As much as I have talked up train travel, I hope anyone
reading this gets a sense of my biggest caveat: If you are going to throw yourself at the mercy of a railed transit
system, time can NOT be your enemy. The
number one rule is to accept that you are going to be late more often than not.
Amtrak boats a 50% on-time schedule. How sad is that? Does anyone else find a coin flip a touch ironic? What’s worse is that personal experience has
proven this to be an unwarranted exaggeration as Amtrak is only batting 28% for
me so far.
Of all the delays, the westbound Empire Builder out of Chicago
has been the worst, arriving in Seattle 8 hours behind schedule. If an Empire truly was built, it must have
been completed long after anyone expected it to be. I should consider myself lucky though as the eastbound
Empire was already 16 hours behind schedule when we passed them in western
North Dakota. That’ll ruin a weekday.
Look, I get that delays are always going to be a part of
train travel, especially now that freight traffic is so common. What I don’t get is how the majority of this
traffic happens in areas where real estate costs pennies on the dollar. Even though I will concede a lack of education in these
matters, I must believe that the rail owners have done their research. How they believe that a single track makes sense anywhere but tunnels and on thin mountainsides is beyond me.
Freight traffic though is at least expected. I think the worst delays I have come across
are the ones due to the federally mandated 12 shifts for the train and engine
crews. While I get that it is important
for engineers and conductors to be well rested, I am curious why they are more
important than any other crewmember.
Odder still is that it is okay for me to pull 16 hour days 3 times a week working
in a mental hospital with dangerous patients or truck drivers (who actually
have to steer in addition to braking and throttle) can pull 14 hour shifts, but
an individual who biggest concern is a stalled car, must stop, one the spot, after
12 hours.
I get that boredom can cause fatigue but why force an entire train of people to be late simply because 12 hours
is up? How difficult or costly would it
be to carry an extra crewmember and let the one needing the relief use the
sleeper and dining cars like the conductors do?
God forbid, maybe we could even let them keep driving to the station where
the new crew is waiting? Surely an extra
hour or two isn’t going to kill anyone.
It seems to work for almost every other industry.
Sadly though, the delays don’t end here. In only three weeks I have witnessed an idiot believe the insurance company wouldn't notice his purposeful drive onto the tracks and I've sat through a three hour wait so a crew of three could slowly remove a large tree felled by an ice storm from our track.
There always seems to be
something.
With concerted effort though, I can deal with these
issues. What I have found I cannot handle is an engineer minimizing a delay or, worse, giving a poorly calculated guesstimate. Though I realize that no one can truly tell how
long a delay may take, wouldn’t it make more sense to overestimate a timeframe than allow us to believe we'll be moving quickly? Everyone on board already knows that trains
are inefficient, exceed expectations. It
makes no sense to give false hope when you have no actual control over the
outcome.
Even with all of the rampant inefficiency I still believe
that train travel could rival and take over for air travel over the shorter
distances and it definitely beats travel by car over the long hauls in terms of
comfort. For my money, unless I was back in my ’81 VW
Westy, a train is the best option, though I will admit that the perpetual
delays are starting to make me reconsider.
If you do decide to take the train, know that you will wait at
some point. This truth will not change until
the owners of the rail lines realize that a little expense now will go a long
ways towards profitability later.
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