Amtrak OIG report offers recommendations for Amtrak to build trust with state partners

[marmar]

A new report published Feb. 2 from the Amtrak Office of Inspector General (OIG) outlines challenges associated with cost sharing on Amtrak’s state-supported routes and makes three recommendations to mitigate them.

Amtrak OIG’s report, Governance: Amtrak Has Begun to Address State Partners’ Concerns About Shared Costs but Has More Work to Do to Improve Relationships, credits Amtrak with addressing longstanding concerns surrounding improved transparency in cost data and better communications with state partners about bill impacts. The report notes there are three areas where challenges persist affecting trust among Amtrak and its state partners. The three areas include:

* Conflicting perspectives between Amtrak and its state partners about control over decision-making and the level of support Amtrak provides to those partners;
* Unaddressed issues with the cost-sharing methodology despite the company’s efforts to improve its ability to directly assign costs to state partner’s trains; and
* Amtrak’s state partners question whether the company has effective quality controls in its cost-calculation and bill-development process and some state partners do not understand the company’s process.

The report says state partners are nearly equally divided among one-third that have high trust in Amtrak surrounding cost-sharing issues, one-third with moderate trust and one-third with low trust. ..............(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/article/21255502/amtrak-oig-report-offers-recommendations-for-amtrak-to-build-trust-with-state-partners