Amtrak booking website/issues/timetables removed

[Mystic River Dragon]

I bought my tickets for next weeks trip at my local station from an agent last month.

I've always purchased tickets in person just to let Amtrak know an agent is needed at this station.

I agree with you. I have always done as much as possible in person, rather than on the phone or computer. This year of course was different— it will be nice to be able to get back to talking to an agent in person again.

 

[zephyr17]

Every iteration seems to make their POS website worse. Less information, fewer options.

Now it appears they are trying pretty hard to hide the breakout between accommodation charges and rail fares.

Plus fewer routing options without going into multi-city mode.

 

[pennyk]

I just purchased tickets for an upcoming trip to NYC. I checked the price on the website, then called to speak to an agent (SE AGR) since I wanted to pick my rooms. I had an excellent agent who was willing and able to give me the rooms of my choice without charging more. I placed a seven day hold because I had a transportation voucher and thought I had to speak to CR to redeem it. Today I phoned back and before connecting me with CR, the AGR agent said she could apply my transportation voucher. My phone calls with the 2 agents went well and both agents were quite efficient. The fare on the website was what I paid. I am looking forward to my first overnight train trip in almost a year and a half.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I've had the same Good expierience on both my AGR trips this past month, even had the 2nd Agent offer me a change in Rooms to a "Better "Room than I requested, and received the New e-mail with my pdf in 1 minute!

 

[desertflyer]

Trying to book a Roomette OKJ-PDX round trip and paying Amtrak $648 each way for the pleasure, but the website keeps erroring out after the payment portion (i.e. the very last page). I have tried booking with points, with my partner's account, with oneway/roundtrip, mixing endpoints slightly (EMY-PDX) but nothing has been working. It's been 48 hours, tried to call Amtrak twice and gave up after 30 minutes.

I know a lot of people have trouble with the website and Arrow. Anyone else have this or similar issues?

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Have you tried the phone app? Not saying it will work but it's an option you did not seem to mention.

 

[desertflyer]

Thank you for the suggestion. I did try the app as well for all of the combinations I mentioned above. I think I'll try it again just to be sure. I have a feeling there are no roomettes available on either 11 or 14 for the dates I need and that the booking engine has a bug for whatever reason.

 

[John Bobinyec]

It seems obvious that they did not put their upgraded website in front of a usability group for evaluation before they released it. The old website used to present more information with fewer clicks, but required more scrolling. Now more choices have to be made to get the same information, but it's not obvious what you are supposed to do next. Sometimes little onscreen instructions such as , "Choose one of these fares", would go a long way to guide the user to the goal line.

jb

 

[PaTrainFan]

Unless I am missing something, it appears that ALL .pdf schedules are gone from the website, which is asinine. They are useful tools. When I am traveling, I want to keep up with the stop, even if the .pdf is stored on my phone.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Unless I am missing something, it appears that ALL .pdf schedules are gone from the website, which is asinine. They are useful tools. When I am traveling, I want to keep up with the stop, even if the .pdf is stored on my phone.

https://www.amtrak.com/routes.htmlclick on the route you're interested in and then click on the schedule button

 

[neroden]

Verified. I have written an angry letter to Roger Harris, Amtrak's supposed Marketing Officer, and cc:ed Jim Matthews of the RPA.

I am going to raise holy hell about this, one way or another. Everyone, make as much noise as you can about this. Complain to every Amtrak contact you have, and to your Congresspeople. ***Every other passenger rail operation in the country publishes their timetable***, including commuter rail and subways.

RPA's next Congressional ask may include a federal mandate that Amtrak publish its timetables, at this rate.

Edit: it may be under "routes", but ***it isn't under Schedules***. That's enough to justify an angry letter to the marketing officer.

And "Valley Flyer" has no schedule. (If you're a genius, you'll figure out to look under "Vermonter"?!?!?)

This tells me this is probably part of a deliberate attempt to hide, conceal, and remove the schedules.

 

[PaTrainFan]

https://www.amtrak.com/routes.htmlclick on the route you're interested in and then click on the schedule button

Alrighty then. Thank you. A roundabout way to get to them, but they are there. I don't know why Amtrak can't use a direct link from the homepage.

 

[Devil's Advocate]

Thank you for the suggestion. I did try the app as well for all of the combinations I mentioned above. I think I'll try it again just to be sure. I have a feeling there are no roomettes available on either 11 or 14 for the dates I need and that the booking engine has a bug for whatever reason.

I've seen the website hang up when it was nearly out of rooms and was trying to merge two different compartments into a combined booking. The only way around this was to try to guess where the switch needed to occur and book it in two pieces or call and have the room switch merged into a single ticket by the call center. If that's the case and you're able to book it manually you'll want to alert the SCA on boarding so they can try to minimize the impact.

 

[neroden]

Alrighty then. Thank you. A roundabout way to get to them, but they are there. I don't know why Amtrak can't use a direct link from the homepage.

Because someone is either trying to drive away business or is grossly incompetent. As I say, I'm going to raise holy hell.

I was already answering multiple people per day on various Amtrak groups who couldn't figure out what their options were by pointing them to the page of all the PDF timetables. (It was already too well hidden.) With each PDF scattered behind other pages, I can't even do that anymore.

Of the people who give up due to lack of timetables, only a fraction will go to railfan sites to ask more questions. Amtrak is clearly losing dozens of customers daily -- trips not taken, reservations not made -- because of this asininity. So I think it's time to raise a fuss about it.

 

[zephyr17]

Every iteration of the website gets worse.

And they F'd with it yet again. Up until a few days ago you could get to the download all schedules link from the schedules tab. Now that is gone. As noted, you can get to the PDFs from the destinations tab in a roundabout fashion.

Now the old download schedule page since COVID actually had PDFs available only for the long distance trains and maybe the NEC (don't use the NEC much so never had a reason to click on it). Picking one of the state supported corridors gave you a message that the schedules had changed due to COVID and to use the schedules tab. Which was at least honest. For the Cascades (which I had ridden fairly frequently, pre-COVID), from Destinations, I do get a PDF schedule. An old PDF schedule from pre-COVID dated February 18th, 2020. which shows 4 Cascades between Seattle and Portland and Vancouver service intact. That does not reflect the current service levels at all (1 Seattle-Portland-Eugene round trip, no rail service north of Seattle. Moving to 2 Seattle-Portland-Eugene round trips and 1 Seattle-Portland round trip on May 24th. Still no rail service north of Seattle).

As bad as it is, no information and redirecting you to the schedule tab is better than wrong information.

The long distance PDF schedules I looked at still show 3 days a week. The Crescent still shows its current schedule, with the 7:00 am New Orleans departure. In the past with an upcoming schedule change, the old Schedules page typically would have links to both the current and the upcoming schedules, like with separate links for "until 6/4/2021" and "after 6/5/2021".

Amtrak has made yet another complete mess of this. Inaccurate schedules that are hard to get to. Whoever is in charge of managing their web presence is an imbecile. Good for you, Neroden, you are absolutely right.

 

[pennyk]

MODERATOR NOTE: There were 2 threads on the topic of the Amtrak booking website. We have merged those 2 threads.

 

[EchoSierra]

Under "Schedules" there was a link to downloadable timetables, but that link is now gone. Going directly to the schedules and timetables page also yields a page that isn't very useful.

What happened? Is Amtrak working on new timetables right now? Or are they not going to publish them anymore so that they can change schedules on the fly?

 

[fdaley]

Weird. That link was there a couple of days ago, and now it's just gone. And for longer routes, there's no way to print or even display anything that would show you all of the intermediate stops at one glance.

 

[EchoSierra]

If I search up the names of the trains/services on Google, it still brings me to a page for the train/service where I can click Schedule to get the 2020 timetable.

Reading one where it has "Will Not Operate" dates, I think they removed them from the front of the website until they can publish new schedules (probably in conjunction with the return of daily long distance trains) because the "Will Not Operate" dates don't make it clear that those dates are for 2020 only, and they don't want to confuse anyone, especially since a major holiday (Memorial Day) is coming up.

 

[JontyMort]

If I search up the names of the trains/services on Google, it still brings me to a page for the train/service where I can click Schedule to get the 2020 timetable.

Reading one where it has "Will Not Operate" dates, I think they removed them from the front of the website until they can publish new schedules (probably in conjunction with the return of daily long distance trains) because the "Will Not Operate" dates don't make it clear that those dates are for 2020 only, and they don't want to confuse anyone, especially since a major holiday (Memorial Day) is coming up.

I think that is the most likely explanation. I don’t think - for example - that they ever got round to putting up the “Covid-reduced” timetable for the NEC, and you have to rely on the dreaded journey planners. Let’s hope they put them up again after the return to full service. There is no substitute for a proper timetable, as it contains information - distances and intermediate stops, for example - that are not otherwise apparent.

 

[WWW]

May be down for housekeeping maintenance schedule refinements - check back later - - -

In the mean time I use an alternate method:

In lieu of a printed schedule
(I saved a copy of the paper bible once published)
I use this LINK:

http://dixielandsoftware.net/cgi-bin/getmap.pl?mapname=West
In the upper right corner the country is divided into 6 sectors
Mouse onto one of the sectors and click
Brings all the current trains in that sector
Click on one of the numbered trains

You will have three options to work with:

MAP (Blue Icon) - shows present position of the train and speed details

DETAILS (Red Icon) - shows the entire history of trip arrival departure timeliness
The three letter station code and stop identified with it.

Note the color graphics indicating that timeliness
Green - on time or within 30 minutes
Yellow - within 1 hour
Red - more than an hour
BLACK - certainly not in the red OVER 4 hours late

If you scroll to the bottom you can see the progress of that train click on one
of the circles to see the speed at that point.
HINT - zoom in to spread the circles apart

FORMATTED DATA (Blue arrow) - this is what you are presently looking at -
Click on the blue arrow for a different version of the data

Sadly the delays do not indicate the REASON !

AND this is only for the current day train NOT a schedule for a future date -
for daily trains not so much a problem - for those infrequent opts no train
in view not operating that day time.

 

[neroden]

I'm going to be busy with paperwork because my girlfriend's mother just died. But I am following up on this with Rail Passengers Association, where I have contacts. If you want to help advocate for Amtrak to be Less Stupid, please join RPA if you haven't already. They've been more effective than anyone else so far. ( railpassengers.org )

If anyone else wants to put together a group signed letter about this, obviously, I'm in.

 

[user 1215]

I was able to find most of the PDF timetables (except for Acela between NYP and BOS) just last week. Today I can't find them online at all.

Not gonna lie. Really no desire to ride the train any more. Partly because I've moved to a city without a station, but mostly because of a complete lack of desire to subject myself to their self-imploding service.

 

[Eric S]

Verified. I have written an angry letter to Roger Harris, Amtrak's supposed Marketing Officer, and cc:ed Jim Matthews of the RPA.

I am going to raise holy hell about this, one way or another. Everyone, make as much noise as you can about this. Complain to every Amtrak contact you have, and to your Congresspeople. ***Every other passenger rail operation in the country publishes their timetable***, including commuter rail and subways.

RPA's next Congressional ask may include a federal mandate that Amtrak publish its timetables, at this rate.

Edit: it may be under "routes", but ***it isn't under Schedules***. That's enough to justify an angry letter to the marketing officer.

And "Valley Flyer" has no schedule. (If you're a genius, you'll figure out to look under "Vermonter"?!?!?)

This tells me this is probably part of a deliberate attempt to hide, conceal, and remove the schedules.

This has always been a frustration of mine. Looking for the schedule of the Wolverines? Check Michigan services. Lincolns? Check Illinois/Missouri services. And the different Northeast schedules have to be confusing to less-informed folks.

 

[niemi24s]

This link will get you to the current Covid schedules... Amtrak Routes & Stations ... if you first click View Details and then Schedule on the new page.

For the previous daily timetables, try this one... Train Schedules & Timetables | Amtrak ... after scrolling down past the three pretty pictures.

But who knows how long these will work or what will happen when daily service returns in a few weeks. I anticipate a genuine circle-jerk!