Transcripts For CSPAN3 Amtrak CEO Addresses National Press Club 20170717

Will if you think of one you can quietly whip out your cell phone. Without further ado i want to bring to the stage the ceo of amtrak. [ applause ] thank you so much, thank you for that gracious introduction. It is great to see all of you. I have had a lot of great experiences in my life and my career, when i walked down the hall and see some of the other people at the podium this certainly ranks up with all of the highlights. I am delighted to be here. I do not to eat, i will not be stopping occasionally to put anything smart that i have set out. Not that i would say anything smart. The other thing i would say is it is not that much more expensive to upgrade to first class. Think about it, we need the money. Well, good afternoon. I thought i would read three things today very quickly and to be aware of time so there is plenty of time to talk about what you would like to talk about. I will give you a brief description of why i am here and why i am doing this, this is primarily so that my wife, who may be listening, can hear it again. Although i have no hope of convincing her. The second is to talk a little bit about amtrak and what it is and equally importantly what it is not. I think there is a number of misconception about what amtrak is. The third is to bleed into a little conversation about infrastructure, which i believe is the critical issue that bases not only our company, but our country in the future. That is the plan, let me try to do that in a minimal amount of time. I will give you a slightly different version of the introduction. And a lot of kids loved trains, if you never grew out of it. I like to say my mother dropped me fairly early and i hit my head and this was the affect. Nonetheless, that is the way that i was built. I have had a remarkably blessed life in every respect, and a wonderful career. Including my time at amtrak where i was fortunate enough to get a job with the Southern Railway. It was the southern predecessor back in the 1970s for those of you who are young. And then we had a great career that culminated in being ceo for about 10 years. I stepped down as ceo in middle 2016, we moved to charlottesville, virginia, a great place. We have our children and grandchildren all within 20 minutes. It was idyllic for about one year and i was ordinarily happy. So why did i end up doing this . Well, it became known that my predecessor, joe boardman would be retiring in my neighbors being thrown around as an ideal successor. I was approached by the chairman of the amtrak board named tony kosher from new york. They asked me about doing it and i said no. And then i made a mistake, i said i would be happy to help. So they ran a search, which did not really work very well. Tony came back to me and finally convinced me to my wifes bitter discussed to do it for a little while. A little while is defined as a short period of time. As tony put it so eloquently the other day i did not adhere to my contract and im now overrunning my allotted time. Fortunately contract adherence does not matter to me because i am not drawing a salary. There is very little drawback. Why did i do it . Three reasons as you heard i have been in this industry and long time. I have been remarkably blessed. It is an industry that i care a lot about. The blessed by the industry and its an industry that i care a lot about. The second reason and im giving you the noble reasons first is that i really do believe this is a form of Public Service. Amtrak is important to our country and it needs to be well lead and well managed and i thought i could make a difference, and that by the way is exactly why Richard Anderson is doing the job. In fact, i can tell you that in spite of my begging and pleading, he did no better in his contract negotiations for salary than i did. So the unhealthy reason of course is pure ego. Its okay when people start saying, you know, hes the ideal candidate for the job, but when you start believing it is a bad thing. Nonetheless, here i am. So lets start with a History Lesson about amtrak. It was really it originated in 1970. It began operations in 1971. To put it in perspective and i was trying to remember the year don penn central bankruptcy 68 and the Railroad Industry was in a state of disrepair. Most companies, not Southern Railway and a few others were really in very bad condition. Infrastructurewise, financewise, everything else, and in fact, you know, the common question was back then was, should the railroads be nationalized because they were important and in total disarray. So decline, disarray, particularly here in the northeast and out in the midwest, railroad Passenger Service was in free fall. The intere state highway had coe along. And the Railroad Companies already weak financially were just hemorrhaging cash running passenger trains and trying as hard as they could to get out of that business. But they were impeded to a large extent because there were a lot of public utility commissions and other people who thought, no, this is an essential service, you need to keep running it. So, it was not a good situation, and amtrak was conceived with this kind of grand bargain that the government would create an organization and ill talk about what kind of organization it is in a minute that would preserve what i call a rudimentary National Passenger network, and it was only Long Distance trains when it began. It relieved the private companies, the rail carriers, of their obligations which they were happy to do, and in return, they gave equipment and, more importantly, they gave amtrak, now amtrak, the right to run their trains, run our trains i should say, on their railroads for really marginal, very marginal costs, and that deal still exists today. Its a deal that i can tell you after a long career in the freight industry, the current Freight Railroads arent that particularly happy with, and some of them tend to forget that it was the bargain that was struck. So, why do i tell you this . There are a couple of key ideas by the way, we then took over commuters, the corrid corridor, penn station where were having a great summer in the mid 70s because after penn central went bankrupt they formed a Company Called conrail which many of you will remember but it continued to struggle mightily and the next step was to relieve them of what really were money losers and that was the commuters operations, and then with that came chicago metro and some other things. The first lesson is one thats fairly simple. When people talk about bringing private companies in to run passenger trains and, gee, wouldnt that be a lot better, you know, history has already told us they couldnt do it. So its not a question of, you know, ability to run a good organization, and ill touch on that. Its really a question of fact that in particular, the Long Distance but in general Rail Passenger transportation is not a particularly Good Business mod model, okay . Asset intensive, relatively high labor costs, and you know, you dont turn equipment that well and you maintain your own infrastructure which is quite expensive. So thats lesson one. But lesson two and the thing i really want to touch on is that amtrak was created and this is absolutely essential in my mind as a corporation. In fact, it was chartered and created as a forprofit corporation. Now, the people who built it up, created the idea, always knew. They knew, not a Good Business model. This thing will probably never make money. But it was sold at the time to the president and the congress as a concept where, yes, just create this and it will, in fact, become profitable. It hasnt yet, and in some ways, particularly if you look at it on a gap basis, it never will. But, its a corporation. Its a company. Since i have been in starting last september, my mantra to everyone, to the outside world and more particularly, inside the company, is were going to run it like a Great Company. Were going to benchmark ourselves against the best private corporations, the Norfolk Southerns of the world, the deltas of the world, because we can do that, and if we do that, then well deliver Great Service and well minimize the amount of money that we require from the government which does, by the way, two things. One, subsidize our operating loss and then pay for our capital expenditures. So what does that mean in terms of running a Great Company . Well, when i came in theres a good amount to do, and i started off with what i thought of as the four tierone issues to deal with. By the way, there are twotwo issues, twothree issues. Ive identified a couple of tiersevens. Im not losing sleep on anything above two right now. But what did we need to do . We needed to organize appropriately so that we had a functional organization with people responsible and accountable for things in a way that made the most sense from running the railroad and running a passengerfocused organization. Once we organized, get the right people in the right jobs. Just business sense. Second, really critical, focus on creating a strong Safety Culture. Amtrak is reasonably good at safety, and im talking primarily about safety of employees but also safety of the public and safety of the traveling public and safety of our communities, but we can do a lot better. Ive been around great Safety Cultures and seen them, and thats where we need to take the company and under the very capable leadership of our chief operating officer, were starting to take very meaningful steps to create that culture, but culture change takes a while and you never stop in order to do it. Third, on top of that, create a strong focus on what i like to call operational excellence. Delivering efficiently and effectively and a strong Safety Culture enables you to build a Strong Operational excellence culture. So thats number three, and were driving that way, i think now. Again, a lot of work to do, but this is something obviously that ive seen and Richard Anderson has seen, and he will be great at doing this. And then fourth and you referred to that, a couple of these issues. Get back to focusing on customer and the Customer Experience. And Customer Experience defined as ticketing, right, stations, our employee interactions, be they with an onboardattendant, a conductor, assistant conductor, a station agent, whoever. And then last, our equipment. Those of you who ride the train may have looked around at our equipment and said, you know, it looks a little steale, right . We can do better than that and we have started some activities that will start to make our equipment a lot better. Its old, but old doesnt mean it cant be good. More of you have flown on 40yearold airplanes than you realize, because when you walk in you dont say to yourself, man, this thing looks like its 40 years old. In some cases you say this looks like a new airplane. And we can do that. Its not that expensive. Its not that hard, but it just requires that mindset of think about our customers. And thats what Great Companies do. In a very real sense, amtrak is a government contractor, just with a different Business Model. Were just like a defense company, defense contractor. Were just like a highway builder. The only problem we have is that unlike those companies who can bill the government directly and bill them enough to have a profit margin, pay their shareholders, do all of those great things, we rely on what are user fees, passenger fares. Because the marketplace doesnt sustain the passenger fares we need to make that profit, we ask the government to make up the difference. Having said that, we need to understand, as i keep saying, that we are a company. So, the point i drive home is that a problematic Business Model is absolutely no excuse for not being great, and thats where im trying to were trying to take amtrak. Let me very briefly tell you what amtrak is today in addition to and this i ask of all of you. Next time somebody says, amtrak is a government agency, just say, no, no, no, its not. Its a very different animal. So, let me tell you about our businesses. Let me look at each one of them. Ill start with the Long Distance, and you may have seen most of you have seen the trumps trump administrations proposal which is to defund the Long Distance business, and the Long Distance business is what people think of when they think of amtrak. Its why we were created. But if you look at the numbers, its about 15 of our ridership. Its only about 23 of our revenue, and thats typically because people ride a little bit farther. And it is what defines our company to most of the nation. In a very real sense, its also the political glue that holds us together because it turns out that we get a lot of support from a lot of members of the house and members of the senate on both sides of the aisle in places where we run passenger trains. Their constituents like it. It is the big money loser. But, you have to understand amtrak accounting, and this is the other thing were up on the hill talking about all the time. Were like any other company with a network cost, right . We have direct expenses which are paying for crews, paying for fuel, paying you know, how much it costs to get that train from a to b. Then we have various layers of allocated costs. If you look at the direct cost its about 5 billion in revenue and a little less than that in expenses. The loss is all allocated costs. The problem with allocated costs of course is if that funding gets cut on the Long Distance side, we lose that 500 million in revenue and all those allocated costs get dumped over on the other two businesses. So the net result of cutting Financial Support to the Long Distance business is, we need more money from congress. Not a good outcome. I believe theres a mission for the Long Distance trains. We serve a lot of underserved parts of this country in terms of public transportation. But i always say, you can have an argument about whether or not the government should be in that business, but defunding it in the way thats proposed would be extraordinarily problematic for the company. Next business statesupported trains, 18 i think it is statesupported trains directly. Depends on how you count direct support, but its a growing business. Its 50 of our ridership, ride on statesupported trains. So its a Good Business. Its only 22 of our revenue because we dont because most of its short haul and we dont always control the fares. The states make up a good bit of the operating loss but by design, we subsidize the states to some extent. So while it doesnt lose as much money as Long Distance, it does lose some money, but its where the Growth Opportunities are and where i think Passenger Rail goes, right . I ride the train from charlottesville to washington most days because i would rather ride the train. In fact, id rather have a root canal than get on i95 and come up here in the mornings. And those trains are full because a lot of people feel like i do. And last piece is the corridor. The northeast corridor, it is 38 of our ridership, 55 of our revenue. And thats because, you know, we have a market in which we can charge adequate fares and we have a first class product in the acela which does very well. And the corridor, even after allocated costs, makes generates cash. It would not be profitable on a standalone gap basis, but it is the Cash Generator for us. And i should mention by the way, last year the operating loss at amtrak was 230 million. We covered 94 of our operating costs. You look around the world. Thats a remarkable number. So its not like we dont know how to run a railroad. The corridors great but it leads me to the last thing, infrastructure. And if i worry about one thing at amtrak, its infrastructure and its the northeast corridor. On the Long Distance network, we run on the freights, on the host railroa railroads, which ed so ably represents. Ive known him too long. That creates problems for us sometimes in terms of Freight Train interference and things like that. Heres the good news, uputting y freight hat on. The one piece of infrastructure in this country thats in great shape is the Freight Railroads. Theres been enormous investment, i will tell you, at all of them Freight Railroad infrastructure is the best shape its been in 70 or 80 years which is a positive thing. The corridor not so. The track is okay. Ride quality needs to improve. The signal system is old. The overhead wiring. We have some 80yearold cat narroirrow out there. We have the b and p tunnel south of baltimore, 30 Miles Per Hour with curves in them, 127 years old, a little past their sellby date. And then the microcosm of this is the gateway programs, the railroads from newark to penn station. A lot of it still double track. Its the busiest part of the railroad. We run 450 runs on the weekdays. We run 24 trains an hour in each direction through the two tunnels under the hudson river. So we have huge capacity limitations. We have 200yearold bridges in that 8. 5 miles, and then we have two tunnels on the hudson and two of the four on the east river that were flooded by sandy. And the deterioration of these tunnels which were opened in 1910 has just started to accelerate. As a result we have what we call the gateway programs, and its a series of projects, bridges, track expansion, two more tunnels under the hudson so we can fix the two that we have before they go out of service, and ultimately an expansion of penn station. As i was saying earlier, you look at penn station today, for 8 hours a day, it is doing things that it was never ever designed to do. So, its our essential mustdo work. The good news is, weve been talking a lot about it, including the fact that that area is 10 of the nations gdp and in the latest houseproposed budget with lots of thanks to chairman diaz ba lar and frelin frelin frelinghaasen, theres money. And i should say, we have strong bipartisan support in the house and we have great support in the senate as well, not only from senator schumer and senator booker and all of the folks from the northeast but even out west and other places. So im optimistic that well do gateway, but the longterm prospects for amtrak mean that some day or another, we have to have a secure Funding Source to run the Company Rather than year by year wondering what it is were going to get. And in the same way, and ill close on this, i firmly believe that our country needs to step up on all of its infrastructure, our highway system and its bridges, the water way and the ports. Everywhere you look there are huge needs and if we dont address that at amtrak and everywhere else, my great concern is that in 20 years time what has been the great competitive advantage thats driven our country forward really since the Second World War becomes the great competitive disadvantage that holds us back. Ive rambled. Hopefully ive left time for a few questions. Make them easy. [ applause ] thank you. I appreciate it. Several questions have been coming in that came in before todays luncheon and some that are coming in fast and furious on the cards and of course via twitter. So thats why all these devices are going on up here. You talked about congressional support. There seems to be a pretty pitched battle going on. The president of the United States campaigned on infrastructure. You talked about it towards the end of your remarks. Yet, members of the Freedom Caucus im sure will ask chairman meadows when hes here in a few days, are trying to cut a lot of that funding. And yet, there are people that are trying to reduce your rural service, the air service. Cuts are coming in left, right and center. You want all these things to improve, yet theyre not necessarily being delivered. How are you compensating for those competing forces going on in the hill and the white house . Well, thats a great question and of course i have to give an apolitical answer. Its just about money. Yeah. Its always about money, right . If you look at the history of amtrak, this is nothing new. I mean, if you look at the trump proposal, right, 20 years ago the proposals coming out of the administrations were, shut down amtrak. So the trump proposal is, gee, weve got this one thing that we dont think makes sense, lets not spend money on it. The other things they actually support. And i am actually an optimist about the administration in terms of our conversations with secretary chow and dot because the president comes from new york and i think he understands the situation up there. Its a long, long process. Well work our way through it. Well make our case. And im an optimist. I think well continue to be funded to do what we do. Let me say this though. The better we run amtrak, the better we deliver on projects, the more people understand how good our company is, the easier every funding conversation gets. You got into this a bit, but what steps is amtrak taking to ensure that there are no more summers of hell, and that is beyond trying to push for a different name when Major Updates are required . Thats a start. You know, this is a big outage. Were addressing the most difficult place to renew in penn. I think that we just have to continue to educate people about the necessity of renewing these assets and the fact that at times assets you know, people have to do a lot of work. The interesting thing is that the new chairman of the mta which controls subways, long island and metronorth as you all know, joe lotta just came out because the subways in new york are having a bad time these days and said, you know, were just going to have to take longer outages to fix them. And we thought, boy, what an idea. So i think the public understands if you explain it and you dont use rhetoric that might be viewed as inflammatory that these kinds of projects are essential. Amtrak will continue to work to make sure we have a Great Railroad in terms of its infrastructure so we can deliver reliable service. What people hate, what commuters hate is when you have an unplanned disruption. This summer while there are disruptions, theyve known about it a month in advance, long island and new Jersey Transit have done a great zjob of sayin, here are alternatives, and knock on wood, were two days in, but by and large, the commuters have figured it out. People figure it out if they know whats going on. Just to put a micro focus on the penn project, is it going to be on time . I know it just started this week, but do you have a sense of the timetable, when its going to be done, when things are going to be back to normal . We told everyone well be back at labor day and there are three reasons why im very confident that will happen. The first is weve done an exceptional and extraordinary amount of planning. On the engineering side we know we have all the material. We know it all fits. We have everything planned out. Second, we have a lot of skilled people who do very difficult work down in the bowels of the station and do it very well. We have the staff. We have the resources. We have the people who can do it. And the third is we do if things start to for some reason look like theyre running behind towards the end, we have the ability to step in at the end and button things up and then finish out whatever we dont get to in subsequent weekend outages. So, labor day is it. So if its late we can call you back here . Absolutely. Okay. Call richard. Derailments, what kind of in terms of the broader safety picture theres a lot of questions here about rail safety. What are you going to prevent what happened in philadelphia a couple of years ago, other derailments, you hear about them almost locally, theyre unfortunate where either its a derailment or somebody is unfortunately hit by a train. What specific steps are you doing to address the Safety Culture . So what we started with in the Safety Culture itself, to go there, is to kind of recalibrate our entire Safety Program to introduce serious new elements of responsibility and accountability for all of our employees, an element that i think had not been strong enough. We are in the process of doing the very first round of training for our operating supervision, and i think we have the right program in hand. And i will tell you, the former chief operating officer of Norfolk Southern has come down to assist us to put all those programs together, as well as some other people. In terms of the incidents you mentioned, the tragic accident up in philadelphia, we now have the technology on the entire northeast corridor that would prevent an accident like that. Derailments, there are a few we have relatively few derailmen derailments. We just need to stay focused on the infrastructure and in particular the infrastructure in our terminals which is where youre more likely to have one of those derailments. Those are typically at low speed, but nonetheless, theyre disruptive, and so we have to stay focused on getting those locations, like penn, fixed. They say all politics are local. When i walked out of my newsroom, some of my colleagues and i heard this from some other members in emails. What are you doing to get the prices down . Sometimes the fees feel like plane fares. Thats good. I mean, look meaning too high. No. Meaning people are saying some of the questions say, hey, the fares are too high. Can we get them down or at least keep them steady because at that point i might as well just hop a plane. Well, okay, let me answer that, right . And of course an airline guy is coming in and i think he would give exactly the same answer. We compete in a transportation marketplace. And so if you look at new york to washington and new york to boston, kind of the same although its a slightly slower trip, all of you know this, you know, downtown d. C. , Union Station to penn station in two and a half hours, Something Like that. We compete very well with the airlines because, hands up, how many people really enjoy being at Laguardia Airport . Thats not fair. Youre a train guy. Thats what im saying, right . We say this all the time. You know, i mean, were talking about no middle seat, right . I mean, we have a lot of competitive advantages, and its incumbent upon us as a good company and as a good steward of the taxpayers money to compete effectively in that marketplace and that means price so that we realize the maximum amount of revenue for the service we offer. And we have 70plus percent share, market share, of commercial transportation between new york and washington. So i do understand that. And by the way, let me say this, we are looking at doing some Creative Things in terms of creating an Economy Class if you will, but you know, its the seat pitch will look more like pick an airline, right . And there will be some other things that just dont make it quite as comfortable. And the other thing i would say in terms of value for money, isnt it relaxing to be on that train . You know, look out, see the country go by. It is, go ahead. I happen to like both. So, just getting back to some other things about infrastructure, and actually, back to money. You said early on in your remarks that you would love to have more money, but every good manager should be looking for ways to improve efficiency in cutting things. A lot of your predecessors have been expanding and retracting serv service, expanding and retracting. Where do you cut and not have customers cry foul . Let me say that is a great question. No, i would tell you that i think because without it being anybodys fault, amtrak, particularly in the 90s and the 2000s was under Enormous Economic pressure because we went through a series of administrations that wanted to cut all the money, and theres still a lot of economic pressure today. I think that the company, in some of its cost, lost sight of the passenger, lost sight of the customer. And ill give you an example. Someone some years ago made a decision, you know, we just wont shampoo the carpets as often, and it saved 1 million. But boy, you get on and you say, wow, that carpet hasnt been cleaned in a while. And thats not the experience we want to create for our customers. So where were focused right now and where all our conversations are is, yes, we want to be like any other Great Company. We want to be efficient and effective and always looking at ways to reduce costs, but we want to do it in the places that dont have that direct customer impact, and thats the mindset, i think, that we all have, certainly the senior team has, and those are the processes were going through. This is northeast corridor focused. Would the problems getting in and out of new york this summer be less severe if governor christie had not cancelled a tunnel project in 2010 . Thats not political. Ive answered a lot of questions recently by saying i understand the governors frustration. I cant quite wrap that one in. You know, look, that was before my time, and the socalled art tunnels, it was a plan that would have certainly given us two more tubes under the hudson. The plan in its final incarnation though would not have gone into penn station. It was a separate new station just to the north of penn, so in that way it was flawed because it would not have allowed us to shut down the other two tunnels one at a time and rehabilitate them. The original art tunnel alignment went into the new station and penn. If that had happened, we would not be where we are today. More northeast corridor questions. I promise there are others. Im so used to these. The high speed rail Improvement Project between New Brunswick and trenton was supposed to be completed last night and the project was delayed because of, quote unquote, gross mismanagement. Heres the deal on the high speed rail project. There are a lot of issues that happened with that. It was a project that was conceived some years ago and im giving you all history. I wasnt there. In haste, and it was difficult to understand exactly what was going to be accomplished and then the ig says, not particularly well managed. It will be a few months more. Its very close to completion. But the important thing to understand is we have completely redo you know all of our Program Management infrastructure. We have now an executive Program Management team that dictates Program Management standards and there are standards and there are tools to make sure that we are managing everything consistently and that we have good people managing those programs. And i feel much more confident about our ability to deliver projects on time and on budget as a result. The second thing, as i said, i dont think that what happened with new jersey high speed rail has any correlation at all to what were doing at penn. When will an order be executed by amtrak to purchase new Long Distance passenger locomotives and cars to replace the current Long Distance passenger train fleet that is, as you indicated earlier, seen better days and cant run forever because the Current Fleet looks just about worn out . Its going to look a lot better soon. How soon . Two years for the northeast regionals for the refresh. These are old assets but ill go back to the Airline Business and the Freight Railroad business. We at Norfolk Southern started a process of rebuilding a lot of our Diesel Locomotives and have been very successful and were looking at the same thing at amtrak. What did we decide earlier . Its all about the money, right . Its just when can we get the funding to start ordering new equipment, but i am a great believer in selfhelp. Im a great believer that we can take our existing assets and extend the lives and make them more reliable and more customer friendly without having to wait around for someone to write a check to us for a whole bunch of new locomotives and thats the path were going down. So that day will come. Until that day, we will use our capabilities and we have considerable capabilities to keep our equipment performing well for our customers. Time to move out to the midwest and beyond. Your predecessor, joe boardman, spoke here about the need for a key railway intersection around chicago. Whats the status of that effort . Well, ed hamburger can answer that as well as i can. We can bring him up. No, no, no. Hes turning red over here. Yeah. Its the create project, and theres been a substantial amount of work done on create and its been a partnership between the railroads including amtrak, the state and city and then with some federal government money as well. The federal government money for example in my old life at Norfolk Southern built a flyover which got 60 no, 80 some metro trains out of the way of 60 Norfolk Southern trains every day. So theres been substantial improvement. Theres a great big project out there theres left called the 81st street sip. Whats the price tag . 75th street. It does include 81st. Thank you, ed. Whats the price tag . Total price is going to be 1. 4. 1. 4 billion. A lot of work has been done and its a great project and chicago is much better as a result. Youve seen that for freight cars in chicago come down, the average interchange time. Quite a few questions about comparing the u. S. Rail system to those elsewhere in the world. Why does the u. S. Seem to be behind asia and western europe with respect to high speed rail transportation, and that goes into autonomous trains. Theres three or four questions that get into the whole notion of why cant we just be like the euro star or Something Like that. I get that a lot. And the most frustrating thing is then its usually tied to, gee, if we just didnt have amtrak, we could be like western europe. No, right . If we spent 100 billion on new rail infrastructure, then we could be like europe. Because one of the key kind of simpleminded lessons of railroading is that when you look for high speed operations which the europeans and the asians have committed to and some others, what its all about is two things. One is the geometry of the railroad, because the japanese and its the 50th anniversary of the shin con sen. They figured out that if with motor technology, you could pump enough horsepower into a train so that hills didnt matter. You could go up just as fast up a hill as downhill and that was a change. Curves slow trains down, so everyone over there that runs high speed trains has built brand new alignments that are, for the most part, dead straight, and then they keep there are no commuters on them, right . There are no Freight Trains, theres no nothing else. If the u. S. Had made a decision to go in that direction rather than invest what it has in the interstate highway system, we would have a lot of high speed trains. Its a government priority to invest in the railroads in other places where its not here. Its just that simple. But do you see private sector or Public Private partnerships, do you see anything that begins to push us in that direction, or is congress too intransient to go there . In my mind, it the most like true high speed operation in this country may well be whats planned in texas between houston and dallas because you can get out, you can go straight. Its flat. Theres a lot of farm land in there, although i think theyre running into the fact that farmers dont want to sell their land necessarily, and the japanese are sponsoring it. Now, theres a lot of question about how much real private money goes into that versus public in some way or another. But the difficulty people ask this about gateway all the time, what about Public Private partnerships because is you know, thats what the administration talks about. Its difficult to toll a tunnel. We can do some things, and i welcome private investment. I think private investment brings all kinds of good things, including discipline, to projects, but its just difficult to see how you make the numbers work. Cyber security and terrorism have come up. Mike rogers whos been here to the club, we like to talk about folks who have visited here a lot. Will you talk about me . We will. In a good way . In a good way. Not so much in youre late with penn station. Kidding. No pressure. Cyber attacks, admiral rogers talked about here, happen almost every day, and he said at this podium to my predecessor, thomas burr, its not a matter of if but when. So, what does that mean for amtrak, how are you preparing for it, how are you coping with it to the degree that you can talk about it . Well, i think we can talk about it a fair amount. Were very aware of cyber threats. We have taken substantial initiatives with our i. T. Group in terms of the commonplace things, the 24 monitoring of everything thats coming at the company electronically and, you know, whatever the percentage is discarding 98 of the inbound emails and trying to sniff others. We have a lot more to be done there. If you look at amtrak, and this is where were focused, i think the threats to us come in a couple of different directions. One is just the ordinary kind of threat i mean theft factor, getting credit cards. And amtrak for a while now has done a very good job of being absolutely in compliance with all of the credit card handling standards that are out there in terms of, you know, keeping those safe. And in fact, were now moving to a new technology where we dont even keep credit cards. We keep a code thats not translatable into a credit card number. The other is and this is a big thing for industrial companies, the socalled industrial control systems. So were talking about dispatching. Were talking about the Power Management and things like that, and we have a lot of work under way. The other thing ill just say in terms of kinds of threats is the other question we get all the time is about terrorism on the trains and i will say theres a multi when i get here i was very impressed to see there is a multilevel system thats constantly watching out for that. You will see it and have seen it. If you go to Union Station, the first thing youll notice, theres a large uniformed presence there, right, of primarily amtrak police, but there are a lot of other people in there, many of whom you wont notice who are watching everything that goes on. We are very tied in to all of the security agencies and constantly monitoring of threat levels. Nothing keeps you absolutely safe. Thats the unfortunate fact of life for all of us, but were doing a lot of, i think, good work to protect the traveling public. Do you see a time when americans are going to embrace rail transportation like their european counterparts . I think that the way i put it is there are a lot of great people at amtrak and for 46 years for a large part of the 46 years a lot of people were there trying to kind of what i would describe as keep the flame alive, right . Understanding that some day people the world would come to the point where people started to say, you know, we really need to have Passenger Rail as an option for transportation. I think that that day has come. I think it takes a while. I dont think it necessarily ever means high speed trains between washington and new orleans or chicago. That may be a while. But what were going to continue to see is things like i mentioned, you know, more and more corridors in particular where people want to travel into from an urban environment to an urban environment or into an urban environment where all of the other problems with our infrastructure, particularly the highway system, make that a painful experience. Thats a sweet spot for us, and thats a place where all of the states want to hear more about what we can do. Some Public Service announcements before we get to our last question. For those of you who may have joined us later in the telecast, the radio cast, on the internet and here in the ballroom, some things coming up. We talked about house Freedom Caucus chairman mark meadows. Hell be here on july 24th for a headliners luncheon, headliners news maker with senses director john thompson. Headliners luncheon on july 27th with general mark milley and our press Club Journalism awards dinner on july 28th. Before i give you the last question, im going to give you our customary National Press club mug. Thank you. Very nice. Take that with you. We in return keep that lovely picture of you that you signed earlier before the luncheon. It will go on the wall with the rest of the speakers so people can admire you along with everybody else outside. There are a lot of fun movies about trains. Uhoh. Strangers on a train, silver streak, north by northwest, unstoppable, throw mama from the train. Thats not an amtrak recommendation. The taking of pelham 123. What is your favorite train movie . Oh, my gosh. Which one oh, the john candy and trains, planes and automobiles. I thought that was a very good movie. By the way, since im constantly selling amtrak, go back because it is a great movie and watch north by northwest because you can recreate that experience today on our empire state service. Give it a try. [ applause ] for transcripts and other information about our National Press club headliners activities, go to www. Press. Org. Thank you very much. We are adjourned. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee meets tuesday to consider the nomination of Calista Gingrich to be u. S. Ambassador to the vatican. Shes the wife of former house speaker, newt gingrich. In addition to her testimony, the committee will also hear from nathan sales, the nominee for state Department Counterterrorism coordinator. Well have live coverage of that confirmation hearing starting at 10 00 a. M. Eastern here on cspan 3. This sunday at noon eastern, a cspan 3 special event. Burn baby burn as American History tv is live from the Detroit Free Press newsroom, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1967 detroit riots. Well talk with former Detroit Police chief Isaiah Mckinnon and historian Heather Ann Thompson to find out what happened and why. Then Detroit Free Press Editorial Page Editor Steven Henderson and former detroit prepress and news journalist tim kisska discuss the coverage of the riot and its aftermat