Engagement Memo—Assessing Amtrak’s Compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

We are initiating an audit with the objective to assess the company’s progress toward achieving compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). This is an update to reports we issued in 2011 and 2014. We may expand our scope or modify our objective during the audit. Throughout our audit, we plan to interview company officials responsible for managing the ADA Stations Program, analyze relevant documents and data, and assess policies.

As we start this audit, please know that we are acutely aware of and sensitive to the impact that the coronavirus has had on us all, particularly the company’s business operations and its employees. We will work to minimize disruptions to the company by conducting our outreach with the company as efficiently as possible and coordinating meetings with staff in advance. Given the current operating environment, we also leave it to your discretion to determine who you would like to participate in an entrance conference so as to minimize disruptions to the executive leadership team and expedite our information gathering and request for company interviews and documents. Throughout our audit, we will keep you advised of the status of our work and any material changes in our objective, should they occur.

We will perform our work in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. Our interactions with the company will be consistent with P/I 2.1.3, which sets forth the relationship between our office and the company. In particular, section 7.0 of the policy discusses coordination between company officials and our Office of Audits.