Amtrak On-Time performance- the real numbers

[dlagrua]

There seems to be a lot of confusion on this forum relative to the on-time performance of Amtrak so here is something to consider.

First the good news. Both the NEC and California corridors run loads of trains and that skews the on-time number to about 72%. That's what drives the 70+% on-time number. On the number of trains scheduled this on-time performance record is accurate .

However if we take a system wide average by routes the number is abysmal.

Here are the Numbers:

Empire Builder 20.9% on-time

California Zephyr 34% on-time

SW Chief 67.1% on-time

Crescent 52% on-time

Cardinal 46.8% on time

Capital Limited 29.4% on-time

Lake Shore Limited 35.6% on-time

Silver Meteor 59.1% on-time

Autotrain 63.3% on-time

Sunset Limited 60% on-time

Texas Eagle 45% on-time

Maple Leaf. 59.9% on-time

Downeaster 49.3% on-time

Point is that unless you are on the California trains or NEC the chance of being on-time are way lower than the 72% number that is bounced around. Something needs to be done to improve the LD trains performance record. Just thought that the blind supporters of Amtrak (and the apologists) might appreciate the real situation for a change.

 

[keelhauled]

I don't think this is news to anyone. It's not exactly a secret that the long distance trains have terrible timekeeping. I mean, there are literally entire threads dedicated to how awful some of them are.

 

[the whistler]

Isn't there a case coming up for supreme court review that,will address this?

 

[Ryan]

I think we understand it just fine, thanks.

 

[jebr]

Wait, Amtrak has OTP problems? I would've never guessed! I just thought the Empire Builder was supposed to arrive at random times throughout the day.

 

[MARC Rider]

These raw OTP numbers aren't really helpful. After all, there's a difference between arriving 10 minutes late, 30 minutes late, 1-2 hours late on from a run that is 20 hours plus, and so late that you get to eat Amstew and/or miss your connection. Also, most of us would like to know the OTP for the station where we are boarding or detraining.

 

[Anderson]

I'm going to agree with MARC Rider: I could really give a rat's behind what time the Meteor gets into Miami. I've never taken the train to Miami, so if it goes to pot past Orlando it isn't my problem. I also agree with the point about delays...if an LD train is regularly "late" at 20 minutes behind schedule, nobody is going to really notice. If it's two hours late, that's another story.

The Builder, Zephyr, Cap, and LSL have known issues. The others...really aren't doing that badly by comparison. However, the OP does have a point insofar as the "commuter" trains (Keystones, Hiawathas, NYP-ALB Empires, and Capitols) have barely been affected. Actually, there seems to be a pretty decent correlation between train operating distance and OTP collapse provided that the train didn't collapse before (i.e. the Wolverines, whose performance has barely been affected by the NS issues...because it was in the tank last year due to slow orders).

 

[John]

A few questions come to mind regarding this OTP issue. Common sense would say of course you would expect the OTP in the NEC to be better when you own the rails and the equipment and call the shots. 72% is probably not that great by comparison to what goes on in some other countries. Anyone out there have a handle on what is keeping the OTP this low, is it equipment failure, age, maintenance. I know that obviously is a part of it. Or is it the rails, railbeds, etc. that are a bigger part of the delays. I am asking because

it would seem that Amtrak owns the decisions from A to Z in the NEC and has for some time. Amtrak writes and I assume pads the schedules somewhat in the NEC to take into account scheduled track work and other infrastructure issues on their own property. Has this 72% gotten better, worse or stayed the same.

Having asked that, with repect to the LD trains and their dismal performance by comparison I do understand that Amtrak pays to travel the host railways network. I have to assume

by contract at a certain rate. The questions here are, does Amtrak have any performance expectations, penalties in the contract(s) or is it just permission to go from point A to point B when the line is open. Do the host railways just take the stand "don't like it....use another hosts tracks.....ha, ha! They are the only game in town.

It would be nice to see Congress fund Amtrak better but that has been and will continue to be an uphill battle. Just wondering if anything is or can be done to put pressure on the hosts to give Amtrak reasonable? priority when using their lines that Amtrak is paying to use.

 

[Ryan]

The NEC OTP is a little higher - there are also a decent number of NEC trains that run over CSX and Metro North tracks, so even they aren't entirely on Amtrak.

 

[PRae_Train]

Did I miss the bracketing of time frame for this set of statistics? Was it for a month, a season, or a year?

I agree that most of us here already know that OTP especially for LD trains is awful, but without the time bracket these numbers don't mean much.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Did I miss the bracketing of time frame for this set of statistics? Was it for a month, a season, or a year?

I agree that most of us here already know that OTP especially for LD trains is awful, but without the time bracket these numbers don't mean much.

Agree

 

[dlagrua]

The statistics posted were mid year averages for Amtrak routes. I will agree that if a train is up to 15 minutes (or even 30 minutes) late it should not pose a serious problem for most. I was just trying to bring attention to the fact that excessive lateness can have a negative impact. We connect through Chicago on our trips West and missing a connection due to excessive lateness is a big inconvenience. Many people (including ourselves) ave lost a days time in the process.

This post was not written to rag on Amtrak. We still support passenger rail and believe it to be vital to the nations transportation system but poor performance needs to be discussed. If you do not discuss or shed light on problems they will never be remedied.

Given the circumstances, Amtrak does a credible job providing passenger rail service and the system serves many towns that have no other LD transportation options. I just wish that it was supported better by the Department of Transportation where Amtrak receives less than or about 3% of the total budget.

 

[George K]

Wait, Amtrak has OTP problems? I would've never guessed! I just thought the Empire Builder was supposed to arrive at random times throughout the day.

Arriving at PDX last month via #27, the conductor said, "Welcome to Portland, ladies and gentlemen. And we are on time, because that happens all the time on Amtrak."

Of course, our return trip to CHI via #6 was 6 hours late arriving. Karma, I guess. h34r:

 

[mlhughes0522]

Downeaster 49.3% on-time Is due track work right now

 

[Guest]

This post was not written to rag on Amtrak.

No, given the editorial comments included with the content, it is reasonable to conclude that it was written to rag on _the members and regular posters of this forum_.

"a lot of confusion on this forum"

"that skews the on-time number"

"number that is bounced around."

"the blind supporters of Amtrak (and the apologists)"

"might appreciate the real situation"

"for a change."

Thanks for sharing the information, though.

Take care,

Guest

 

[WICT106]

I think it would be enlightening to examine the OTP for stops along the middle of a given route. For example, The Builder's OTP at Saint Cloud, MN. Then we will see just where Amtrak's reputation for tardiness comes from. Tardiness reputation stems from Amtrak's utter failure to be on time at the stops along the route, and not just the endpoints.

 

[TinCan782]

I believe there can be a lot of "padding" at the end of a route. The last time I was on the SWC we were pretty late on the later part of the route including in and out of Fullerton. We were on the early side of on-time into LAUS. The SWC schedule itself shows the FUL > LAUS distance being 29 miles with a time of 1:41 for that segment. That can make the overall route time look "good" while the intermediate stops are far from the scheduled time.

 

[dlagrua]

This is a reply to the post by Mr Guest whoever you are.

This forum was created to share in the open exchange of "Ideas and Opinions" and we do have all types of members with different ideology here. That is perfectly fine with me. Feel free to disagree but understand that opinions are just that-opinions. Hopefully posts can be supported by some facts that I try to present for discussion. If you site that my comment adds to the confusion on this forum (and maybe it does) or affects it in a negative way ,feel free to dispute or correct my facts with more correct data.

I am a big supporter of Amtrak and always purchase the highest level of service available. If I am critical, it is because I expect value and it is also my right voice my opinion. Without controversy and subsequent discussion, this forum might be a dull place. Have you watched a political debate lately?????

 

[Paulus]

The FRA does report all stops OTP (within 15 minutes) for all trains. For the quarter ended June 2014, they are as follows for the long distance trains:

Auto Train 66.4%

California Zephyr: 26.5%

Capitol Limited: 27.8%

Cardinal: 42.8%

CONO: 53.4%

Coast Starlight: 54.8%

Crescent: 52.1%

Empire Builder: 20.5%

Lake Shore Limited: 28.0%

Palmetto: 66.5%

Silver Meteor: 48%

Silver Star: 46.2%

Southwest Chief: 44.3%

Sunset Limited: 42.9%

Texas Eagle: 30.8%

Corridor services ranged from a low of 47.2% on the Adirondack to a high of 96.8% on the Capitol Corridor (on UP track I might note). The Acela, held to a 10 minute standard, achieved 82.6%.

 

[Anderson]

I'm going to partly excuse the Adirondack...a non-trivial share of those delays do come down to border disasters. I've seen those delays completely de-slot the train, and it's not like Amtrak can control CBP.

 

[afigg]

I'm going to partly excuse the Adirondack...a non-trivial share of those delays do come down to border disasters. I've seen those delays completely de-slot the train, and it's not like Amtrak can control CBP.

The Adirondack has actually had a couple of good months for OTP. Or at least at lot better than usual. While we were watching the CL and LSL getting caught in the NS meltdown, the EB and CZ troubles continuing with some improvements, some corridors such as the Wolverine having terrible OTP (much of it due to track work), the NEC OTP continuing to be poor, some services saw improvements after the end of August.
In September, the Adirondack had a 80% endpoint OTP, with #69 achieving 96.7% with many early arrivals and #68 pulling down the mean at 63.3%. From my random checks of 68, the delays were mostly US Customs and south of SDY. Looks like October was not quite as good, but still better than the established norm. The south of SDY segment is getting upgrades and if they can get all the agencies and governments to sign off on the Customs facility at Montreal and build the damn thing, perhaps the Adirondack could be one of the more reliable medium range corridor trains.

 

[Richard McCormick]

There seems to be a lot of confusion on this forum relative to the on-time performance of Amtrak so here is something to consider.

First the good news. Both the NEC and California corridors run loads of trains and that skews the on-time number to about 72%. That's what drives the 70+% on-time number. On the number of trains scheduled this on-time performance record is accurate .

However if we take a system wide average by routes the number is abysmal.

Here are the Numbers:

Empire Builder 20.9% on-time

California Zephyr 34% on-time

SW Chief 67.1% on-time

Crescent 52% on-time

Cardinal 46.8% on time

Capital Limited 29.4% on-time

Lake Shore Limited 35.6% on-time

Silver Meteor 59.1% on-time

Autotrain 63.3% on-time

Sunset Limited 60% on-time

Texas Eagle 45% on-time

Maple Leaf. 59.9% on-time

Downeaster 49.3% on-time

Point is that unless you are on the California trains or NEC the chance of being on-time are way lower than the 72% number that is bounced around. Something needs to be done to improve the LD trains performance record. Just thought that the blind supporters of Amtrak (and the apologists) might appreciate the real situation for a change.

Just wanted to point out that the OTP numbers mentioned here are for end point arrival times. OTP for intermediate stops on a given route can vary greatly from end point OTP.Since fewer than 15% of LD riders travel from the originating station to the end point on LD trains and average about 600 miles on their trip OTP for these intermediate stops is an important factor. Recently I was on 2(11/3) SL boarding at TUS bound for NOL. Scheduled arrival time for TUS was 8:28 A.M. and departure time of 9:15 A.M. However,due to numerous freight rail delays,it did not arrive in TUS until 12:20 P.M.,3 hours and 52 minutes late and departed at 1:05 P.M.,3 hours and 50 minutes late.This train continued to lose additional time through the rest of Arizona and New Mexico finally departing Deming,NM at 5:45 P.M., 4 hours and 35 minutes late. From that point on 2/SL continuously reduced it's late departure time stop by stop by cutting break time and service stop time( and blowing right through flag stop Sanderson,TX in the wee hours) along the way through Texas and Lousiana eventually reaching NOL at 11:17 P.M. , 1 hour and 37 minutes late.The arrival/departure times for the intermediate stops between TUS and NOL varied by as much as 3 hours compared to the end point arrival time. So the point being that a LD train reported as arriving on time at it's end point could be several hours late arriving at earlier intermediate points on the route causing havoc for those passengers boarding or detraining at those points.

 

[Anderson]

I'm going to partly excuse the Adirondack...a non-trivial share of those delays do come down to border disasters. I've seen those delays completely de-slot the train, and it's not like Amtrak can control CBP.

The Adirondack has actually had a couple of good months for OTP. Or at least at lot better than usual. While we were watching the CL and LSL getting caught in the NS meltdown, the EB and CZ troubles continuing with some improvements, some corridors such as the Wolverine having terrible OTP (much of it due to track work), the NEC OTP continuing to be poor, some services saw improvements after the end of August.
In September, the Adirondack had a 80% endpoint OTP, with #69 achieving 96.7% with many early arrivals and #68 pulling down the mean at 63.3%. From my random checks of 68, the delays were mostly US Customs and south of SDY. Looks like October was not quite as good, but still better than the established norm. The south of SDY segment is getting upgrades and if they can get all the agencies and governments to sign off on the Customs facility at Montreal and build the damn thing, perhaps the Adirondack could be one of the more reliable medium range corridor trains.

That's in line with what I've experienced: Canadian customs seems to be better about getting the train processed quickly (even if they seem to not want to be there); US customs is more pleasant, but seems to foul things up with a long hold more often.