The newest sufferer of the Trump administration’s obsession with the looks of effectivity is the man who made the trains run on time. Stephen Gardner, the Chief Government Officer of Amtrak who held the put up since 2022, abruptly introduced that he could be stepping down from his position Wednesday within the wake of Donald Trump and Elon Musk inserting the prepare firm within the crosshairs for potential privatization.
In a assertion, Gardner stated, “I’m stepping down as CEO to make sure that Amtrak continues to benefit from the full religion and confidence of this administration.” Previous to taking the highest position on the agency, he served as Amtrak’s chief working and business officer beginning in 2009 and because the group’s president beginning in 2020. And whereas he’s been hanging within the C-suite for some time now, Gardner has some fairly strong credentials as a prepare lover. He beforehand served as a conductor and operations supervisor for the Maine Central Railroad, and he based a punk band referred to as Chessie, which took its identify from the defunct Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.
Regardless of this (or due to it), Gardner discovered himself between a rock and a tough place with the brand new administration. Trump’s ire for Amtrak isn’t new—new tried to minimize federal funding for the corporate in half throughout his first administration—however it’s taken a sharper flip this time round. Billions of {dollars} of help for the railway bought caught in Trump’s federal funding freeze earlier this 12 months, and Division of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been urgent Amtrak to finish variety, fairness, and inclusion applications and mandate return-to-office orders for workers or lose out on federal help.
At the same time as Gardner has tried to associate with as a lot of the Trump administration’s calls for as doable, it appeared inevitable that he and the corporate would proceed to obtain important scrutiny. Earlier this month, Elon Musk advised that Amtrak and the USA Postal Service needs to be privatized. He referred to as Amtrak “type of embarrassing” and stated at a convention, “Should you’re coming from one other nation, please don’t use our nationwide rail. It might go away you with a really dangerous impression of America.”
Amtrak is coming off a 12 months with file ridership, facilitated in no small half by ongoing enlargement of accessible routes which are a part of a plan to serve an further 40 million individuals with rail service within the coming years.
Now, maybe privatizing the corporate would increase that. Let’s test on how Musk’s Boring Firm has been doing with its efforts to supply high-speed, mass transit options…it seems the corporate has spent greater than seven years constructing 2.4 miles of a proposed 68-mile community in Las Vegas, all performed with minimal oversight or intervention from regulators. And that’s the corporate’s finest displaying! That doesn’t even contact on the multitude of initiatives that the Boring Firm has promised solely to delay or straight-up abandon as a result of they proved too expensive to proceed. Say what you’ll about Amtrak, however it doesn’t look so dangerous by comparability.
