Amtrak President David Gunn Is Fired
Amtrak's Board fired Dave Gunn today (Wedneday, Nov. 9th).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/09/AR200511...
Gunn ran Metro from 1990 to 1993 (give or take a year). He had his run ins with the Metro Board, but as I recall, he informed them a year before his contract expired that he didn't intend to renew.
mountain maryland
Who knows, perhaps it's the first step towards regional privatization.....
Bring back the B & O!!!!!!
Mark
Reading the newspaper accounts, it sure sounds like that's the reason.
If memory serves me correctly (I'm sure that there are much more knowledgeable people on this topic who will be reading this), private railroads in the U.S. NEVER showed a profit from passenger transportation alone.
As I recall, railroads were obligated to provide passenger transportation as a condition for the right-of-way granted by the governments. Starting the the 60's, they slowly convinced the federal govt. to relieve them of that "burden" so they could focus their energy on profitable freight transportation. Thus Amtrak was born.
If this is true (again, I'll defer to more knowledgeable minds here), then I fear that a "privatized" Amtrak will go the route of the old passenger railroads: shut down because they can't turn a profit.
Who knows, perhaps it's the first step towards regional privatization.....
Bring back the B & O!!!!!!
Mark
This is such a shock..the first president in 10 years who knew what a railroad is...got the axe. We're going to have to get moving with AmtrakRiders.Org now
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You're exactly right..why the government would replace failing profiting railroads with a profiting railroad is beyond me. Why can't we treat it in the same manner as public transit? God there's some stupid people around.
Does anyone recall the recent DISASTER that occurred over rail privatization in England?
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Not to say that Metro does absolutely nothing wrong and that they should be held absolutely blameless from the problem, but we need to consider the factors involved before we just assume that someone isn’t doing their j