From my 2009 trips on the CS and in watching train 14's OTP on line, it seems to be routinely getting into PDX on time. Is it possible that this is because of reduced freight traffic, or are there other factors?
When UP took over SP, they got a railroad that had been bled white by the previous owners. It was in far worse condition that their worst nightmares. To compound the felony, UP then dumped most of the ex SP guys that had leared how to runa a railroad on chewing gum, string, hope, and prayer. The results were not necessarily pretty, but they did manage to get the trains over the road after a fashion. Prior to the SP takeover, no one in UP management had any experience running a railroad that was in poor condition. As a result, the ex SP system simply congealed.
UP management finally figured out, or managed to convince the holders of the purse strings, whichever the case may have been, that they had to spend megabucks to catch up on deferred maintenance and, particularly on the Susnet Route west of El Paso, major capacity improvements. In the first few years of this activily, and yes it takes years to fix systemwide deferred maintenance, the maintenance surge made timliness of operations even worse is such was possible. Finally, in the last couple of years they have finally begun to at least catch up with the trackwork maintenance curve. Anyone who has been watching reasonably carefully will have noted improvments in timliness even before the drop in traffic. Yes, there have been increases in scheduled time, but even that did not come close to the average lateness that some trains were experiencing.
With the recent drop in traffic, there are many locations where Amtrak trains find themselves "waiting for time" instead of running late.
So, yes the downturn in traffic has helped timliness improve, but that is only part of the story, and on some lines a very small part of the story.