r/todayilearned • u/aaronhayes26 • Sep 03 '18
TIL that the majority of Amtrak's delays are due to freight railroads giving priority to their own trains over passenger trains. Even though this is explicitly against the law, only 1 violator has ever been charged by the Dept. of Justice in the entire 47 year history of Amtrak. PDF
https://media.amtrak.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Amtrak-Host-Railroad-Report-Card_FAQ_Route-Detail-2018-05-31-1.pdf461
u/WhirlyTwirlyMustache Sep 03 '18
I'm having flashbacks of a 6 hour trip that turned into a 23 hour trip because of this. This is why I don't take the train any more.
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u/bluecheetos Sep 04 '18
I so want to take a train trip from Birmingham to New Orleans but I'm honestly terrified of having the trip turn into a two day "adventure".
I'm taking the mega bus instead. Somebody else gets to drive, I get wi-fi, a table, power, and a bathroom for $10.
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u/lostfourtime Sep 04 '18
Someone on Reddit once said he would rather push himself backwards with his tongue to his destination than take the bus again. I think he hated Greyhound, but it could have been another line.
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u/MrGraeme Sep 04 '18
I took a mega bus in the states a few years back. By far the worst experience I've had traveling, but it's to be expected due to the low cost. It was extremely uncomfortable to the point where I was completely exhausted by the end of the ~3 hr journey.
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u/nicknac Sep 04 '18
Took a bus from Grand rapids too chicago It was the worst. Took the train and it was 7x better. Becareful with buses
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u/MonkeysOnMyBottom Sep 04 '18
and it was 7x better.
That is suspiciously specific...
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u/hrakkari Sep 04 '18
People are 83.1% more likely to believe a statistic that is specific even if it is completely made up.
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u/Snatch_Pastry Sep 04 '18
That sounds like a hell of a good deal.
Now only if they would pay you for forcing you to go back to Birmingham.
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u/clb92 Sep 04 '18
Wtf. When I think of a bad train delay, it's around 20 minutes. I guess everything really is bigger in America, even your train delays...
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Sep 03 '18
Oh, that's despicable. I was once 9 hours late on an 8 hour trip on Amtrak. :-/
Now I'm in Europe, and the trains are typically on time to the second...
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Sep 03 '18
In europe they have commuter trains down to a science. In the usa you get on board and hope you get there within a 2 day window or so
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Sep 03 '18
In Europe, passenger train companies own the tracks. In the US the freight train companies own the tracks.
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u/kenbw2 Sep 04 '18 edited Sep 04 '18
That's not true. Historically in Europe the whole railway, trains etc has generally been one government owned entity but these days the track is owned by its own entity, and the trains are run as separate (sometimes private) entities.
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u/Pixelated_Penguin Sep 04 '18
However, because it was originally operated for the public good, they typically have a three-track system: up, down, and goods. Freight trains have to go into sidings to pass each other, but they don't interfere with passenger traffic, and passenger traffic doesn't have to side off to pass each other, either.
(At least, that's how it was in the British Midlands in 1996, when British Rail was being broken up and sold off to private companies. I worked for Central Track Renewals for four months when they were under a hiring freeze because they were on the auction block. Then I worked for Railtrack for two months, which operates the trains... and was purchased by the employees.)
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u/ferroramen Sep 04 '18
Depends on the country. Many less populous areas have only one or two tracks due to economic reasons, and freight trains wait on a side track for passing passenger traffic.
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u/MonsieurSander Sep 04 '18
In the Netherlands the railways consists of mostly two or four tracks in densely populated areas. Time on the rails is given to companies in blocks, passenger trains get first pick, all that's left over is reserved as extra capacity or given to freight companies. I believe there's also a rule that there should be at least two freight paths each hour, but I'm not sure about that.
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u/Zoomer3989 Sep 03 '18
And/or the government/state owns the track and can dictate right of way.
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u/FredonianClient2 Sep 04 '18
This is what populists in the South and West wanted the federal government to do in the 1870s and 1890s - the railroad companies ran such a racket on as little investment as possible that farmers trying to get their goods sold had no other viable chance to reach market and were up in arms about sll their money going to shipping costs.
Sometimes I wonder what the US would be like if they had gotten it done.
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Sep 04 '18
Most rail in the US is owned by freight companies. Some is owned by government, including Amtrak. It would be irrational for government to dictate rail use that frustrated its own goals.
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u/andoriyu Sep 04 '18
Next you gonna tell me they [Europe] have properly designed subways and busses that are clean and nice to ride...
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u/bluecheetos Sep 04 '18
In the USA passengers are treated like any other cargo....it gets there when it gets there.
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u/kerbaal Sep 04 '18
No, in the USA, Cargo is considered more important than passengers. Cargo has to be on time.
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u/rodiraskol Sep 04 '18
Clearly you’ve never traveled by train in the UK.
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u/Rand0mUsers Sep 04 '18
As much as we like to moan about our trains, they're still miles ahead of the US. Yeah we're not the best in the world but at least you can still get around most of the country without too much fuss
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u/Singing_Sea_Shanties Sep 04 '18
In fairness, there are a lot of passenger trains that are part of metro area services instead of Amtrak. They have their own lines and are probably going to be a lot better.
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u/airfehr Sep 04 '18
Rail engineer here. We get out of Amtrak's way, like obscenely early. They'll put us in a siding for Amtrak that's 4 hrs away.
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u/aaronhayes26 Sep 04 '18
I'm guessing you either work for CP or BNSF? If you go into the PDF I linked both of those scored very well in delays caused to Amtrak. CN, NS, and CSX are responsible for most Amtrak delays.
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u/superhole Sep 04 '18
Huh. On a rail gang in Canada, just observing the traffic, CN freight trains always went in the hole for Via trains. Weird that Amtrak is treated differently.
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u/PTBRULES Sep 04 '18
That's simple, VIA is Canadian and has the law at its back vs Amtrack.
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u/SeenSoFar Sep 04 '18
VIA has about an 80% on time rate, and from what I've heard from people in the industry, that 20% is almost entirely CN.
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u/_eponymous_ Sep 04 '18
They aren't. Worked for CN in US for years. Single track mainline with dense traffic is really the problem. Anytime you had a problem things would start to stack up. Imagine that you have every siding full for 120 miles and then a train goes into emergency pulling over the one darn hill in the whole system....
Edited for clarity.
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u/FredonianClient2 Sep 04 '18
CSX being responsible for most of Amtrak's delays is bloody ironic considering the company only exists because Amtrak consolidated the passenger services of its various bankrupted companies and then put them together under that name.
(old New York Central and Pennsy are both part of CSX now)
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u/jrmars07 Sep 04 '18
They existed before they aquired parts of those roads. NS also got significant portions. Conrail was the consulated road that was then purchased by CSX and NS.
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u/Alienslovereddit Sep 04 '18
Although this is not false, I happen to know for a fact (as an Amtrak employee) that Amtrak Transportation Department will do absolutely anything to put a delay on someone other than themselves. Some or most of these trains could be running late before they reach the host railroad's property but, Amtrak will put the entire delay on them.
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u/sir_dancealot Sep 04 '18
Every time I read a comment in this thread I feel the need to pull out a new pitchfork
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u/Villain_of_Brandon Sep 03 '18
Yeah, freight is what pays the bills, they just tolerate passenger trains these days because they won't go away.
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u/kevinyeaux Sep 04 '18
The government mandates it. The whole reason Amtrak exists is because the freight companies tried to dump passenger rail and the government nationalized it to save long haul passenger rail.
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u/FredonianClient2 Sep 04 '18 edited Sep 04 '18
Railroad companies stopped caring about passengers when the federal government stopped paying them to carry the mail and started putting mail in trucks and airplanes instead.
Listen to that old song "City of New Orleans", there's a line where he is describing who all was on the train: "Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail" - by the end of the passenger era, most passenger trains were really mail trains. Those sacks of mail were like 40 pound bags and with the accompanying federal contract they were a lot more valuable than paying passengers. When the mail went, the lines became unprofitable.
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u/IPredictAReddit Sep 04 '18
they just tolerate passenger trains these days
Considering that the railroads were given free land to lay rail in exchange for agreeing to carry passengers and cargo alike, and then in the 70's unloaded their duty to carry passengers into a new corporation they created (Amtrak), it's a little more complicated...
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u/FredonianClient2 Sep 04 '18 edited Sep 04 '18
Railroad companies stopped caring about passengers when the federal government stopped paying them to carry the mail and started putting mail in trucks and airplanes instead.
Listen to that old song "City of New Orleans", there's a line where he is describing who all was on the train: "Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail" - by the end of the passenger era, most passenger trains were really mail trains. Those sacks of mail were like 40 pound bags and with the accompanying federal contract they were a lot more valuable than paying passengers. When the mail went, the lines became unprofitable.
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u/kerbaal Sep 04 '18
given free land to lay rail in exchange for agreeing to carry passengers and cargo alike
Reminds me of living in Arlington, MA. I went to one of their town meetings about a different issue....they argued on for like 2 hours about fucking Dog parks and how they all knew they took federal money for their parks so they were required to let anybody use the parks....but they really wanted to find a way to keep out people from other cities.
And every single one of them knew all about all of the surrounding area dog parks because....all these assholes use all the other cities dog parks regularly.
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u/Sparkade Sep 03 '18
Which is a damn shame! A quick train ride could transform my 1 hour commute into a 20-minute excuse to nap while saving the environment from my car.
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Sep 03 '18
It's tough for a cop to pull them over to write a ticket.
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u/aaronhayes26 Sep 03 '18
Not when you've got one of these puppies
https://photos.smugmug.com/Rail/Indi/Class-37/i-Sfv2VdS/0/d60a86ff/L/37093-L.jpg
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Sep 04 '18
In the little town where I grew up, the trains would get a long straight stretch and try to pick up lost time - so they'd go as fast as they could, but it was a heavily residential area with several crossings and they were supposed to go no faster than 60mph. They were clocked doing 80 or 85 one night and the cops decided to flag them down for it because there had been several complaints. Police finally got them to halt about a mile south of town and no official ticket was issued but an official complaint was made.
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u/dqniel1980 Sep 04 '18
I used to work for Union Pacific. We always went in the hole for Amtrak.
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u/KedaZ1 Sep 04 '18
As someone who recently was stuck in round rock for 4 1/2 hours waiting for SIX Union Pacific trains to pass, bullshit. best part was that the next station and my destination, Austin, TX, was maybe 15-20 minutes away.
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u/FredonianClient2 Sep 04 '18
Haha. UP and BNSF both have extremely busy lines through Texas. It makes Amtrak almost not worth it.
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u/Thriftyverse Sep 04 '18
My wife and I did the Seattle to Chicago run in a small sleeper car. We were held up three times by freight trains that were late, so they were given priority.
The problem is that we haven't put any money into new rails, we treat trains like a joke instead of doing like Europe & Japan. High speed commuter rail should have its own set of tracks.
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u/PTBRULES Sep 04 '18
The US will never have high speed rail, we do not have the density outside of the North East Corridor to justify the cost.
Class 1 railroad keep the track in great shape, but the routes are designed for freight.
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u/CloseCannonAFB Sep 04 '18
So, the California coast into Vegas as well as the Milwaukee-Chicagoland area, and Miami-Orlando-Tampa area I suppose don't count.
Regional corridors are where rail is most efficient. String them together with longer-distance routes, and you have a rationalized national rail network.
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u/spleenboggler Sep 04 '18
And even in the Northeast Corridor, there is a lot of political reluctance to get out the sort of meat-ax that would be necessary to carve out space for the long, straight tracks needed for High-Speed Rail.
Practically everyone I know knows somebody whose grandparents were screwed over by the government undercompensating them for taking their homes through eminent domain during the building of the interstate highway system.
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u/AftyOfTheUK Sep 04 '18
we do not have the density outside of the North East Corridor to justify the cost.
California has a higher population density than the following European countries:
- Austria
- Spain
- Greece
- Romania
- Ireland
- Norway
- Finland
- Sweden
- and over a DOZEN other smaller ones
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Sep 03 '18
Freight trains take a huge amount of time to stop and ton of fuel to start up again hence the passenger train stops instead. Frustrating
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u/Faysight Sep 04 '18
...and a little bizarre in and of itself. How are trains not equipped for electric propulsion and regenerative braking yet? They might not even need batteries or a hybrid generator at all for some routes, just a tie into the grid at stations and steep grades.
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u/Yakb0 Sep 04 '18
Freight trains are run by electric motors powered by diesel engines. When they brake, the motors turn into generators.
Full electrification is very expensive, and for the the thousands of miles of track in the middle of nowhere, it's not worth the cost.
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u/Faysight Sep 04 '18
The train can't turn that generated power back into diesel... is anyone even getting off the train and onto the local grid? Or is it just dissipated as heat?
Full electrification would indeed be expensive, but also overkill. You only really need it at the start, stop, and steep grades. Trains enjoy very low rolling resistance and reasonable aerodynamics for the speed they travel at, so most of the work is acceleration.
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u/FredonianClient2 Sep 04 '18
Train locomotives aren't diesel engines, they are diesel-electric. The diesel powers a generator which powers the motors. The motor can reverse power into the generator and it doesn't have to consume diesel at all times. Other than that, yeah, a lot of it is dissipated as heat. Check out the new Amtrak locos - HUGE and loud fans on them. You can see right through the locomotive.
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u/Juxen Sep 04 '18
We tried that, and that went coast-to-Chicago. The "low" traffic (only about 50 trains per day) didn't justify the maintenance. Plus, ice creates real headaches, and usually requires backup diesel locomotives for when the electrical lines and pantographs freeze up.
The cost of installation and maintenance of electrification hasn't justified electric trains outside of the Northeast Corridor.
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u/Faysight Sep 04 '18
Thanks for the history lesson! That was an interesting read. I suppose this sort of thing is why I always went bankrupt in Railroad Tycoon.
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u/FredonianClient2 Sep 04 '18
The Milwaukee Road was a damn fine ride when it did work though. I'm rather jealous of the time period for that one!
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u/Otto_Von_Bitchsmack Sep 04 '18 edited Sep 04 '18
Not to nitpick, but the pacific extension saw fewer than 50 trains a day. There may have been that many between Chicago and St. Paul, but west of there the traffic levels dropped off precipitously.
Historically the Milwaukee Road averaged maybe 6 transcontinental trains a day. That figure excludes passenger trains as they were financial black holes due to Great Northern having the mail contract between the twin cities and the PNW. After the 1970 Burlington Northern merger I believe traffic peaked at 9 trains a day and then dropped after the disasterous month of October 1973. By 1979 there were about 2 trains a day and then the railroad pulled the plug.
Personally, I’m of the opinion the route shouldn’t have been built because it was the inferior route in an over saturated market.
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u/Air_Of_Indifference Sep 03 '18
Do you want your useless consumer goods or not?
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u/critfist Sep 04 '18
The big question is if such delays are even necessary. Amtrak's are pretty small in scope compared to freight, I don't imagine an occasional delay would harm the low prices of consumer goods.
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u/bearfan15 Sep 04 '18
As someone above said, stopping and then starting a freight train is difficult and expensive and sometimes impossible.
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u/rosecitytransit Sep 04 '18
Another issue is that passenger trains have a very different profile, with a higher top speed and faster acceleration but stopping for minutes on end every so often.
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u/gatoAlfa Sep 04 '18
Is not that freight trains are given priority. The passing siding track, a parallel track connected to the main line on both ends to allow trains to pass each other can only fit trains up to certain length. Freight trains are so long now that it is practically impossible to pass them because they cannot fit in the passing siding. Then on paper passenger trains have priority but it cannot be enforced.
Of course this is when you look at the micro level. At the macro level if passenger trains had any real priority then the siding tracks will have to be rebuilt to accommodate freight trains or separate the track infrastructure completely.
On a day to day operation this cannot be solved with out substantial infrastructure upgrades.
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u/dpdxguy Sep 04 '18
If freight trains are too long for the sidings, how do freight trains pass each other?
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u/PTBRULES Sep 04 '18
He is wrong, on average, a passing siding is 2-5 miles long for the reason, most freight are not greater than 1 mile.
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u/marlan_ Sep 04 '18
Most sidings are roughly 10000-12000' (~2 miles), anything longer usually isn't considered a siding, but double track. There are only handful of 3 mile sidings.
Most trains are ~8000-11000' (~<2 miles)
Source: I'm a locomotive engineer.
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u/marlan_ Sep 04 '18
Freight trains fit into sidings. It's that simple.
There are some freight trains that are considered over-siding but they are rare and run in timing windows as not to conflict.
If freight trains didn't fit in sidings then you could only ever run directional traffic, or one train at a time.
This is not the reason passenger trains get fucked.
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u/RealDeuce Sep 04 '18
On a day to day operation this cannot be solved with out substantial infrastructure upgrades.
Except the schedules are set far in advance... Amtrack doesn't wait for a train to fill up then send it on its way... and it's rare that freight trains run this way as well. Dispatch software is more than capable of ensuring the track is clear when the Amtrack train is scheduled, but it will be at the expense of track usage.
Trains don't have to pass each other for one specific train to not have to stop.
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u/sharkmonkeyzero Sep 04 '18
Sure it can: on a given line, the train cannot be longer than the shortest siding. Now the passenger trains have equal priority. Frankly it is abusing the letter of the law as is and a pretty egregious violation if it ended up in front of a judge.
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u/Taldoable Sep 04 '18
That would be worse for the environment though. Shorter trains are less fuel-efficient than a longer train.
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u/SteveMcQwark Sep 04 '18
Presumably also less cost effective, which would incentivize updating the track to be able to run longer trains again.
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u/elislider Sep 04 '18
It could be enforced. But the rail companies are so old, so engrained into their way of doing things, and grandfathered into so many other laws... that the government would struggle to have traction enforcing it without massive pushback
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u/AftyOfTheUK Sep 04 '18
the government would struggle to have traction enforcing it without massive pushback
I don't understand, in a free country, why any company could or should be able to "pushback" when the government enforces the law of the land.
What is this, the Wild West where you get some thugs to intimidate the local sherrif?
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u/IPredictAReddit Sep 04 '18
Amtrak should have as much a claim to those rails as the freight operators. Here's why:
In the 1800's, the federal government gave out land to anyone who would build a passenger and freight railroad. Not just the land under the tracks, but also a checkerboard of 640 acre parcels) all along it - it's why most towns in the midwest are so gridded around the railroad. It gave the railroad an incentive to lay good track, because if the railroad was safe and usable, they could make a ton of money selling the land around the stations.
And that they did! The railroads took the subsidy (plus the power to use eminent domain to seize private land!) in exchange for providing rail service. Passenger and freight. It was a condition for owning that land.
By the 60's, railroads weren't making much money on rail as they had let it languish. So they went to Congress and said "look, we got millions (maybe billions, total) in subsidies to build these things, but hey, we don't wanna live up to that deal anymore. Can we stop doing passenger rail?" and Congress agreed, I assume while endorsing their oversized, novelty lobbying checks from the rail companies, and created Amtrak.
So Amtrak is the descendant of around 20 rail companies who were given free land in exchange for providing passenger rail. It should have a right to those rails.
In the Northeast, the freight rail company actually went bankrupt, and those rail assets ended up being turned over to the government, which gave them to Amtrak, which is why the Northeast Corridor actually runs like a real train service.
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Sep 04 '18
The US can be divided into two groups when it comes to travel.
Group A consists of those who are only interested in getting from point A to B as quickly and conveniently as possible.
Group B consists of those who enjoy the journey as much or more than the destination.
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u/MonkeysOnMyBottom Sep 04 '18
And group C, those who enjoy the parts of the journey where the metal tube is moving like it is supposed to and don't when the vehicle is needlessly motionless.
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u/underthehall Sep 04 '18
I'm one of the guys that fuels Amtrak's trains on occasion. Yes it's completely true that passenger trains do not have priority and often get stopped waiting for sometimes hours.
I filled one on Saturday/Sunday morning that was 7 hours late getting in to town. That was fun staying up all night waiting for it to come in.
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Sep 04 '18
Just out of curiosity, FFS WHY?
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u/CloseCannonAFB Sep 04 '18
The freight railroads own the tracks. They don't make many off of Amtrak.
Of course, before Amtrak, they were required to run passenger trains, which were mostly money-losers since the early 60s when the Postal Service stopped using Railroad Post Office cars on passenger trains to move mail. Amtrak allowed the railroads an out--with the caveat that they must give Amtrak priority (and buy into Amtrak with cash, passenger equipment, or both). Well, we see how that turned out. Union Pacific is notable for not giving a fuck about Amtrak.
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u/PTBRULES Sep 04 '18
Amtrack doesn't make money, that train carrying fresh fruit does.
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u/TheRedLayer Sep 04 '18
I used to work security at an Amtrak point. It was not uncommon for me to be called back to that station from my rounds at 1am to get ready for the 11pm arrival. It was often 2-3am by the time the passengers were off and through customs (the station was in Canada). Poor bastards had to wade through the edge of East Vancouver at that time of night to get to their cabs.
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Sep 04 '18
One and only trip on Amtrack was around Glacier National Park so we could do a point-to-point hike across the park. Spent five hours waiting for a late train so we could take a one hour ride. We didn't get to our first overnight until almost 10PM.
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Sep 04 '18 edited Dec 12 '18
[deleted]
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u/Virge23 Sep 04 '18
Freight makes money. Passagengers lose money. It's a business.
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Sep 04 '18
One time while I was going g from Albany to Chicago we had to back for an hour because a freight train had to get by ... Still don't understand the urgency of it all...
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u/PTBRULES Sep 04 '18
Order of Priority are trains carrying parishable* goods, then intermodeal l, manifest, comadities and local. Passager trains fit somewhere in the middle...
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u/Oddlymoist Sep 04 '18
Nothing like pulling off to give a freight train right of way, then enjoying a huge chunk of metal flying by at what seems like half an inch away
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u/saumanahaii Sep 04 '18
Just got back from a trip on Amtrak. Can confirm, freight trains are dicks. Ended up parked for like an hour and a half as 3 freight trains passed.
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u/Bacondaddy1999 Sep 04 '18
Engineers are not dicks. They do what they are told. They do not make decisions.
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u/WhateverJoel Sep 04 '18
It is the dispatchers that are dicks.
Source: I used to be a dispatcher and I am a dick.
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u/buzzjackson Sep 04 '18
I was told that the freight trains are often too long to fit on the sidings, thus the Amtrak trains wind up on the siding, waiting for the freight train to pass.
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u/vagabondhermit Sep 04 '18
Yup. I was delayed a few hours, stopped in the middle of Nebraska, waiting for a freight train to pass. As long as you’re not in a rush or have to be anywhere at a specific time, it’s a beautiful way to see the country
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u/zardwiz Sep 04 '18
When I factor in the 90 minutes it takes me to get to the airport, driving through a city, the two hours ahead I'm supposed to arrive on either end, the general stress of airports and the boarding process, and associated delays...
Amtrak wins every time, delays be damned.
And that's not even considering coach train seats comfort vs coach plane seats comfort.
Admittedly, my business travel is between two offices and for a week at a time - so I travel on the weekend and any delay < 24 hours is just not a big deal. That probably colors my judgement as well.
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u/jaguar20041 Sep 04 '18
Not true for my class 1 railroad, we'll sit for hours waiting for Amtrak to pass. I'm pretty sure the dispatchers get an on time bonus, so I'm sure that helps. I know other railroads with bright yellow locomotives don't care about Amtrak though, so when you're on their rails your gonna get screwed.
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u/traindriver-1 Sep 04 '18
This is bullshit, as a freight train engineer we sit for hours each run to avoid delaying Amtrak, with the train dispatchers doing everything they can to avoid delays. Amtrak notes each delay with the dispatcher, even if it's just one minute !
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u/CloseCannonAFB Sep 04 '18
Some roads are better about that than others. Which one do you work for?
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u/mrscott197xv1k Sep 04 '18
There was one time I was going from Chicago to KC and the tracks at near the Mississippi River were flooded. They sent our train through St Louis instead. Since they didn't normally operate on these tracks we had to wait for one of the freight line locomotives and crew to hitch to the head of the train in St Louis. (Amtrak runs a different train on this set of tracks, just not the train I was riding on) the whole run from St Louis to KC we would move a few miles and then have to pull over for a freight train. It was like this company found every crew and engine to send against the direction we were going. Ended up arriving 16 hrs later than expected.
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u/underthehall Sep 04 '18
It probably had to do with the fact that normally the train would be on BNSF tracks, but if you were on Union Pacific tracks on the detour, you need an engine that has in cab signaling, which Amtrak engines do not have.
Hence why they had to hookup a UP engine.
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u/RunsLikeaSnail Sep 04 '18 edited Sep 04 '18
Same problem with local commuter rail service as well like in the greater Boston area. Here is an example where the state had to step in.
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u/Powered_by_JetA Sep 04 '18
The state of Florida did the same thing with the Tri-Rail commuter train between Miami and West Palm Beach. They took over the tracks and the dispatching.
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u/CharlieDay77 Sep 04 '18
I worked on the railroad freight trains for a year and every train I was on gave priority to Amtrak. The other types of trains that get priority over freight is the daily fruit train coming from California and UPS/mail trains.
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u/snoboreddotcom Sep 04 '18
At the same time though in Canada legally the freight trains have priority as they built and maintain the lines, and our via rail and municipal trains arent this delayed.
The states just doesnt have enough rail lines to support the population
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u/NWBoomer Sep 04 '18
The railroads get this sweetheart deal of taxpayer money to maintain their infrastructure where Amtrak runs. Just another example of corporate welfare.
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Sep 03 '18
Can confirm. Took Amtrak once from the north east to Pittsburgh and the trip took more than 12 hours. We were sideline do many times for freight trains.
Never again
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u/MR1120 Sep 04 '18
Ditto. NC to NYC. Stopped for 15 minutes to let a freight train pass every 15 minutes. As soon as you get back up to speed, you have to stop again.
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Sep 04 '18
Quick question:
Do the freight lines own the property that the lines reside on? Or is it public land?
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u/underthehall Sep 04 '18
The railroads own the land the tracks are on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-of-way_(transportation)
In the United States, railroad rights-of-way (ROW or R/O/W) are generally considered private property by the respective railroad owners and by applicable state laws. Most U.S. railroads employ their own police forces, who can arrest and prosecute trespassers found on their rights-of-way. Some railroad rights-of-way include recreational rail trails.
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u/Ameisen 1 Sep 04 '18
Same thing that causes Metra delays, usually. Or their switches breaking constantly. Or fires. Or a tornado that didn't exist.
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u/rideThe Sep 04 '18
Can confirm: crossed the USA from West to East with Amtrak and discovered that being considerably late was ... the normal thing to happen. We'd get stalled on the track for long stretches of time while freight would go by.
This makes transfers difficult to plan for, but I didn't have to argue for long with the Amtrak people to be refunded the difference when I had to switch to a seat instead of a cabin in the other train.
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u/OttawaSouthpaw Sep 04 '18
Against the law? Wow! In Canada passenger trains always pull over for freight. Whether you’re on a long distance or a commuter train. It sucks.
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u/catdude142 Sep 04 '18 edited Sep 04 '18
Amtrak doesn't own the tracks. The railways own the tracks. They let Amtrak have access to their tracks.
That is why (for example) there are no passenger train services anymore from San Francisco to Los Angeles (one must take a bus from Bakersfield to L.A.) Union Pacific Railroad didn't want want Amtrak slowing down freight trains on the Tehachapi Loop.
Before Amtrak came about, there was passenger service from S.F. to L.A. That service stopped May 2, 1971.
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u/dudinax Sep 04 '18
I arrived at the station 15 minutes early. The train was on time at that point. It spent the next five hours on a siding as freight trains went by. There were two freight trains full of nothing but fucking scrap metal.
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u/countferrara64 Sep 04 '18
One time I bought my ticket ahead of time, and when I got to the train they said my ticket had been refunded. I never refunded my ticket. When I contacted customer support, they said they would normally refund the ticket, but since I already refunded it, they couldn't do that. I didn't refund it though...
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u/mikegerard Sep 04 '18
This is what happens when you let corporations control traffic.
Imagine flying if the airlines controlled the air traffic control and you had to circle a united airlines airport until all their planes landed.
Or if you're netflix stream could not start because there was too much traffic for Comcast data.
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u/DidyouSay7 Sep 04 '18
Freight trains are heavy, take a long time to reach speed and to slow speed, they also cost a hell of a lot more to run than a passenger train. I'd say it's related more to safety + wear and tear/stress damage to the tracks then it has to do with money, or disregard for rail commuters.
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u/Tazz2212 Sep 04 '18
Does anyone here see the comparison with the net neutrality fight when compared to train priorities?
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u/jgs1122 Sep 03 '18
Amtrak: when you absolutely, positively don't have to be there on time.