Passenger Trains > Amtrak's new mantra: NO ALTERNATE TRANSPORTATION

Train 301(22JUL) stopped 3 miles east of Lee with engine failure,
involved unit reported as AMTK 142. Union Pacific (can't call them
YouPee this time, can we?) has cut a unit off a freight train to push
the disabled Amtraker to Kansas City, where it was expected to arrive at
500pm, actual arrival 535pm. Train 306(22JUL), with over 120
passengers holding confirmed space has been cancelled KCY-STL...

NO ALTERNATE TRANSPORTATION.

Now, over 120 people are on their own, on a Friday evening, to find a way to get where they are going.

We will see more and more of this sort of thing. Certainly there ar two factors at work. First Amtrak is cheap, they just don't want to spend the money. Second getting alternate transport is very difficult. Getting one bus on short notice is very difficult forget three or four.

How refreshing....if Amtrak was still saddled with those marketing types who call passengers "guests" everyone one would have a bee in their bonnet about how to accomodate those guests. But now we have the sensible operations folks back in charge who understand Amtrak must focus on it's core mission of running trains. If the train is broken today, well we can't run it so everyone go on home. Call a bus you say? Hey, we're a train company! If you're just interested in transportation call a transportation company! Get it?

Dave

Putting non-railroad people in charge of a passenger railroad proved to be a bad idea. The only worse idea is putting railroad people in charge.

If Amtrak could find a reason to exist that would not involve putting passengers on the trains, then they would have the ideal operation. By the way: walk-up fare on Southwest from MCI(Kansas City) to STL is $79. At least some of the end-to-end folks could have been accomodated had Amtrak desired.

Travelers always have alternates available. Drive, fly, taxi, limo, bus, bike, hitchhike, walk, or stay home.

No alternate transportation = last time those people EVER book Amtrak...

As I've always said in recent years Amtrak (not passenger trains) needs to go away.

Yeah, buy back all the Amtrak box cars, and put all the managers in them. Send the train to some yard out in Chicago in the depths of winter and forget about them!

gyralite Wrote:
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> As I've always said in recent years Amtrak (not
> passenger trains) needs to go away.
>

That is bad news. That tells me money is very, very tight. Two more months till the new money comes(with darn strings attached)! Jim

If funding approval was still up in the air, and if this train situation had been let's say a Washington-New York City train, would it have received the same treatment as the folks in St Louis-Kansa City-St Louis service?

Reminds me of snow removal and the Mayor's election in Chicago. Prior to the mayoral elections, snow removal is fantastic. Afterwards...well buy a shovel and some salt.

Its all politics I'm afraid.

"Travel = life in 2005 = chaos possible" Dr. Flood, distinguished professor of math, Oxford University.

I have decided any person travelling or just living today needs to constantly have 25 backup plans ready to go at a moment's notice and be mentally prepared to make changes.

You cannot just stop, cry, and wait for someone to repair your life.

Thanks to cell phones and laptops and the internet, the means for quick adaption of our species is available.

I just returned from Ohio-Montreal-Antwerp-Cologne-London-Southampton-New York-Ohio trip.

The container ship from Montreal was 2 weeks off its schedule, so I had to change hotels and ships and destinations and meeting times with my wife and nephew and also our supplier in Wuppertal Germany. It all worked out really great. We just got to set in a traffic jam on a german autobann in his Mercedes for three hours instead of riding the local train from Cologne!

I had already spent 2 solid days on my cell phone talking to our travel agent in Ohio and nephew in London from my cabin on the container ship which was waiting out holidays and labor slowdowns in Montreal, rearranging our nephew's weekend in Greece from his school in London, thanks to Olympic airlines and general greek political strikes-Olympic airlines just shut down for three days and told the customers good luck! Quebec and Greece seem to have similiar politics.

The nephew's train into Paris was late so he had to come on a Eurostar much later, so my wife got to wait two more hours at Waterloo to collect him, then go to his school in the middle of the night, then arrive at our hotel: but room service was 24 hours so that worked out ok!

The July 7 bombs hit as we were loading onto the Eurostar at Brussels: suddenly no trains through London as we planned to visit another supplier and then weekend in Liverpool. So we changed to a lovely English inn in Ashford, which also worked well after we made the mental adjustments: and we even met the Archbishop of Canterbury: who seemed suspiciously like a homeless guy on the street in costume, playing Disney songs on an electric keyboard.

We finally came into London Sunday morning 10th, along with hundreds of thousands of beautiful decorated WWII veterans, but missed breakfast and decided the Hard Rock Cafe would be open earlier than normal english pubs, walked 2 miles in sweltering heat, only to find the Hard Rock had had a fire Saturday night and would not be open soon: we waited for the pub across the alley to open, which in typical english marketing savvy, happened finally about 45 mintues after 12 (the staff of the pub, as well as the Hard Rock staff, were welcomed in for booze and food, just not the public!)

We spent the rest of the day on the tube, riding around to pick up the tourist stuff the nephew decided to reward his family with for sending him away for six weeks!

I had spent six months setting up this trip with extra days connection time everywhere especially on Amtrak days, to allow
for deviations. But it happened anyway, we adopted and saw a little more of the world, and incidently how coddled and naive the rest of the world sees us in the USA!

Dr. Flood spoke on the QM2 on our way home, about Newton and how Newton discovered the absolute order of the universe: but Flood's conclusion was that there is actually no order: one small variation will totally screw up all calculations: a butterfly in China may set in motion winds that will cause a hurricane in Florida, a loose container in Missouri might end up causing a five day delay for twenty ships in Long Beach.

I have decided we have made our world at least 1000 times more complex in the last 10 years, so in spite of the internet etc., we just have about one billion more chances for mistakes.

I wonder why, Mr. Milkcow, I simply no longer travel for travel's sake.

Trips to Florida to escape the Chicago winter; trips to New York to visit family - mostly to answer a "summons' is about it nowadays.

Beyond that, travel is simply no longer fun. My last Passport expired during 1992; not likely I will ever renew it. This is not any kind of a post-9/11 fear of travel (give me a family emergency in New York and I'll be on the bird in a heartbeat); it is just simply why be bothered when it is easier just to stay at home?

milkcow Wrote:
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> "Travel = life in 2005 = chaos possible" Dr.
> Flood, distinguished professor of math, Oxford
> University ..... any person travelling or just
> living today needs to constantly have 25 backup
> plans ready to go at a moment's notice and be
> mentally prepared to make changes.
>
> I have decided we have made our world at least
> 1000 times more complex in the last 10 years, so
> in spite of the internet etc., we just have about
> one billion more chances for mistakes.


That last paragraph says it all. Like "Scotty" said in ST-3, "The more they overtake the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain." Whither, Amtrak? Well, perhaps they have a lot to learn, but it's the only game in town right now that we Americans have to "play" - by intercity rail, that is. Now if Amtrak were to offer some sort of realistic partnerships with airlines, busses, maritime routes, it mightkeep some of them from going bankfrupt along with Amtrak. (I thought the government was big on "intermodalism" - or maybe I just imagined that.)

Hmmmm.....

milkcow Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Travel = life in 2005 = chaos possible" Dr.
> Flood, distinguished professor of math, Oxford
> University.
> Dr. Flood spoke on the QM2 on our way home, about
> Newton and how Newton discovered the absolute
> order of the universe: but Flood's conclusion was
> that there is actually no order: one small
> variation will totally screw up all calculations:
> a butterfly in China may set in motion winds that
> will cause a hurricane in Florida, a loose
> container in Missouri might end up causing a five
> day delay for twenty ships in Long Beach.
--------------------------------------------------------

Entropically speaking sounds like a typical trip, and fortunately you were not transformed into a cloud of pink mist by bombers as were other tube passengers.