(The following story by Brad Cooper appeared on The Kansas City Star website on May 24.)
KANSAS CITY — Amtrak resumed full service from Kansas City to St. Louis on Wednesday, but only after scolding the Union Pacific railway for not adequately clearing its tracks for passenger trains.
The Missouri Department of Transportation and Amtrak took the unusual step Wednesday of calling out Union Pacific, blaming Amtrak service interruptions on the way Union Pacific handled flooding on another of its Missouri tracks.
“Amtrak passengers have been shortchanged this month, having to endure slow service and canceled trains because Union Pacific is not providing sufficient track access,” said Rod Massman, railroad administrator for MoDOT.
“Union Pacific has certainly had a challenging month, but rail passengers have been treated like second-class citizens while UP’s freight schedule has used nearly all available track time.”
Union Pacific spokesman James Barnes said Wednesday that Union Pacific was surprised by the relatively “naive assessment” and “strident tone” reflected in the statements issued by MoDOT and Amtrak.
“We would hope going forward that any communications during such challenging times can be more conciliatory and reflect greater understanding of the enormity of the obstacles that had to be overcome to restore service,” Barnes said.
MoDOT said Amtrak service was disrupted because Union Pacific sent heavy traffic over its track through Sedalia after flood damage to its freight-only route farther north.
As a result, Union Pacific diverted 25 to 30 trains a day onto the tracks that Amtrak uses to get to St. Louis through Sedalia and Warrensburg.
Massman said problems arose when Union Pacific wouldn’t give Amtrak trains priority as required by federal law. Amtrak faced delays of four to five hours.
Barnes said Wednesday that Union Pacific takes its commitments seriously.
“This outage had a huge impact on both passenger and freight service, and our employees worked very diligently to restore service as efficiently and as safely as possible,” he said. “Their efforts to overcome disruptions caused by Mother Nature benefit both freight and passenger service.”