WASHINGTON — An Amtrak train left a large number of passengers behind when it departed Washington Union Station for New York on Dec. 26, the Washington Post reports, reportedly after doors to the station platform were never opened to allow customers to board.
A passenger posted on the social network Reddit that passengers received a message at 9:40 p.m. that it was time to board the 10 p.m. train from Roanoke, Va., to New York — the last Northeast Regional train of the night — but people were still waiting for the gate to open when they received word the train had left at 10:15. An Amtrak employee eventually told them the train had left because no one had come to the platform to board. The poster indicated an Amtrak employee said 110 people were affected.
The Post said it had contacted the passenger, who had provided a copy of his ticket but declined to speak on the record. Amtrak spokeswoman Kimberly Woods confirmed in a statement that the train had departed “before all passengers were able to board,” and said “Amtrak sincerely apologizes for the miscommunication that resulted in customers missing their train. We provided customers service on the next train, food and beverages, hotel accommodations, and full refunds.”
In a followup, the Reddit poster said “ticket agents were more than accommodating” in rebooking onto an Acela the next morning. The individual confirmed receiving a ticket refund and “a healthy amount in Amtrak credit.”
Amtrak took over management of Washington Union Station earlier this year and said it planned to introduce “modified boarding procedures to reduce congestion” [see “Amtrak begins management …,” Trains News Wire, July 30, 2024]. The long lines of the boarding process have long been an issue with passengers.
I remember sitting on a train not too long ago at WAS listening to my scanner. The gate people up top were trying to call the conductors (who I saw on the platform) re: boarding of that train. The conductors refused to answer. Then someone upstairs said “I’m going down to find what the he’ll is going on.” Then a call came on the radio to board the passengers.
Heads need to roll in this case. And like someone said, starting at the top.
Between this and the priority handling dispute things at Amtrak have reached an all-time low. How Stephen Gardner keeps his job is beyond belief. The politicians never ride, even the ones who claim to be soooooo supportive of passenger rail, oh are they supportive, so they never see this stuff. This ought to make front page news at the likes of the Boston Globe and the NYTimes from Maine to Florida. Yeah, let the members of Train Riders Northeast , that organisation of whackjobs that have dubbed the Boston-Portland Downeaster Service “America’s Favorite Train”. Need to be exposed to this incident. It ought to be fun to read the National Association of Railroad Passengers, Amtrak’s PR firmtake on this in their next weekly e-mail blast “Hotline News” if they dare cover it.
Mark , I was a Conductor on the 5:00 p:m Acela out of NYP on Friday nights . I can tell you our Acela was well represented by Congressman and Senators from Connecticut , Rhode Island , and Massachusetts . We would also see New York’s leave the train upon its arrival in NYP.
The whole Amtrak process of making everyone line up in single file to shuffle out to the platform is ridiculous and results in the loss of all the advantages trains have over planes as far as boarding (multiple doors and long platforms.). Just post the platform number and whether boarding has started, and let passengers head to the platform – as is done with commuter trains in the US and with most trains around the world.
This is a first for me–but then again, it’s Amtrak so nothing should be surprising.
At airports when a plane is boarding, there is constant communication between the cabin crew and the gate crew. Railroads are a bit stuck in a prior century.
Didn’t something like this happen at Penn Station in New York a few years ago? The train pulls into the station from Boston and passengers detrain. But because no one bothered to open the gates upstairs the waiting passengers couldn’t get to the platform. Yet the idiot conductor left without even wondering why at the busiest station in the country and on the busiest route on the system, no one boarded the train. Union employee at his/her best. Not his/her job to figure out why no one boarded. At least in that case it wasn’t the last train of the day. Both the gate dragon and the conductor/assistant conductors should be fired in both instances. I can’t imagine what it must have cost the taxpayers to put up 110 passengers in hotels in downtown DC at the last minute.
WashingtonDeeCee is one of the busier yards. If there’s any station where Amtrak could at least look for a crew and makeup train it would be there. There’s no extra Amtrak equipment or crews at Saint Paul or Kansas City or Dallas or Atlanta, but at Washington there’s at least a fighting chance.
This isn’t to say I know the answer, but merely the question to ask. I waited five hours for United Airlines to come up with a substitute 737 at its Denver hub. One had to be flown in from Houston, another major United hub. So no, there isn’t always a substitute Amtrak consist available or a train crew on call, but at Washington there should have been at least that possibility.
This first falls on the on-board train crew: How stupid can you be not to realize that something is wrong when no one in Washington DC boards the train. The second falls on station management to not have someone at the gate to ensure passengers can access to gates. This must be a major change in DC for the gates not to be constantly open.
So typical. And I am sorry to say that but most of my Amtrak journeys – several a year – include moments of extreme incompetence, much of it attributable to undermotivated line employees. I can just see the shoulder shrugs down on the platform as no one came down the ramp to board, rather than a hurried call to another motivated employee to quickly rectify the issue.
Unmotivated? Yeah, but stupid also comes to mind.
No, they’re not stupid, that’s a little too harsh. But Amtrak certainly has a “not my job” employee culture. The Amtrak personnel I’ve encountered have been pleasant and friendly enough but certainly not motivated to do more than the bare minimum necessary to get their job done. I suspect that workers who raise questions when something doesn’t seem quite right are not popular with the rest of the crew and learn to keep their heads down and their mouths shut.