Starlight Schedule Change

[zephyr17]

Effective Monday, October 25th, the Stalight will leave LA 19 minutes earlier, at 9:51 am.
The schedule is different up through Vancouver, WA:
- Burbank -17
- Van Nuys -16
- Simi Valley -16
- Oxnard -16
- Santa Barbara -13
- SLO -24
- Paso Robles -16
-Salinas -9
- San Jose -19
- Oakland -12
- Emeryville -17
- Martinez -20
- Davis -14
- Sacramento -10
- Chico -10
- Redding -1
- Dunsmuir -2
- Klamath Falls -34
- Chemult -33
- Eugene 0
- Albany 0
- Salem +9
- Portland +8 minutes
- No change Vancouver to Seattle.

So the Starlight's old PDF schedule will no longer be any good.

A few thoughts.
The EB connection in Portland is now reduced to 65 minutes. Will the guarantee still apply?

This schedule should be the "binding" one on UP and Metrolink that STB passenger delay will be measured against. The shifts are odd, loosened here, tightened there.

I got wind of it this morning, Amtrak sent me a schedule change email for my November trip. The last Monday in October is often a date Amtrak changes schedules on. I will check a few others as well.

 

[jis]

Someone should take the old schedule PDF, load it up into a PDF Editor and create a new schedule PDF, and donate it to RPA.

 

[zephyr17]

Southbound Starlight schedule also changed, leaves Seattle at the same time, arrives LA 11 minutes later at 9:11 pm. Haven't looked at the details.

 

[JermyZP]

I also got notified by amtrak through a email that my trip from EMY to LA was changed to depart at a later time. From 8:20 to 8:39

 

[zephyr17]

Did a quick check on the endpoint times for other LD schedules changed effective 10/25 and only found two:

4 departs LA 5 minutes earlier at 5:55 pm

20 arrives New Orleans 4 minutes later at 6:00 pm

 

[zephyr17]

Just checked the Starlight to Sunset connection. It appears to have been cut due to the new, 9:11 pm arrival time being beneath the 60 minute connection minimum. Southbound connections to the Sunset now appear to require use of the San Joaquin Thruway bus connections.

 

[zephyr17]

They also clearly haven't gotten the connections straightened out from points north. EMY-NOL is bookable via a San Joaquin connection. SEA-NOL is not via the Sunset, SEA-TUS is not bookable at all. SAC-NOL isn't, it want's to send you on the CZ and CONO. But SAC-TUS is bookable.

You can force legal connections through Multi-City. SEA-BFD/BFD-NOL is bookable on legal connections that are legal between other city pairs on the same routing. So is SEA-SAC/SAC-TUS.

Also, it is now pretty clear to me you can't force illegal connections using Multi-City any more. I tried a phantom booking with a 5 minute connection in Chicago and it would not let me get to payment (my desired result). I tried a much more reasonable Starlight to Sunset connection with a 49 minute connection time, and it again wouldn't let me get to payment.

They are clearly not putting as many possibilities in routings now. SEA and NOL are only connected via the EB and the CONO, not even the San Joaquin connections are available to the Sunset from Seattle. Same with SAC-NOL. You really have to know your stuff to get some desired routings now, Amtrak.com isn't offering as many options and, with PDF schedules gone, you have to know the alternatives in your head to force some routings through Multi-City.

 

[ParanoidAndroid]

I didn't bother editing the original pdf because I couldn't get the icons to render right. So this is the current timetable effective Oct. 25, without station symbols or service symbols, and with worse arrows.
Note that connections to/from the Surfliner (including the earlier 761 to 14) must be done through multi-city, at least at the moment.

 

[bratkinson]

deleted by author

 

[Devil's Advocate]

After these changes the dysfunctional Sunset Limited will be even more useless than it was before. ☹

 

[acelafan]

Someone should take the old schedule PDF, load it up into a PDF Editor and create a new schedule PDF, and donate it to RPA.

Is there an open source (free) PDF editor out there? I found one to cut/merge PDF pages but not edit the text.

 

[neroden]

At this point I suspect the best move is to prepare as a spreadsheet in LibreOffice and export to PDF.

For copyright/trademark reasons we probably shouldn't be using Amtrak's color scheme or logos anyway.

 

[slasher-fun]

Easy to use Online PDF editor is not open source but comes for free.

 

[Cal]

I have a Deember trip, FUL-SEA and back. I got an email about the schedule change for the Surfliners, but not the Starlight. Should I be worried?

Edit: On the Amtrak app and website, it shows the correct date, wrong times as well.

 

[Bob Dylan]

I have a Deember trip, FUL-SEA and back. I got an email about the schedule change for the Surfliners, but not the Starlight. Should I be worried?

Edit: On the Amtrak app and website, it shows the correct date, wrong times as well.

With the Cluster flub that is Amtrak IT and the Vanishing Schedules, I say give it some time, hopefully by November Amtrak can get it's act together as ridership slows before the Holidays Rush!

 

[Cal]

With the Cluster flub that is Amtrak IT and the Vanishing Schedules, I say give it some time, hopefully by November Amtrak can get it's act together as ridership slows before the Holidays Rush!

Yes, on the website it also doesn't show the southbound Starlight. And in my "cancelled trips" area it shows trips that I took and completed, while not showing anything in the past trips area.

 

[Sidney]

They also clearly haven't gotten the connections straightened out from points north. EMY-NOL is bookable via a San Joaquin connection. SEA-NOL is not via the Sunset, SEA-TUS is not bookable at all. SAC-NOL isn't, it want's to send you on the CZ and CONO. But SAC-TUS is bookable.

You can force legal connections through Multi-City. SEA-BFD/BFD-NOL is bookable on legal connections that are legal between other city pairs on the same routing. So is SEA-SAC/SAC-TUS.

Also, it is now pretty clear to me you can't force illegal connections using Multi-City any more. I tried a phantom booking with a 5 minute connection in Chicago and it would not let me get to payment (my desired result). I tried a much more reasonable Starlight to Sunset connection with a 49 minute connection time, and it again wouldn't let me get to payment.

They are clearly not putting as many possibilities in routings now. SEA and NOL are only connected via the EB and the CONO, not even the San Joaquin connections are available to the Sunset from Seattle. Same with SAC-NOL. You really have to know your stuff to get some desired routings now, Amtrak.com isn't offering as many options and, with PDF schedules gone, you have to know the alternatives in your head to force some routings through Multi-City.

It is getting harder and harder to book online. From Sea to NOL,you can either take the EB to Chicago and the CONO or the CS to Sac and the buses and San Juaquin to LA and the Sunset to NOL. Amtrak doesn't give you that choice

 

[Cal]

Today was when it supposedly went into effect. Yet, today's 14 departed at 10:10 AM out of LAX and seemed to follow the now old schedule.

https://asm.transitdocs.com/train/2021/10/25/14

 

[desertflyer]

Really bummed. Wanted to travel ABQ to OKJ around the New Year and forgot that there is now no guaranteed connection from the SWC to the CS. Well, I guess that trip isn't going to happen. Sorry, I'm venting. Doesn't seem like they need the connecting traffic anyways looking at fares.

 

[Maglev]

Really bummed. Wanted to travel ABQ to OKJ around the New Year and forgot that there is now no guaranteed connection from the SWC to the CS. Well, I guess that trip isn't going to happen. Sorry, I'm venting. Doesn't seem like they need the connecting traffic anyways looking at fares.

I would be nervous about such a tight connection, and that anxiety would disrupt my trip. Part of the inconvenience that I endure to ride Amtrak is paying for hotel nights between trains.

edit to add: Has the Coast Starlight schedule been adjusted for the Point Defiance Bypass?

 

[brianpmcdonnell17]

Really bummed. Wanted to travel ABQ to OKJ around the New Year and forgot that there is now no guaranteed connection from the SWC to the CS. Well, I guess that trip isn't going to happen. Sorry, I'm venting. Doesn't seem like they need the connecting traffic anyways looking at fares.

The connection is still guaranteed and bookable from the westbound SWC to the CS. The CS to SL connection in both directions is also guaranteed. It just took some time for Amtrak to update the system after the schedule change.

 

[willem]

Wanted to travel ABQ to OKJ around the New Year and forgot that there is now no guaranteed connection from the SWC to the CS. Well, I guess that trip isn't going to happen.

I would be nervous about such a tight connection, and that anxiety would disrupt my trip.

I would rather ride the Coast Starlight than a San Joaquin, but I would not cancel a trip because of this change.

Actually, I have the tickets (in on Southwest Chief, out the same day on Coast Starlight) already, and have heard nothing from Amtrak about the schedule change. I'm hoping that I'll get bumped to a San Joaquin only if the Southwest Chief is too late, but otherwise will be allowed to use the ticket that was already issued. Thoughts?

The connection is still guaranteed and bookable from the westbound SWC to the CS.

Ah, thank you for answering my question even before I posted it.

 

[desertflyer]

The connection is still guaranteed and bookable from the westbound SWC to the CS.

I had to double-check this. It's not bookable if I choose ABQ-SFC but it is if I do ABQ-OKJ. So you're right, although chock this up to more booking engine problems since it should still be bookable to SFC in this case.

 

[neroden]

Someone should take the old schedule PDF, load it up into a PDF Editor and create a new schedule PDF, and donate it to RPA.

I'm starting to find better tools. Amtrak seems to have a functioning published GTFS machine-readable now. There are tools for converting that into a human-readable timetable and I or others could probably make better tools. It's... not a project I have time to work on right now, unfortunately.

 

[trimetbusfan]

Just checked the Starlight to Sunset connection. It appears to have been cut due to the new, 9:11 pm arrival time being beneath the 60 minute connection minimum. Southbound connections to the Sunset now appear to require use of the San Joaquin Thruway bus connections.

In case no one saw, the garunteed connection from CS to SSL has been fixed (restored).