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Revised Michigan Amtrak schedules to take effect April 23
In its early years Amtrak had a culture of trying to find creative alternate transportation. Starting with George Warrington the attitude became take the cheapest and easiest way out. Remember when Amtrak installed the new span at New London. Initially they were just going to close up shop without looking at the Inland Route or selective busing. They got browbeat into doing something. Recently they just cancelled day trains in the Carolinas instead of running to say Rocky Mount and busing. You don’t get any points for that at Amtrak today.
Unfortunately, when Amtrak does put in replacement service, they go with inept service. I recently (4/18) used the Lincoln service CHI-STL which is disrupted SPI-STL by track upgrades. The replacement bus was supposed to be express to STL, but made all stops and was driven by a driver who was unfamiliar with the vehicle and the location of the station stops.
This is certainly not customer friendly. Amtrak is capable of doing better. However, in this case, the real issue is NS. Shame on NS for allowing the track to deteriorate to require this “special” effort. And I thought that there was bad track in the PC days!