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been an executive with the Union Pacific Railroad. Kummant ran
Amtrak during a period of unprecedented increases in ridership,
due in part to $4-a-gallon gasoline and chaos in the airline indus-
try. Then in November 2008, amid rumors of conflict with the
Amtrak board, Kummant suddenly and unexpectedly resigned.
Within weeks, the Amtrak board announced the interim
appointment of Joseph Boardman as the railroad's newest presi-
dent. Boardman was certainly familiar with Amtrak and its
operations—he had been serving as administrator of the Federal
Railroad Administration for the prior three years and, for three
decades before that, in various roles within the surface transpor-
tation industry. As of this writing, Boardman's appointment has
been extended through 2013.
Also in 2008, Congress authorized funding for Amtrak that
would do two important things: (1) provide adequate operating
funds and (2) commit funding at that level for five years. It's hard
to believe, but in its entire 37-year history, Amtrak had never
known from one year to the next how much money it would have
for operations. You and I would have a terrible time running
our households like that; yet Amtrak was somehow expected to
operate a national rail transportation system efficiently and intel-
ligently under those circumstances.
Then came the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009 (ARRA)—the so-called stimulus bill. It included additional
funds for Amtrak to repair railcars that had been sitting in stor-
age. The ARRA also provided $8 billion in capital grants to be
awarded for initial work on high-speed rail corridors and inter-
city routes. For the first time in its history, Amtrak found itself
with a federal government at least nominally supportive of more
and better passenger rail service.
Still—and it's hard to overstate this—day after day and
month after month through all those frustrating years, Amtrak
trains continued to carry Americans to and from thousands of
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