Amtrak celebrates Heartland Flyer 12th anniversary, names new CIO

Communities along the Oklahoma City-Fort Worth route of the state-supported Amtrak Heartland Flyer celebrated the 12th anniversary of daily passenger rail service on Saturday, June 18. Amtrak is offering a special anniversary fare promotion that will be available until June 30. "This service has exceeded its ridership expectations from the day it started and even in the current economic climate, is on a record-setting pace," said Mike Chandler, who is responsible for the Heartland Flyer service as Amtrak general superintendent of the Southwest division. Since this Amtrak fiscal year began October 1, 2010, and through May 2011, ridership on the Heartland Flyer has grown by nearly 10 percent compared with the same period a year ago. Total ridership since the Heartland Flyer inauguration on June 14, 1999, now totals 790,713. In other news, Ronald Sorozan has been appointed as chief information officer and will provide leadership for all Amtrak information technology, effective June 20. Sorozan has more than 25 years of experience in the technology field including his most recent position as group information officer of operations, engineering and maintenance at Amtrak that provided him in-depth knowledge of Amtrak's national operational and business functions. In addition, Sorozan has held CIO/VP IT positions with DynCorp International, Holland America Line and other respected organizations. He also brings knowledge of reservation applications, e-ticketing and other related systems of prime interest to Amtrak. "In his time with Amtrak, Ron has demonstrated his abilities on many major IT initiatives by streamlining several systems and applying a customer satisfaction and staff productivity focus," said Amtrak President and CEO Joseph Boardman. Sorozan will be responsible for leading all technology matters for Amtrak, including the continuation of the Strategic Asset Management program designed to modernize all business operations, provide timely data warehousing for decision support, life-cycle/retirement of aging infrastructure and applications and managing the large national out-source partnerships.