(The following story by Doug Wilson appeared on the Herald-Whig website on May 13, 2010.)
QUINCY, Ill. — Amtrak trains traveling between Quincy and Chicago have recorded big improvements in on-time performance the past nine months.
“We’ve got trains with between 93 percent and 95 percent on-time performance. That’s great,” said Quincy Mayor John Spring.
Spring attended an Amtrak stakeholders meeting in Galesburg last week where Amtrak released a report that shows on-time arrivals along the Quincy-Chicago corridor are up as much as 15 percent over the previous year.
When Amtrak trains are on time, customers are more pleased with the entire experience. That was reflected in customer satisfaction scores from February, when 92 percent of those surveyed were very satisfied with their experiences on Amtrak. That compares to 73 percent who were very satisfied in 2009. Only 1 percent of respondents said they were very dissatisfied this year, down from 9 percent last year.
Marc Magliari, a spokesman for Amtrak, said on-time performance has been good even during some recent scheduled track work that has required the use of buses between Quincy and Galesburg. Magliari said the morning bus leaves Quincy earlier than the Amtrak train would so it can stay on schedule.
“Today is the last day for the buses,” Magliari said.
“People have been pretty understanding because of the planned track work, which will help us maintain our service reliability.”
Ridership and revenue along the Quincy-Chicago corridor has been trending upward since November. February’s statistics show a 6 percent increase in passengers and a 16 percent improvement in revenue.
George Weber, bureau chief of railroads for the Illinois Department of Transportation, said higher ridership numbers started a few months earlier along the Chicago-St. Louis corridor. Now that trend is evident along the Quincy-Chicago corridor and the Chicago-Carbondale corridor.
“We’re starting to see some bounceback” from the recession, Weber said.
Nationally, Amtrak is on track to break the fiscal year 2008 record of 28.7 million passengers. There were 13.6 million passengers in the first six months of fiscal 2010, compared to 13.5 million in 2008.
Jim Mentesti, president of the Great River Economic Development Foundation, also attended the Amtrak meeting and said proposed changes along the Quincy-Chicago corridor could meet the needs of recreational travelers.
“They’ve had a significant amount of requests for (luggage) accommodations from people who are traveling with their golf bags,” Mentesti said.
He knows of people with local ties who live in Chicago, but visit Quincy and want to bring their golf bags. In addition, Amtrak has seen more travelers bringing bicycles along on trains and then using bike paths or touring city streets in the communities where they stop.
Amtrak workers say they are finding new ways to keep large items secure during the trips.
Looking toward the future, Amtrak officials will have a rail connection from Princeton that connects westward to the Quad Cities and Iowa City. Since Princeton is along the Quincy-Chicago corridor, that will be an additional option for travelers when it is completed.
Other upgrades along the route could bring more rail sidings or double-track sections where the competing demands of freight rail and passenger rail will not cause delays for either one.