(The following article by Michael Mello was posted on the Merced Sun-Star website on February 23.)
MERCED, Calif. — Amtrak’s on-time performance last year was so bad, the passenger train company placed leaflets on its cars with a mea culpa.
And the problem has gotten worse, Amtrak officials said this week. While the delays are getting shorter, there are more of them.
Then and now, the company promised to work on the problem. While there are still late trains, customers seem to be happy with the service.
“From what I’ve experienced, it’s never been longer than 15 to 20 minutes (late),” said Robbie Lumpkin, as she sat earlier this week outside the Modesto Amtrak station. Lumpkin recently moved from Modesto to Portland, Ore., and had returned for a visit.
Her train was about a half-hour late coming into Sacramento from Oregon, she said, but stopped at the Modesto station only a couple of minutes off its scheduled arrival.
She’s no stranger to the rails, having recently traveled from Modesto to Fresno on Amtrak. Those runs, she said, “went pretty much like clockwork.”
Last fall, Amtrak’s leaflets on its San Joaquin trains apologized for a “very serious deterioration of on-time performance.”
It gave several reasons for the delays, including a “doubling” of the number of freight trains on the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe tracks, the line Amtrak uses between Stockton and Bakersfield. Amtrak also cited track improvements and higher passenger loads as other causes of delays.
The fliers promised Amtrak would work to resolve the problems and bring its on-time performance to 95 percent.
They’re still working on it.
“It’s basically worse than last year at this time,” Amtrak spokeswoman Sarah Swain said, although she could not provide statistics.
“Where we are seeing an improvement in the length in delays, we are seeing a higher number of delays,” Swain said. “We are not where we would like to be in getting passengers to their destination.”
She also gave several reasons for the delays, including holdups caused by freight trains.
Lena Kent, spokeswoman for the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad, confirmed the number of freight trains has increased in recent years. Two years ago, about 35 freight trains used the BNSF in the San Joaquin Valley. That number has grown to about 50 a day because of new port facilities in Oakland and a new railyard near Stockton.
However, Amtrak trains are given priority on the tracks.
“We wouldn’t put a faster-moving passenger train behind a slower-moving freight train,” Kent said. “We would try to get that train over to a siding and let the passenger train pass.”
While most trains seem to come in within a few minutes of schedule, some do slip behind. Thursday’s southbound San Joaquin 716, due to depart Modesto at 3:25 p.m., left 22 minutes later because of freight traffic in Stockton. In that case, the culprit was a Union Pacific train crossing the BNSF tracks a few blocks east of the station and moving at a pace much slower than the normal 30 mph pace.
“We’d like to thank you for taking Amtrak – we do apologize for the tardiness of Train 716,” the station agent told the dozen passengers waiting for the train.
Modesto resident David Froba stood on the platform this week, after he saw his wife off on a Sacramento-bound train. That train was three minutes late.
“It didn’t seem like a big deal,” he said.
Froba said he and his wife, Sharon, live about three blocks from the Modesto station and frequently take Amtrak to see their son in Sacramento. He said he’s happy with the service and has never been more than a few minutes behind getting to his destination.
“It’s usually a little bit late, but I hardly notice it,” he said.