Train travel is "in" in 2023?

[Railspike]

So train travel is going to be "in" in 2023. Too bad Amtrak won't be ready for it. Cars needing refurbishing, late trains, and Traditional dining not on all LD trains is bound to turn many new travelers off. See article: How To Travel By Train In The South

 

[John Bredin]

All of 2023 isn't necessarily going to be this. Amtrak's hiring, and that's taking time. They'll be able to repair more cars and bring them back into service, restore traditional dining, etc. when they've got more workers. NARP/RPA seems to be keeping on top of whether, once Amtrak is able, it's making improvements or not.

Everyone's short of workers nowadays and showing it in their operating hours or levels of service, but nobody thinks Starbucks or McDonald's is trying to drive away customers. Not that you (Railspike) said that, but the idea that Amtrak is trying to drive away passengers keeps popping up here, and it's a bit wearying.

Amtrak's clearly pushing for restoration of Gulf Coast service to Mobile and was willing to take on the host railroad and call out its BS to do it. While it's corridor service and not long-distance, Amtrak itself came up with the idea for the Amtrak Connects corridor development program -- they asked Congress to fund the program, not waiting for Congress to tell them what to do -- and seems to be taking it seriously. While it's state-driven, the second train Chicago-St. Paul may well be coming in 2023.

And while it's also state-driven, the Venture cars coming online in the Midwest and California will
(1) bring a nicer and more modern travel experience to some busy corridors with millions of passengers annually, and
(2) free up Horizon and Amfleet cars to lengthen and add trains elsewhere in the system, so that they don't need to wait for the Airos (also a nicer and more modern travel experience) to come into service in a couple of years.

All that sounds like grounds for cautious optimism on the non-NEC corridor front even if things look less than favorable right now.

As to the long-distance trains, Amtrak did restore traditional dining to most Western trains, which some skeptics here insisted they'd never do. (Also, not everyone thinks the misnamed flexible dining is "garbage" just because some loudly and repeatedly insist it is. One man's vote, but I ate it on an LSL round-trip in April and thought it OK, not great but also not bad.) And while Amtrak may not be too far along in their plan to acquire new long-distance cars, Amtrak has a plan to do so, which tends to contradict the skeptics who insist Amtrak is trying to get rid of the long-distance trains.

 

[Railspike]

I was only pointing out that if this prediction is true, it's a shame that Amtrak won't be prepared for it by being able to put their best foot forward. I also realized that I accidentally omitted the first page of the article which is here:

https://www.southernliving.com/trai...lctg=2876d38eebd66cd8c07e23798bf6522d736730f1

 

[jis]

I was only pointing out that if this prediction is true, it's a shame that Amtrak won't be prepared for it by being able to put their best foot forward. I also realized that I accidentally omitted the first page of the article which is here:

https://www.southernliving.com/trai...lctg=2876d38eebd66cd8c07e23798bf6522d736730f1

True. But that is pretty much true of most transportation companies for at least a little while, not just Amtrak.

 

[John Bredin]

Sorry, I used your post as a jumping-off point to discuss a point of view I've seen pop up here and was only tangentially responding to the "not prepared for it" aspect of your post.

That point of view (which I know isn't what you said) is "Amtrak sucks right now and its leadership must want it to suck because they've got lots of money from Congress but aren't immediately fixing the things I see wrong." But:

(1) failures grab more attention than success or just plain muddling-through. It's usually a figure of speech, but literal here, that trains arriving safely & on time don't make the news. You'd never know from the list of cancelled and shortened trains from the major cold snap and blizzard before & during Christmas that Amtrak took up some of the slack from the Southwest Airlines meltdown as discussed in this thread.

(2) a pot of money alone doesn't make an army of workers, or rail equipment, appear. Both have a lead time, more so nowadays than in years past! In the case of Amtrak fixing its own cars, those lead times "stack" as you've got to hire & train car-repairers and maintainers before you can attack the backlog of repairs & maintenance.

(3) life is lived day by day and sometimes minute by minute, and in the short-term time frame it's admittedly sometimes hard to tell how much recent delays, equipment shortfalls, etc. are due to
*weather actually more horrible than usual,
*the labor shortage and related equipment shortage that's being worked on with hiring and the Ventures,
*earlier congressionally-mandated cost-cutting decision-making, and/or
*present conscious decision-making by Amtrak leadership.

 

[rs9]

I think there are a lot of assumptions embedded in the original post. Why would first-time riders have an expectation of, say, traditional dining? Why would they even know that's a thing?

The condition of SL1 and VL1 sleeper cars has been thoroughly documented on this site, but the vast majority of new non-NEC passengers in '23 are going to be in coach, not sleepers. For their age, the Amfleet II and Superliner coach cars I encounter look to be in reasonably good shape. Sure, they don't look modern, but does anyone with basic knowledge of Amtrak's existence expect new equipment?

Late trains are an issue, but the majority of new travelers - who are going to be in coach - are riding long distance trains segment-to-segment, rather than terminus to terminus. They aren't going to experience the full brunt of delays like a sleeper end-to-end passenger would.

I do think there's a number of things Amtrak can do to improve the experience for first-time passengers. I was pleased to see that Amtrak has addressed one big issue along these lines at Chicago Union Station - there's now multiple signs posted that list which trains board from the Great Hall, as opposed to the gate areas. One area lacking - Amtrak should include information on what food a passenger can and can't purchase on a train.