Post by LoveTrains on Jul 20, 2012 13:29:04 GMT -5
I can't believe I am about to defend amtrak after suffering through a 30 hour delay, but in their defense, the freight companies own 90% of the railroad track in this country. Amtrak was formed in 1971 when the freight companies - who did want to run passenger trains anymore - relinquished the right to run passenger trains to amtrak. Amtrak is a corporation that actually has stock - but the stock is mostly owned by the federal government.
In any case, the derailment that held up my train happened along a stretch of single track. 17 cars derailed, some filled with hazardous materials, and there was a fire so large that it is also shut down a section of highway that runs along the tracks in Montana. BNSF, the owner of the tracks, immediately sent in crews. They cleared the wreckage and reopened the track in about 36 hours with people working around the clock. When you have a huge derailment like that, it is not amtrak's fault.
What was amtrak's fault - however - was the poor handling of the situation from the perspective of the passengers. They didn't have enough buses to transport us all around the derailment site, so they had to do multiple runs of the buses which took approximately 5 hours, instead of 1.5 hours. Then our crew timed out - federal regulations state that the engineer can only work for 12 hours driving the train.
So the reason that train travel in this country sucks is 100% due to the freight companies. They own the tracks and they control the dispatching. So when they have an important freight train, they put the amtrak train on a siding while the freight train goes past. Much of this country is single track, which means that trains going in opposite directions have to wait on a siding while the track on the main line passes it by.
I agree that a long delay is unacceptable. But this was really an outlier in regards to the length of delay, and again, amtrak is in no way, shape or form responsible for a freight derailment. In some ways it is also not their fault when the freight companies have signal problems (common occurence due to storms and requires slow orders), or there are heat kinks in the tracks (anytime it is over 90*) and the train has also been given slow orders. These are all things that are 100% controlled by the freight companies, on whose tracks amtrak runs.
the only place where amtrak actually controls the tracks and owns them is the north east corridor between Boston and Washington, DC. And of course one can expect the train to be 90% on time there.
So in this country, where we have a system where the freight companies rule the rails, delays are a matter of fact when traveling cross country. If you are not prepared for that, don't take amtrak.