Amtrak Always Late

Just wish it ran on time like the German trains.

If we were willing to invest in mass transit like the Germans do, I bet ours would run on time too.

From Amtrak’s website: its definition of on time performance (OTP)

https://m.amtrak.com/mt/www.amtrak.com/servlet/Satellite?c=AM_Content_C&cid=1241245662251&pagename=am%2FPopup

Contrast that with the Japanese shinkansen (bullet train) system which measures “late” in SECONDS, regardless of length of trip.

But – again – Japan takes mass transit seriously and invests in it. We don’t. Until we do, it’s hardly instructive to compare the two.

I recently visited Seattle, a city which does believe in public transit. It was really great to be able to ditch the car for 4 days and easily get everywhere we wanted to go using a transit system which is cheap, reliable and available. It is possible to do this, even in America. We just have to decide that we want to.

Is the train on time when they begin their travel? It’s just losing time between Vancouver and Seattle?

We have ridden between dc and ny for years. I’ve only seen a big delay a couple of times. But, it’s not like I’m a daily or weekly rider. Just a few times a year over the course of 20 years. There is a lot of crumbling infrastructure that needs attention.

Well…they could do what the airlines started to do…their published arrival times are way later than need be…so that the airlines LOOK like they are on time.

@FlyMeToTheMoon, it left Vancouver (WA) last night 6 minutes late. By the time it left Tacoma, it was then 32 minutes late. So it lost time along the way. Then they ran into the snafu with the car in the tracks (fortunately did not literally run into it), so that added an hour (but at least that had an obvious explanation).

I feel for you; I’d always leave the house to drive to King St station when the train left Tacoma and hope that I wouldn’t have to drive around for too long prior to the train arriving. (Our D went to school outside Portland.) Shared tracks are the worst.

The NE Corridor is the only section of Amtrak where they own the tracks. Nowhere else do they own any of the trakcs, and must defer to the owners (all freight companies) for scheduling. On those tracks, freight trains have priority over Amtrak trains. I was once on the Auto-Train where we were stuck in SC because of a freight train derailment ahead of us, and the train had to be re-routed on secondary tracks through the backwoods of SC and GA before we rejoined the mainline at Savannah. We finally arrived at Sanford FL 17 hours late. On the way back to DC, the day we were supposed to leave, there was an ice storm north resulting in the cancellation of our train, and we ended up having to find lodging for another day in Orlando before going home. As much as I love train travel (the Amtrak crew went above and beyond to keep us fed and staying comfortable), I would not do this again. Train travel in this country is a joke.

We live in the DC suburbs and this is why I prefer taking the bus to NYC. We have had several instances where Amtrak has been late.

Yes. Always late.

But also remember we’re big country. The same mileage from Hamburg to Munich would only get you from DC to the SC border. Just saying.

I did Seattle-Portland round trip in Nov., and it was one hour late one way, two the other. Waste of time.

As others have noted, Amtrak in many places is using freight tracks, and the owners have priority. Amtrak can have a hard time getting into or out of NYC going under the Hudson because there are only two tunnels they share with NJ Transit, that are 100 years old, and they are overloaded and if a train breaks down, it is a nightmare. The quality of the tracks is also an issue, the accela trains can do well over 200 mph but the tracks limit them to less than 100. Still, on the northeast corridor I have always had good luck for the most part.

Train service in the US is dismal cousin to the highway system, the government spends a lot of money on highways, expanding them, repairing them, whereas passenger trains are looked upon, especially by many conservative politicians, as a waste. They complain about the subsidies (ignoring, of course, the many subsidies we have for airlines, and for the road system cars use), and make the claim that if train service was really worth it, it would ‘pay for itself’ (again, leaving out the illusion that other forms don’t get subsidies).It is true Amtrak has routes that make little sense except for nostalgia, and many of the same politicians from whistle stop towns all over the country who decry Amtrak would scream bloody murder if Amtrak dropped towns in their area (and it is all those small towns and such that really drain Amtrak; major runs like the northeast corridor, San Francisco to San Diego and other regional trains do well).

With true high speed rail service on some corridors, it would take the load off of crowded highways and congested air travel, if you could travel between NY and Boston in an hour an a half, city center to city center, it would be a practical alternative to flying, and high speed trains like they have in China could make even going from NY to Chicago more desirable.

When done right, rail travel can compete. The narrow minded view that transit should operate on a for profit basis, and if it can’t it shouldn’t be around, is leaving out several things. One, that other ‘for profit’ models have pretty significant subsidies to allow them to make a profit, that are hidden, but more importantly, that the subsidies for things like commuter rail pay off many times what they cost. Take a look at cities like Atlanta, where my company is HQ’ed, and they are being choked by traffic, because there is no mass transit, yet NYC for example has thrived because they get commuters from all over a large region, that means they have the pick of talent (and towns in the region have an anchor in NYC that keeps house prices up, because jobs are available), and inside NYC a network of buses and the subway means you don’t have to drive, and all of that adds up to economic benefits many times the cost.

It is true the US is different than Europe, so long distance rail travel cannot be compared to Europe. On the other hand, there are analogues, the Northeast Corridor is very much like travel let’s say between two cities in Germany, so there are places where the analogy holds true. With ultra high speed trains, maglevs and the like, trains could even make a run like NYC to Chicago practical and competitive to airline travel. Trains cannot compete on real long distance routes with airline travel (it is roughly analogous to plane travel versus cruise ships), but there are places where it would be great to have high speed rail, would be complementary to let’s say air travel.

It was the Cascades that was 1.5 hours late this week…

Great post, @musicprnt .

Taking the NE Corridor one winter out of DC, all passengers seeking to head north were vying for the best spot to get on the next train, as Amtrak gave no priority boarding to those who had been on an earlier train which had arrived from the South but whose passengers had not been able to yet board a train heading north. They’d had to make a switch in DC anyway, but Amtrak was not fast-tracking them on the next train out. That connecting train having been canceled, the next scheduled train (my train) was delayed by about 1 1/2 hours due to the snow on tracks and general blizzard conditions.

I was about 10 months pregnant and stood in the crowded station wondering how I was ever going to get on the train when an Amtrak employee announced that anyone needing assistance, the elderly and women with small children could board first. Didn’t even think I qualified so I wasn’t going to try, when a bunch of firefighters - captains all - who had been attending a convention turned to me and said, “Hey, you can get on that train, and we can deliver that baby if you go into labor.”

I thought, “What the Hey,” and walked forward. So did they. I presented my belly, one of them presented their argument, and we all boarded. They surrounded me on the train, flanking me across the aisle, before and behind my row. They brought me snacks and water and playfully argued with each other the whole way over who had delivered the most babies. It was kind of awesome.

But, honestly, these days I’d be afraid to take Amtrak because of the derailments, but my kids suffer under no such constraints. I wouldn’t have a problem taking the Surfliner, though I haven’t.

The worst that I’ve encountered is the “Late-for-Sure-Limited”, the nickname its employees give to the “Lakeshore Limited” which runs from NYC to Chicago, It’s late running either direction, sometimes hours late, which makes life pretty miserable if you’re trying to board in one of the places where it’s supposed to make a stop in the wee hours.

On the other hand, the Capitol Limited, which goes between Chicago and D.C. is on time or early- I’ve seen it show up here 45 minutes before it was scheduled !! Same track bed from Chicago through northern Ohio…

That said, I’ve ridden trains all over Europe and Japan and our rail system in the US is pathetic. The track beds have been left to rot because goods began to be moved by truck rather than rail and now we’re paying the price- even if we wanted to, it would take decades to make Amtrak a real, viable option to the airlines and that’s sad.

More goods are delivered by rail than by truck. A lot more, in fact. https://www.fra.dot.gov/Page/P0362