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Roger Harris

๐Ÿ‘ค Speaker
60 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

And it's supply and demand, right?

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

If we lower the prices too much, then the planes, the trains fill up.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

too soon, and there isn't a seat available for that last-minute customer.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

But we see help on the way in terms of more capacity, because that's really the answer when you have a ton of demand like we do today.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

So, the new Acela trains, which we're rolling out, have 27% more seats than the old-generation Acelas.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

Focusing very hard on rolling out those new Acelas.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

So we have five, we have seven in service at the moment.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

And we're going to have 24 by the end of this coming year.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

And then the new fleet that rolls in as well will be additional capacity.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

So I think that's really the light at the end of the tunnel.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

Yeah.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

So, you know, many of the trains we have can go faster than the infrastructure allows.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

And it's really about not only the rails, but also things like the electrical systems, the wires overhead that supply the electricity for the trains.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

Right.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

Right.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

Well, we have to replace all that infrastructure in order to make the trains go faster because that infrastructure I was telling you about is basically 100 years old and trains didn't go that fast 100 years ago.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

So that's what we're working on.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

It takes a long time to do that, unfortunately.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

We've in general, we've seen the funding come through every month, the big projects that we're working on.

Bloomberg Talks
Amtrak President Roger Harris Talks Surging Demand & Pricing

So I think that the challenge at hand is really to kind of buckle down and get the projects done that we're already working on.