Amtrak passengers stranded at Union StationDecember 23, 2008 at 1:21 PM | Comments (17)
About 450 Amtrak passengers have been stranded at Union Station for nearly a day – first in a cold waiting room, then on the train without food, water or, at times, functioning restrooms, passengers said.
The Empire Builder train headed to the Pacific Northwest, with stops in Portland, Ore., and Seattle, was scheduled to leave at 2:15 p.m. Monday but has not yet departed.
Amtrak issued a statement early this afternoon that blamed the situation on “severe weather” that has caused “rail infrastructure and railcar issues, affecting deployment cycles for equipment and train crews.”
It said it still didn’t know when the Empire Builder would depart and said the train would operate only as far as St. Paul, adding: “No alternate transportation is available.”
The passenger rail carrer noted cancellations on its Lincoln Service, Wolverine Service and Lake Shore Service as well.
“They just keep giving us all of these excuses. Excuse after excuse after excuse,” said Beth Kelly, 29, of Lima, Ohio, who is en route to Canada by way of Minot, N.D.
The “excuses” have included engine problems and that no cond
"Joseph Bordman, CEO of Amtrak, said a combination of subzero temperatures, heavy snowfall in the Pacific Northwest and high winds across the northern tier of states “has played havoc with our train equipment, including frozen water systems and snow-packed locomotives. It has caused problems on the rail lines themselves.”
The man’s name is Boardman, but he just failed his first test as CEO. It seems that each winter Amtrak goes through a customer service nightmare, usually in the Midwest. The passengers aren’t really interested in the cause of the problems so much as they need the problem solved or a reasonable estimate of when that will occur. Future potential passengers need to be assured that it won’t happen again, but Mr. Boardman’s attitude is that winter is an “act of God” for which he is not responsible.
And the above described mess in Chicago is exactly why Amtrak needs almost twice the long distance equipment they have.
This is not the first winter this problem in Chicago and other places has occurred. Whats needed is for the present equipment to be used in standby and peak summer travel or winter travel on the east coast to Florida and new equipment be placed in service on all long distance trains. When emergencys development equipment would be available to fill in. Much of the long distance equipment is approaching thirty years of age and should now be used as back up or peak travel time extra equipment.
The RRs did the very same for many years older equipment was held in reserve at terminal cities and when needed was quickly substituted for the regular equipment due to weather delays and derailments or other emergencies.
I often thought that Amtrak retired and scrapped the equipment they got from the RRs far to soon and that much of the equipment could be used in just such emergencies as we are encountering now.
Amtrak downsized far to soon and it shows today when passengers are returning to the rails Amtrak can’t handle the increased demand.
As to the crews not being able to get to the trains an easy remedy might be to make available nearby motels for crews or even older sleeping cars but I forgot they have no spares.
I understand that the crews are doing the best they can to get incoming trains ready to go out again. It is a difficult task when weather causes most of the problems. But the one thing I do not understand is frozen water systems in this day and age. With all of the different insulation types available today there is no excuse for the water systems or the plumbing systems to freeze. And if the power is failing on the trains than a far more reliable power source needs to become available and quickly. If the R
If you go to the Chicago Tribune web page a reporterette was scheduled on the train and recounts the total ineptitude including telling passengers who decided to leave they couldn’t because their luggage had already been put on the nonexistant train.
This is not to absolve Amtrak of all their faux pas under the havoc of the winter weather conditions…but every form of transportation through the affected areas had similar horror stories. Hundreds stranded at the Sea-Tac airport in Seattle, hundreds of flights cancelled out of O’Hare airport in Chicago. Interstates closed around Indianpolis. Winter weather can defeat man every time.
Don’t overlook the story of the City of San Francisco being stranded for 3 days in a snow bank in the California mountains in the 50’s. A period when the railroads, relatively, had all the manpower in the world to be able to defeat Mother Nature. Mother Nature won.
Yes, fifty years ago, the railroads had a good supply of cars to be put into service when the traffic level warranted their use. Some were older, and perhaps not as comfortable as the newer cars were. In August of 1953, I rode the Kansa City-Florida Special from Birmingham to Atlanta. When the Southern operating people realized that more people would be boarding in Birmingham that could be seated on the train that was arriving, they added at least one coach (with walkover seats) to the consist. It took a little while for the car to be cooled, but I had a seat to Atlanta. Three or four years later, one of my college classmates returned to Bristol, Tenn. from her home in Houston after Christmas, arriving on the Birmingham Special. She complained about the seats in the old coach–but she did have a seat. Incidentally, the most comfortable night I ever spent in a coach was when I rode, on a pass, from Atlanta to Charlotte in one of those–I stretched out on the seat right next to the washroom (it went from the side of the car to the aisle that was next to the other side of the car).
Yes but, There is no excuse for Amtrak telling people that there was a frozen switch in the yard preventing the train from coming to the station for two hours or an airline needs replacing and it will be another two hours or no you can’t get your baggage back it is already on the train. All the people got was lies for 23 hours and then were allowed to board a train with no water or food and an inoperable toilet. Sorry but Amtrak is just another organization run like the post office and by the same people with total disdain for the people footing the bill.
Maybe whats needed is for Amtrak to be operated by a private company under contract to the government. It would have to be better than the way it is run now. Eliminate the board and about half the regional brass and put the money in equipment and to better training of the people that deal with the public.
I’ll believe Mr.Boardman is something more than an empty suit rotating thru another public service job when executives now responsible for Chicago operations suddenly discover the need to “spend more time with their families” or “seek new challenges”.
Mr. Boardman was well respected in the rail industry during his stint as FRA administrator. Maybe not always agreed with, but respected. He’s only been in the job a couple of weeks, and there clearly wasn’t an orderly transition from his predecessor. At least give the guy a chance.
I sure want to be the fly on the wall during the Monday morning meeting of all the operating people. Some of my airline meetings got really hot and we did not have nearly as many employees.
How do you know any of that happened? Were you there? How do you know they were lies? Were you working on the train with the brakies and hostlers? People are very ready to believe a reporter hyping a story with sensationalism. Seems like people also think that Amtrak owns all the railroads in Chicago and call all the shots, too (what do they own there? only the station, and yard tracks on the PRR side, but none of the main lines).
BTW, thanks for not mentioning that both CTA and Metra had numerous delays as well, and due to some of the same reasons Amtrak is citing. Darn CTA and Metra, just two more organizations run like the Post Office (and what’s exactly wrong with how the USPS is run?)
How do I know this happened? Well if you read one of my previous posts you would have read that a reporter from trhe Chicago Tribune was taking it to St. Paul and gave an hourly account of what Amtrak was telling passengers. She stood in the waiting room until late into the night because there was insuffucient seating. This appeared in the 12/21/08 Chicago Tribune paper and was not disputed by Amtrak.
Hour by awful hour, a holiday is derailed## The Tribune’s Shanna Novak describes nearly 24 hours of waiting for her Amtrak ride home to begin
Tribune staff report
December 24, 2008
Amtrak seemed like a wise travel choice back in October when I was planning to spend Christmas week with my family in St. Cloud, Minn. I thought I could avoid the O’Hare hassle and the Midway meltdown and instead recline in a cushy seat, stretch my legs and stare at snowy plains as the Empire Builder carried me to within a few miles of my parents’ house.
It would be my first real Amtrak experience, and although the 101/2-hour travel time had me loading up on magazines and dictionaries, I was looking forward to the journey.
Here’s how it went on Monday and Tuesday:
1:15 p.m. I hurry to Union Station for my 2:15 p.m. departure. I get my ticket and head to the waiting lounge at Gate B.
This is potentially a reason why we, as a society, receive such rotten ‘Customer Service’ in today’s world.
Once upon a time when new employees where hired, the were hired into ‘training’ positions. Positions where they added some, but little value, to the final product - but they got the opportunity to observe and learn how to properly construct the final product. Be that final product a piece of equipment, operating heavy equipment, dealing with customer expectations.
In today’s ‘right sized’ corporations, new hires come off the street, get a cursory ‘training program’ and are thrust into positions of some responsibility, without having any REAL understanding of just what they are responsible for or what tools they have available to resolve any issues that may arise. As a consequence we are left to deal with minimally trained incompetents that don’t know what their job is and have no command of the resources that are available to make it all come out right.
In the rail industry, Conductors and Dispatchers get hired off the street in many cases and are thrust into positions of responsibilty with the minimum amout of training. Conductors in a year are then thrust into the Engineer training schedule and in short order become ‘qualified’ engineers. Truly throwing people into the deep end and expecting them to swim.
So who’s the chief of services on an Amtrak passenger train? The conductor? And regardless, why wasn’t s/he given some idea of how serious the lateness would be?
I must also wonder how much this kind of nonsense goes unreported, times during which there is no professional reporter on board the train. - a.s.
Those of us who are interested in rail matters frequently learn of such incidents through forums such as this one. However, I suspect the general public is unaware of how frequently Amtrak has problems either of their own creation or created by the freight railroads.
I suspect most Chicagoans, to take an example, believe all trains run the way Metra does – on time (almost) all of the time.
With all this having been said (and boy do I feel great about my Amtrak trip to Ann Arbor next week - jeez), how are things going now? I understand the weather in the pacific northwest is easing somewhat (snow’s melting in Spokane). Has anything improved in terms of Amtrak operations in the Midwest?