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Going nowhere fast: Delays plague Amtrak at a time the railroad needs more riders
Sunday, October 08, 2000 By Frank Reeves, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
On a recent Saturday, when the Capital Limited pulled out of Pittsburgh's Downtown Amtrak station en route to Washington, D.C., it was already two hours late.
The sleek, modern train, with double-decker coaches, sleeping cabins and a glass-enclosed scenic lounge, had broken down during its overnight run from Chicago.
The train eventually made up some of the time and arrived in Washington's Union Station about an hour late.
The next day, the Capital Limited left Washington precisely at 4:05 p.m. on its 7 1/2 hour, 296-mile journey back to Pittsburgh.
But near Martinsburg, W.Va., as the train slipped through mountain passes where the trees were already touched with autumn color, the conductor announced that, due to track maintenance, the train would have to reduce speed. As a result, it arrived in Pittsburgh about an hour late.
For most of the peak summer travel season, such delays were common on the three principal Amtrak trains that run from Chicago through Pittsburgh to Philadelphia, New York and the nation's Capital. According to Amtrak, trains traveling east from Chicago through Pittsburgh had the poorest on-time performance. In July, for example, the Capital Limited's Washington run was late 94 percent of the time; the Chicago-to-New York Three Rivers was late 55 percent of the time; and the Chicago-to-Philadelphia Pennsylvanian was late 52 percent of the time.
The delays come at a bad time for the government-supported enterprise. Congress has put Amtrak on a short leash, giving it until the end of 2002 to start making it on its own or confront bankruptcy and possibly failure. But to make a go of it, Amtrak admits it needs to do a better job of providing reliable service, something it has struggled mightily with this year.
Amtrak officials, government regulators and freight-railroad operators say there is no single cause for the delays. They cite congestion on the railroad freight lines over which most Amtrak trains travel, train holdups and slowdowns for spring and summer track maintenance and a lack of upkeep of Amtrak's aging equipment.
Delays for any of these reasons can wreak havoc on schedules where on-time performance is measured in minutes.
On a trip 150 miles or less, for example, Amtrak considers a train "on time" if it arrives at its destination within five minutes of its schedule. On distances longer than 550 miles, trains have a 30-minute leeway.
But even this definition gives little indication of the severity of the problem on certain routes.
In May, for example, Amtrak told the National Surface Transportation Board, which oversees the nation's railroads, that although on-time performance of the Three Rivers train between Chicago and Pittsburgh had improved to 64 percent, "most trains that were late were extremely late." It attributed delays averaging 21/2 hours on a run of track owned by CSX Corp., whose freight trains also use the line. Three months later, the Three Rivers run remained a problem line.
In some ways, the delays are even worse than the on-time performance numbers show. That's because Amtrak officials "pad" train schedules to account for unanticipated delays. That is why trains are sometimes able to make up time lost and still arrive "on time."
But in testimony last month before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, Joseph Vranich, an author and frequent critic of Amtrak, said the way Amtrak calculates on-time performance underestimates the severity of the problem. This is particularly true for Amtrak trains outside of the Northeast.
"Amtrak now inserts very long periods of time just before 'checkpoints' where on-time performance is calculated. If Amtrak performance was measured at the stop before an official checkpoint, Amtrak's on-time statistics would be far worse than official reports indicate," Vranich told the Senate panel, headed by former Republican presidential candidate John McCain of Arizona.
Indeed, some of Amtrak's schedules have been larded with so much padding that along some routes, it takes longer for a train to travel today than it did a generation ago, Vranich said.
Amtrak was cobbled together in the early 1970s, as the nation's passenger railroad system teetered on the verge of collapse after a half-century of decline. Prior to World War I, U.S. railroads operated 20,000 passenger trains daily. By 1970, they operated about 300 passenger trains daily, carrying less than 1 percent of the passenger traffic between U.S. cities.
In 1970, Congress freed the nation's railroads from the obligation of providing passenger service, which for years had been a money-losing proposition as automobiles, and later airplanes, became the preferred means of long-distance travel. In return, the railroads were required to provide equipment and personnel to a new passenger railroad system.
Amtrak began operations in 1971 as a for-profit, though government-subsidized, corporation. It was envisioned that the passenger railroad would help alleviate air traffic congestion as well as overcrowding along the nation's highways.
Amtrak still bears the markings of its birth.
Although it operates over 22,000 miles of track in the United States, it owns only about 650 miles of track, primarily in the Northeast corridor between Washington, D.C., and Boston. The rest of the track it uses is owned by major freight railroads, including Richmond, Va.-based CSX Corp. and Norfolk, Va.-based Norfolk Southern for Amtrak trains serving Pittsburgh.
The result is that Amtrak has little control over its destiny. While it's true that Amtrak pays for the right to travel over the freight railroads and that these railroads are under an obligation to give passenger trains priority on their rails, the reality is that freight railroads often put their needs first.
That has made for a sometimes uneasy relationship between Amtrak and the freight railroads. One of the principal duties of the National Surface Transportation Board is to adjudicate disputes between the two on their shared use of the tracks.
The NSTB has been put to the test the past two years, after CSX and Norfolk Southern fought for control over, and later divided, most of the assets of Conrail. The NSTB has been monitoring the effect of the Conrail acquisition on Amtrak service over former Conrail lines now owned by CSX and Norfolk Southern, as well as Amtrak's on-time performance on those lines.
"As a general matter, we have seen a significant improvement in both systems. They have made significant progress," said NSTB Chairwoman Linda Morgan. "[But] Three Rivers remains problematic. Amtrak feels improvements have been made, but it is not where it should be."
While acknowledging that Amtrak bears some responsibility, Ross Capon, executive director of the National Association of Railroad Passengers, said most delays are caused by problems on the freight railroad tracks over which Amtrak must operate.
Ruddy Husband, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern, disputes such criticism. He says that Amtrak's overall on-time performance on trains that operate over Norfolk Southern tracks is about 80 percent.
However, on some routes, notably the eastbound Capital Limited trains, the on-time performance of trains over Norfolk Southern tracks was about 50 percent during April, May and June, according to Amtrak figures.
Bill Lerch, general manager for Amtrak's eastern operations, said Amtrak and freight railroad officials confer daily to work out problems likely to arise due to track repair and freight congestion.
Not surprisingly, the freight railroads use the spring and summer months to repair and replace railroad ties, fix signals and shore up the ballast -- the crushed stones -- that undergird the ties and tracks.
Both CSX and Norfolk Southern have been working to upgrade their systems.
CSX Vice President Paul Reistrup said this past summer has been a particularly busy time for track maintenance. He said the railroad has sought to make Amtrak aware of the repair projects so it can notify passengers of possible delays.
When a section of track is being repaired, trains must follow slowdown orders. In some cases, Amtrak service is brought to a halt, with passengers being switched to buses for transport around the section of track that is being repaired.
Lerch said it is almost impossible, when preparing Amtrak timetables, to anticipate all the delays likely to arise because of track maintenance. Schedules are prepared on a seasonal basis and don't reflect day-to-day or week-to-week interruptions that occur as repair crews move from place to place.
Lerch said track-maintenance delays should taper off soon as the railroads wrap up their summer repairs.
Another persistent problem is freight congestion, which causes bottlenecks on the tracks over which Amtrak trains travel.
Some of these bottlenecks also are caused by track maintenance, when both passenger and freight trains are stopped or forced to slow down.
Morgan, of the NSTB, said freight congestion is "an industrywide problem" in Chicago, a major hub for freight traffic in the United States.
Sometimes lengthy back-ups can be caused by problems at a particular railroad's freight yard. Such was the case for many years at CSX's Willard, Ohio, yard, about 30 miles south of Sandusky along Lake Erie near Cleveland.
But Amtrak and NSTB officials give CSX credit for making changes in its Willard operations that have eased operational problems that tended to hit the east bound trains particularly hard.
Trains often backed up there because only a single track ran near the yards, CSX officials said. The railroad has spent $250 million to "double-track" the area, where at least 100 freight trains travel in a single day. CSX also modified the terminal at Willard to expedite the movement of freight.
CSX's Reistrup said one of the root causes of freight congestion is the lack of adequate track capacity to handle the increasing volume of freight traffic. Contrary to expectations a generation ago, Reistrup said, railroad freight traffic has grown, even in the face of competition from trucks.
The Capital Limited already is vulnerable to delays because the cars that make up the train originate in Los Angeles. If those cars arrive late to Chicago, it has a ripple effect. "Amtrak and freight trains have slots. If we get an Amtrak train late, it is out of its slot. Sometimes with trains getting into Chicago late, we have to put them where we can get them in. It interrupts the system," said Husband of Norfolk Southern.
But not all Amtrak delays are due to track maintenance or freight congestion. Some say the delays, particularly those due to equipment failure, reflect Amtrak's sinking financial fortunes.
Faced with a static number of passengers throughout much of the 1990s, Amtrak took major steps to improve its financial position.
The U.S. General Accounting Office, a congressional watchdog agen-cy, noted these steps included increased borrowing, staff cuts and deferred maintenance on its aging fleet of cars and locomotives. These steps, the GAO said, "have diminished the quality and reliability of Amtrak service" on many of its lines.
For Amtrak, the delays are bad news for a company trying to build ridership and become self sufficient. Holding down costs, improving service and introducing high-speed trains are widely seen as keys to Amtrak's survival.
Amtrak has received about $22 billion in operating subsidies since it was founded in 1971. If it is unable to wean itself from these subsidies by December 2002, it faces liquidation or restructuring.
Amtrak carried about 22 million passengers last year, more than in 1998, but still only slightly more than it did in 1990.
In contrast, McCain, one of Amtrak's severest critics, notes U.S. airlines carry about 582 million passengers annually, while inter-city buses carry about 357 million passengers:
"Are we supposed be impressed that Amtrak's ridership is at the same level as it was 20 years ago? [Will we] be asked to continue pumping billions of dollars into a form of transportation that the majority of the traveling public isn't interested in using out of the Northeast?"
The debate over Amtrak's future is likely to intensify as the December 2002 deadline approaches. Echoing a recent General Accounting Office report, U.S. Rep. Bud Shuster, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said he is not optimistic about Amtrak's future: "I don't see how they will do it."
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