Amtrak reveals it is cutting its service in 2022 amid vaccine mandate

A top Amtrak official has revealed to lawmakers that it may have to cut back rail service next month, citing President Joe Biden‘s vaccine mandate for federal contractors and others that work with the government.

The expected cutbacks in service come a day after Biden proclaimed himself ‘Mr. Amtrak’ in remarks in Kansas City, and despite Amtrak reporting that 94 per cent of its workers are vaccinated.

‘Achieving full service levels, while complying with the vaccination requirement and continuing to prioritize the safety of our customers and employees, is our goal,’ Amtrak president Stephen Gardner told lawmakers in prepared testimony.

He told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that 96 percent of employees had received at least one vaccine dose.  

President Joe Biden called himself ‘Mr. Amtrak’ on Wednesday,. 

‘We hope that all employees who have already received one vaccination dose, which all employees are required to receive as of today, will be fully vaccinated by January 4,’ he said. ‘However, because many engineers, conductors and on-board service employees retired or left Amtrak during the pandemic, and we temporarily halted hiring due to funding uncertainty and covid-related distancing requirements that inhibited training, we anticipate that we will not initially have enough employees to operate all the trains we are currently operating when the federal mandate takes effect’ next month, he said.

‘This will likely necessitate temporary frequency reductions, primarily for our long-distance services.’

Problems pandemic related hiring and delays ‘will likely necessitate temporary frequency reductions, primarily for our long-distance services,’ Amtrak said

Biden often tells stories of his decades riding the rails between Wilmington and Washington, D.C.

 Asked about the cutbacks at the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki called the vaccine rate ‘great news.’ And she noted there is about a month to comply.

 She said the administration has conveyed that employers will follow ‘their standard HR process,’ which means employees not in compliance will ‘go through education, counseling, accommodations and enforcement.’

The staff issues are most challenging in multi-day trips, some through areas with lower rates of vaccinated employees, as Bloomberg News reported Thursday.

As Gardner explained: ‘This impact is primarily felt across our long-distance services because of the relatively small crew bases at intermediate points along multi-day long-distance routes where conductors and engineers report to work. At some of these crew bases across our network, we have a relatively high percentage of unvaccinated employees. If those employees chose to not get vaccinated by the deadline, we will not have sufficient trained staff to support current service frequency on affected routes, as engineers and conductors must undergo extensive training both when hired or promoted and to become qualified on the characteristics of each route on which they work.’

He said potential service reductions would be made public next week.