(The Sacramento Bee posted the following editorial on its website on May 15.)
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Imagine being late to work three days out of 10 — not just a few minutes late, but an hour, sometimes more. That’s the sad reality for commuters who rode Capitol Corridor trains between Sacramento and Oakland last month. On-time performance on the route in April was a dismal 68.8 percent. Actual performance was even worse. Under the rules, a train is on time when it arrives no more that 10 minutes past the scheduled arrival time. Next time you’re 10 minutes late to work, try telling that to the boss.
April was no fluke, either. Late arrivals along Capitol Corridor have been a chronic problem. Trains were so late so often last November that Eugene Skoropowski, managing director of the Capitol Corridor’s Joint Powers Authority, formally apologized to riders.
And CCJPA — the eight county agency that operates the train service — offered riders a 25 percent discount on December fares.
Sometimes delays are unavoidable, as when the bridge at Carquinez Strait has to be raised to allow ships to pass. Sometimes delays can be traced to Amtrak equipment breakdowns. But the bulk of the blame for Capitol Corridor delays lies with a single entity: the Union Pacific Railroad.
UP owns the track on which the Capitol Corridor trains run. Even though California taxpayers have invested $130 million in repair and upgrades to those tracks since the mid-1990s, UP still treats passenger trains and their riders as second-class citizens.
In a recent letter to UP’s head of Western operations, frustrated passengers voiced a number of complaints. Among them: the railroad’s lack of commitment to passenger rail, the preference given to freight trains, poor switch operations, dispatcher errors and maintenance schedules that conflict with passenger trains.
The UP dispatchers who control which trains move and when between Sacramento and the Bay Area aren’t in this region or even on the West Coast. They work out of Omaha. Railroad critics say dispatchers so far away have too little on-the-ground knowledge of conditions here and poor communications with those who do.
To its credit, the railroad seems to be listening. At the invitation of passengers, a UP official rode the Capitol Corridor train last week to look at the problems from the perspective of those who pay the fares. The railroad has established a quality team that will work with Amtrak and CCJPA to try to improve on-time performance. A switch to localized dispatching is one of the issues UP says it will examine.
More attention to the needs of passenger rail can’t come too soon. In one decade, the Capitol Corridor has become one of the busiest passenger rail routes in the nation, the busiest west of Chicago. Even with its poor on-time performance, ridership continues to soar. With the I-80 and I-680 freeways more and more congested, rail lines will get even busier. Passengers who pay the fares and taxpayers who’ve invested tens of millions in track improvements deserve better performance. Late to work three days out of 10 just won’t cut it.