Arrive Magazine - September/October, 2009

All Aboard!
Recovery and Reinvestment

All summer long we have been hard at work improving our infrastructure and equipment to better serve you. For us, the fall means the winding down of extensive track work projects on our Northeast Corridor. By the end of summer, our track gangs installed more than 200,000 railroad ties, in addition to making other infrastructure improvements this fiscal year.

Oct. 1 marks the beginning of our new fiscal year, as we continue to strive to connect America in safer, greener and healthier ways. In addition to the state-of-good-repair plans we have set for the year, we will continue working on more than 500 projects that were approved for $1.3 billion in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds over the next two years to upgrade service while preserving and creating jobs.

Stimulus funds have helped implement or accelerate projects that will rehabilitate and modernize our infrastructure, equipment and systems, and strengthen our security and life safety programs. Thanks to the availability of these funds, this summer we began rehabilitating passenger cars and locomotives that have been sidelined for years, releasing the first “stimulus-driven” car in July. Not only does this work provide jobs at our mechanical facilities in Indiana and Delaware, but it also helps increase seat capacity on our trains.

The stimulus funds will also help us better communicate with you and improve your experience with us. We will be deploying improved Passenger Information Display systems at a number of our stations, employing more sophisticated customer relationship management tools to provide you with timely and more targeted information, and relaunching Amtrak.com with even more user-friendly ticketing and travel planning services. We’ll also be spending about $40 million on improvements to more than 200 other stations to increase accessibility for people with disabilities and make other upgrades.

While we are continually seeking ways to improve, we are very proud of the quality of the work we do and the service we provide. We see the stimulus as more than advancing improvement projects, we are also doing our part to put people back to work and help rebuild the American economy.