Amtrak Asks Two People Who Use Wheelchairs To Pay $25,000 For A Ride (NPR 1/17/20)

[Thirdrail7]

That can’t be true, because the solution was for 3 to ride the train, and 2 to ride in a chartered van. The 3 riding the train would still be in separate cars. They just wanted to all ride on the same train.

Not initially, which is why they called the group desk. They initially wanted to get grouped together but somehow that was all forgotten.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

Not initially, which is why they called the group desk.

Well, it’s reasonable to request that a group could sit together in the same car. So sure I can see that request being made. But even when they had to split up the group among 3 train cars and a van they were still planning on taking the train.

 

[Thirdrail7]

Well, it’s reasonable to request that a group could sit together in the same car. So sure I can see that request being made. But even when they had to split up the group among 3 train cars and a van they were still planning on taking the train.

It is reasonable to request to sit together but it comes with a cost and that is the basis of this conversation. What exactly is "reasonable accommodation" and when is it fulfilled?

Is it reasonable to have to alter cars to accommodate the requests? If they wanted to ride in sleepers, is it reasonable to alter them and therefore make them unavailable to others? If additional equipment needed to be added, as it reasonable to charge them the costs or is there a fare splitting ratio?

This wasn't an issue in the past but you have a "for-profit" CEO that has passed the costs on to everyone else, and they had to accept it or do without it.

Who will cover the costs? Will Congress?

 

[crescent-zephyr]

Amtrak didn’t say in order to ride in the same car it costs $25k, in order for all 5 to ride the same train it would cost $25k.

At least that’s my understanding from what I’ve read.

Even then you’d need someone more familiar with ADA law than you or me to determine what is reasonable accommodation.

In the case of sleepers... Amtrak doesn’t have spares, they would have literally had to pull sleepers off of other trains which in turn would have been telling other Ada customers they can’t ride.... so that’s definitely not reasonable.

Is altering a coach reasonable? I don’t know. It does seem to be right on the line.

 

[jis]

It is reasonable to request to sit together but it comes with a cost and that is the basis of this conversation. What exactly is "reasonable accommodation" and when is it fulfilled?

Is it reasonable to have to alter cars to accommodate the requests? If they wanted to ride in sleepers, is it reasonable to alter them and therefore make them unavailable to others? If additional equipment needed to be added, as it reasonable to charge them the costs or is there a fare splitting ratio?

This wasn't an issue in the past but you have a "for-profit" CEO that has passed the costs on to everyone else, and they had to accept it or do without it.

Who will cover the costs? Will Congress?

These are exactly the issues that came to my mind, and I am still not convinced that the unconditional fulfillment of that request irrespective of cost is what ADA means by "reasonable accommodation". If it does then IMHO it is utterly wrong headed. Hey I am entitled to an opinion like everyone else

 

[neroden]

The sad thing is that sometimes an unintended consequence of such things turns out to be service discontinuance. I am hoping it won’t come to that and Ms. Duckworth will make sure that Congress appropriates adequate funds for Amtrak to serve ADA customers at the level that everyone appears to desire.

ADA has been law of the land since 1990. There is no excuse for Amtrak's behavior.

The ADA regulations for train cars are in the midst of being updated. The current regulations say that each intercity (Amtrak) car should have either 1 or 2 wheelchair spaces. The new regulations are almost certainly going to say that each car should have a minimum of 2 spaces, plus additional seats which can be readily reconfigured.

Currently Amtrak has only one wheelchair space per car. This is error.

If Amtrak were run by competent people, which it is not, it would already have two wheelchair spaces in each car. The Illinois service trains practically never fill up, so this wouldn't actually lose them much of any revenue -- maybe 6 seat tickets on the 5 busiest days of the year, so maybe 30 * $100 = $3000/year or something, and that is a high estimate. Of course there would be additional wheelchair ticket sales to compensate for this.

Amtrak trains practically never fill up period. The staff routinely reserve seats for their own usage, which means the train isn't full; only on *extremely* rare occasions have I ever seen an Amtrak train *actually* full, notably the day before Thanksgiving. I did see an Empire Service train overbooked between ALB and SDY, but they didn't fill all the cafe car seats, so again, not actually full. They should just have two spaces per car permanently.

As it turned out, there were actually more than 6 wheelchair users who wanted to go to the same conference, so even with two spaces per car it would have required some reconfiguration. With the track seating in most cars, the cost of removing a few seats from one car and putting them back in later is low -- it is no more than an hour's work to remove or reattach (I have seen it done more quickly than that). Amtrak could probably have reasonably charged a fee of a few hundred dollars, but not $25,000, which is obviously unreasonable and criminal.

 

[neroden]

Also of note the train had extra staff assigned to assist these passengers both enroute and at the station.

Seem like this is the new Amtrak. Do something dumb than regroup and do something dumber.

Still available for the CEO job, not hard to do better.

I also offer to do Amtrak's CEO job, because likewise, it's impossible to do much worse than Mr. Anderson. At least, unlike him, I (a) understand how to comply with the ADA, (b) actually understand accounting, and (c) actually ride trains.

 

[neroden]

This is where I expect Mr. Anderson to play hardball.

That would be super dumb of him. He's on thin ice already, pretty close to getting fired for cause, something which never looks good on a resume.

He's not going to.

Congress will be happy to fire Mr. Anderson if he continues to act like an entitled idiot. They are his bosses.

At the moment, it looks like he recognized that this particular move was a serious screwup, and is backpedaling as fast as possible to minimize the amount of resulting micromanagment which he will get hit with.

The actual followup is that Duckworth and two other Illinois Congressmen have demanded an Amtrak ADA coordinator who reports directly to Anderson, *and* an Amtrak Board member representing the disability community. These are good things, of course. But they are also more micromanagement of Mr. Anderson. If he doesn't stop acting brain-damaged, he will end up with absolutely no freedom of action at Amtrak.

(Press release about the letter requesting these two changes:

https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/ne...-and-reliable-for-customers-with-disabilities

Download letter:
https://www.duckworth.senate.gov/download/01/27/2020/letter-to-amtrak-ceo&download=1 )

 

[jis]

I strongly suspect Congress will do nothing until after the election unless they actually get around to doing a new Surf Transp Authorization. If not, they will probably extend the duration of the FAST Act by a year instead of actually working on a new Surface Transport Authorization. I also suspect and hope that Anderson will not seek a new contract when his current contract expires this year. I also doubt that Anderson gives a rat's rear end about what shows up in his resume anymore. He is retired with a boat load of money, doesn't really need a job, and is just opportunistically doing stuff for fun. I must admit he does seem to have an odd sense of what "fun" is, but being a CEO forever can oddly affects ones senses I suppose

 

[neroden]

Duckworth cares enough about this that she's willing to put a rider in a "must pass" budget bill, and she can. I expect her to.

 

[jis]

The odd thing about Anderson is that such a thing won't bug him at all. He will go ahead and implement the law and cut something else which we can moan about for the rest of 2020 and beyond.

 

[Thirdrail7]

I've seen the letters and it still means very little.

That would be super dumb of him. He's on thin ice already, pretty close to getting fired for cause, something which never looks good on a resume.

He's not going to.

Congress will be happy to fire Mr. Anderson if he continues to act like an entitled idiot. They are his bosses.

What impact does anything you mentioned have on an almost 65-year-old MILLIONAIRE that wasn't politically appointed, who is probably leaving next year anyway, has a salary of $1 and probably has already collected large amounts of his bonuses? Do you really think he cares about being fired, particularly at a time when he can point to the "numbers?"

It is true that he's been forced to comply with what Congress puts into law.

Reinstating staff in certain stations.
Clarifying the redeployment of the police.
Reinstating the Veteran's discount.
Committed to operating the SW Chief...for a while.


However, he's also ignored a lot of congressional input.

Toys-For-Tots.
Riverside Call Center.
Private Car restrictions.
Refused to assist Maine in extending a train.
Received money to operate the SW Chief....for now.

That's what makes him unpredictable. What does he really have to lose?

 

[neroden]

Depends what he cares about. What he has to lose is his reputation. He's losing it fast. Maybe he doesn't care about leaving in a cloud of shame and disgrace. A lot of people do -- after a certain point of money, reputation starts being the thing many people care about, because it's *much harder to earn and maintain*.

He won't be able to point to "the numbers" given that Amtrak's accounting has already been exposed as phony, *to his bosses in Congress*, and there's a pretty major push on this point right now.

 

[jis]

Depends what he cares about. What he has to lose is his reputation. He's losing it fast. Maybe he doesn't care about leaving in a cloud of shame and disgrace. A lot of people do -- after a certain point of money, reputation starts being the thing many people care about, because it's *much harder to earn and maintain*.

He won't be able to point to "the numbers" given that Amtrak's accounting has already been exposed as phony, *to his bosses in Congress*, and there's a pretty major push on this point right now.

I am afraid you may be living in your own rosy bubble on some of these things. I am not as convinced as you seem to be that anything major will come of the so called accounting push in short order. Maybe eventually, but long after Anderson is gone. In any case, the argument is mostly about allocations to various buckets. The top line and bottom line are not really affected by all that. The total cost number and revenue and income numbers are hardly likely to change a lot. It is basically rearranging the deck chairs exercise IMHO, which of course affects which chairs go into the drink first, but eventually all do.

 

[neroden]

Amtrak doesn't even really report full bottom line or top line numbers, since half the budget is "off budget" over on the capital projects department. As for operations, Anderson's made a bunch of moves which cause revenue to drop faster than costs; it'll show. Already showing in places.

 

[Barb Stout]

Neroden wrote "Currently Amtrak has only one wheelchair space per car. This is error." I would have sworn that I have seen 2 people in wheelchairs in 1 car on the SWC. I am absent-minded, so it's possible that I created a false memory, but other times that I have ridden the SWC, there seems to be so much space in the lower car that I would be very surprised if it couldn't hold 2 people in their wheelchairs. That's one of the biggest draws to me of Amtrak: all that luscious space! Yum!

It is interesting how different people read the same report and get different things out of it. I too assumed "traveling together" meant traveling on the same train, but not necessarily the same car, especially because they then discuss the drawbacks of taking an earlier or later train in addition to the desired train.

 

[Eric S]

Neroden wrote "Currently Amtrak has only one wheelchair space per car. This is error." I would have sworn that I have seen 2 people in wheelchairs in 1 car on the SWC. I am absent-minded, so it's possible that I created a false memory, but other times that I have ridden the SWC, there seems to be so much space in the lower car that I would be very surprised if it couldn't hold 2 people in their wheelchairs. That's one of the biggest draws to me of Amtrak: all that luscious space! Yum!

It is interesting how different people read the same report and get different things out of it. I too assumed "traveling together" meant traveling on the same train, but not necessarily the same car, especially because they then discuss the drawbacks of taking an earlier or later train in addition to the desired train.

Bilevel Superliner cars (as are used on the Southwest Chief) have different wheelchair space allocations and configurations than single-level Amfleet and Horizon cars (as are used on the Lincoln trains in question).

 

[me_little_me]

If both apples and ice cream had to follow ADA laws... not sure what the point of that comment is?

I was referring to the comment about small businesses that can't afford ADA bathrooms. Yes, they have to follow the laws (and I agree with that law) but it can be a significant burden. For Amtrak, the burden is much less proportional to obey the law. They also have the money to think of alternative solutions - such as having a few removable seats or just biting the bullet to set up 2 wheelchair areas for cars, etc.

Heck, their poor accommodation for loading handicapped (not just wheelchair) people at stations really sucks. They don't even let people know where to wait to board at many stations so handicapped people may be forced to walk long distances (or even attempt to run) at the last minute when the train arrives. Unacceptable stupidity.

 

[neroden]

Neroden wrote "Currently Amtrak has only one wheelchair space per car. This is error." I would have sworn that I have seen 2 people in wheelchairs in 1 car on the SWC. I am absent-minded, so it's possible that I created a false memory, but other times that I have ridden the SWC, there seems to be so much space in the lower car that I would be very surprised if it couldn't hold 2 people in their wheelchairs. That's one of the biggest draws to me of Amtrak: all that luscious space! Yum!

It is interesting how different people read the same report and get different things out of it. I too assumed "traveling together" meant traveling on the same train, but not necessarily the same car, especially because they then discuss the drawbacks of taking an earlier or later train in addition to the desired train.

I was referring to the Illinois service trains, which have only one space per car. You are right that the SWC has two (as it should!)