Mr. Boardman was asked about the daily Sunset last week in LA at the RailPAC/NARP conference. Amtrak is looking into it, but he seemed careful not to over commit. Also responded to, was a question about going to Phoenix. They are looking at it, working with UP and the State of Arizona to see what is needed restore service on the Phoenix routing, and possible Tucson-Phoenix service. Once again, look see, no commitments.

The equipment situation does appear to be a bigger stumbling block than the UP capacity issues on any expansion of the Sunset, right now. The ARRA monies for equipment repair are now ramping up. It is clearly a very high priority with Boardman and the States. Amtrak, has a number of out of service pieces of bilevel intercity equipment (sleepers, diners, lounges)that may be put back into service. Though the biggest real shortage on the west coast is spare coach capacity for peak demand periods on the corridor services. Boardmand noted that they would refurbish a number of older single level coaches to fill this need, creating single level coach sets for some of the short distance corridors, until new bilevels can be ordered.

Unfortunately, it sounded like the Amtrak equipment repair program might be off to a somewhat slow start. This was another subject of 'controlling expectations" in the careful responses. It seems the US just doesn't have that much immediate passenger equipment repair capacity (facility slots, staffing, parts on hand). The same problem exists with ordering new equipment. Amtrak may be looking at a large order of bilevel equipment with the States, but there is severe lack of vendor capacity here, too. The boom bust cycle of rail passenger equipment expenditures have resulted in a lack of investment by vendors. And, the few new entrants into the market have withered, and some have gone under.

Daily Sunset service is definitely not outside the realm of possibility. But, I doubt it would be able to start by the Fall schedule, from what I heard. Boardman clearly wants to expand service working with the States, but made it clear that they were reluctant to run any "new" services poorly. He appears, in the very near term, to want to work with states on near term safety/realiability investments though the ARRA funds, to do much needed facility upgrades for maintenance, and work on immediate operational and equipment reliability/availability improvements to the existing system.