jccollins
Conductor
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2002
- Messages
- 1,266
The Amtrak California Capitol Corridor Highway 17 Thruway Bus Service between San Jose Amtrak, Scotts Valley, and Santa Cruz was suspended this morning when drivers went on strike without prior notice. The Highway 17 service is operated by Santa Cruz Metropolitan Transit District drivers and jointly funded by Amtrak as a thruway route to and from Amtrak and CalTrain trains at San Jose Diridon Station. Service will remain suspended for the forseeable future, until SCMTD can reach an agreement with its drivers.
Amtrak is NOT offering any alternate transportation and is telling passengers that they are on their own. Desperate passengers are being referred to Greyhound, but Greyhound only offer four poorly-timed (in terms of connecting to/from trains) daily buses between San Jose and Santa Cruz. This is a far cry from the 30-40 daily buses that the SCMTD/Amtrak jointly operate. In addition, the Amtrak and Greyhound stations in San Jose are about 3/4 mile apart and passengers are on their own transferring between the two. No other scheduled transportation (besides the Amtrak Highway 17 Express buses) runs between San Jose and Scotts Valley so those passengers are just completely out of luck.
This is a sad situation for the passengers who have and will fall victim to it, especially since passengers arriving into San Jose on Amtrak and CalTrain trains today had NO advance notice or warning that this could happen. This is a good reason why Amtrak needs to use more caution when establishing contracts with other companies (such as vulnerable local transit districts that can and do strike) that involve scheduled transportation of their passengers.
For the latest information on this service disruption, you can visit the Santa Cruz Metro Bus website or Amtrak's Capitol Corridor website which will post updates on the service disruptions on the right side of its homepage. Additional information can also be found by monitoring the Santa Cruz Sentinel (local newspaper) website.
Amtrak is NOT offering any alternate transportation and is telling passengers that they are on their own. Desperate passengers are being referred to Greyhound, but Greyhound only offer four poorly-timed (in terms of connecting to/from trains) daily buses between San Jose and Santa Cruz. This is a far cry from the 30-40 daily buses that the SCMTD/Amtrak jointly operate. In addition, the Amtrak and Greyhound stations in San Jose are about 3/4 mile apart and passengers are on their own transferring between the two. No other scheduled transportation (besides the Amtrak Highway 17 Express buses) runs between San Jose and Scotts Valley so those passengers are just completely out of luck.
This is a sad situation for the passengers who have and will fall victim to it, especially since passengers arriving into San Jose on Amtrak and CalTrain trains today had NO advance notice or warning that this could happen. This is a good reason why Amtrak needs to use more caution when establishing contracts with other companies (such as vulnerable local transit districts that can and do strike) that involve scheduled transportation of their passengers.
For the latest information on this service disruption, you can visit the Santa Cruz Metro Bus website or Amtrak's Capitol Corridor website which will post updates on the service disruptions on the right side of its homepage. Additional information can also be found by monitoring the Santa Cruz Sentinel (local newspaper) website.
