NEWCASTLE — Everything mentioned in your Aug. 2 front-page article (“Downeaster in recovery mode after dismal year”) on the Downeaster’s comeback effort raises questions about the competence of the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority as manager of the passenger service.

Perhaps that’s the reason the Legislature’s Government Oversight Committee has called on the Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability to conduct a full investigation of the rail agency’s stewardship of publicly financed operations.

NNEPRA’s single-minded focus has always been about ridership and customer experience, worthy goals but not the sole responsibility of good management.

MANAGEMENT MUST BE FORTHRIGHT

Transportation professionals know that tie replacement and other regular track maintenance are mandatory – and that winter weather requires contingency planning for the reasons cited in the article.

NNEPRA admittedly must deal with a ponderous Amtrak bureaucracy as its contracted service provider as well as with host carrier Pan Am Railways, which bears compelling responsibilities to affected freight customers. So it has little direct control over disruptions caused by abnormal conditions – all the more reason to be prudent.

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Certainly, operational challenges are imposed by cold, snow, ice and rain and the inability to procure essential maintenance equipment and materials to facilitate timely tie installations.

Regardless, however, responsible management of a public transportation service must be forthright, honest and objective in communicating with its patrons and the general public. People can understand problems when the cause is fully explained and such information is readily available.

The current need to regain public confidence in the Downeaster results from a succession of overly optimistic service representations that created unrealistic expectations, as Freeport’s Kristina Egan, a “former fan” of the Downeaster, and others told the Maine Sunday Telegram.

Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority management must be more than an extension of its cheerleading corps of rail enthusiasts, TrainRiders/Northeast.

NNEPRA’s long-standing policy has been to provide a premium service experience (in relation to the motor coach) at deeply discounted fares – 34 percent for a Portland-Boston round trip and 43 percent from Brunswick.

DON’T RAID THE PIGGY BANK

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Isn’t below-market pricing sufficient attraction if the comfort and reliability factors have been restored? Nothing should sell better than a first-rate means of transportation whose fare is not only far below the competition, but also far below its own cost of delivery.

Why must an increased $520,000 advertising budget be accompanied by an array of special-fare inducements to regain disaffected passengers when the Downeaster already is an outstanding bargain? The 100,000 lost annual trips represent far fewer individual riders, since much of that total is composed of the same people traveling on multiple occasions.

Ridership should be easy to recover without further drastic markdowns because the formerly dependable service is well known to most of those “lost” patrons. A couple of news articles confirming that the public relations “nightmare” is over should be all the fresh promotion needed.

The rail authority is responsible to taxpayers as well as to its passengers. Though there is no reason to expect the Downeaster to be profitable by any accounting standard, neither does it make sense to raid the piggy bank of public subsidy to throw money at problems unnecessarily.

Increased ridership certainly is desirable, but the means of achieving it should at least strive to avoid further revenue dilution. Price-cutting to prosperity from an already noncompensatory level is not a winning strategy for improving the train’s reported 45 percent operating loss ratio (exclusive of capital charges). The ticket bargain is not even made up by on-board food sales, which consistently lose money as well.

HELPING VALUED TRAVELERS

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Instead of NNEPRA management’s high-risk, “toughing it out” day-by-day approach to operations, might it actually have saved money and avoided damage to its reputation by suspending service to Maine stations while repairs were made to 27 miles of line within the state? That’s exactly what Amtrak is sensibly doing for the next 11 months with its weekday Springfield-New Haven shuttle service, substituting buses during that period.

Some measure of NNEPRA’s institutional good will could have been preserved by assisting its devotees in making alternative motor-coach arrangements. Those valued customers are travelers, but not necessarily train travelers.

Given the annually recurring political controversy over Amtrak’s budgetary problems, NNEPRA’s “win-at-all-costs” approach could prove to be a losing proposition in the final analysis. I hope that the further giveaways it now proposes don’t portend an eventual “going-out-of-business” sale.

 


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