I'd bet he can't wait to get out of here at this point.
He didn't deserve this exit.
The Nippon Sharyo disaster traces back to the Stimulus planning, in my telling of the story: With the economy crashing into deep Recession, somebody probably asked Amtrak if it could quickly buy a couple Billion worth of cars
a.s.a.p. to provide employment. The answer was, "Oh, noooooes, we aren't ready! We don't have any suppliers lined up. We need new designs using new technology, and we have to set up teams to prepare new specs, and ..." So a couple of years went by before anyone was able to direct that last chunk of Stimulus money thru the states. Then a new Congress full of haters came in, and any multi-Billion plans for buying new equipment were quickly forgotten.
It surely wasn't Boardman's fault that nobody was prepared to buy or build new equipment when he'd been in office for only weeks or months. Nobody will say Amtrak should have seized the moment -- a 1980s moment, LOL -- to order hundreds more Amfleets and Superliners matching what was in the ageing fleet.
So here we are with a new supplier, using new designs, to new specs -- and we're gonna have a do-over and a two-year delay and maybe even lose the funding.
Boardman emphasized safety. At least his spokesmen did:
Amtrak Ink always had safety stuff, every issue. Amtrak was about 6 months away from finishing the CTC on the NEC when a train flew off the tracks. Not even a year went by before workers were hit by a train and killed. I just don't see Boardman at fault, except that it did happen on his watch.
Meanwhile, better On Time Performance; electronic ticketing; Wi-Fi; 70 new electric locomotives; 70 Viewliner baggage cars; two Talgo trainsets at work on the Cascades; lower losses on the LD line of business; better farebox recovery; many improvements in ADA compliant facilities; another 60 Viewliners in the pipeline; extended service in Virginia and Maine; good labor relations; plans readied to restore service on the Gulf Coast; improved stations big and small from Seattle to Beaumont to St Paul to Waterloo (Ft Wayne), Penn Station, Union Station in D.C.; ridership up by millions; and more and more. And let's mention, none of the drama of the revolving door C.E.O.s during the years before he arrived. Of course Boardman didn't do all of this by himself. He seems far too modest to brag on himself in any way. But by every measure I can think of, Amtrak is doing better today than it was when George W Bush appointed him in November, 2008.
We'll be lucky if his successor can do half as much. The Congresscritters say they want a leader with "vision". Boardman had plenty of vision; he just needed about $4 Billion a year to achieve it. That's the failure of Congress, not of Joe Boardman.
