RPA statement on Amtrak’s handling of major Wolverine delay

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Trogdor

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Basically, last week, train 351 suffered locomotive problems. The train was coupled to 353 a few hours later. But then all sorts of everything else went wrong and a pre-11 am arrival in Chicago turned into a post-midnight arrival. Power was off on the train for much of it, and passengers started self-evacuating from the train and called rides, cabs, ubers, etc. to get where they were going. Amtrak’s handling of the situation, and their official response afterwards were poor.

https://www.railpassengers.org/happ...statement-on-amtrak-351-wolverine-disruption/
 
This comparison bothers me.

"“Amtrak’s performance in this incident is, sadly, very much like the performance it showed in the winter this year when snow storms massively delayed a train in Virginia coming from Roanoke,” Mathews continued."

Some people can understand the issues with the blizzard because of the depth of snow and the number of trees across the tracks and roadways.

This train traveled when the weather was clear, however, and it travels along several major highways through several large cities. There was ample opportunity to put the passengers on a bus in Ann Arbor, Jackson, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo.

Additionally, all four cities have multiple food options close to the station. They could have loaded the train with pizzas or sandwiches and bottled water. The station in Kalamazoo is literally across the street from McDonald's and two short blocks from Little Caesar's Pizza.

They also could have turned those into service stops, giving passengers time to use the restrooms.
 
This comparison bothers me.

"“Amtrak’s performance in this incident is, sadly, very much like the performance it showed in the winter this year when snow storms massively delayed a train in Virginia coming from Roanoke,” Mathews continued."

Some people can understand the issues with the blizzard because of the depth of snow and the number of trees across the tracks and roadways.

This train traveled when the weather was clear, however, and it travels along several major highways through several large cities. There was ample opportunity to put the passengers on a bus in Ann Arbor, Jackson, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo.

Additionally, all four cities have multiple food options close to the station. They could have loaded the train with pizzas or sandwiches and bottled water. The station in Kalamazoo is literally across the street from McDonald's and two short blocks from Little Caesar's Pizza.

They also could have turned those into service stops, giving passengers time to use the restrooms.

Definitely agree. The Virginia snowstorm was a case of weather that caused problems far beyond Amtrak's control. The severity of the storm famously turned a nearly 50-mile stretch of I-95 into a parking lot where people were stranded in their cars overnight. No. 176 left Lynchburg on time at about 7:40 a.m., and the northbound Crescent came through about 1 p.m., and both became stranded between there and Charlottesville. They eventually were able to make it back to Lynchburg around midnight. I'm not sure how well Amtrak handled communication to the passengers on those two trains, but at least people can understand in retrospect that this was an evolving emergency from a storm that transportation officials of both road and rail had underestimated.

Although the length of the delay in Michigan was comparable, a short-haul train that winds up being delayed more than 12 hours on a sunny day is a train whose passengers deserved to have been rescued a lot more quickly. And a traveler on this particular run of Wolverine 351 is a lot more justified in saying "never again."
 
This comparison bothers me.

"“Amtrak’s performance in this incident is, sadly, very much like the performance it showed in the winter this year when snow storms massively delayed a train in Virginia coming from Roanoke,” Mathews continued."

Some people can understand the issues with the blizzard because of the depth of snow and the number of trees across the tracks and roadways.

This train traveled when the weather was clear, however, and it travels along several major highways through several large cities. There was ample opportunity to put the passengers on a bus in Ann Arbor, Jackson, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo.

Additionally, all four cities have multiple food options close to the station. They could have loaded the train with pizzas or sandwiches and bottled water. The station in Kalamazoo is literally across the street from McDonald's and two short blocks from Little Caesar's Pizza.

They also could have turned those into service stops, giving passengers time to use the restrooms.

I readily admit the complexities of running a railroad exceed my ability to comprehend. The logistics are immensely difficult to fathom, but how can anyone anywhere, at Amtrak or at any railroad where an incident like this happens, not be saying "We have to find a way to get these people out of there, now!," is even even more beyond my level of understanding. How do these people sleep at night?
 
I readily admit the complexities of running a railroad exceed my ability to comprehend. The logistics are immensely difficult to fathom, but how can anyoneThi anywhere, at Amtrak or at any railroad where an incident like this happens, not be saying "We have to find a way to get these people out of there, now!," is even even more beyond my level of understanding. How do these people sleep at night?
This is the epitome of the comparison between this incident and the Crescent affair: At a minimum it comes across as them not even trying to find a way to sort stuff out in favor of the pax.

Like, there should be a glorified "petty cash" line item for patching stuff like this. It's fair that sometimes a situation escalates to where it can't be patched, but Amtrak has completely thrown any goodwill out the window. For example, RPA's leadership warned Amtrak about the probable impact of that stupid 3x/weekly experiment in late 2020/early 2021...and that has come to pass.
 
I readily admit the complexities of running a railroad exceed my ability to comprehend. The logistics are immensely difficult to fathom, but how can anyone anywhere, at Amtrak or at any railroad where an incident like this happens, not be saying "We have to find a way to get these people out of there, now!," is even even more beyond my level of understanding. How do these people sleep at night?

It seems that the crux of the matter is that human passengers were viewed, simply, as delayed "freight." The human element was entirely ignored by both Amtrak and the railroad companies over whose roads this coupled train(s) traveled. Frankly, if executives were fired (as they should well be) and sent off penniless over the matter, their treatment would be incredibly more humane than the lack of humanity they proved is something of which they are incapable.
 
WASHINGTON – The Rail Passengers Association has asked the Federal Railroad Administration to ensure a speedy safety debriefing and review of the 19-hour service disruption October 7th aboard Amtrak’s westbound Wolverine service #351, to permit Association staff to serve as observers, and to share the results of that review with the public.

In a letter addressed to FRA Administrator Amit Bose, Association President & CEO Jim Mathews noted that even though the cascading series of failures on the Wolverine service did not result in a collision, a derailment, or a fatality, the risk of serious harm to passengers as the incident unfolded was quite real – a risk that grew substantially once passengers elected to self-evacuate from the train.

Amtrak blamed several mechanical failures for what became a thirteen-hour delay, with passengers stranded for many hours at a time at various points on a train without heat, ventilation, lights, food, or working toilets. After a two-hour delay just outside Chicago in Gary, Indiana, at 10 p.m. local time passengers took matters into their own hands, opening the doors themselves, letting themselves off the train, crossing three sets of active Class I freight tracks, wading across a small gully in waist-high grass in the dark alongside the disabled train to reach a busy highway where passengers hoped to catch ride-hailing cars.

In video of the incident provided to the Association by one of the passengers, some passengers can be heard discussing how best to cross the busy highway, waiting for a gap in the traffic to jump across jersey barriers in the middle of the roadway. The Association has shared this video with Amtrak and regulators.

“I had a cordial, productive, but candid meeting with Amtrak leadership this week to share our concerns, and to pose questions about Amtrak’s response to these incidents,” RPA’s Mathews said. “Their response was expansive, informative, and sincere. They clearly recognize the seriousness of what occurred. But with so many open questions remaining about how the incident was handled, how alternate arrangements were considered, and how poorly passengers understood what was happening, we feel an obligation in representing our members and the traveling public to elevate our request for a formal debriefing and review whose results, with appropriate redaction of personally identifiable information, can be shared with the public.”

Under existing Federal regulations, incidents like these require the railroad to conduct a safety debrief within 60 days whose principal purpose is not to assign blame but to understand how well, or not, the railroad responded to protect passenger safety, and to determine whether and how any pre-built response plans need to be improved or modified.

Passenger rail and public transportation are economic engines creating a safe, reliable, affordable mobility web connecting students to colleges, elderly to family and healthcare, workers with economic opportunity and communities to locally driven investment. Time and again, the Association has been able to demonstrate returns on investment to rail-served communities of anywhere from four times to as much as 10 times the annual Federal operating cost. These kinds of benefits are what Congress intended to foster when it passed the historic five-year Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, allocating $66 billion taxpayer-supplied dollars to rail investment. We believe reassuring those taxpayers about passenger rail safety is an important part of realizing this congressional intent.
 
t seems that the crux of the matter is that human passengers were viewed, simply, as delayed "freight." The human element was entirely ignored by both Amtrak and the railroad companies over whose roads this coupled train(s) traveled. Frankly, if executives were fired (as they should well be) and sent off penniless over the matter, their treatment would be incredibly more humane than the lack of humanity they proved is something of which they are incapable

That's the part that bothered me when reading about it earlier.. it seems that the Wolverine is the red headed stepchild of trains in these situations (which thankfully don't happen very often). There are major cities along the route, making people sit for hours in the dark - and thankfully it wasn't colder - is hard to justify - even sending food would only exacerbate the toilet situation. Someone needed to make a decision and say let's stop digging our heels in, this isn't working let's get these people off the train, let them refund their tickets, set up buses, shuttles, cabs, whatever.
 
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