Actually, I had some extra time this afternoon and you gave me an idea…watchout, Emails in transit, to some of the powers that be…lol
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This is true also but now that David put an idea in my head. Some station stops are more equal than others…to quote from the book Animal Farm. Seriously though, Amtrak needs to use judgement. I am not saying all grass roots inspired stops are bad. Only the stops that will never generate enough annual revenue to really be a stop, so a min threshold should be set of annual ridership numbers. I am fine with rural stops to a point. So again looking at the Texas Eagle for example, you can probably pick out from the annual stop ridership stats which station stops should be flag stops just by eyeball and I would set the threshold at less than 500 riders a year…no stop: https://www.railpassengers.org/site/assets/files/3444/32.pdf
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As long as Amtrak is dependent upon Congressional appropriations they have to play the game with the controlling Politian’s if they want to continue to get funding. Remember, no passenger railroad operation in the worlds is profitable on fare box revenue alone.
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Actually, if you think about it a moment, something ‘flag stops’ enable is exactly the opposite of what seems to be brewing in the last few posts.
You are exactly right about the updating reservation system, and the likelihood that only comparatively small changes would be needed to implement low-latency update to conductors of the need to stop at a particular location (or remind them if they appear to be overlooking someone who intends to leave the train). We might consider the time difference between a graduated ‘normal’ stop and a full-service stop for a given LD consist on a given day, and then make the latter the criterion for update latency’ in the relatively-unlikely case where someone arriving at the last minute has their ticket reserved on the system. An associated question is whether the train stops for a ‘confirmed reservation’ that is running late arriving at the station or checking in. Would it be cheaper to give the customer a free ‘reschedule’ to a later train and save all the time and energy cost of a stop and dwell for a ‘no-show’?
But here is a great advantage of the flagstop idea, as I see it: you could vastly increase the number of ‘political’ stops – and thereby, increase the perceived value of ‘transportation’ to a wider range of people in the train’s service area – right up, in fact, to interurban levels, without materially damaging over-the-road timing. Most of those little stops, as on an interurban, would be lightly if not actively uncommonly ‘patronized’, so you increase the perceived utility of the train to ‘coach’ or intermediate destination-pair customers at very little potential downside risk of additional delay; it also extends the possibility mentioned above that the train can recover from extended prior delay by running at sustained track speed past a greater proportion of what would otherwise be crippling stops.
Extending from there, it might be possible to coordinate regional or paratransit so that all customers for a particular ‘range’ of poitential stops get free or discounted transportation to particular single stops – the ‘Animal Farm’ prioritized ones, perhaps. That gives an incentive to reduce the actual number of necessary consist stops, while preserving the opportunity to obtain “transportation” if the incentives don’t apply.
As an interesting illustration: see here:
regarding flag stops for long-distance trains, pre-reservations, what happens if a stop is missed, etc.
I run on a tourist line - we may be one of the longest in the country at over 100 miles (for our longest run), but keeping a precise schedule is not paramount for the vast majority of our trips.
That said, we occasionally encounter passengers who figure that if the train is scheduled to depart at, say, 12:30 PM, they should arrive at the station at 12:30 PM. Not early. And they often have trouble wrapping their heads around the concept.
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Yeah I completely understand that last sentence. I see that a lot not just with train transportation. Though I think they can swing this within the current Amtrak reservation system fairly easily and cheaply. I might just suggest it to Amtrak but need to find an entrance point so I don’t get a boilerplate response back from their public relations department.
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In Europe, you’re fine as long as you’re on the train when the doors close prior to departure.
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Being career railroader time has always meant something. My son & daughter - no so much. When visiting my daughter her time frame is ‘After’ a specified time.
My doctor appointments specify to arrive 15 minutes in advance of the specified time - mostly to catch up insurance paperwork issues.
I was raised in the if you are not 5 minutes early to a specified time, YOU ARE LATE.
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If you are in the U.K. and arrive two minutes before departure the gate to the platform has already closed and cannot board. Why have I arrive two minutes before departure? The train I was on before had arrived late. Stand and watch and fume as the train departs eight minutes late; six minutes late.
David
Sounds like in the UK there is a failure to communicate. Wasn’t the inbound train reporting the number of passengers it had to connect to the outbound train that you missed?
The simple answer is ‘No’,
The different companies run their railway their way.
It is a nightmare most times.
As I mentioned previously trains here are ‘Not Late’ until eleven minutes have passed. A train arriving at a station nine minutes later than advertised is not late, but if I have a connection to another train inside that time; it has gone.
You think Amtrak has problems. Our railways have no problems (until after eleven minutes). Passengers here have lots of challenges and nobody in authority cares.
David
Back in the day of private USA passenger service - the carriers at Chicago communicated with each other concerning connecting passengers and made all efforts to see that the passengers made their connection. I believe B&O authorized 30 minutes late departure waiting for connecting passengers - other carriers had their own rules. In Chicago at that time there were multiple stations in use that were scattered around the downtown Chicago area.
Parmalee Transfer was a local Chicago company dedicated to moving connecting passengers from the arrival to departure stations.
It is much easier in the Amtrak world as all trains use Union Station.
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Airlines require you to be at the gate 15 minutes before schedule departure times. They sometimes hold planes a bit for connecting passengers.
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One way to ameliorate this problem is to use a slightly different timetable between the employee timetable and the public timetable. The ETT should be the actual expected running times and the PTT would be a few minutes earlier for all intermediate stops scheduled and flag.
I know they do this in the UK and I know Amtrak did this at one time on the Metroliners. They advertised 2:59 but the Penn Central ETTs were often a few minutes over 3 hours.
I always find very annoying timetables where a little easily overlooked footnote at the bottom of the pages states “train may leave up to 5 minutes early”. WTF! Why not just subtract 5 minutes right in the public timetable. No one cares if a train is 5 minutes late but will be mad if a train leaves early.
That’s not true. Japans Shinkansens are profitable on many lines. As are some of the TGVs. Including capital costs. But politicians being politicians demanded Shinkansens and TGVs in areas where they wouldn’t be profitable.
I suspect that part of the willingness to ‘hold’ trains for connections was that priority operation and (in many cases, including PRR) the ability to exceed ‘timetable maximum’ speed) would enhance returning the train to OT relatively quickly, and certainly by destination terminal.
Britain was notorious for having two different operators on the same route intentionally NOT coordinating with each other’s trains. I can almost sympathize looking at it from a Victorian capitalist’s perspective.
As a funny aside: I remenber all through my youth, conductors on IRT and IND expresses would ‘hold’ for the next following local, if it was close, and locals would hold for expresses. That pointedly stopped at some point, probably due to some MTA or state decision to proirotize shorter travel times or reduce ‘holding light’ style delay excuses, and it was highly irritating to see doors just closing across the platform during final braking.
The interesting thing is that a low-latency flagstop scheduling system would inherently have the ability for ticketed and pre-reserved passengers to text or otherwise ask for a stop, or a hold at a given stop time, for a certain time. You’d make sure that ‘prank’ requests or the equivalent of a DOS attack would not be accepted (perhaps by requiring a special reservation code, or using a wireless device pre-registered with Amtrak, and cross-referencing against known reservations). As with PSR, this would, even if it made the next few stops late, allow the ‘tracker’ app to be within a couple of minutes of anticipated arrival time even if the app itself only updated every 3 to 5 minutes.
Sorry, I shouldn’t have been so broad; I forgot that countries like France and the UK have those annoying gates to the platforms. I was thinking of Germany etc.
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Off course run trains to the timetable would help.
If it is impossible to do, then the timetable should be altered so trains run on time.
The downside is trains run slower (like her in the U.K.)
The passenger loses out once again.
David
Has anyone looked at the ‘foot print’ of a passenger train is on a mixed use segment of railroad?
Most people see a 800 to 1000 foot train to be moved. The Dispatcher sees a Train ID that needs FOUR to TEN MILES of clear track ahead so that the passenger train only sees CLEAR signals allowing maximum authorized speed. Signal spacing determines the distance. Back in the day, signals had a nominal spacing of about one mile between them. As train size grew over the years, signals were spaced out to two miles and in today’s PSR railroad they are approaching THREE miles.
On the simplest signal progression - Clear - Approach - Stop. A preceding train must be 6 miles ahead for the trailing train to have clear signal. Once a train recieves an Approach signal - it commands the train to reduce train toe Medium Speed AND approach the next signal Prepared to STOP.
In days gone by it was common for passenger trains to ‘Ride the Approach’ - ie. not take the actions to reduce speed ‘knowing’ the train ahead was also a passenger train and that by the time the following train reached the signal displaying Approach, it would go Clear. There were any number of rear end collisions where the preceding train developed some sort of issue and stopped and was run into by the following train.
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