(The following article by Chris Mondics was posted on the Philadelphia Inquirer website on April 19.)
WASHINGTON — Amtrak said yesterday that it had replaced two-thirds of the service lost between Washington and New York when its high-speed Acela trains were canceled Friday after cracked brake parts were found on many cars.
But Cliff Black, a spokesman for the national rail line, said there were no plans in the near term to offer replacement service for canceled Acela trains between New York and Boston.
For the most part, slower regional trains were filling in for the Acelas, although Amtrak ran one Acela from New York to Washington yesterday.
Last night, after finding problems with that train, Amtrak said no Acelas would run through Friday, possibly longer.
Black said Amtrak would have a better idea later this week of how long it would take to get all 20 Acela trains back into service, but that process is likely to take two months or more.
The companies that built the trains, Bombardier of Canada and Alsthom of France, said they were working with Amtrak to repair the trains at service yards in Washington, New York and Boston. The companies, in addition to building the $1.2 billion Acela, also have a contract to service the trains.
“The net result is we are in a lot better shape today than we were on Friday,” Black said.
Acela trains, which carry about 10,000 passengers a day – about 20 percent of all Amtrak riders on the Northeast Corridor – were pulled from service Friday after inspectors found that 300 of the 1,400 brake rotors on Acela trains were cracked.
The cancellation of most Acela service comes amid a debate over the future of Amtrak, although it is unclear how Amtrak’s service problems will play out on Capitol Hill. Critics say the rail line is inherently inefficient and in need of restructuring, while proponents contend the latest equipment problems result from chronic underfunding by Congress and the White House.
“One of the things that Amtrak has said over the past several years is that they have had to put off capital investments; while this one problem may not be directly related to a dollar figure, it does underscore the financial needs of the railroad,” said Tom Gavin, a spokesman for Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D., W.Va.), a proponent of more federal money for Amtrak.
In its budget for the next fiscal year, the Bush administration proposed eliminating all federal support for Amtrak, which this year amounted to $1.2 billion.
It proposed that Amtrak be split up and that service along its lines be run by groups of states or “compacts” that would have the option of contracting with Amtrak or a private company to provide train service. The federal government would share the cost of capital improvements such as new bridges and tracks, as well as maintenance, but would not pay for day-to-day operations.
The Acela trains, which began service in 2000, are modeled after high-speed European trains. They are sleek, quiet, and can travel up to 150 m.p.h. Amtrak officials initially believed the trains would be so popular that they would provide a much-needed financial boost for the rail line.
But while popular and often sold out, they have been plagued with problems.
The trains were delivered a year late, and in 2002 they were taken out of service for several weeks because of cracks in their undercarriages.
Engineers later determined that the cracks were caused by the extra weight of crash-protection equipment required by American rail authorities. European trains do not have the same safety requirements, are not as heavy, and thus are not as subject to breakdowns.
Passengers, meantime, complain that the train often is late; Black said that for the last 61/2 months, the trains’ on-time record was 75 percent.