WASHINGTON — Amtrak has urged federal regulators to investigate the ongoing tardiness of the Sunset Limited, saying the train’s on-time performance this year falls well short of minimum standards.
The filing this week with the Surface Transportation Board does not mention Union Pacific, which handles the Sunset over nearly all of the train’s route between Los Angeles and New Orleans. The filing also does not break down delays by cause or railroad.
“Recent data continues to demonstrate performance below the minimum standard on this
route and highlights the urgent need for investigation by the Surface Transportation Board,” Amtrak said.
For the first three months of 2023, the customer on-time performance of westbound train No. 1 was 45%, an improvement from the 31% recorded in the fourth quarter of 2022. Eastbound train No. 2’s customer on-time performance was 38% for the first quarter, up from 26% in the prior three months.
“These figures are still nowhere close to meeting the applicable COTP standard,” Amtrak said. “Indeed … the COTP for Sunset Limited trains remained deficient for the sixth consecutive quarter.”
In December, Amtrak filed a complaint and petition that asked the STB to begin an investigation of Sunset Limited performance. The trains’ customer on-time performance was well below 80% for two consecutive calendar quarters, which meets the requirements for a board investigation, Amtrak says.
Union Pacific filed its reply to Amtrak’s petition in January, arguing that the issues with the Sunset derived from a schedule not designed to take the customer on-time performance metric into account. UP requested mediation to help resolve the dispute.
Amtrak responded in early February, arguing against UP’s request for mediation.
If Amtrak was so sure of itself they would have agreed to mediation. The fact that they wouldn’t is all you need to know about the situation. Surely UP and all the freight railroads could do a better job of giving the much faster Amtrak trains priority whenever possible. But Amtrak should quit spreading Bull S**T about all of the supposed inequities that the freight railroad supposedly inject into Amtrak’s schedules. This is just more of the same mismanagement that has been in place since David Gunn was fired for telling the truth about how Amtraks operations favor the Northeast Corridor at the expense of everything else, irregardless of Congress’s mandate to build the nation wide network and serve all customers. Put a person in charge that understands railroading and give him the authority to make the sweeping changes necessary to get the job done. If this means separating the two operating groups into say “Amtrak Communter” and “Amtrak Long Distance” then so be it. At least the finances would be more accurate!
How many of these delays were due to Amtrak’s ongoing management problems and inefficiencies?
Union Pacific’s response was without accurate basis. In fact, the last pre-AMTRAK schedule for the train (when the line still belonged to Southern Pacific) showed a run time of four hours faster than the current AMTRAK timetable, which Union Pacific can only meet less than a third of the time.
Southern Pacific didn’t have any trains to block Amtrak, such was the state of the SP. Things must change it is true, but being rigid and unwilling to work within the frame work of 21st century railroading only makes Amtrak look recalcitrant and inefficient.