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Happy Holidays from Amtrak!
Next year will mark my 23rd anniversary with our company. We often say it's a big year, and they usually are, but my sense is that this year is going to be bigger than most. There will soon be a new Administration, full of new faces, and a new Congress, albeit one with plenty of familiar faces. We will be hard at work, talking with people everywhere, and because of your experience, knowledge of the industry, and your longstanding support of passenger rail, I wanted to reach out to keep you informed.
We are beginning this new Administration in a strong place<http://bit.ly/FY16_financials>. Under the leadership of our new President and CEO, Wick Moorman<http://bit.ly/Wick_Moorman>, we are taking some important steps to secure a bright future. We took delivery of the last of our 70 new electric locomotives<http://bit.ly/ACS_64> this year, and we took a big step forward with the announcement of a $2.4 billion RRIF Loan to invest in new high speed trainsets<http://bit.ly/next_gen_hsr> for our signature Acela Express service. We have also worked to deliver some significant improvement projects in the Northeast and in other regions, and introduced programs for travel with pets<https://www.amtrak.com/pets> and bikes<http://bit.ly/Amtrak_bikes>.
These investments will be possible because our key indicators such as ridership and revenue growth over the past decade have laid a strong foundation for us to build on. We are working with several of our state partners to improve their services, and their support will deliver some worthwhile new investment projects in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest in the coming year.
Projects like these are indicative of an ongoing shift in the public's mobility preferences, a shift Congress has acknowledged in the recent FAST Act, which brought Amtrak into the nation's surface transportation reauthorization legislation for the first time. This probably does not come as news to you, as someone who has watched the development of rail passenger service, and it should signal that a period of opportunity may be upon us. We are hopeful that with strong partnerships, we can sustain Amtrak's momentum in the years to come. While our financial situation is strong, Federal support will continue to be a vital part of our investment effort.
Because I appreciate all your support for Amtrak over the years, I will be sure to keep you informed on an ongoing basis about our progress, providing news and other information that's likely to be of interest. Your support and partnership have been important to us in the past, and I would like very much to stay in touch - and to let you know that if you want our assistance at any time in preparing for a meeting, a speech, or a presentation, we will be happy to do whatever we can to help. Please feel free to reach out to our Government Affairs team when you're in the area, or if there's anything you need. If there is someone else you feel would benefit from hearing about this or you have an assistant you'd like us to include in future mailings, please email Robert.Ripperger@amtrak.com<mailto:Robert.Ripperger@amtrak.com>.
Sincerely,
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Joe McHugh
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