Originally Posted By virgojmk So sorry if this has been around before...we were scheduled to take Amtrak home from LAX(via Anaheim) to SJC, this morning, okay so we get to the ANA station and are told , THE UNION STATION TRAIN HAS BEEN CANCELLED SINCE JANUARY 19TH!!!!!!!!!! WHAT?, We were told that we were CALLED ON THURSDAY the 31st(at home, while we are away), HOW MANY DAYS IS THAT?????? HELLO ON VACATION DIDN'T CHECK HOME PHONE!!! AND 2 DAYS BEFORE DOESN'T HELP. We are traveling with a daughter that has austism,so we paid for a family bedroom on the train, the reason we paid more for the family car was to not disrupt people!!! Amtrak's alternative was a short train ride and then a long bus ride home( too much for a daughter with autism) We have an email into Amtrak, but they are saying for high volume(BIG SURPRISE!) they will get back to us in 4 weeks. We still ended up paying more, with the taxi ride, food, etc. Our whole point is that AmTrak isn't the greatest at communicating to customers that have paid for their tickets in advance, about things they know about ahead of time........... this was a big dissapointment, we were looking forward to the experience of the train ride as part of our vacation. We're home safe and that's all that matters. BUT we just wanted to give anybody else a "heads up", should they have any plans traveling with AMTRAK in the near future. FYI---JETBLUE WAS GREAT HELPING US OUT ON THIS ISSUE! SADLY,AFTER, TRAVELING CROSS COUNTRY ON AMTRAK, NEXT TIME, AMTRAK WILL NOT EVEN CONSIDERED
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I'm sorry your vacation was a hassle. I know Amtrak asks for both a phone and an alternate phone where you can be reached if there are problems with your reservation. I know at times that does no good because you don't know the phone where you will be at your destination. At any rate, the train service was discontinued because of massive mudslides over the tracks in Oregon. I'm sorry the weather inconvenienced you -- I'm sure it was a major inconvenience to Amtrak also. Trains, like autos, are subject to weather problems. Trains will go through snow most cars can't, but nothing can go through a mudslide. I love traveling by train. But if I absolutely, positively had to be somewhere at a certain time I would fly.
Originally Posted By virgojmk Totally understand about the weather. Our issue was they closed it on the 19th, why did it take so long to even try and call us? They did have our email as well, but nothing came thru. Even on the site they didn't do a press release until the 1st, I had check the site about 4pm and it wasn't on there then, but found it on the 2nd while waiting for our flight. And under our train status on the 1st it stated "scheduled to depart at 10:15, no further information at this time."looked on today's and it now saying there is a service disruption.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip My guess (and it is obviously nothing but a guess) is that they did not contact you sooner because they assumed that between January 19 and February 2 they would be able to restore service. They unfortunately waited until 48 hours before the scheduled departure to decide it just wasn't going to happen. I think they should have contacted you immediately and informed you of the situation. They could say that they hoped to have it resolved by 2/2, but there was no guarantee. That way you would have had time to make adjustments to your travel plans. As I said, I love traveling by trains. I think that the onboard train staff almost always provides great service. I haven't always had great experiences with Amtrak’s station staff though, so I guess in the end I’m not surprised by your experience.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan My one and only train excursion was this past summer on the Coast Starlight. Our train was 24 hours late arriving at our destination. Part of it was unavoidable, but we found the onboard staff aloof at best and downright unfriendly most of the time. They moved in slow motion, and seldom provided updated information about where we were at, how long it might take, etc. They weren't especially apologetic. From what I have seen, their customer service is abysmal. But again, that's just based on one roundtrip. I doubt I'd use them if I was on any type of limited time schedule.
Originally Posted By boyumz I can totally sympathize with you. See my post in Trip Reporting under "My Transportation Nightmare" for my issues with Amtrak. I don't think I will ever use them again when I need to be somewhere at a certain time!
Originally Posted By markymouse Not that it compares to virgo's last minute cancellation of an entire train, but I've experienced a bit of Amtrak "customer service" too. We were traveling from Denver to California in the winter through a mildly impressive snow storm. Partly making conversation, partly making sure we weren't in for some serious unpleasantness, I asked a crew member about getting stranded and how long they could feed us. She assured me if worse comes to worse "we've got cans of beef stew." OK. Not gourmet. But we won't starve. Well we weren't stranded exactly but we were delayed. Our train which should have arrived before supper was going to arrive around ten p.m. No big deal, right. We'll eat whatever is still in the pantry, or at worst, the beef stew. When I asked a crew member about dinner, I was told there wasn't one. Not the remotest hint of apology in her voice. The snack bar was open, so we bought sandwiches. As sleeper customers, our meals were supposed to be included, so I mentioned this to the guy working there. He was nice about it, but, not surprisingly, said that only applied to meals from the dining car. The dining car that wasn't serving. I know this has nothing to do with Disney. I wonder if there are regional differences with Amtrak. I've experienced great service on the Empire Builder (Chicago to Portland/Seattle) which felt very midwestern. And I've been disappointed too many times on California trains.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<I wonder if there are regional differences with Amtrak. I've experienced great service on the Empire Builder (Chicago to Portland/Seattle) which felt very midwestern.>> I think there is considerable difference. I've had excellent service on both the Empire Builder and the Capitol Limited (Chicago to Washington DC). I'm frankly very sad that the high level of service does not extend throughout Amtrak. For your train viewing pleasure... Southwest Chief and the Doobies. (Just because) <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtFJFrIaaM4" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v =ZtFJFrIaaM4</a>
Originally Posted By Mr X **Our train was 24 hours late arriving at our destination.** This just blows me away. Whatever sort of problems cause these "unavoidable" delays, they should be dealt with! Seems like it's simple incompetence, I can't believe it makes any sort of sense for there to EVER be a TWENTY-FOUR HOUR delay!
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<Whatever sort of problems cause these "unavoidable" delays, they should be dealt with!>> Mudslides and flooding... both relatively common on the West Coast, are unavoidable delays. There also is the problem with the Union Pacific tracks that Amtrak has to use. There are not in great shape, and the Union Pacific has been extremely stressed in recent years because of too few locomotives for their current level of business. This results at times in a freight sitting somewhere waiting for another locomotive while an Amtrak train also sits and waits because the freight has priority. Of course that type of garbage could be avoided if Amtrak could use its own track instead of renting it from the freight companies. But until Congress is willing to provide funding for passenger rail in the U.S. Amtrak must make do with what it has. I know people get frustrated with the problems, but Amtrak truly does outstanding job given the inadequate budget they are forced to deal with. Every other industrialized nation on earth supports rail transit. Why not the U.S.? Air travel in the U.S. gets massive subsidies by the national, state and local governments providing air traffic control and airport construction. If Amtrak could receive just a portion of that we could have passenger rail in the United States that would rival anything in the world. Instead Amtrak is forced to operate on a substance budget and the U.S. has passenger rail that rivals anything in Mexico. Passenger rail gets a huge number of cars off the road. Let’s face it… Amtrak is not going to take business travel away from the airlines… at least not on the long distance routes. Amtrak will get business from families taking vacations that would otherwise be traveling by personal automobile. The energy savings with passenger rail are considerable. Trains average about 42 passenger miles per gallon. If you are looking at Mom, Dad and a couple of kids that is 168 miles per gallon. Try getting that in your Prius. There is no excuse for the poor passenger rail service we have in the U.S. Contact your Congressional Representatives and Senators and tell them we want QUALITY long distance rail service in the U.S. Only a penny per gallon dedicated from the federal gas tax could provide us with the best system in the world. [Roadtrip steps off his soapbox]
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan It was in July. It wasn't a mudslide or bad weather. The train arrived in Sacramento late initially because it hit a man on the tracks in So. California. It ws understandable that this would cause a delay. The train arrived with a new crew 6 hours late. In the station, we weren't kept updated at all. Three people were working in the station overnight. Rarely did they make an announcement, but when they did, good luck understanding it over the muffled, ancient PA system. People would go up and ask for an update from tim to time. One woman finally got an update, turned and hollered it out to all of us like the town cryer. Once on board the train, the train crept along ever so slowly. The hours rolled by. I was one of the leaders with 30 Boy Scouts on this trip. Getting information from anyone on the train was like asking for state secrets. No one had any info. Where are we currently? "I dunno." How long til we get to our station? "No way to know." We decided to buy food for the boys since this was an unexpected expense. I went to the dining car and ordered 30 hamburgers. The guy looked like his head might explode. He had never heard of such a thing. He snapped and asked why we hadn't made reservations in teh dining car. I explained that we didn't want to cram up the extremely limited space with a bunch of scouts (there was another troop of scouts on board as well and had all 60 of us gone to the dining car for table service, all the other passenegrs would have been out of luck. Despite the constant lack of info, suddenly we passed a huge lake, and someone started filling us in on the history of the lake, the wildlife that inhabited it, on and on and on. While fascinating, we really wanted to know when we might get to our destination. The train crawled along. More hours ticked by. They made an announcement saying that, because of the delay, dinner would be provided free of charge. This was around 5PM. Other passengers got meals, but not any of us. Why? No clue. Suddenly, around 7PM, they announced we were two minutes from our station. We were snapped at by the guy in the baggage area of our car that he needed us to help, we had to "MOVE IT!" We were flinging gear off the train as fast as possibe, made to feel like us stopping here was REALLY throwing off their schedule. Going home, mercifully, we were only an hour late getting home. Sorry, RT. I can't get real excited about the "efficiency" of Amtrak.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan (I should add: The service of the Capitol Corridor from the Bay Area to Sacramento & back was most excellent. They come from some other Amtrak universe or something. Helpful, friendly, generally happy to have us on board.)
Originally Posted By Mr X **but Amtrak truly does outstanding job given the inadequate budget they are forced to deal with** I realize you enjoy Amtrak, but I just cannot see the label "outstanding" in reference to ANY transportation company that has such extreme delays. TWENTY-FOUR HOURS!? That's just ridiculous.
Originally Posted By Mr X **Where are we currently? "I dunno." How long til we get to our station? "No way to know."** Of course there should be a way to know! That's really pathetic. One of the nice things about trains here is that when there IS a rare delay (usually due to weather conditions or suicides), they update people VERY often on how long the delay is expected to take (gotta understand Japanese though). Every couple of minutes or so, in fact.
Originally Posted By jonvn OK, you can't go on Amtrak and expect, well, service. If you get some, that's great, but basically expect nothing, and you won't be disappointed. It's been like this for years. Trains are always late. Always. Be happy there is any passenger rail service in this country at all, because it is not profitable, and survives only because it is federally subsidized. Even that subsidy is constanly under attack as wasteful spending.
Originally Posted By RoadTrip <<Of course there should be a way to know!>> Well, actually there isn't. Since Amtrak plays second-fiddle to the freight trains using the same lines, and they really have no idea how much the freights may or may not delay them. All they can do is guess, and of course passengers don't like B.S. information. So instead of making up crap to tell to the passengers, they tell the truth. They just don't freaking know.
Originally Posted By sherrytodd <<<This results at times in a freight sitting somewhere waiting for another locomotive while an Amtrak train also sits and waits because the freight has priority.>>> My husband works for Union Pacific. Amtrak always has priority over freight. If there is a delay it is only to get a freight train into a siding to allow Amtrak to pass. They will always stop freight to give priority to Amtrak. They will even stop the Ski Train to Winter Park if the Colorado Zepher has left. The track is not all owned by Union Pacific. As you travel from Denver to California you pass in and out of track that is owned and controled by many different companies. As trains enter each, they have to communicate with a seperate controler and get a track warrent to enter and each section may have seperate track rules. It is a real cluster you know what out there. Those train controlers are just as stressed out as air traffic controlers. And then of course there is always the problems with derails which happen far more frequently then people really know. You see the big ones on the news with the multi cars piled up on each other, but most of the time it is just a few cars that jump a track and doesn't cause the death and distruction to make the evening news. Freight trains are going off the tracks every day and this causes problems and delays on the tracks as the cars have to be realigned and the tracks are constantly being repaired. Then just the nature of the terrain in the Western US is very prone to rock slides and errosion causing further damage to tracks. Of course there is the usual corporate budget cuts in maintenance, understaffing, running freight trains so long that it makes them more prone to derail, blah blah blah...
Originally Posted By Mr X **Well, actually there isn't. Since Amtrak plays second-fiddle to the freight trains using the same lines, and they really have no idea how much the freights may or may not delay them.** Obviously then the relationship between the freight companies and Amtrak need significant improvement! There really isn't any reason why the schedules can't all be coordinated...I see it with my own eyes every day! (they run freight trains on all the subway and train tracks in Japan too, with the exception of the dedicated bullet train lines...and somehow all that scheduling works out)
Originally Posted By sherrytodd OK, let me put it this way. A loaded freight train travels on average about 18 miles an hour. The fastest they can travel on a straight away is about 40. Amtrak can travel upwards of 80 miles an hour. If they are putting the freight trains in front of the Amtrak trains it would take you a LONG time to get to your destination as you would be puttering along behind a freight train at 18 miles an hour.
