate era that defined the last century is over. We’re not adding lane-miles, we aren’t building airports, and yet populations are increasing and people are correctly demanding better mobility as a central element of good quality of life and prosperity.  Now is the time for our nation to rediscover train travel and, globally, to aim high and assert the railway’s role as the low-carbon, high-capacity mobility solution for this era.