Amtrak Communications, Still Subpar

[peconicstation]

Saturday, April 4th, was not a good day for the northern leg of the NEC, and poor communications (and a few toher things) just made a bad situation worse.

We were taking our usual trip from New London to Boston on train 150, (returning on 167) and all was well until we got to Providence.

At that station we were told that due to a fire along the tracks in Boston we would have to detrain and take the MBTA commuter rail train since

the commuter rail train could bypass the section of the NEC where the fire was. The fire itself was along the tracks in the Forest Hill section of Boston.

The commuter rail train did what it could and got us to Boston just before 1:00 (as opposed to just after 11:00). The train train took the Fairmont line,

something that Amtrak could only due with a diesel engine.

Now for the communications breakdown.

Train 150 had many people travelling for the day (there was also a large convention in town), and with word that the fire was out, we were trying to get a handle on what were the plans for the afternoon. Calling the 800 number, using the Amtrak mobile device, or using Julie prooved fruitless, in fact according to the mobile device train 150 was only delayed 50 minutes into Boston (when we finallly arived on commuter rail, that train set still had not made it, but was expected as the 1:40 southbound regional showed it would depart on-time). No one in the call center knew of these disruptions, until I insisted they check, and after being on hold for about 15 minutes they came back to say, oh yeah there will be delays).

Planning for our return on 167, the 4:40 out of Back Bay, the call center knew NOTHING about the status of the train, nor did the Amtrak ticket clerks at Back Bay (and yes, the Amtrak ticket counter is open again at Back Bay). The departure board only showed that the train was delayed.

Happily the train arrived at about 5:00, and got us back to New London just in time to make our ferry.

In this day and age of communication, how is it that Amtraks call center is so poorly informed of disriptions, and status ??

..........and it gets better when we boarded train 150 at New London, the conductor never checked the tickets of passengers from there and north, so our reservation wound up showing as a forfeit. That same conductor tried scanning my ticket for the return, and said, gee this is a problem.

He realized that I had a ticket, so he let us travel (I said nothing to him about it being his fault).

When I got home, I had an email from Amtrak telling me that my reservation (and payment) was forefited, it took over 30 minutes with the call center

to get that corrected, but I did.

Not a good day.

Kudos to the Commuter Rail crew for accomidating a full Amtrak train, as well as it's own passengers, and they were trying to get information for us.

It is also worth noting that the T had extra staff at Back Bay to deal with confused passengers, and direct them.

Why didn't AMTRAK do the same ????????, and if they did have extra people at South Station, and not at Back Bay, that is 100%

not acceptable.

Ken

 

[Triley]

Just so you know, Keolis had a HORRIBLE winter with many trains not running (did you notice the banners around the station stating all service was brought back, as of only about a week and a half ago?), and all the T employees in the waiting area is merely an attempt at raising customer service levels to make up for the issues of the winter service issues. They are there seven days a week.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

Until Amtrak gets everything on the same page regarding these Scanners and Conductors not doing a consistant job of actually SEEING every pax when they lift tickets, this automatic cancellation business needs to be put on hold.

 

[peconicstation]

Just so you know, Keolis had a HORRIBLE winter with many trains not running (did you notice the banners around the station stating all service was brought back, as of only about a week and a half ago?), and all the T employees in the waiting area is merely an attempt at raising customer service levels to make up for the issues of the winter service issues. They are there seven days a week.

Not to be a jerk, but no kidding that the T had a horrible winter. That said the personnel that the T had on hand yesterday, were addressing the issues related to the fire, and how

it was affecting the riders. Amtrak MUST be nimble enough to dispatch staff to major station when dispruptions like Saturday's occur.

Ken

 

[Triley]

Just so you know, Keolis had a HORRIBLE winter with many trains not running (did you notice the banners around the station stating all service was brought back, as of only about a week and a half ago?), and all the T employees in the waiting area is merely an attempt at raising customer service levels to make up for the issues of the winter service issues. They are there seven days a week.

Not to be a jerk, but no kidding that the T had a horrible winter. That said the personnel that the T had on hand yesterday, were addressing the issues related to the fire, and how

it was affecting the riders. Amtrak MUST be nimble enough to dispatch staff to major station when dispruptions like Saturday's occur.

Ken

I was simply stating the extra staff was not on hand because of the incident, as you made it appear. As a side note, it may certainly not be as easy as you would think, when you consider we are all unionized, and there are extra boards you have to deal with, and on-call periods, etc. I wish I could say it would be simple. I am not going to get involved in the conversation any further than that.

 

[the_traveler]

Amtrak MUST be nimble enough to dispatch staff to major station when dispruptions like Saturday's occur.

Nothing personal, but New London is not a major station. How do you know they didn't tell passengers boarding at NYP that the train would be delayed getting to BOS? And why would Amtrak have extra personnel at BOS, when the train departs at the scheduled time? MBTA has station stops in the segment that Amtrak detoured past after leaving BOS.

 

[peconicstation]

Amtrak MUST be nimble enough to dispatch staff to major station when dispruptions like Saturday's occur.

Nothing personal, but New London is not a major station. How do you know they didn't tell passengers boarding at NYP that the train would be delayed getting to BOS? And why would Amtrak have extra personnel at BOS, when the train departs at the scheduled time? MBTA has station stops in the segment that Amtrak detoured past after leaving BOS.

READ what I was saying I was talkning about BACK BAY, not New London, BUT since you brought it up, New London is a staffed station and the clerks on knew NOTHING about there being ANY deplays connected to train 150. Train 167 DID NOT depart BOS at it's scheduled time, and the boards simply stated that train as being delayed, stop making excuses for a failure for Amtrak to communicate.

 

[niemi24s]

Have you made this matter known to anybody who might possibly be able to stake steps to correct it? Like Amtrak?

If not - why not?

 

[peconicstation]

Have you made this matter known to anybody who might possibly be able to stake steps to correct it? Like Amtrak?

If not - why not?

What do you think is first thing on my agenda for Monday morning ??

The call center made it clear that there is no one in authority to talk to over any weekend, so I will call Mr. Boardman's office after it opens tomorrow morning.

Ken

 

[Guest]

Amtrak just needs to repair and replace the broken part of the system and design it better to prevent against lightning strikes. Obviously Amtrak still has loads of old electrical infrastructure in parts so whatever the true cause turns out to be they will repair it and life goes on.

As far as the forfeit of ticket, it sounds like Amtrak had their hands full due to the electrical problem so they just made a small error which wasnt relevant if you had proof of the ticket. Ive been on LIRR as well where they never checked tickets or made accusations against me when I used a same fare ticket and conductor tried to pocket money from me and acted like I had stolen a ticket which was same fare but to a different destination and they told me at counter when i tried to exchange the ticket I could use the same ticket.

Amtrak isnt perfect but online tools tend to know more than Amtrak employees and there is open data and open source tools which help with Amtrak information even though its not officially provided by Amtrak.

Amtrak safety record is very good and they run the trains constantly. Northeastern corridor has the ACS 64 being phased in so as these trains are phased in and as work is done to fix up the electrical plant including this fire and other sections, Amtrak will be more stable in future years.

You could knock Amtrak if they didnt have immediate plans to fix the fire affected area which is being done and if Amtrak didnt have future infrastructure modernization projects including new locomotives and the like. For a large transit agency, Amtrak is not doing a bad job at all considering its funding limitations and everything else including using freight rail lines and more. Its a very complex organization where Amtrak has to depend on multiple partners.

I myself saw the alert on the website and wasn't caught in this but have been caught on overloaded LIRR trains do to system problems where trains were slightly delayed as well and it was standing room only with no room to move.

Amtrak will be Amtrak and for what it does, it gets done.

I sympathize but Amtrak cant afford to update every component in preventatitive maintanence and when issues do happen, you can't expect perfection. I saw the fire affected photo and it looked like the electrical vault may have been older and could have seen replacement work or improvement but there are so many spots and Amtrak can really only fix and replace as needed and do the most critical projects. The tracks in that area and external transformer looked to be in excellent shape with concrete railroad ties.

Switzerland has a different system where you can expect trains on time, working like clockwork with more funding and where people use rail more than car. But that level of rail will not exist in USA due to geographic size and traffic patterns and due to logistical issues with freight tracks and more.

 

[the_traveler]

Amtrak MUST be nimble enough to dispatch staff to major station when dispruptions like Saturday's occur.

Nothing personal, but New London is not a major station. How do you know they didn't tell passengers boarding at NYP that the train would be delayed getting to BOS? And why would Amtrak have extra personnel at BOS, when the train departs at the scheduled time? MBTA has station stops in the segment that Amtrak detoured past after leaving BOS.

READ what I was saying I was talkning about BACK BAY, not New London, BUT since you brought it up, New London is a staffed station and the clerks on knew NOTHING about there being ANY deplays connected to train 150. Train 167 DID NOT depart BOS at it's scheduled time, and the boards simply stated that train as being delayed, stop making excuses for a failure for Amtrak to communicate.

Westerly, RI and Kingston, RI are also staffed stations, but I wouldn't call them major stations either. And I doubt Amtrak sent any additional staff to them either. The fire could have been out in the hour it takes to get there, so even if they sent staff they may find out there is no delay.
I have never seen extra staff at NYP saying there will be a delay tomorrow in your arrival to WPK because a car is going to be hit in SAV. Or staff in CHI saying the Cardinal or SWC will be delayed due to a freight train derailment tomorrow. I would call those major stations!

 

[jis]

Amtrak MUST be nimble enough to dispatch staff to major station when dispruptions like Saturday's occur.

Nothing personal, but New London is not a major station. How do you know they didn't tell passengers boarding at NYP that the train would be delayed getting to BOS? And why would Amtrak have extra personnel at BOS, when the train departs at the scheduled time? MBTA has station stops in the segment that Amtrak detoured past after leaving BOS.

READ what I was saying I was talkning about BACK BAY, not New London, BUT since you brought it up, New London is a staffed station and the clerks on knew NOTHING about there being ANY deplays connected to train 150. Train 167 DID NOT depart BOS at it's scheduled time, and the boards simply stated that train as being delayed, stop making excuses for a failure for Amtrak to communicate.

Westerly, RI and Kingston, RI are also staffed stations, but I wouldn't call them major stations either. And I doubt Amtrak sent any additional staff to them either. The fire could have been out in the hour it takes to get there, so even if they sent staff they may find out there is no delay.
I have never seen extra staff at NYP saying there will be a delay tomorrow in your arrival to WPK because a car is going to be hit in SAV. Or staff in CHI saying the Cardinal or SWC will be delayed due to a freight train derailment tomorrow. I would call those major stations!

Pretty silly strawman knocked down with admirable agility

 

[DryCreek]

Switzerland has a different system where you can expect trains on time, working like clockwork with more funding and where people use rail more than car. But that level of rail will not exist in USA due to geographic size and traffic patterns and due to logistical issues with freight tracks and more.

As a size comparison, isn't the entire country of Switzerland about the same size as Rhode Island? Heck, Brewster County here in Texas is over half the size of that country. If we could get the rattlesnakes and roadrunners counted as population, I think that they would be close in numbers.

Anyway, back on track - I can see how easy it would be for a much smaller region to have impeccable regional/local rail service.

 

[Eric S]

I think we're getting a little bit caught up in a few relatively unimportant details. I think the main point of the OP's post was to emphasize that Amtrak did a poor job communicating and has definite room for improvement in that area. That doesn't seem like a particularly controversial opinion - I would imagine many of us would agree that Amtrak could do a better job of communicating service disruptions to passengers.

 

[jis]

I wholeheartedly agree that Amtrak in general does a pretty sub par job of handling any communications related to IROPS. There is a vast room for improvement there. The current status quo should not be an acceptable norm except for the mindless cheering section for Amtrak management.

 

[Guest]

Not really as website and open source data have more informaiton than calling Amtrak and employees dont really know much. With new trains and modernization projects, information should hopefully get better. Airlines also don't have much information if you call as well as bus companies. Online tools are thr best method for obtaining information and its up to transit agencies to phase it in. MTA has bus locations on an open source app with various datasets.

Amtrak also has open source info and custom tools that people have built. Hopefully Amtrak could eventually reinvest in information technology and signalling improvements. For Northeastern electric tracks new locomotives have more information available based on design and ACS 64 still need to be phased in at 3 a month according to wikipedia so more cars are getting phased in.

As of now the alert for the fire has been removed and it looks like Amtrak has fixed the fire issue and systems are now operating fine. They said it could affect Monday morning but alert was removed before then so it looks like everything is back to normal. That is where Amtrak shines. They take responsibility and come out and fix the system quickly.

We could be in a country with no rail service at all or one with shutdowns for weeks and months but fortunately we have a heavily involved system that has over 30 million passengers and will grow even further.

Amtrak is not perfect, and other nations have better rail service but Amtrak can and will get better over time. I am hoping private sector rail growth in the future will grow and perhaps replace or complement Amtrak better.

 

[jis]

I travel a lot both by Amtrak and air, and in my experience Amtrak is much worse than say United Airlines in making information available in a form that is available readily to a lay user with rudimentary web browsing skills. Just take this as a data point from an S+ on Amtrak for last 6 years and a Premier Platinum Million Miler plus on United. So yes Amtrak is sub par IMHO

 

[user 1215]

I rely on AU and folks here on AU relying on TrainOrders for real, timely information.

 

[PaulM]

I think we're getting a little bit caught up in a few relatively unimportant details. I think the main point of the OP's post was to emphasize that Amtrak did a poor job communicating and has definite room for improvement in that area.

Right. The title of the thread was communications. IMO adding staff at a station, large or small, is not the issue but a red herring.

 

[Guest]

Amtrak can add more open source data and I am more than sure it will when new signals are installed as well as new locomotives with latest technologies. Problem is some of the Amtrak technology is still quite old and primitive.

Amtrak even integrates with Google maps. When I looked for a trip however it routed me on the longer silver star than silver meteor and should have shown both options and I dont think it was showing the most efficient transfer to Tri rail either as I did a NYP to south east florida routing.

What I like is that Amtrak has budgetted for its improvements but due to funding limitations only so much gets accomplished in a short timr frame.

I would rather congress defund expensive waste of resources and after all the cuts and with Amtrak efficienciy programs in place, Amtrak could finish more projects quicker.

But communications between Amtrak and consumers today are mostly on mobile devices more than ever and of course resources should be devoted to improving this.

I like the open source status board which works for NYP, it has many other stations showing but does not seem to work for all stations, and shows if the train is on time or not.

 

[DryCreek]

I travel a lot both by Amtrak and air, and in my experience Amtrak is much worse than say United Airlines in making information available in a form that is available readily to a lay user with rudimentary web browsing skills. Just take this as a data point from an S+ on Amtrak for last 6 years and a Premier Platinum Million Miler plus on United. So yes Amtrak is sub par IMHO

Yes, I particularly like the way United can predict when one of their passenger jets is set to a siding (holding pattern) when a higher-priorty FedEx freighter needs to pass, or how they track the planes progress through all of those intermediate stops they make between the originating and final airport.

I understand the point you were trying to make, but it is very hard to be able to get train disruption information disseminated over a wide area in short notice. Should it be impossible? I don't think so, but the Telephone and Website Julie (and online train-tracker) is a good start in my opinion.

 

[amamba]

I wholeheartedly agree that Amtrak in general does a pretty sub par job of handling any communications related to IROPS. There is a vast room for improvement there. The current status quo should not be an acceptable norm except for the mindless cheering section for Amtrak management.

I agree with jis that Amtrak sucks during IROPS. We all know this.

However, knowing amtrak's track record during IROPS, I'm actually pretty impressed with the coordinated response to this issue. The fact that they were able to get everyone off the train set in PVD and onto the MBCR/Keolis/MBTA commuter rail is pretty good. They got folks to their destinations and only a little late with a major fire.

Again, unsurprising that the folks at back bay were unaware of the details of the delay. the folks in South station are often unaware of the delay and I can't imagine that they had extra staff there, either.

 

[jis]

I travel a lot both by Amtrak and air, and in my experience Amtrak is much worse than say United Airlines in making information available in a form that is available readily to a lay user with rudimentary web browsing skills. Just take this as a data point from an S+ on Amtrak for last 6 years and a Premier Platinum Million Miler plus on United. So yes Amtrak is sub par IMHO

I understand the point you were trying to make, but it is very hard to be able to get train disruption information disseminated over a wide area in short notice. Should it be impossible? I don't think so, but the Telephone and Website Julie (and online train-tracker) is a good start in my opinion.

I am not sure that you understand what I am saying, but maybe you do. For example, it is not clear to me why it is "hard to disseminate information" that is available to disseminate, specially to field agents like station agents and train crew. Afterall they all have cell phones, don't they?

Of course what they have in the way of Julie is better than if they did not have it, and of course they could do better. But they could do better even if they don't have any additional information beyond what is available to CNOC at present. That is my main point.

In the current example it is inexplicable why people in the field know less than what their more internet savvy customers know. All it takes is for someone with the responsibility at CNOC to send out a properly targeted IM with the info that CNOC has to the relevant field folks, and you won't then have this situation where no one seems to be aware of anything except that the train isn't there or some such. Afterall all T&E crew have the electronic means to receive such messages, so it is not a technology problem.

As an example in case of United Airlines because they have a common dispatch management system that feeds everything including flight status to customers and to gate agents, if the gate agents are paying attention they have the same info that their customer standing in front of them with their Smartphone running the United App in hand is seeing. And that is the information entered by the system managers, which is the best information available. Occasionally the gate agents have more current information than central control does when it is locally produced information that is yet to cycle through central control, but that's OK, since people consulting the agents get the most current information. Of course no one can provide information that is not available. Now Amtrak does not have a single such system. but they do have CNOC which potentially has the consolidated information.

The issue is of setting up the workflows and responsibilities (a) to feed all available info to CNOC as a priority act, and (b) for the information to get disseminated to where it needs to be. Absent automation, these are all human actions, which need to be managed and put into effect as standard processes.I can understand the technological infrastructure challenges that Amtrak faces due to chronic under-capitalization, so I am not even complaining about the fact that the only exceptional condition that one sees in train status on the Amtrak App is "Disruption", though it is obvious that more information is available but is not provided to the App.

 

[niemi24s]

As long as we're on the subject of communicating - what on Earth does "IROPS" stand for?

 

[Ryan]

Irregular Operations.