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RyanS said:
Someone mark your calendars, I agree with George on something. :D
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neroden said:
montana mike said:
I guess with an average arrival time into CHI, for example, of 524 minutes late over the past month they are getting a lot of practice. It's almost as if there is no schedule on this train, like third world country transportation
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Well, a businesswoman I respect just said outright a year or two ago, "This is a third world country."
Let's see... we've got third-world health care, elections which international monitors refuse to monitor because it's too easy to electronically "stuff the ballot box" or "lose votes", a Presidential election actually stolen by the Supreme Court preventing the votes from being counted, torture committed by the government, people imprisoned without trial for political reasons; whistleblowers imprisoned; powerful corporate execs being caught dead to rights stealing land through document forgery, and being let go because they're "too big to fail", the "intelligence" services lying to the elected Congress and spying on them (as has recently been revealed by Feinstein), paramilitary police breaking in people's doors in the middle of the night because the police have the wrong address....

...this is like any third-world banana republic. It's all consistently third-world. Perhaps when people admit this we can start making things better; as long as people are in denial about the current situation, it's hard to improve it.

To get back to Amtrak, at least many people *recognize* that not being able to run the passenger trains on time is unacceptable in a developed country, and that's the first step. On some of these other issues, people still think the US is the best in the world, even though we're not, and that makes it hard even to get started fixing things.
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If people can't be on time how and why do we expect freight to be on time. Rail is the most efficient domestic system we have. We should expect both to be on time but not in a country controlled by corporate and industry dependant on oil. God forbid we do what is right and economically sound.
 
Crescent ATN & TCL said:
neroden said:
To get back to Amtrak, at least many people *recognize* that not being able to run the passenger trains on time is unacceptable in a developed country, and that's the first step. On some of these other issues, people still think the US is the best in the world, even though we're not, and that makes it hard even to get started fixing things.
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If people can't be on time how and why do we expect freight to be on time. Rail is the most efficient domestic system we have. We should expect both to be on time but not in a country controlled by corporate and industry dependant on oil. God forbid we do what is right and economically sound.
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I'm not sure how you compare Amtrak in an "apples to apples" scenario vs. other modes of transportation.

For example, my usual drive to work is 45 minutes. Today, I got stuck in traffic and it was an hour. That's a 33% increase vs. my normal time. I kind of thought it might be bad, as I had to go in at 5:00 pm. Everyone knows traffic is bad then - it's called "rush hour". It's annoying, but people usually assume that it's going to take longer if you drive at rush hour, and plan accordingly.

The EB's schedule is 46 hours endpoint to endpoint. A 33% increase in duration would be about 15 hours late. The EB has been averaging about 8 hours late, or a 15% increase in the trip's length. So, the EB's delays are nothing compared to rush hour in the average city, or a moderately delayed plane.

This is where the "apples to apples" comparison is hard. First of all, airline or driving trips are usually only a few hours at most, so even doubling the journey's length is usually just a minor annoyance. But adding 10-15 hours to any trip is going to throw a monkey wrench in people's plans.

From what I've read, most commuters spend about 30 minutes in the car each way (that figure can double or more for cities like New York and Atlanta). But consider what would happen if they had "Amtrak-like" delays. Some days, the commute would only take 30 minutes, but on others, it would take 2 hours. Or 4 hours. Or 8 hours. And you never knew which kind of day you were going to have - it could be 30 minutes one day, then 4 hours the next, then back to 30 minutes... if that were the case, nobody would be able to commute. For most people, showing up for work 3 hours early or 3 hours late just isn't an option. It simply wouldn't work. If you KNEW your commute was going to be 3 hours every day, you could plan accordingly. It would suck, but you could make it work - many people do.

Amtrak is in the same boat now. I think the real problem isn't really the lateness, it's the NOT KNOWING. There has been a lot of discussion here about padding the EB's schedule, and how bad that would be because BNSF would never allow Amtrak to get the time back later, when conditions improve.

But from a passenger perspective, being so far off is extremely problematic. AU members and railbuffs probably know how long the EB's schedule is, and would notice a drastic change of 6-8 hours in either direction. But I think the average passenger doesn't care whether it's 40 hours or 52 hours - they either have several days to take the journey, or they don't. But they DO need to know what time they're going to arrive.

That's why I think that Amtrak must do SOMETHING to make the trains run ON TIME - either change the trains (which they can't control), or change the time (which they do).
 
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Nice post DP, I was just on the EB East bound and we were about 6 hours late to Wisconsin. I had been sitting all day with a couple that had a connection in CHI with a 6 hour window. They were anxious to make this because of a very sick grand child and a wedding.

If you are stuck in traffic it may be 1 or2 hours max, but, if you miss a connection with a 6 hour window that window just goes to 24 hours.
 
Any ideas on what the average OTP is now a days? I'm looking at a possible opportunity to do the EB SEA to CHI in about three weeks. At $417 that seems like a good deal. That train is numero uno on my wish list and has been there for years and years.
 
One could work out an average figure, but it is hard to say how each trip will turn out. About the only constant is that the eastbound train seems to do a little better going through the congested area on weekends. It has been anywhere from two hours to six hours or more late recently. I believe the heavy winter weather has abated in that area. The eastbound train yesterday was about three hours late into Chicago. Book the trip if this is a good deal for you and enjoy the ride Just make no plans for the evening when arriving Chicago. It is a great ride, and it is a shame what has happened to this train's performance, which used to be quite reliable. Hope that you g et the dining car crew headed by Timmy.
 
Booked. I already have the poster, so I guess I'm just fulfilling prophecy. Yes, I'll go with that excuse, don't judge me.
 
montana mike said:
Just look at that extra 4+ hours as an additional "bonus" from Amtrak and BNSF!!

:))
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Not a problem for this trip. If I get to Chicago really late I'll just get a hotel and jumpseat home in the morning. Schedule shouldn't be a factor.
 
Saw a Facebook friend's status update in which she was frustrated and confused trying to check Amtrak.com for a train from Spokane to Miami. I replied explaining the EB situation and suggested calling 1-800-USA-RAIL to talk to a live person about her options. I think her main frustration stemmed from Amtrak.com's "sorry, we cannot find train service matching your request" error message, which is not particularly user-friendly, especially for a situation such as this.
 
a moderator can stick this in trip reports if need be but it sure illustrates the bad luck of the eb. went spk-pdx today. left spk the about average 3 hours late. lost another hour due to freight congestion the first few hours, then lost an hour and a half when a freight in front of us broke a knuckle and we had nothing to do but wait for a repair, then just before bridge of the gods we lost an hour due to someone "lying on the track claiming to be moses" and law enforcement had to talk him off the track. then as we entered washougal(about 30 minutes from pdx)the conductor announced "welcome to washougal, washington; your crew is out of hours". a little over 30 minutes waiting for a crew to taxi out from pdx. beautiful day in the columbia gorge, the train crew was very pleasant and fed us twice for free. no complaints here just another average 376 miles for the eb
 
Paperwing said:
This is the reason I will be packing a few extra provisions for our trip!
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We always do, even on trains with good OTP. When I get hungry and my blood sugar drops, I'm like a honey badger combined with a Dalek.
 
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D.P. Roberts said:
Amtrak is in the same boat now. I think the real problem isn't really the lateness, it's the NOT KNOWING.
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A very rough rule of thumb that I use is that you have to plan your trip based on the 5th percentile perfomance. In other words, if you're later than you expected 5% of the time, and earlier than expected 95% of the time, that's OK. But if you're later than you expected 20% of the time or more, you have a problem. I think a lot of people do something similar, even if they don't compute it out -- maybe based on different percentiles (1st percentile, 10th percentile, whatever).
People riding Amtrak (who know about the 40-year history of delays) generally add on some amount of time to the schedule to get their personal expected "fifth percentile" or "worst likely case" runtime -- maybe using AmtrakDelays or something similar.

For the LSL, for example, you can usually assume it'll be no more than 3 hours late; anything worse than that happens quite rarely, less than 5% of the time. Even at 3 hours late, the LSL has times which are fairly competitive with driving. After all, you have to include such expectations-of-lateness into your driving time estimates, too, due to traffic, weather, etc.

The trouble is, given the EB's current performance, if you base your plan on the 5th percentile performance, you're talking something like 15 hours late -- maybe more! -- and that starts to be extremely uncompetitive with anything.

Another way of putting this is that people will blow off the occasional "disaster". So the LSL is 24 hours late one day of the year -- people write it off as a unique, one-off event. But if a bad event is happening frequently enough -- and 1 out of every 10 times is frequently enough -- then people start treating that as something they have to expect and plan for.

There has been a lot of discussion here about padding the EB's schedule, and how bad that would be because BNSF would never allow Amtrak to get the time back later, when conditions improve.
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(Reposted from the CS-EB non-connection thread.)

The sound of making yet another of Amtrak's trains a three-a-week route makes me cringe. Lets say they do go down that path and the Empire Builder becomes the Sunset Limited North. How much would you want to bet the moment Amtrak wishes to go back to a daily train, BNSF pulls a Union Pacific and says "that'll be $700+ Million." The capacity of the route would have increased, but the amount of freight would have also have risen in the same amount of time. BNSF could simply point and say "we don't have room for a re-established daily train" and use that as their cause for more money. Or, just flat-out refuse to host Amtrak at all.

Cue the "Slippery Slope" warning signs. :help:
 
mkeroad said:
Nice post DP, I was just on the EB East bound and we were about 6 hours late to Wisconsin. I had been sitting all day with a couple that had a connection in CHI with a 6 hour window. They were anxious to make this because of a very sick grand child and a wedding.
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At some point the onus is on the traveler to reevaluate their plans after months of routine delays and perpetual dysfunction. At this point if someone chooses to take an Empire Builder connection to a wedding then they're basically saying they really don't care if they arrive on time or not. Trick me once, shame on you. Trick thousands of people hundreds of times, shame on them.
 
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D A

I was sitting with Amish that I met on the CZ wb and we met again on the EB e bound 11 days later. How much fun was that! I'm sending them pics. They have no way of looking at schedules. Very nice family
 
Devil's Advocate said:
At some point the onus is on the traveler to reevaluate their plans after months of routine delays and perpetual dysfunction. At this point if someone chooses to take an Empire Builder connection to a wedding then they're basically saying they really don't care if they arrive on time or not. Trick me once, shame on you. Trick thousands of people hundreds of times, shame on them.
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So you're saying every passenger traveling on EB should come to AU months before their trip and see this discussion thread to realise EB runs notoriously delayed regularly? Even after the mess going on for so long, the Amtrak site says nothing at all about EB having severe punctuality issues. Its easy to say as a railfan that oh there are third party sites that you can check to see historic performance, but as a casual passenger, you can't expect everyone to be doing that. When I book a flight, I don't go digging into databases to see how many times in the last three months the flight gets delayed. Some airlines are gracious enough to mention this in the booking page itself, for example Southwest has a note like "74% on-time" next to every flight you are given to choose.

Edit: Amtrak's Service Alerts page also has zero mention of anything being wrong with Empire Builder. Out of sight, out of mind I guess?
 
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