The USDA, which governs the foodservice operation of AMTRAK, does indeed prohibit the open distribution of ice by non-foodservice staff. This is because this is a wonderful medium to spread disease. The ice scoop must be stored outside the container in a clean closed container. Only the designated ice scoop can be used to get ice (How many times have you dipped your class into ice?) This is very unsanitary. Folks grabbing the ice scoop may not have clean hands. Ice can only be transported in specific containers designated for ice only and cleaned on a regular basis.
The funny thing is that food service staff are really no different than any other group of people. If you've ever worked in America's food service industry you'd know that sanitary conditions can vary wildly from location to location and employee to employee. Some employees will be safer than you. Others will be much more careless. Bureaucratic directives that ignore this rather simple reality don't make us any safer. Nor does the demand for fall-down ice machines. I've seen people shove nasty containers into and over the drop spout. How is that any better than using an ice scoop?
Then again, this directive apparently comes from the same regulatory agency can't seem to do squat to prevent American consumers from receiving potentially deadly spinach, tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, peanut butter, beef, chicken, eggs, etc. with e-coli, salmonella, listeria, botulism, etc.
Amtrak staff should absolutely be prevented from using unclean or malicious storage and handling methods, but beyond that it should be up to the consumer as to whether they're willing to accept the risks of self-service contamination. I feel the same way about providing a microwave or toaster oven.
There are many, many threads in this forum on why assigning coach seats on LD trains would not work very well.
Trains all over the world have assigned seating. Even
Amtrak has assigned seating. In the case of the sleepers they're assigned at booking. In the case of coach cars it's assigned at boarding; either by you or by the coach attendant. Once you are seated the first time that's your
assigned seat for the rest of the trip. Once you realize that this is true, it becomes much more difficult to make blanket statements about what can and cannot work with assigned seating.
The one thing some people want to change is for Amtrak to allow the assigning of coach seats
at booking. There is no technical reason I'm aware of that this could not be implemented. Would it be absolutely perfect? Of course not. Would it be a complete disaster? Not likely. But I suppose there would be a transition phase when people who don't like change would be surprised by something they're not familiar with. Or, in the case of New Yorkers, they might become needlessly belligerent and unruly toward the staff and fellow customers.
1) If a family books relatively late in the process, it might be impossible to seat them together. Not that this doesn't happen now (moreson on Regionals than on LD trains), but it would likely increase the chances as the "available" seats end up broken up...and you can't tell me that some folks won't be a bit snippier about moving from "their" reserved seat than they are now.
On airlines they don't generally assign every last seat at booking. Some seats are left unassigned and can be used to for last-minute bookings by groups. One of the things that has surprised me about AU is how little understanding there seems to be for how trains work in other countries, or how other forms of transit work right here at home.
2) As things stand, the OBS can get a list at the start of a trip and know, within a few people, how many riders will be going to a given destination. Knowing this, they can space passengers out so they don't have to check every car at every stop. A computer assignment can very easily make for utter chaos on that front and eliminate any such efforts and/or result in passengers missing stops.
Utter chaos simply from assigning seats at booking? You don't think that's a major overreaction?
hboy: :giggle:
