(The following story by Regan Foster appeared on the North West Herald website on July 6.)
CRYSTAL LAKE — Bill Beck, Kathy Snowden and Beck’s 80-year-old mother, Marion, arrived Monday morning at the Amtrak station in Sacramento, Calif., looking forward to a nice, leisurely trip back to Chicago.
But congestion on tracks that also are used for freight trains, coupled with travel delays that resulted when a new crew had to be brought in to man the train, meant that Snowden and the Becks spent just shy of 13 extra hours on the already 53-hour trip.
Congestion-related delays and Amtrak capital needs are among issues that the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is studying in a series of hearings this summer.
“You know when you’re riding Amtrak that you’re going to be a little delayed,” Bill Beck said. “But 13 hours, that’s just punishing people.”
Amtrak representatives did not respond to repeated calls for comment Thursday. But service alerts posted on the passenger company’s Web site warn that schedules shown for the California Zephyr – on which Beck, his mother and Snowden booked $1,300 worth of passage – are changed to accommodate track work being performed by rail owners Union Pacific.
It means that trains are not running according to the schedule published in Amtrak’s 2007 spring/summer system timetable, according to the alerts.
Beck, his mother and Snowden had been in the Golden State visiting family members. The trio opted to take the train home because Beck and Snowden, a longtime couple, had enjoyed a previous Amtrak trip to Chicago from the Pacific Northwest.
“Everything was going so great, and we were really looking forward to the relaxation of the train,” Snowden said. “But once we were getting further and further behind, it just built up the worry.”
The train was late leaving Sacramento, got repeatedly stuck behind slower-moving or broken-down freight trains, and stalled while waiting for a relief crew to come and take over operation, Beck said.
Their train had been scheduled to arrive at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday in Chicago; but Beck, his mother and Snowden stepped off the train shortly before 5 a.m. Thursday in Naperville.
“It’s just a comedy of error upon error upon error,” Beck said. “If it was a horse, you’d take it out and shoot it.”
That’s a major concern for members of the U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
U.S. Rep. Daniel Lipinski, D-Western Springs, is suburban Chicago’s lone member of the committee, which is conducting hearings on railroad use and Amtrak. The next hearing, designed to look at Amtrak’s capital needs, is scheduled for Wednesday before the subcommittee on railroads, pipelines and hazardous materials.
Committee members are looking at a range of rail-related issues, including congestion and its impact on schedules, Lipinski spokesman Jason Tai said.
“Nationally, congestion delays are a real issue,” Tai said, noting that Amtrak, Metra and freight cars often have scheduling overlaps. “From [Lipinski’s] standpoint, here in northeast Illinois, congestion delays are a real problem.”