CHICAGO — Amtrak told two people who use wheelchairs that their proposed trip from Chicago to Bloomington, Ill. — a 124-mile trip normally requiring a $16 ticket — would cost $25,000, a move that has a senator from Illinois asking for a meeting with the passenger carrier’s CEO.
National Public Radio was first to report the case of a group from Access Living, a Chicago disability service and advocacy center that wanted to take a group of 10 — five using wheelchairs — to a work retreat in Bloomington this week. The Lincoln Service train usually has three coaches, each of which can accommodate one patron in a wheelchair; Access Living’s Adam Ballard, one of the wheelchair users, told NPR that in the past, with advance notice, Amtrak has accommodated the group by removing seats or seating them in the dining car and charging a few hundred extra.
This time, Ballard told NPR, an Amtrak group sales agent wrote to say the cost of removing seats to accommodate the extra chairs would be over $25,000, citing a new policy regarding the cost of removing seats. Amtrak reiterated that comment in a statement to NPR, saying the charges were part of a policy to charge “an additional fee when any group requires reconfiguration of our railcars.” It suggested splitting the group onto two trains operating about three hours apart so no reconfiguration would be necessary.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth — who lost both legs serving in the U.S. Army in Iraq and is the first disabled woman elected to Congress — called Amtrak’s stance “outrageous” in a statement on her Twitter account, and said it was “disappointing that Amtrak leadership appears to have failed to offer a public apology for its initial mistake.”
Duckworth, ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Transportation, said she will request a meeting with Amtrak CEO Richard Anderson “to discuss eliminating Amtrak’s nationwide policy of refusing to absorb any costs associated with reconfiguring a railcar to accommodate a group of wheelchair users.”
Miss Harding
The header on “Leave a Comment” says to keep on topic. Mr Herbauer is about as far off topic as you can get.
And speaking of comments, I enjoy reading yours.
Mister Share:
Patrick Herbauer has the right (as much as any of us have the right, given that this forum is private property subject to the rules of the owner) to express his opinion, just as we do.
We have the right to ignore him.
If this does not sit well with you, you are free to report him to management. But absent that, let him alone.
The above comments are generic in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own bleep lawyer.
This is terrible! The low floor California Cars on the Capitols and San Joaquins and the Surfliner card on the Surfliners can accommodate several people in wheel chairs per car on the lower level. Just about every station on these three lines has one, or two, wheel chair equipped ramps, and/or a slightly higher platform to be used with a bridge plate stored on the car. Both of these car types also have a very large (think about four paying passenger seat spaces) bathrooms.
Even the Superliners may accommodate at least one wheel chair bound passenger downstairs where there also is a larger accessible bathroom.
Is no body going to call out the needless comments by Patrick Herbauer
Ms. Harding, Bravo! As one whose Constitutional rights are currently under legislative assault (Hint: I reside in Virginia), I’m not surprised at any government entity failing at the concept of equality. Especially one whose leader includes employment in one of the U.S.’s most vilified industries, airlines. What’s needed at Amtrak is a leader who is focused first on customer service. The problem with being a government and political ward is that Amtrak is in an institutional culture devoid of customer focus, as government is, by its very nature is a pure monopoly. Thus, a real leader recognizes a greater need for not just customer service, but public service. Yes, there are communities for which Amtrak provides a vital public service. And yes, Amtrak provides not just a travel option, but also can be a luxury. But, above all else, Amtrak needs a seismic culture shift from top to bottom that it, like all businesses- exists to serve customers. That, indeed like all businesses ceases to exist without them. Amtrak is in a spiral of decline. What Amtrak needs is innovative leadership. Not the devolutionary environment that that plagued it almost since its inception. What’s needed is not just reasonable accommodation for private cars and excursions, but to give people reasons to ride trains again. To build not just new business, but repeat business.
Is Amtrak a commercial entity, or a public accommodation?
Bloomington is only 2 hours from Chicago. While I get that the train ride was preferred, they could have taken a wheelchair accessible bus if the destination was more important than the methods.
Personally, I think these are simply mind games Amtrak is playing. Either fund us in a way that allows us to be a public accommodation or let us make commercial decisions to make the service “a profit” like Congress claims.
“to discuss eliminating Amtrak’s nationwide policy of refusing to absorb any costs associated with re-configuring a railcar to accommodate a group of wheelchair users.”
If Congress provides the dough to support car reconfiguration, then Amtrak will comply. Ms Duckworth, don’t you see these are simply Jedi mind tricks?
Charles,
There was no rule on how many passengers needed a wheelchair when I worked in the airline industry. I could hear the Florida flights calling into the hub asking for 20 plus wheelchairs at the gate for connecting passengers in the spring. At my location, when we had more requests than wheelchairs, we borrowed from other airlines, if they weren’t using them, or took a delay boarding, using the same chairs over and over as needed.
One wheelchair accommodation per car seems woefully inadequate. It shouldn’t be that hard to create some flexible seating that can be used both ways.
Richard Anderson is messing with the wrong people when he says ” Oh, just charge them $25,000. That will keep them disabled people from causing us extra work”!
Charles……one reason for limiting the number of disabled would be the required evacuation time of 90 seconds for a full plane with half of all exits unavailable. People in a wheel chair would never try to utilize a toilet on a narrow body plane….first they would need a wheel chair….which would usually be placed in cargo hold…..on wide body long haul flights…there is an onboard folding wheel chair and there is one “larger” accessible toilet. Also, you don’t have to declare that you are disabled to travel via air…..just at the counter….
MARVIN – The airline doesn’t remove seats for disabled passengers or provide space for the passenger’s own wheelchair. As bus or transit line does.
If Amtrak only needed to put a disabled passenger in a regular seat, as the airline does for your wife, then there would be no charge.
foxnews.com reports that Amtrak has backed down. Now Senator Duckworth should take on the airline industry which is the real problem here.
This should be the battle cry to oust Anderson from the helm at Amtrak.
My wife is mobility impaired. When informed of this problem, the airlines arrange that she be transferred, with an employee, from the curb where we exit the taxi, through checkin, through security to the gangplank of the airplane. Then, she is transferred to another wheel chair provided by the airline, which allows her to navigate to her seat on the plane.
The reverse procedure occurs when we land. We pay nothing extra for this service. Amtrak’s fee of $25,000 is another incident of why the people who are running the railroad ought to be removed.
Christophe Parker has the simple solution, it is true that CN requires additional equipment on these trains because of an axle count needed to trigger crossing signals or some such BS. Those additional cars are just dead equipment costing money and making no revenue…open them up for this one group and you have your extra seats without it costing 25k. I know, but what about the additional crew member, trust me, if one additional crew member costs 25k for one trip then everyone would apply to work at Amtrak, so I highly doubt it would cost 25k for one additional crew member(if you even needed one that is).
ROBERT RAY — Maybe it’s because Dick Anderson ran two huge airlines, each of them many times the size of Amtrak, neither of which had any of these requirements. Even though the two airlines had lots of $$$$ while Amtrak runs hand to mouth at best.
This reminds me of Amtrak’s recent policy to not run any charter trains because it costs too much. Per some Trains articles Amtrak has no idea how much it costs for them to run a charter trip. It certainly shouldn’t cost $ 25,000 to remove some seats, or to put them into the dining car. Like Anderson’s Southwest Chief rail-bus-rail fiasco this suggests again that Amtrak management is incompetent.
25,000 dollars for passenger in wheelchairs that’s just ridiculous
Senator Duckworth has her priorities screwed up. She’s fine with laws that allow babies in their mother’s womb to be cut to pieces without any anesthetic for the baby. It’s human torture. These babies don’t care about anything other than wanting to be born. We have become a savage and heartless society with upside down priorities.
WALTER RITTLE – Exactly. You made a HUGE POINT. The airlines move people from uncomfortable “transport wheelchairs” onto regular airplane seats a fully abled person can barely climb into. Airline passengers don’t demand that a plane be removed from service to remove seats, or even that they be brought on board seated in their own wheelchairs. If Amtrak were allowed the same rights as a carrier that the airlines are allowed, they wouldn’t need ANY handicapped spaces. In over 150 flights I’ve never once seen a single handicapped seat or wheelchair space on an airplane, as ARE REQUIRED on buses, Amtrak or subway cars.
I realize Amtrak has gotten a black eye with this story. It’s underserved. Senator Duckworth with her own heroic experience might think this through. The airlines that bring the good senator to Washington each week or month don’t take a plane out of service to remove a seat for the senator herself. Why does the senator expect Amtrak to do something for her constituents that the airlines don’t do for a war hero United States senator.
It’s terribly unfortunate that some disabled airline passengers wear a diaper. No one wants that. No one likes it. It’s reality. I’m fully able, somewhat athletic and of average height and weight for an adult male – and have difficulty using an airline lavatory. Maybe the good senator, whose constituents fly as she does herself, could look into that is.
The NPR article indicated some of all of these are motorized wheelchairs. So bigger and heavier than a standard chair.
For reasons not clear to me, airlines are largely exempt from ADA requirements on actual accessibility (ie by ADA standards, ramps and doors and restrooms have to be big enough to accommodate the person and his/her chair without added outside assistance). Apparently, trainside lifts don’t quite fulfill ADA requirements because someone else has to operate the lift. Amtrak and local bus services have to give up a lot of revenue space to accommodate wheelchairs that the airlines seem not to have to do.
Of course, I think this is enigmatic of Amtrak’s current leadership. They need a “yes we can do that” attitude when it comes to reasonable requests, even if it means eating some costs. That his request was made in advance should be manageable, even if they sent an extra car. This includes on board services and private cars and charter trips and all the things that give people a positive impression of Amtrak and rail in general.
$25,000 might be closer to the actual “cost” than it might seem. If you can’t remove and replace seats during the normal dwell for the trainset in Chicago, then you need to have the car out of service for day on each end of the trip and the cost to have a spare available to sub for the car that’s out of service for the work. Plus the cost of the actual work. Holding a couple of carmen over for their 4 hour minimum overtime would be a minimum.
This is not to say that Amtrak did the right thing here. The cost of all this negative press might be much higher than the actual cost to accommodate the travelers.
Certainly, Amtrak needs to figure out a flexible seating arrangement for this sort of thing in the future.
My BS meter is going off the Charts…and that is saying a lot for a man in my profession of being a Professional Barfly..
Amtrak has a severe public image problem as far as wheelchair users are concerned. It should be noted, however, 99% of Amtrak on train employees are more than willing to assist special needs passengers.
Is there any reason they couldn’t board all 5 in wheelchairs and then transfer the 2 most ambulatory people to regular seats and stow their 2 wheelchairs as luggage?
You know there is another way to look at this:
Why does it cost $25,000 to remove a couple of seats? To me, that suggests a failing of Amtrak as an organization. It isn’t that hard to remove seats.
I accept it may cost that much for Amtrak. But that doesn’t mean it is reasonable for it to cost that much. It may be that the real cost of two union guys working an hour or two might be two much to bear – but it isn’t $25,000.
Another matter. Press reports say the wheelchair limit is because there are three cars in service. But isn’t this train required to be six cars because of some stupid rule by CN that enough axles need to be on the train to trip signals (one wonders if they ever run light engines . . . or short locals). Anyway, if they have to use deadheading cars anyway, why not open them for revenue use?
This move is just as dumb as the one where Amtrak kicked a disabled person off the Southwest Chief in Albuquerque, mid-trip, because she couldn’t ‘take care of herself.’ An Albuquerque policeman took her to the airport and made sure she got on a flight to continue to her destination.