obnoxious people on amtrak

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tahoejeff

tahoejeff

Train Attendant
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
34
Location
Wisconsin Dells
i found this blog post via google alerts. it reminded me how rotten people can be. if you don't read the whole thing, start about halfway down under the downtown chicago picture, starting with: And now, a note about trying to sit on an Amtrak train.

shouldn't there be some kind of car attendant on each car? this has always been one of the biggest downfalls to riding coach, to me. and being a factory worker, i'll always be riding coach.

http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=903
 
They don't specifically say so, but I'm guessing that they weren't riding the Texas Eagle. Most likely they were on one of the short haul trains, where there are no attendants. So one would need to find a conductor to force people to move and/or behave like normal human beings.
 
Passengers are allowed to occupy one seat each, and no, they may not buy a seat for their luggage or just to avoid sitting with others. It is official Amtrak policy to keep groups and families together, especially when they include minor children. If passengers refuse to allow someone to sit next to them or to move to another seat to accomodate a family, they risk removal from the train. All it requires is a request from the passengers (granted, Chicago-based crews have a reputation for indifference, but they still have to enforce Amtrak policies if they want to stay employed).\

As far as putting an attendant in each car, sure, it's possible, if you don't mind paying about 30 percent more for your fare. As it is, most of the Saluki trains (which I believe this blogger rode) have only one or two attendants at most, but the Conductors and ACs are the ones truly responsible for enforcing the rules, while the attendants are there just to hand out pillows, fetch stuff for the disabled, assist with luggage, etc.
 
TransAtlantic said:
As it is, most of the Saluki trains (which I believe this blogger rode) have only one or two attendants at most, but the Conductors and ACs are the ones truly responsible for enforcing the rules, while the attendants are there just to hand out pillows, fetch stuff for the disabled, assist with luggage, etc.
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I don't know about the Saluki specifically, having never ridden that particular train, but on all other corridor trains out of Chicago, the only "attendant" on the train is the one that works food-service.
 
So this man is surprised that there are obnoxious people in the world or even on Amtrak? Has he been on a plane lately?

When the Conductor came through to take tickets he could have simply shared the incident and allowed him/her to handle the problem. I must say that in all of my travels on Amtrak...my experiences with fellow travelers have been very positive!
 
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frj1983 said:
So this man is surprised that there are obnoxious people in the world or even on Amtrak? Has he been on a plane lately?
When the Conductor came through to take tickets he could have simply shared the incident and allowed him/her to handle the problem. I must say that in all of my travels on Amtrak...my experiences with fellow travelers have been very positive!
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I find that there seems to be a different mentality when one rides the short haul trains vs. the long distances trains. I'm not saying that you won't find someone laying across two seats on a LD train, but they are far more likely to move for you without complaint than on the short haul trains.
 
I rode the Saluki a few weeks ago and the attendant was used to greet you for the business class and offer a can of soda. Other than that she worked the counter and saw very little of her. I noticed that some tipped her near the end of the trip. I wasn't very sure for what? As to the coaches, they were packed, three of them. On the return that evening I took the City back to Centralia, of course they sit you in the short distance car. It was nearly completely full. I had a nice young lady sit next to me, but as things go now days, she spent half the time talking to others on the phone, some of it pretty private conversation. At one point I had four people sitting within hearing distance jabbering on their cell phones. I think that is about the most disagreeable new item to be invented. I did see a mother and daughter try to get seats after the train was mostly loaded, but the people they ask to move to a new seat so they could sit together didn't budge. I thought about offereing mine, but I ended up quickly with the other seat filled anyway. I also thought it was odd that we had to traverse the diner, such as it was, to get to the lounge. I see in the topics here that that is a fairly new developement. I noticed that they had one call for dinner and that happened at 10:30 at night. It is bad enough that you can't get real prepared food anymore but the atmosphere of the diners is long gone also. A bunch of what may as well be card tables, an as usual a very disturbing trend of the workers piling supplies all over one of the tables. Not very appealing to me. Both ways we were within 20 minutes of on time, which seemed an improvement over some preivous trips.
 
Larry H. said:
It was nearly completely full. I had a nice young lady sit next to me, but as things go now days, she spent half the time talking to others on the phone, some of it pretty private conversation. At one point I had four people sitting within hearing distance jabbering on their cell phones. I think that is about the most disagreeable new item to be invented.
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Funny you should bring that up Larry,

Every night my trip home on Metra is filled with inane cell phone discussion carried on around me by about 3-4 loud people in my car. Over time I have learned to ignore this, but some nights it's really hard! Those who carry cell phones would have you believe that BCP(Before Cell Phones):

1)work was never accomplished

2)people were never able to communicate with each other

3)because people were incommunicado for short periods, this was a bad thing

I agree with you: I think it is a disagreeable item. Oh for quiet cars on Metra!!

Oh oh, did I open the flood gates here???
 
this wouldn't help much at the stations mid trip, but why can't amtrak pre board parties of 2 or more before letting all of the singles board. this would be a somewhat decent alternative to assigned seating. in any case, i don't care what it does to train fares, they need someone to visit each car to ***** slap the single riders who won't give up that seat next to them. that in untolerable.
 
re: cellphones, they're a necessary evil - but the French (and others) have it right in that they've added "quiet cars" where cell phones, cranky babies, etc., are prohibited; I believe this also exists on Acela, but not most of Amtrak's other trains...it's time!...
 
It would be nice to be able to do that, but the cost would be considerable. It would mean an additional car, and additional OBS crew, both to enforce the "quiet car" status and because the crew would have to keep track of those separate passengers who would presumably represent all of the destinations along the whole route, compared to the situations on LD trains now where the car that they seat you in basically depends on where your destination is, allowing them to group passengers by where they are going. Having a quiet car would require an additional car and additional crew. Good luck on that happening.
 
AmtrakWPK said:
It would be nice to be able to do that, but the cost would be considerable. It would mean an additional car, and additional OBS crew, both to enforce the "quiet car" status and because the crew would have to keep track of those separate passengers who would presumably represent all of the destinations along the whole route, compared to the situations on LD trains now where the car that they seat you in basically depends on where your destination is, allowing them to group passengers by where they are going. Having a quiet car would require an additional car and additional crew. Good luck on that happening.
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It doesn't add an additional car to its trainset, just change one noisy car into a quiet car. On long distance travel, the reception for cell phones are spotty. Quiet cars are more effective in short distance such as commuters.
 
gswager said:
It doesn't add an additional car to its trainset, just change one noisy car into a quiet car. On long distance travel, the reception for cell phones are spotty. Quiet cars are more effective in short distance such as commuters.
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I haven't ridden them much, but the last couple of times on the CHI-MKE route, the quiet car would have 6 people in it and the regular coaches were packed. May have been the time of day I rode.
 
Why not just designate the lower level of one or more of the superliner coaches on an LD train as the quiet zone (or maybe the noisy ones should go there). No additional cost and would seem to be an easy solution.

Not sure of what you could do on viewliner trains, although I've seen the last coach on the Palmetto closed off to passengers who are then stuffed into the remaining cars. I suspect this is for the convenience of the crew as it certainly is not for the comfort of passengers. Use that car as a quiet car.

Better yet, just ban cell phones except at smoke break stops. If you can survive on an airplane for several hours without your cell phone, you should be able to do it between stops on Amtrak.
 
Palmland said:
Why not just designate the lower level of one or more of the superliner coaches on an LD train as the quiet zone (or maybe the noisy ones should go there). No additional cost and would seem to be an easy solution.
Not sure of what you could do on viewliner trains, although I've seen the last coach on the Palmetto closed off to passengers who are then stuffed into the remaining cars. I suspect this is for the convenience of the crew as it certainly is not for the comfort of passengers. Use that car as a quiet car.

Better yet, just ban cell phones except at smoke break stops. If you can survive on an airplane for several hours without your cell phone, you should be able to do it between stops on Amtrak.
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I'm not so sure it is a major problem on the LD trains, but seems to be more of the commuters and short haul state trains.
 
Cellphone coverage probably depends on the route you are talking about. Through Florida we are very rarely without good coverage, and cellphones are in use pretty constantly. And I stand by my comment that it would require another car for the LDs or at least a rearrangement of how you allocate (and keep track of) pax into which coach, because pax are generally assigned a coach by destination. What destination are you going to assign to the quiet car? If you allow whoever wants a quiet seat into the quiet car, then you do indeed end up with the necessity of keeping track of those pax separately from the normal coach-determined-by-destination, which means a higher workload for OBS, and the addition of one more location, and doorway, that you have to go to get pax for their destination, beyond just the coach for that destination and the sleepers for that destination. And if we assume the coach which is the entraining/detraining coach for a particular station stop is the furthest from the quiet car at a given station stop, you either need another crewmember to open the quiet car door for entraining/detraining pax, or those pax have to walk through all the intermediate cars, dragging their belongings, to entrain/detrain at that stop. I would think that the end car would be the best for a quiet car because it would have the least foot traffic through it. If you have a full train, and have not added a coach for a quiet car, then you have another problem.
 
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TransAtlantic said:
re: cellphones, they're a necessary evil - but the French (and others) have it right in that they've added "quiet cars" where cell phones, cranky babies, etc., are prohibited; I believe this also exists on Acela, but not most of Amtrak's other trains...it's time!...
Click to expand...
Quiet cars run on almost all Regional trains and Acela Express trains, with few exceptions. Quiet cars also run on the Capital corridor in California and on the Hiawatha service. I'm guessing that the program will probably expand to most short haul trains, as the demmand seems to be there.

I rather doubt that you'll ever see it happen on the LD's though, as it's simply not practical for so many reasons.
 
I do not mind having someone sit next to me. If you are traveling in a group and want to sit together, get down to the station an hour before train time and stand in line. I understand that they were a family, but they would have alleviated some of their stress by getting to the station earlier. Check in time for planes is 90 minutes to an hour.

If I am traveling coach, and having a window seat is important to me, I get down to the station early, stand in line, and then get on the train. I really resent being asked to mvoe by somebody who gets on at the last minute. As I stated above though, I am entitled to only one seat and would not have a problem sitting next to anybody.

This probleem could be allevaited if Amtrak was ever able to implement a seat reservation policy where passengers could pay small fee, (5 dollars is the norm in Europe) to reserve a seat. A family of 4 or whatever then could call ahead, reserve seats together, and then sit together. If you dont take the time to plan and get reservations, then you dont sit together.
 
The times I ride the Hiawatha, the quiet car tends to get filled up pretty quick, particularly westbound. I think that may (perhaps) be mostly due to the fact that the first open door on the train for boarding is right next to the quiet car, thus encouraging folks to immediately turn left and take a seat in that car.

Usually when I'm traveling eastbound, it's toward the end of the day, when Chicago-bound Hiawathas tend to carry light loads anyway. Sunday night, I rode the Hiawatha in the quiet car, and there were maybe two or three other passengers in that car. However, I think the total load on the entire train was no more than 30 to 40 people (and one had to walk through two other cars to get to the quiet car, thus limiting its use to those that *really* wanted to sit back there).
 
I STRONGLY suspect we are not getting the whole story here. TWO ultra-rude people on the same train acting like this on the same day? I theorize that the author(s) had a "tone" in their voice when wandering around/demanding seats together. I have NEVER seen anyone refuse to move to allow someone to sit next to them, and here on the corridor, you hardly EVER sit alone for long. Not to say it doesn't happen, but it's surely unusual.

I'm also not playing holier-than-thou, here. On a recent Acela trip, I may have had a bit of a "tone" with the conductor when I started seriously doubting there were ANY seats available on the whole train (the few seats without seat checks had people sitting in them). The conductor had to move someone to get me ANY seat, much less a seat with the person I was traveling with (facing backwards, not fully reclining, and at a table with no legroom or footrest, besides).

In any case, I tend to agree with an earlier poster: I enjoy my window seat greatly. I didn't catch how young these children were, but unless they were under 10, they should have been fine sitting alone for a few stops. I'm not saying I wouldn't have moved for a family, but they would have had to be VERY nice about it, and made it clear I was doing them a favor, not just "my civic duty."

Contrary to popular belief, people DO ride trains . . . and that means seating arrangements won't generally be ideal.

JPS
 
Back when my kids were 18 months and 3 years old, I asked someone of they would mind moving so I could sit with my kids. They refused. However, a lady across the aisle volunteered her seat.

I know that I would give up my seat for such little ones as I had at that time.

As much as I enjoy the window seat for comfort and scenery, I find that the scenery is even better in an aisle seat because you get views from both windows. On a LD trip, it is not as comfortable to try to sleep in.
 
Yeah it very common on the Northeast Corridor . I mean these people dont want sit next nobody....some them even sit in the cafe cause they don't want to sit next to anyone .

tahoejeff said:
i found this blog post via google alerts. it reminded me how rotten people can be. if you don't read the whole thing, start about halfway down under the downtown chicago picture, starting with: And now, a note about trying to sit on an Amtrak train.shouldn't there be some kind of car attendant on each car? this has always been one of the biggest downfalls to riding coach, to me. and being a factory worker, i'll always be riding coach.

http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=903
Click to expand...
 
Why not just do what we do in Sweden? Pre-assigned car and seat numbers that are reserved at the time of ticket purchase. Sure, people sometimes wander around trying to get at better seat, but when you have a ticket with a specific seat number printed on it, it's hard to refuse that seat.
 
Swede said:
Why not just do what we do in Sweden? Pre-assigned car and seat numbers that are reserved at the time of ticket purchase. Sure, people sometimes wander around trying to get at better seat, but when you have a ticket with a specific seat number printed on it, it's hard to refuse that seat.
Click to expand...
In my experience, most European nations do that on premium trains (the American analogue being Acela or Metroliner); it's great, but not practical for shorter-haul/commuter type trains (much of the NEC, Capitols, Surfliners, etc.)
 
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