Disabled Coach passenger meals

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Everydaymatters

Engineer
Joined
May 15, 2006
Messages
3,406
Location
Just North of Normal, Illinois
A few months ago I called AGR for a long distance coach reservation. I knew I would need meals at my seat and told the agent. The agent I spoke to said he "refused" to do this and switched me over to another agent. His exact words were "I refuse to have anything to do with this". He switched me over to another agent. I had no problem on that trip, but on other LD trips I have taken in the lower level, the TA never appeared during the entire trip. I am wondering if there is a provision in the reservation process where a coach pax can be noted to requiring meals at their seat???
 
Pre-pandemic, I did a day trip between Orlando & Tampa, reserving the wheelchair space and the adjacent seat, On the way down, the TA seemed surprised but there was no problem. But on the way back, he had seated someone else in the companion seat and had filled the wheelchair space with luggage. The lady in the seat (who had mobility issues but was not in a chair) refused to move. After a bit of a kerfuffle, the TA found her a seat in the other coach and had to find someplace else for all the large luggage he'd stowed in the wheelchair space. The conductor was not happy with the TA holding up the train's departure.

So either TA's don't get advance info about disabled passengers, or they pay little attention to it.

I should add that this TA was not at all a slacker. He was constantly on the move, chatting with passengers and asking if they needed anything.
 
Pre-pandemic, I did a day trip between Orlando & Tampa, reserving the wheelchair space and the adjacent seat, On the way down, the TA seemed surprised but there was no problem. But on the way back, he had seated someone else in the companion seat and had filled the wheelchair space with luggage. The lady in the seat (who had mobility issues but was not in a chair) refused to move. After a bit of a kerfuffle, the TA found her a seat in the other coach and had to find someplace else for all the large luggage he'd stowed in the wheelchair space. The conductor was not happy with the TA holding up the train's departure.

So either TA's don't get advance info about disabled passengers, or they pay little attention to it.

I should add that this TA was not at all a slacker. He was constantly on the move, chatting with passengers and asking if they needed anything.

Whenever you make a reservation, and you include a “Special Service Request”, if you or the booking agent enters that correctly, it automatically is added to your train’s manifest, which is given to the train conductor, and sometimes to the specific train attendants that serve the passengers.
Possibly it was not put on the reservation, or the crew didn’t get the manifest. Or didn’t see it.🤷‍♂️
 
Whenever you make a reservation, and you include a “Special Service Request”, if you or the booking agent enters that correctly, it automatically is added to your train’s manifest, which is given to the train conductor, and sometimes to the specific train attendants that serve the passengers.
Possibly it was not put on the reservation, or the crew didn’t get the manifest. Or didn’t see it.🤷‍♂️
Or the conductor had it on the manifest, but didn't communicate with the coach attendant -- who is the one that really needs the info, since he's the one seating and assisting the passengers.
 
I believe that legally the coach attendant (or someone else I guess would be a conductor on a regional train) under the ADA is required to serve you at your seat if you're in a wheelchair unless your riding a train like Amtrak Cascades where the vestibules are designed for a wheelchair to be able to roll between cars and go up the Café car counter themselves. Otherwise wheelchair customers are being denied amenities (food) that are accessible to able bodied passengers. This is a reasonable accommodation that Amtrak has to make.

I would defiantly report any ride where the attendant refused to bring you food as an ADA complaint.
 
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The official Amtrak rule, *and* the ADA legal requirement (because you never know who has invisible mobility impairments) is that any passenger, upon request, can have food brought to their seat. Most attendants are pretty good about it, though some do forget to check on the passengers in the lower level. If an attendant's a jerk about it, report them.

You can have your needs put on your ticket by the agent on the phone. However, there's a long track record of those needs never getting communicated to the attendant, so you have to tell everything to the attendant all over again when you get to the train. Solving this particular consistent communications breakdown at Amtrak is way above my pay grade, so all I can do is warn about it. :rolleyes:
 
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