(The following article by Guy Darst was posted on the Boston Herald website on August 7.)
BOSTON — Amtrak increasingly is getting shafted by most of the railroads whose track its passenger trains must use. This ought to be better known, both to stimulate some government investigations and to shame the offending companies. It’s hard to see why anybody will want to ride long-distance trains whose schedules have become laughable.
Grounds for a probe are clear: Federal law requires that Amtrak get preference over freights “except in an emergency” or where the secretary of transportation has granted a railroad’s petition for other rules. Too often, passenger trains are stuck in sidings to wait for freights to pass
The National Association of Railroad Passengers complained to the Surface Transportation Board last month that the on-time performance of Amtrak using the tracks of other railroads had fallen by 50 percent from 1999 to 2005. Association head Ross Capon said it seemed “things are worse this year.”
Amtrak says 70 percent of its trains were on time (that is, within a half-hour of scheduled arrival) in May, no change from the same month of 2005. But long-distance trains were on time for only 32 percent of arrivals, down 10 points from May 2005.
The five trains running exclusively on the tracks of CSX Corp. were punctual only 2 percent to 35 percent of the time. Delays aren’t trivial: Capon said only 15 percent of the Coast Starlight runs (most of the time on Union Pacific) between Los Angeles and Seattle reached their destination better than four hours late.
I have just completed a 7,792-mile meander to San Francisco and back, stopping in three cities. Amtrak’s cars were comfortable, the crews were helpful and affable (and bitter about what their host railroads were doing), the scenery spectacular, other passengers engaging, the microwaved food not that bad (though you do get tired of the same seven-dish dinner menu) and the drinks reasonably priced. But some grossly late trains marred the trip.
On the San Francisco-Chicago California Zephyr, a crew member told me, “For the past three weeks, we have been between 5 and 10 hours late into Chicago every day.” That day he was 5 hours 2 minutes late, or 27 minutes past the scheduled departure of the connecting train to Boston (whose departure was delayed to await San Francisco passengers). If we had been a bit later, the Boston train would have had to leave, and I’d have had to trudge to the dining car to see Amtrak representatives who boarded 162 miles from Chicago in case anybody needed hotel and meal vouchers (indeed, some did).
The Buffalo-Albany, N.Y., segment of that connecting train is listed at 5 hours 20 minutes for 290 miles over tracks of CSX; we took 9 hours 17 minutes. Eight times we were sidetracked for freights, once for more than an hour, for a total delay of at least 3 hours 35 minutes.
“It’s always like this,” moaned the car attendant.
The railroads can do better. My segment on the Empire Builder, 2,206 miles from Chicago to Seattle on the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe, ended up only 5 minutes 30 seconds late. This train has an 87 percent on-time record. The Chicago-Los Angeles train on BNSF makes it 76 percent of the time and the Chicago-New Orleans train over a Canadian National subsidiary had a 94 percent record. Every other train is dismal. BNSF and CN seem to be the only professional railroads Amtrak is dealing with.