After riding the Empire Builder train #7, I have noticed that Amtrak employees seem to enforce a ridiculous queue/ ID check system at St. Paul Union Depot, which creates a line that stretches from escalators to the ticket counter to the gate itself. Considering the Depot's platforms are new and not limited in space what so ever, and ID checks are stupid (they do it on the train), what is Amtrak's ridiculous reasoning to queue passengers to timbuktu in a recently remodeled station, that has platforms wide enough to easily accommodate passengers?
MSP is my home station. I have never seen any such situation there. Departing passengers do have to wait a few minutes until arriving passengers have cleared the platform, that's all.
"line that stretches from escalators to the ticket counter to the gate itself" -- Naah-ahh not so, even if an all-passenger ID check (what I've never seen at MSP)
Even IF there was an ID check at the platform gate at the far end of the concourse, or at the ticket counter, a queue that long would fill at least 5 Empire Builders. Anybody who has been at SPUD knows the layout, and "line that stretches from escalators to the ticket counter to the gate itself" seems a great exaggeration, really.
Sorry, OP, don't know your gripe, but most of it just doesn't fit MSP as I know it, and I do.
Unless there was a bomb threat or "dangerous fugitive" situation? I follow local news and know of no such thing, but maybe, what day?