I think that the freight railroads(not counting BNSF) got it backwards with Amtrak. Run Amtrak as a priority. the sooner Amtrak is out of a dispatchers tracks the sooner he can run more freight trains. I mean it makes more sense to hold a freight train on a siding for 5 minutes to let amtrak pass then it does to hold amtrak for 30 to let a slow moving freight train pass. What you think am I right in thinking that they should run Amtrak first.
Well, it's not always that easy.
The freight railroads are NOT out to screw Amtrak. Their managers don't sit around all day thinking, "Maybe if we stick Amtrak in sidings for three hours at a time and delay the trip for everyone by 12 hours, their passengers will quit riding, Amtrak will yank the route, and then we'll be rid of this thorn in our side."
Well, OK, maybe they do. Or at least some managers. (Kidding!)
For the most part, the dispatchers try to organize the runs so EVERY train is moved as far and as fast as possible. Freight trains are often on just as tight of a schedule as passengers--the BNSF's ZLACWSP train has to make it from UPS's Commerce, CA loading facility to the Willow Springs, IL mega hub (the Chicago Area Consolidated Hub, or
CACH for short) in time for their daily sort (where packages are then sorted and routed to other UPS hubs for other destinations, including a large load of them continuing on to Newark on CSX). If BNSF doesn't reliably get the packages there on time, the packages get delayed, UPS customers get mad, and BNSF is out of a very lucrative contract.
The same thing happens for all kinds of other shipments, from oil and gas to coal (can't have power plants shutting down, can we?) and chemicals to heavy equipment on flat cars to whatever else that can be transported by train. Just like package companies, railroads generally charge customers higher rates for higher-priority shipping (for example, UPS pays top dollar for BNSF to run their stuff on a "Z" train--also known as a hot-shot intermodal train, while auto manufacturers may pay a good deal less to run a low-priority auto-rack train, and backhaul empty--and also therefore light, saving fuel--flats might ship for pennies on the dollar).
Quite often, these low-priority trains will actually sit in sidings for several hours to wait for Amtrak. Plus, the dispatcher also needs to be mindful of the crew's hours of service and especially make sure they don't die out in the middle of nowhere where a replacement crew would be hard to deliver. In fact, a friend of mine who's a former conductor on the UP told a story once of arriving at a red signal out in the plains of Nebraska somewhere. Several hours later, his crew died on the law, and a railroad Suburban pulled up to deliver a relief crew and take them to a hotel. Twelve hours later, they got back in a Suburban and drove out to the same signal, and the SAME TRAIN was still sitting there. They jumped on board and replaced the crew that had spent their
whole twelve-hour shift waiting for the signal to turn green. The way he tells it, this may have even happened for two or three days before they finally received a clear indication and was able to proceed. (To be fair, this may have been for a work train--the lowest of the low bottom-feeder scum trains when it comes to track priority.)
So back to your assertion that the sooner Amtrak is out of the way, the sooner the freights can get going. Yes, it doesn't make sense to hold Amtrak for 30 minutes when the freight could be held for five, but that's just the perception of someone on-board the Amtrak train. Just as often as (and maybe even more than) Amtrak is held for a freight, a freight (even a hotshot intermodal) is held for Amtrak. From the dispatcher's perspective, it makes just as little sense to hold the freight for 30 minutes when Amtrak could be held for 5 and the freight given the highball--the dispatcher is under pressure to run a smooth railroad for everyone.
Plus, given that a good number of sidings are too short for today's mega-long trains, it's not as easy as taking the next siding--no matter what the dispatcher or crew does, that 120-car doublestack just won't fit into a 4,500' siding.
And part of the reason Amtrak appears to do so well on BNSF is that the AT&SF was very forward-thinking when it came to capital projects and capacity improvements. BNSF inherited an INCREDIBLE shipping corridor with the [mostly] double-tracked Transcon. The UP (and some of its predecessor railroads), on the other hand, was more conservative in their capital spending, and when fuel prices increased and rail shipping became far less costly than trucking for long distances, the UP just wasn't ready for the explosion in rail traffic--their single-track lines just couldn't handle the number of trains needed to meet the demand. (In fact, I've thought that it might be good practice for the UP to run, say, eastbound on the Overland Route and westbound on the Sunset Route, making for a lot less meets! However, I understand a good bit of the Overland Route is double-tracked, making this a moot point...) Consider the possibility that for every Amtrak train that's delayed on the UP for an hour, there are probably five UP trains that are delayed by two hours or more.
Having said this, yes, I wish Amtrak could get as close to a 100% on-time rating as possible, and I wish there were ways to easily do this. But unless Congress can pony up some serious funding for capital improvements for freight-owned railroads (or even build their own) or to increase the payments made to the freight railroads so they can make enough of a profit off of Amtrak to make it worth bump its priority up (or even spend it on capital improvements themselves), I don't think we can expect much more out of the current system. (Of course, the flip side would be severely increasing the penalites for delaying Amtrak, but I guarantee you that would have very negative consequences, especially since that would then leave the freight railroads with less money to spend on their own capital projects--unless, hmm, maybe Congress could then place those fines in a trust fund that would be used for railroad capital improvements! Hadn't thought of that before...)
OK, I've gone on long enough, and I need to start packing for my trip--I leave in 22 hours! Yay! If anyone wants to wave at the westbound CZ between DEN and SLC on Wednesday, I'll wave back! And if anyone will be in UT or CO between the 15th and 20th, give me a shout!
