(The following column by Jon Hilkevitch appeared on the Chicago Tribune website on May 21.)
CHICAGO — Hefty ridership gains on state-funded Amtrak trains since last fall have exceeded even the optimistic expectations of Illinois officials. But habitually late trains are creating a bad impression of the expanded intercity rail service, leaving some Amtrak passengers to wonder why they ever gave up driving or flying.
Piles of empty plastic water bottles lie scattered against chain-link fencing near the train station that Amtrak serves in southwest suburban Summit, a symbol of the unquenched thirst for decent passenger rail service in the U.S.
The bottles have been tossed by engineers out the windows of idling locomotives, such as Train No. 302, which departed St. Louis on time at 6:35 a.m. on a recent morning. But five hours into its scheduled 5 hour and 40 minute trip to Chicago Union Station, it has stopped — as it has numerous times — waiting for the track to be cleared.
Train No. 302 will arrive 20 minutes late at Union Station. From Oct. 1, 2006, through May 5, Train No. 302 arrived on time only 6.5 percent of the time, according to Amtrak records.
Trains creep through slow zones because of deteriorated tracks and heavy freight traffic, then get up to highway speed for a stretch, even reaching the maximum 79 m.p.h., only to slow down again.
Train No. 302 is one of the new runs added to Amtrak service in Illinois as part of the state’s $24.2 million annual investment in Amtrak service, a doubling of the previous operating subsidy paid to the passenger railroad. The encouraging news is that record numbers of riders have tried the expanded Amtrak service to St. Louis, Milwaukee and Downstate Carbondale and Quincy from Chicago.
But serious and chronic delays have resulted in disappointment for those record numbers of riders on most of the state-supported routes, as well as on other Amtrak runs that don’t receive the special state subsidy. The Pontiac, Mich., to Chicago run doesn’t receive an Illinois subsidy, although it does get operating assistance from Michigan.
Chicago resident Mary Anne Barry had a recent stop-and-go experience with Amtrak on that route.
“What was supposed to be a five-hour trip from Pontiac to Chicago ended up being almost three hours late because our train was shunted over to a siding to wait for freight trains to go by,” Barry said. “I will never ride Amtrak again.”
Despite the best efforts of the Amtrak crew, a number of factors coalesced to make Train No. 302 arrive late to Chicago on the day your Getting Around reporter went along for part of the approximately 300-mile ride.
Twenty-nine minutes were lost early in the trip as the train stood still waiting for permission to enter the territory controlled by the Kansas City Southern Railway. Amtrak conductor Mike White repeatedly tried to call a dispatcher for the Kansas City Southern in Shreveport, La., but the dispatcher did not answer his phone for almost a half hour.
“I tell the passengers what’s going on during a delay like that, but it’s frustrating for them just to sit there,” said White, a 15-year Amtrak veteran. “Luckily, it was pretty early in the morning and many of the passengers were asleep.”
Four different freight railroads own the tracks that Amtrak uses between Chicago and St. Louis, requiring cooperation at each step along the way if trains are going to run like clockwork.
Amtrak officials conduct weekly phone calls with the freight railroads to talk about problems.
“We identify issues like their trains blocking our trains. We try to reason with them and let them know how their actions affect our passengers,” said Don Saunders, Amtrak’s operating chief in Chicago.
Amtrak engineers often operate their trains at speeds that are slower than required to avoid stopping.
“We’ve all been conductors earlier in our careers,” said Amtrak engineer Dave Dudley, a 20-year Amtrak veteran and third-generation railroader. “Keeping the train moving, even at a crawl, avoids some of the grief that passengers make for our conductors when we are running late.”
Fifteen slow zones were in effect on this day just in a 100-mile stretch of track south of Springfield. But Train No. 302 caught a break that other trains on the route did not receive.
Train No. 303, for instance, was forced to pull into a track siding as another train traveling in the opposite direction passed on the single track. Train 303 then had to back out of the siding, rather than proceed through it, because of mechanically unreliable gates and warning devices at nearby road crossings.
The backing-out process caused an almost 20-minute delay for Train 303. But going straight through the siding and re-entering the main track would have required the conductor to get off the train at each crossing and flag approaching cars to stop — creating an even longer delay.
Amtrak Chairman David Laney called the burgeoning delays “unacceptable by any measure.”
Illinois officials agree, although they don’t blame Amtrak for all the problems.
“We have struggled with mediocre to dismal on-time performance on our three Downstate corridors,” George Weber, acting bureau chief of railroads at the Illinois Department of Transportation, told Illinois House lawmakers at a hearing last month. “On the St. Louis corridor, we are lucky to have a train reach its final destination in an on-time fashion 50 percent of the time.”
Weber said it may take years to achieve consistent reliable service. The main challenges include freight traffic, especially between Chicago and Joliet, the poor condition of tracks that require speed reductions in many locations and Amtrak equipment breakdowns, Weber said.
“The outcome of our efforts is not in our control,” Weber said, referring to the unenthusiastic cooperation on the part of some freight railroads that contracted with Amtrak to use their rails.
Despite a 1971 federal law that requires the freight railroads to give priority to Amtrak trains, some of the freight carriers are flexing their muscles. Last year, the Canadian National Railway tried to pull out of an agreement with Amtrak to allow one of the additional round trips to St. Louis and to withhold access to the Carbondale route. The railroad subsequently backed down when U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and other lawmakers got involved.
“[Canadian National] recognized at a very late stage that the new service agreement as written offered us insufficient recourse if it became apparent that the additional Amtrak service was becoming a detriment to our ability to provide service to our existing customers,” Gordon Trafton, a Canadian National senior vice president, testified before the Illinois House Railroad Safety Committee last month.
Referring to the shotgun-wedding relationship between the host freight railroads and Amtrak, Trafton said: “No freight railroad in the United States has sought passenger service to be instated or reinstated on their lines.”
Weber said in an interview that it wasn’t IDOT’s idea to add more Amtrak service now. The longer-term solution to providing quality service rests with building more capacity, which is the basis of the Chicago Region Environmental And Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) program, a $1.5 billion modernization of the freight and passenger rail infrastructure serving northeastern Illinois. But the program is underfunded and, therefore, years away from completion.
He said the push for ramping up Amtrak service now, in an effort to boost rail ridership and get people out of their cars, was sparked by Durbin and other lawmakers, the Environmental Law and Policy Center and the Midwest High Speed Rail Association.
Many of the state lawmakers who advocated increased Amtrak service rarely if ever have stepped foot aboard an Amtrak train. Yet they are unapologetic about increased taxpayer funding of the mixed bag that riding Amtrak represents.
Amtrak boosters point to the ridership gains in Illinois — about 40 percent on the St. Louis route, 33 percent on the Quincy run and a more than 55 percent increase on the Carbondale route — since extra round trips from Chicago were added last fall.
“Just think how many people would be riding Amtrak if the trains were on time,” said Richard Harnish, executive director of the high-speed rail association.