henryj
Conductor
which of course, they are. They have to put that bloated overhead somewhere.
June 2012 Monthly Performance Report
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johnny.menhennet
Conductor
Really??? >
For the ancillary customers revenue, is that payments made to Amtrak for using Amtrak-owned tracks?
Swadian Hardcore
Engineer
1. Always a nagging problem, as you said it isn't that severe per-train but they add up. The freight are supposed to yield but they don't and get away with it.
2. Can't really violate slow orders without compromising safety. Trains have too many accidents already.
3. No opinion.
4. I wonder if PTC will speed up Amtrak trains more. I hope they will help a least a bit.
5. What exactly are these delays? Passenger congestion is all I can think of.
4: Hopefully, but that's up to the RRs. My understanding, for example, is that CSX is open to it while NS isn't. It likely varies from road to road, and from situation to situation. An 11 MPH jump in top speed will require a lot of lines to re-sort their timetables.
5: It's any of a number of things...slow passengers boarding/disembarking, passengers who get disorderly and have to be put off the train, larger-than-accounted-for crowds at a given stop, and handicapped passengers who need assistance boarding. This is a lot of items.
N
Nathanael
Guest
2. The problem is that a lot of these slow orders shouldn't exist; they're due to substandard maintenance practices. (Call it "stuff Conrail wouldn't have tolerated".)
4. I'm just hoping for more reliability. By itself, PTC will only raise the speed limit from 79 mph to 80 mph on class IV track, which should have a very small impact (though I suppose it might be noticeable); but I'm hoping it will reduce the rate of "delayed due to signal failure" problems.
5. There is a lot of stuff involved here; basically anything which delays boarding or de-boarding. This includes holding one train for a late connecting train, a frequent occurence in Chicago. It also includes delays due to bad passenger-handling procedures taking longer to let people on the train than they should (ahem, "gate agents"), delays due to baggage loading or unloading taking longer than expected, and all the other stuff the previous poster mentioned. Most of this stuff is delays Amtrak could eliminate, though it also includes fairly unavoidable things like throwing disorderly passengers off the train, or loading five wheelchairs when the schedule accomodates time for loading one.
Swadian Hardcore
Engineer
2. Maybe this is why so many freight trains keep derailing.
4. Last I took Amtrak, we were delayed due to "weird" signals. Lost 30 minutes. I guess it will improve OTP and possibly cut some padding.
5. I understand how wide this is, and it's really hard to improve.
In Chicago, with how the boarding is handled, I'd think they could set up 2-3 lines for ticket-checking these days so as to speed things (i.e. set up the lines a few feet back from the door and have a few agents present with scanners). It's not like NYP (where the track access is the bottleneck). This could probably also be done at WAS. Mind you, I know this might require adding a few people on, at least part-time, but it's something to consider.
I'd particularly note that some of the waiting rooms are set up such that the boarding exit is down a short hallway; it wouldn't be hard to get a divider and two agents in there in lieu of usually only having one. Yet another option would be to automate scanners on the exit side of things, set them up for a set of "accepted trains" (i.e. trains departing in the next X minutes) and allow people to skip the lounges and just "scan in" like they do at any of a number of amusement parks.
This only comes up because, of the "big four" hubs for the LD network (NYP, WAS, CHI, and LAX; you can add PHL and BOS to the mix as well by some standards), only CHI has that wacky mandatory waiting room setup.
I'd particularly note that some of the waiting rooms are set up such that the boarding exit is down a short hallway; it wouldn't be hard to get a divider and two agents in there in lieu of usually only having one. Yet another option would be to automate scanners on the exit side of things, set them up for a set of "accepted trains" (i.e. trains departing in the next X minutes) and allow people to skip the lounges and just "scan in" like they do at any of a number of amusement parks.
This only comes up because, of the "big four" hubs for the LD network (NYP, WAS, CHI, and LAX; you can add PHL and BOS to the mix as well by some standards), only CHI has that wacky mandatory waiting room setup.
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