Amtrak never on time

When I regularly rode Amtrak, the eastbound Lake Shore from Chicago was often held past departure time for connections from the West. But on one occasion when we left Chicago some five hours late I was still grateful to have a roomette in a Heritage sleeper because if I had been heading home by air I would have been spending the night in an airport waiting room chair on account of a raging sleetstorm. Dave

According to reports from many sources, Dave Gunn may be one of the best railroad managers to come along in some time. He is highly regarded by employees, others in the business, writers in the business press and members in the U.S. Congress. Even Senator McCain, who strongly opposes Federal Amtrak subsidies respects Gunn for his management skills.

Among recent changes, Amtrak is going from a 180 to a 90 day cycle for scheduled maintenance on cars. That gets to a faster fix on things that are wearing out, finds defects that much quicker and generally improves the prospect of a train going out on the road finishing the trip without an equipment failure.

You can be sure that he and his people are working on anything that causes service problems. Cash is a problem, but reportedly, many projects are coming in under budget.

Any Amtrak employees want to comment?

I rode amtrak up and down the washington coast for years and it seemed that the trains were always at least 15 minutes late (usually more like 3 hours). But i was always satisfied with the over-all service. I am a train addict and have been trying to plan a trip from lexington, kentucky to Olympia, WA. This is a very frustrating concept because you can’t get there from here. Does anyone have any ideas??

I’m new to this forum but have been a rail fan since my first ride behind a steam loco on a Japanese passenger train in 1949 from Hachinoi to Tokyo. (My dad was in the occupying force.) Nevertheless, I ride trains whenever and wherever possible, and have been saddened by the miserable state of affairs concerning AMTRAK’s performance and service.

Until our leaders in Congress understand that underfunding the subsidy Amtrak needs to provide passenger service to the US, they will continue to weaken, underperform, loose ridership, and be generally uncompetitive with the airlines, automobile, and even bus service. In fact, that with the unfair tax advantage all railroads have, which makes them uncompetitive with air and truck, which are both subsidized, rail service, both passenger and freight will dissappear altogether.

It occurs to me that members of Congress should be REQUIRED to ride Amtrak regular service whenever possible to familiarize them with the problems their undersubsidizing is causing, from tardiness to poor food service.

In response to K.P. Harrier Who asked this question.
“Does anybody know what Mr. Gunn thinks of this whole mess? Is it merely just a paycheck to him?”

You might want to do a little more back ground research on this person. In my view, he seems to do this type of work more because he enjoys rebuilding something that is almost destroyed. As far as the comment “just a paycheck” is concerned, this man is more than able to walk away from this project and not notice the change in his own finances. He has restructured and salvaged a few companies in the past. He is a supporter of Mass Rail Transit.
If he was worried about the paycheck, I feel he would not make many of the statements he does to the committees in Washington D.C. It is refreshing at times to see someone as staunch and forthright with our representatives on Capital Hill. I am sure he would like to see the trains run on time all the time just as the rest of us do.

[In response to this string of messages]

There are also the same people that have livelihoods and business that are dependent on the freight getting through on time to be unloaded, reloaded and driven and delivered to keep these other customers content so they as well don’t ask for refunds due to slow service. As usual this can be a huge can of worms with many view points and valid sides.
I too enjoy train travel and wi***o share that pleasure with my own children. And hope its still around for many years to come.
I would much rather take time on a subway or train in the morning and read the paper or just close my eyes and rest instead of driving in hectic traffic with other tense individuals that are running late and blaming everyone in front of them for their own tardiness. I am sure that if Rail Transit could get the amount of funding that the airlines receive on an annual basis we would see the price of tickets drop drastically and service improve due to more rail being laid for passenger traffic instead of having to shar

Mark-

I gotta take issue with that “Sometimes we have problems with the locomotives”. I have ridden passenger trains since before there was an Amtrak perhaps leading to my career choice to work on the RR. Pretty much every trip I have taken in the past 2-3 years has involved engine trouble (those @#$R*&%! GEs I spoke of in another thread). On a recent trip I got on an Amtrak train and we made it all of three miles from the terminal before the one unit we had died. After I learned it was the *&^^%$#@! GE Computer, I even offered the crew my humble expertise with GEs. Luckily we had a good laugh and got moving again. We only had two more failures before the end of the 5 hour trip…lol…

Not counting the drawbridge that was hit by a barge and made us 4 hours late…

It’s always something. I still ride though, when I can get the vacation.

LC

Freights hate passenger trains because the passenger trains are supposed to get priority service from the hast railroads. This could screw up the freight sched. if it has to give way to a passenger train that is running behind. Not only is the freight railroad penalized for having to wait but also they have heavy penalties when their trains are late for their customers.

I have spoken on this subject before but I will state again why CSX purchased the tickets at the same time as laying off the 1000 workers. First of all, it is good business to give your clients gifts for their using your services or products. If you were given superbowl tickets would you not consider giving your business to that person or company? Second the layoffs were to seasonal type employees who are hired to supplement the workers when they are doing track work trhat can only be done in summer. You have to remember the source of the original story and that they are also just trying to sell you newspapers so they try to make it sensationalistic so that you continue to read thier paper. Last of all its is only 1000 workers out of how many in their organization?

A further thought on David Gunn, who is, in my humble opinion, one of the really great railroad execs: he has a perfectly wonderful farm waiting for him back home. He isn’t in this for the cash, he’s in it because he loves railroads and railroading, and passenger service, and he was asked to see if he could do anything about the problems of Amtrak pretty much as a favour. He’s a very dedicated man and a great guy to work for.

I’ve been thinking about the schedule thing… and on time performance… most railroads today are really lean organisations – for better or worse – which really means that if something goes wrong, it’s very hard to avoid a cascade of problems, which usually impact schedules. And… most railroads today have executives who are, also for better or worse, almost completely geared to the ‘bottom line’ – quarterly profits. Delayed freight is more costly than delayed passengers, so… guess what? 50 or 60 years ago, though, there was a tremendous prestige factor in the major name trains (ever notice that no one talks about the on-time performance of the local to West Undershot?), and there were the spare resources – in manpower and equipment – so that if something bad happened and, say, the Super Chief looked like it might be delayed for some reason, you betcha that everyone from the head office down to the track walkers moved to make sure that didn’t happen. Very different environment.

Just musings…

mottertektura – give AMTRAK a try! I’ve taken two roundtrips in the past year (Carolinean & San Joaquin), & all 4 trains were within an hour of scheduled arrival.

New to this but, i took my 12 and 8 year old boys from Philadelphia to Boston in the spring left Philadelphia around 11 PM and was to arrive in Boston at 8:05, once out of Philly track was smooth slept great, woke up along the coast at sunrise and arrived at 8:00. Giong to Florida in July, myself and girlfriend with three boys 12, 10, and 8. $1361.00 from Elmira to Pittsburgh to Orlando w/ US Air. $708.00 Am-Trak, for $653.00 I’ll take my chances.

ooo - Talon Cake - that ishow Mookie looks after the chocolate cake goes by… oooo

(Sorry bout that - but it is a forum joke and too good to pass up)

Welcome to the forums -

Mookie

I thank god for Amtrak. I ride it regularly between Chicago nad D.C. and yes it is late and yes I have been stuck for several hours on a stationary train because the locomotive crapped out but what is the alternative? An airport with armed MPs, hassles going to your departure point, questions that come damn close to being insulting. When I’m late on Amtrak, I am, at least comfortable. No big fat broad with a cheek taking up half my seat. I wish Amtrak would get some freeway of it’s own, that would probably answer all the on time questions.

It is easy to throw stones at Dispatching for the Amtrak On Time woes, however, for those stones to have any real merit the Dispatcher has to have a physical plant the approximates the traffic level of the territory.

The Class 1’s have been ‘right sizing’ their physical plant ever since the conclusion of WW II and now have the physical plant of an anorexic woman…There is no capacity for anything beyond a depression level of traffic. Trains do occupy a physical space of track and cannot be manipulated in real life like they can in board games. The facts are that there isn’t enough physical plant (yards, main line multiple track, sufficiently large and numerous passing sidings) to run both freight traffic and passenger traffic both on time. Decisions have to be made that affect the 50 to 100 trains that may be on some busy territories at any one time…not just a single Amtrak train. When the dispatcher has an inadequate physical plant to operate his hands are tied behind his back as to the moves that can be made. Without a sufficient number of train sized passing sidings (note freight train size now is for trains of 9000 to 11000 feet range) those monster trains can only meet a a fraction of the sidings on most territories. Those inadequacies affect the total operation, both freight and Amtrak.

Those who complain about dispatching need to sit in the dispatchers chair for a few days.

Until about one year ago, I worked for Amtrak in Portland, OR. Dealing with the Coast Starlight from Los Angeles to Seattle and the Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland was like night and day. For the year 2002 I believe we did an unofficial calculation of the northbound Starlight’s average late arrival into Portland for the year and it was 3 hours and 20 minutes. The Empire Builder was almost always on time or very close to it. If the Builder was late, there was usually a good reason-weather, unusual mechanical problem, etc. The Starlight’s delay was largely but not entirely attributable to the UP.

CP and BNSF own the Builder’s route and both railoads did a very good job of operating the Builder on time a priority. I have a feeling that this speaks volumes of how both CP and BNSF operate their freight trains.

UP operates the Starlight from Los Angeles as far as Portland, with the BNSF operating the train Portland-Seattle. On UP, operating Amtrak on time was obviously not a priority. While not all Starlight delays can be blamed on UP, I would say well over half the delays were preventable.

Another comparison is the Amtrak Cascades corridor. Seattle-Portland trains generally run on time or close to it as BNSF owns the tracks. South of Portland to Eugene, UP owns the tracks and frequently hammers all passenger trains with delays.

Balt ACD. I do appreciate that there are capacity limits and I don’t mean to imply that the delays are the result of a “don’t care” attitude on the part of the man on the desk. I was in the business long enough to realize that getting a train, any train, over the road takes some real effort on the part everyone involved. The fact is BNSF and CP seem to be doing a better job than others at handling Amtrak trains. Must be something going on.

Yes, UP is out to get Amtrak, but lately, in the past year, the Texas Eagle has been getting to Chicago and San Antonio better (an hour or so late instead of 3-4 hours late). The conductor on the Eagle said UP got a new attitude when Mr. Gunn threatened to take its fuel surcharge allowance away…(making fuel much more expensive for UP)…

I ride Amtrak almost every vacation, and have seen America riding the rails. The trip is always enjoyable, and I get a lot of rest and relaxation. I don’t care how late the trains are, because I always plan the trip to have a couple of days of missed connections anyway…

The thing that bothers me most is that some of the time when the trains missed connections, I end up in coach instead of the sleeper the next day… However, Amtrak has always refunded the difference. At least Amtrak will put you up in a motel nearby the stations, something the airlines refuse to do…

When I worked on Norfolk Southern’s Piedmont Division, I was told that NS had to pay hefty fines to Amtrak if we caused them to be delayed. We were frequently put in the hole to allow an Amtrak to get around us.

Nwjeff, baltacd – you’re hitting on exactly the same theme I was musing on: the ‘right sizing’ (or, as some would put it, the sheer lack of physical plant and employees on some railroads, who shall remain nameless but who are hiring frantically to cover for past actions). Right sizing on some roads – BNSF, CP, CN most notably – has worked, and worked well, and their record shows it. Right sizing on some others went way overboard, and the sad fact is you can’t run a train on a track which isn’t there with a crew which is dead on the law. Period. And from the various comments on various trains on this thread, it isn’t that hard to figure out who’s who… and I truly feel sorry for the dispatcher who has to juggle an impoverished railroad and catches it from the boss when things don’t work.

Thanks to all who answered my question along with the original posters question.