Causes of Amtrak delays

[Mackensen]

The Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has issued an official report on the causes of Amtrak delays: Report.

I hadn't seen this posted previously and I think it'll be of interest here. My only comment is that it proves statistically what many of us believed previously: BNSF dispatching is the best and UP's is the worst.

 

[Trogdor]

They used data from 2002-2007 to generate this report. I strongly suspect that the conclusions (with respect to how individual railroads perform) would be different if they used data from 2010 or 2011 (or 2012, when it's over).

 

[Devil's Advocate]

They used data from 2002-2007 to generate this report. I strongly suspect that the conclusions (with respect to how individual railroads perform) would be different if they used data from 2010 or 2011 (or 2012, when it's over).

Last I checked passenger trains are still being stalled on UP's network, especially whenever they're already a little late. I would imagine that passenger train dispatching is now much worse on BNSF's network as well. So I guess in that sense we'd find a much more even disruption among Amtrak scheduling. But we're also talking about a much shorter period (five years vs. two years) in that case, so while the report would indeed be different it would still be weighted toward the previous findings over the most recent developments.