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My friend was on that train.
My friend was on that train. She said it was not pretty. No lights, overflowing toilets, sitting in the woods in CT. Rescue train comes and then standing room only to Boston.
I once took a train north
I once took a train north from Penn Station that stopped in the rail yard in Long Island City and stood for two hours. We were waiting for a diesel engine to be brought in from New Jersey because of power problems on the line in Connecticut. That's all well and good, but there was not one mention of this power problem BEFORE we got on the train so if, you know, someone had an important appointment they needed to make they could have made an alternative arrangement. We then went at a snail's pace up the CT shore. A two-hour trip became a five hour saga because Amtrak could not get it together.
I'm aware that Amtrak is plagued by disinvestment and funding problems, but the experience made me realize that if I needed to get somewhere on time, I was better off driving.
First of all, maybe the power
First of all, maybe the power problem didn't occur until AFTER you left Penn Station, so they didn't know.
Second of all, Amtrak's protect engines are kept at Sunnyside Yard in Queens, not in New Jersey. Amtrak does not have any yards or maintenance facilities in NJ.
And thirdly, assuming you were heading to Boston, the scheduled trip time IS 4.5 to 5 hours. Any added journey time was due to any of several reasons, including: From the Bronx to New Haven, Amtrak does not control the track and is at the mercy of Metro-North's dispatchers, who don't like Amtrak getting in the way of their commuter trains; and Amtrak's diesels are good for maybe 110 mph (depending on the specific unit), whereas the electrics are good for 150 (Acela) or 125 (Regional), which will lose you some time, plus Regional consists are very long, and if they only stuck one diesel on to pull it, acceleration would be very slow.
I don't see how you can blame Amtrak for this. Things break. It's impossible to predict when something might happen, and while I'm sure they'd like to tell customers "Sorry, we're going to experience a power problem later today so you might want to make other arrangements", that's not really how it works.
I don't see how you can blame Amtrak for this.
Here's how:
I blame Amtrak for failure to negotiate a suitable arrangement with Metro North that would allow them to run their trains on schedule.
I blame Amtrak for failure to put a sufficiently powerful engine on the train, or a sufficient numbers of engines.
I blame Amtrak for failing to engineer enough resiliency in its systems, its processes, and the positioning of backup assets, to prevent the inevitable equipment failures from inconveniencing the traveling public any more than is absolutely necessary.
I blame Amtrak for failure to
Amtrak has no leg to stand on when Metro-North owns the tracks, and has since it inherited them from Conrail in 1983. It is a tenant, and thus only has so much power over how things are run, especially considering the number of trains Metro-North runs every day absolutely dwarfs the number of trains Amtrak runs. Personally I think it's a miracle that those trains manage to run on time as often as they do, since they come from as far as southern Virginia.
In the event of an unanticipated service problem, something is going to ave to be sacrificed. They only have so many protect engines available, and probably couldn't spare enough to put multiple engines on the train, so they figured it was better to run the train with only the one engine, rather than tell you all to find another way to get to your destination. When faced with that decision what would you have done? Towed the train to the next station at reduced speed, then kicked everyone off, or continued onwards, despite being later and later? Most people would be grateful that Amtrak at least went to the effort to still get them to their destination, albeit late.
As for the engine not being "sufficiently powerful", there's only so many horsepower you can squeeze out of a diesel engine!
Does anything ever have 100% resiliency? NO. It's impossible. There will ALWAYS be factors outside of their control that they cannot anticipate, and must react to as best they can. And they're doing the best they can with what they're given by the federal government (and I bet you'd be first in line to complain if they raised fares!). Your blaming them for that is like blaming a homeowner for not building their house out of 3-ft thick concrete, on stilts, with earthquake proofing, so it could withstand any force of nature.
Since you seem to think they're doing such a terrible job, I would LOVE to see you do better! Hint: you can't.
/rant
Don't excuse the inexcusable
If you ate in a restaurant and complained that the room was cold and drafty and the roof was leaking and dripping into your soup, and they offered up the sorry excuse that they were a tenant and couldn't do anything about it, that would be about as ridiculous as the excuse you're offering up for Amtrak. The restaurant's job is to serve a good meal in pleasant surroundings. Either they're doing their job or they aren't. Details of their relationship with their landlord are completely out of my area of interest or concern: they held themselves out to be a nice restaurant; they charge the prices associated with being a nice restaurant; they need to deliver a nice restaurant experience.
Service problems aren't unanticipated. Any decent management knows, to a fairly high degree of precision, what the frequency and severity of various kinds of failures is going to be. You can't predict exactly where or when any given failure is going to happen, but don't give us this "unanticipated" nonsense. What if you went to a hospital emergency room with a gunshot, and they said, "well, we don't have any doctors or nurses on duty, but don't blame us, who could have predicted you were going to get shot today?
Yes, exactly, we agree that they don't have enough protect engines available. That's a management problem.
I wouldn't be faced with that decision, because I wouldn't take on a CEO job if the company owners were not going to provide me with the resources to do the job they were asking me to do. I sure as hell wouldn't take on the job knowing it was not doable, fuck it up, and then blame the owners for underfunding me.
That's not really my problem. My problem is wanting to get from New York to Boston. Horsepower, how many engines, those are all the province of Amtrak's engineering staff. What if you went to a restaurant, ordered spaghetti, it took an hour to arrive, and you got the excuse, "Look, there are 50 seats in this restaurant, it's the middle of the dinnertime rush, and I only have one four-burner stove; don't blame the restaurant management." Jeezus, do it like other restaurants do, get another stove, or get your sorry ass out of the damn restaurant business.
Nobody's asking for 100% resiliency. I'm asking for an appropriate level of resiliency to provide a level of service equivalent to what people in a modern, industrialized country generally expect rail service to be like.
Amtrak used to be chided for having "Russian service at Swiss prices." Turns out their prices are quite a bit higher than Swiss.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/10/the-sorry-sta....
No, it's like blaming a construction company operating in a known earthquake zone from building a building for rent to the public, without adequate earthquake proofing. I'm not suggesting that they be able to withstand any conceivable failure, only that they should be reasonably able to recover from failures that occur with some degree of regularity.
Yeah, I can't run a railroad. I can't run a restaurant or do surgery, either, and if I complain about cold, poorly prepared food served in a nasty atmosphere, or about a botched appendectomy that leaves the patient without his left foot, I suppose you'll be telling me "at least the chef (or surgeon) did better than you would have done. Heck of a low bar you're setting there.
All I know is this. When we
All I know is this. When we asked about why the train stopped in Queens, we were told that they had to bring a diesel engine through the tunnel from New Jersey.
And, no I wasn't headed to Boston. I was headed to New London.
What's the story on refunds for trips?...
What's the story on refunds for trips where, for example, there's no heat on the train or other terrible conditions?...
http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=159060
No refunds, but...
...also no fines if you throw the feces from the overflowing toilets at representatives of the transit company.
Poop-Hurling Howler Monkeys!
that is all.
Weird.
I mean, it's almost as if when places that aren't Boston have severe weather, their trains misbehave in the same way that they do in Boston. Frrrrr-eak-kay!
Misbehave in the same way?
So Amtrak has announced that their trains should be back on schedule by April 15th at the latest?
You've got it.
Snowy, cold weather invariably disrupts rail travel.
That's why Switzerland, much of which is cold and snowy for good parts of the year. is so famous for its legendarily crappy train service.