For all of you who enthuse about Amtrak:
Why cannot the service be consistent? Even the Amtrakafoamers concede that service is a crapshoot.
Do you know of any airline or other service that is so maddeningly inconsistent?
Is Amtrak management afraid of enforcing basic service courtesies? Does anyone ever check on the service? Wouldn't you think that the raft of complaints (resulting in vouchers) by the people on this board alone might clue SOMEONE in Amtrak management that there is a problem here?
Again, year after year, the one consistency with Amtrak is its inconsistency.
What a way to run a railroad!!!
There are people on this board far more knowledgeable than myself about this topic, but I will attempt to summarize. Since its inception in 1971, Amtrak has been a political hot potato. There are some in the federal government who feel that it should invest in passenger rail, just as it does in highways, and others who feel that passenger rail should not receive any federal subsidies. For example, the Amtrak budget has been zeroed out by the Bush administration on at least two occasions (later reversed by Congress).
A result of this political tug-of-war is that Amtrak has been on starvation diet pretty much since its inception. It received only enough for it to survive, and little else. It was also operating under the constant threat of its funding being pulled, which made it difficult to plan for the long term. The result is old rolling stock, bare bones ameneties, deferred maintenance, and (sometimes) surly employees, who have had to deal for years with failing equipment, excessive delays, and complaining passengers. Amtrak management has always been very aware of these problems, but there simply wasn't enough money available to fix them.
There is some hope, however. The current administration recognizes that passenger rail is an important form of transportation, and invested substantial amounts of money into it (8-12 billion so far, IIRC). It is still far short from what countries like France, Germany, Japan, and China invest in their passenger rail systems, but it's a start. Amtrak finally got funding to acquire new rolling stock, refurbish old train cars, perform much needed infrastructure maintenance, and install niceties like Wi-Fi. Based on the trip reports on this board, the results are starting to show, and passenger rail travel is definitely on the upswing in terms of both ridership and quality of the experience.
However, Amtrak is improving service one train at a time, so some trains are much better than others, even though the price is about the same. (I remember seeing a schedule for train improvement projects for the next few years, can anyone post that?) That's one major reason for the inconsistency. The other is that there are some burned out, unmotivated employees, but it's hard to get rid of them because they are union workers, and it takes a lot of documentation and effort to get them fired. But again, based on trip reports, it appears that recent hires almost always provide excellent service, and are slowly replacing the "old guard."