arrive is Amtrak's onboard magazine for business travelers. It provides millions of passengers with vital information and welcome entertainment to help make most of visits to the major destination cities of the Northeastern United States.

arrive is published bimonthly and delivers constant exposure on all Northeast trains as well as the ClubAcela station lounges. Its goal is to provide a unique and intelligent view of America's most compelling urban centers of commerce, government and the arts.

The tone of the magazine is entertaining yet informative, casual yet consuming. It is the perfect travel partner—a knowledgeable guide and an entertaining companion. And for Amtrak's time-sensitive riders, it is always available within arm's reach ... it is the only magazine within reach.

arrive delivers equally compelling value to advertisers. It reaches and influences a unique and valuable audience at precisely the moment when it is most receptive to a wide variety of business-, travel- and entertainment-related ad messages. And arrive readers are downtown visitors—that's why they use Amtrak and Acela. No other magazine delivers such a targeted audience of affluent visitors to Northeast cities.

Village voice
28 Native New Yorker Liev Schreiber is still doing Shakespeare in the Park, Mamet on stage and, in June, satan’s own on screen. The devilish star of this summer’s The Omen chats from his apartment in the East Village. | BY DENNIS MCCAFFERTY

Little pink houses
36 An archipelago of salmon-colored granite, C onnecticut’s Thimble Islands promise an ethereal day at a storybook site. | BY TIM GEARY

This issue’s contributors:

DENNIS MCCAFFERTY interviewed Liev Schreiber for this issue’s cover story and Elle magazine editor Robbie Myers for Final Stop on the last page. McCafferty has contributed to Salon, Parenting, Men’s Health and Maxim. He and his wife, Laura, live in Oak Hill, Va.

Regular Arrive contributor JOHN MARIANI explores the growing dining scene in Philadelphia midway through that city’s celebration of its founding father, Ben Franklin. Mariani is the food critic at Esquire magazine and author of Dictionary of Italian Food and Drink, Passport to New York Restaurants and Mariani’s Coast to Coast Dinner.

TIM GEARY, who writes about the charming and somewhat secret Thimble Islands for this issue’s travel feature, has published three novels. In addition to writing for The New York Times and The (London) Daily Telegraph, Geary has written for The New York Observer, The Times of London and Condé Nast Traveler. He is currently developing a sitcom set in New York City, where he lives with his wife and children.

Download arrive Magazine, May/June 2006

PDF format, 118MB, 64Pages.

What is ‘good’?

To be successful in a service business you must first understand what “good” means to your customers. When you think you know the answer, you’ve got to deliver what they expect and more.

At Amtrak, we measure lots of things that our passengers don’t know about, like the miles of track we have upgraded so you have a smooth ride, or the number of coaches rebuilt for reliability and comfort. While these metrics don’t naturally resonate with our passengers, each is important to us, because restoring the railroad to a state-of-goodrepair translates into more reliable service, improved on-time performance and, in the end, a better value proposition for our passengers.

So what is the measurement of “good” for our customers? We recently interviewed Acela Express passengers in focus groups. Their answers? “Make the trains run on time.” “Give us more up-to-date information and announcements on when the train is arriving.” “Better food choices.”  “Friendlier service.”

The good thing about these responses is that they are all achievable. The better thing is that we are making a lot of them happen right now.

For example, on-time performance on all of our trains in the Northeast Corridor has improved significantly in the past six months, with Acela Express running at 92 percent on-time and Regionals running at 88 percent on-time for the month of March (as I write this). This is far better than the unacceptable performance of 70 to 80 percent that we were experiencing on these trains last year. It took some doing, but I think we’re capable of continuing to perform at this level.

We are also continuing to look at ways that we can improve the quality of the food we serve on board. Already we’ve added more salads and healthier snacks. We’re also testing cart service, which is getting a very good reception.

But along with these tangible improvements, we are also putting more emphasis into the intangibles of good customer service. Our goal is to provide our passengers with a consistently high level of service at every point along their journey. This takes form in many ways, like a “can-do” attitude at the ticket counter, timely and accurate information from a conductor if a train’s running late, and clean and well-maintained facilities. Presently, we’re putting greater effort into teaching and reinforcing these important intangibles of customer service.

In the end, our goal is to be better than “good” at delivering the service that every one of our passengers expects. We want to be consistently great.

Thank you for choosing to ride with us today, and welcome aboard.

Sincerely,
David J. Hughes
Acting President and
Chief Executive Officer

Visit arrive magazine Official Website

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