Sad - Amtrak employee killed on duty Oct 29

[Orie]

I was on the East/South bound Maple Leaf that day, the conductor came in to ask us if we could look up more information about it, he was visibility distraught. Don't know if he knew the employee or not. (We were in the small BC section so maybe thats why he talked to us about it). RIP to the employee.

 

[Bus Nut]

Here are the 2013 FRA stats comparing Amtrak to the other Class 1 railroads for the number of employee cases per 200,000 hours worked. The numbers are pretty revealing. The lower numbers are indicate better safety performance.

Amtrak - 4.08

BNSF - 1.10

CN - 1.89

CP - 2.17

CSX - 0.91

KCS - 1.82

NS - 1.17

UP - 1.15

You may be completely correct about Amtrak's culture and if so, what's wrong with it. But these numbers don't pass the smell test to me. I live and work in Florida where CSX is based. Our worker's compensation regulations/enforcement are the pits. I am familiar with how CSX operates, and knowing how other employers who want to minimize WC payouts/insurance costs while dumping injured/disabled employees and not correcting their corporate culture or increasing investment in employees (which includes wellness), I find it extremely hard to believe that CSX in fact has a better safety record than other railroads in its class. This is the company that preferred to lie to multiple government authorities rather than replace a few signals, leading to two hellish faulty-signal-caused freight-vs-passenger accidents in ten years in Maryland.

Amtrak also employs many more employees per train because Amtrak is hauling customers, not freight. Freight employee accidents are most likely on the freight switching yards. But Amtrak has employees (the conductors) who must open and close passenger cabin doors, hop on and off trains, and assist customers on and off all day--on some routes, multiple times an hour.

I am familiar with WC accidents, and going down steps onto the ground (or pavement, such as it is) is a VERY common kind of accident but one that freight railroad workers are going to have less often because they may only climb off a train once a shift. (Likewise, some proportion of yard accidents are probably caused by workers rushing to jump in and out of switching locos and onto gravel where they can twist an ankle or worse.) This isn't 1888 when railroadmen stood in open box cars and tossed freight onto whistle-stop platforms and caught freight from them at 12mph.

What it seems like you're trying to imply is that Amtrak MOW workers on Amtrak's small self-owned and operated section of the NEC engage in worse safety practices than their peers. You might start off by comparing MOW worker accidents at Amtrak NEC operations to MNRR, MBTA and CSX's MARC ROW, and see if Amtrak is out of line. I doubt that you have this information or that either of us could turn that up easily so I remain unconvinced.

 

[Bus Nut]

Also, I understand what the "pyramid of safety" is but the metaphor is misleading. It sounds like* blaming front line workers for their own injuries and accidents when a mistake in a dispatch office or by a corner-cutting supervisor or by a money-grubbing contractor can kill you every bit as dead as a "culture of unsafety" among craft workers. NTSB reports are freely available online. I suggest everyone read them.

*-note this is not the plain meaning or the intent, but metaphors and visuals matter because our brains are much more keyed into visuals and also human hierarchies than they are into abstractions and subtlety

 

[Bus Nut]

I was on this train (#280 of Wednesday October 29), trying to get to a funeral for a friend who died suddenly and unexpectedly from unknown causes. We did not get to the funeral thanks to Amtrak's incompetence.

This is the point at which Penn Station proved to be unwilling or unable to do their job. Amtrak did not accomodate passengers properly. We had an hour and a half before we got to Penn Station at that point. Despite my repeated attempts to get information, Amtrak provided zero accurate information on rescheduling and connections after we finally got moving from Rhinecliff -- and even after we arrived in Penn Station, and even half an hour *after* we arrived in Penn Station. On the train, we were finally (shortly before boarding) given inaccurate information as to where to go. In the station, we were told repeatedly that a manager would come, and there was no manager. Eventually I got the name of the theoretical, absent, manager (Mark Jordan). I got a hotel myself, and got dinner -- which we needed at this point due to hypoglycemia, it being 4.5 hours after our train was supposed to arrive. Then I called customer relations to try to get Mark Jordan fired. The customer relations agent was shocked at the behavior of the Penn Station staff, set up a report to send to Mark Jordan's boss, so hopefully something will happen to change this. (At least the Customer Relations agent comped us our return tickets, refunded all onward tickets without fee, and is reimbursing us for our hotel rooms -- the minimum reasonable response.)

So there's been a fatality on one of the busiest passenger corridors in the country which caused a problem of epic proportions in one of the biggest and most complicated and most congested passenger rail facilities on the planet, one which is barely staffed at levels to get everyone through a normal day and you decide to lash out emotionally and try to have someone's job because somebody with brass on their shoulder wasn't there to personally?

 

[Bus Nut]

I remember reading about the incident in Michigan where "signal maintainers" left the signal system in an unsafe state. That was very, very, very bad. The fact that this incident also involves a signal maintainer... makes me wonder.

It was a supervisor. Read the report.

He tried to cover his actions up and blame an underling, though. Classy.

His own supervisors were at fault. They failed to supervise him. They waived safety protocols meant to prevent exactly what he, in fact, did. (He jumped a circuit to save his ass from doing work.)

 

[Bus Nut]

I agree. The federal rules should be considered a base to build upon. Each railroad should develop rules that address their special cases properly. The railroads of the northeast have been used to such due to the myriads of special situations they face.

Honestly I think the publicly owned NE RR's have too long relied on being "special" and crying about how their equipment is 75 years old and systems interfaces and custom jobs and yadda yadda instead of investing the money and keeping to evidence based (but so boring! cry!) standards that would be needed to really make the system safer. Spuyten Duyvil comes to mind.

 

[neroden]

You may be completely correct about Amtrak's culture and if so, what's wrong with it. But these numbers don't pass the smell test to me.... I find it extremely hard to believe that CSX in fact has a better safety record than other railroads in its class. This is the company that preferred to lie to multiple government authorities rather than replace a few signals, leading to two hellish faulty-signal-caused freight-vs-passenger accidents in ten years in Maryland.

CSX's numbers are probalby "lowest" because CSX has browbeaten employees to not report. This is pretty well documented. CSX also has a very nasty reputation for failure to maintain track which led to Senatorial investigations a couple of times.
Unfortunately, when we know that companies are "gaming the numbers" and lying to the authorities, the numbers don't mean much.

 

[neroden]

So there's been a fatality on one of the busiest passenger corridors in the country which caused a problem of epic proportions in one of the biggest and most complicated and most congested passenger rail facilities on the planet, one which is barely staffed at levels to get everyone through a normal day and you decide to lash out emotionally and try to have someone's job because somebody with brass on their shoulder wasn't there personally?

Amtrak's lax safety culture caused a fatality. Then Amtrak's culture of disregard for passengers caused them to do absolutely nothing to accommodate -- or even inform -- the passengers whom Amtrak had delayed.

Let me repeat this: the Amtrak Customer Relations agent agreed with me that:

(1) Penn Station should have had a plan ready for us before we arrived at the station (they had an hour and a half to prepare a plan AFTER we were transferred to the second train)

(2) Penn Station should have communicated their plan to us

(3) The behavior of the AWOL manager was unacceptable

(4) His boss was being informed.

She only started offering me refunds after the reports had been filed.

I think when I start a conversation with Customer Relations with the statement "We were on train 280 which had a terrible accident and was delayed for 6 hours -- I am *not* complaining about that --", that it tends to make the agent wake up and realize that Amtrak has REALLY screwed up. Which she did realize.

Someone I talked to about this said "Ah -- Chicago is used to late trains, so their managers know how to deal with them. New York doesn't have severe delays often, so their managers simply don't know what they're doing when it happens." This is perfectly likely -- but if this is the case, the NY managers need to be fired and replaced with people who can handle passenger accommodation when there are severe delays. What are managers for, if not to deal with unusual situations?

I didn't particularly want to speak to a manager, but *everyone below the manager's level said that they weren't authorized to do anything*. If Mark Jordan was too busy to actually communicate with me, he needed to deputize someone else with the authority to give me information and communicate with me. He didn't. Total incompetence.

By the time I was talking to Customer Relations on the phone at 7 PM, nobody at Penn Station had given me any information. STILL. I had left my phone number and a note to call me (despite the fact that my phone number was already on my reservation). They simply didn't provide any information at all.

It was totally unacceptable behavior. Amtrak shouldn't employ managers who behave that way. I have never seen behavior this bad at Chicago, even when nearly all the routes out of Chicago were simultaneously closed/rerouted/detoured due to the 2008 flooding, or when that Metra executive director jumped in front of a Metra train.

 

[the_traveler]

Moderator's note

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[MrFSS]

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[Thirdrail7]

So there's been a fatality on one of the busiest passenger corridors in the country which caused a problem of epic proportions in one of the biggest and most complicated and most congested passenger rail facilities on the planet, one which is barely staffed at levels to get everyone through a normal day and you decide to lash out emotionally and try to have someone's job because somebody with brass on their shoulder wasn't there personally?

Amtrak's lax safety culture caused a fatality. Then Amtrak's culture of disregard for passengers caused them to do absolutely nothing to accommodate -- or even inform -- the passengers whom Amtrak had delayed.

Let me repeat this: the Amtrak Customer Relations agent agreed with me that:

(1) Penn Station should have had a plan ready for us before we arrived at the station (they had an hour and a half to prepare a plan AFTER we were transferred to the second train)

(2) Penn Station should have communicated their plan to us

(3) The behavior of the AWOL manager was unacceptable

(4) His boss was being informed.

She only started offering me refunds after the reports had been filed.

I think when I start a conversation with Customer Relations with the statement "We were on train 280 which had a terrible accident and was delayed for 6 hours -- I am *not* complaining about that --", that it tends to make the agent wake up and realize that Amtrak has REALLY screwed up. Which she did realize.

Someone I talked to about this said "Ah -- Chicago is used to late trains, so their managers know how to deal with them. New York doesn't have severe delays often, so their managers simply don't know what they're doing when it happens." This is perfectly likely -- but if this is the case, the NY managers need to be fired and replaced with people who can handle passenger accommodation when there are severe delays. What are managers for, if not to deal with unusual situations?

I didn't particularly want to speak to a manager, but *everyone below the manager's level said that they weren't authorized to do anything*. If Mark Jordan was too busy to actually communicate with me, he needed to deputize someone else with the authority to give me information and communicate with me. He didn't. Total incompetence.

By the time I was talking to Customer Relations on the phone at 7 PM, nobody at Penn Station had given me any information. STILL. I had left my phone number and a note to call me (despite the fact that my phone number was already on my reservation). They simply didn't provide any information at all.

It was totally unacceptable behavior. Amtrak shouldn't employ managers who behave that way. I have never seen behavior this bad at Chicago, even when nearly all the routes out of Chicago were simultaneously closed/rerouted/detoured due to the 2008 flooding, or when that Metra executive director jumped in front of a Metra train.

First of all, you have NO IDEA what actually caused the fatality and until the official report is released, your words are irrelevant. By the way, would it make you feel better about things if it wasn't an employee that was killed by a train moving at roughly 100mph? Would it ease your mind if it was a run of the mill pedestrian? How about a criminal? Would that right things for you?

Secondly, the next time you're on the phone with customer services and you two want to talk about things, roll this around your mouths:

Penn station is the busiest station station in Amtrak's system. I'm not sure who the person you're ranting about is, but he's probably trying to think of what to do with the other 100's of impacted passengers. Chicago doesn't have ANYWHERE near the traffic of NYP and remember, the ENTIRE Albany line was shut down for HOURS.

ALL of it.

Now, you're trying to not only find crews, you're trying to find trains for the 100's of inconvenienced passengers since NYT only starts two trains on that line. As for connecting passengers, remember most trains out of NYP are well represented and here comes a batch of late connecting passengers. So, yes it takes time to figure where everyone can fit. It takes time to figure out when everyone can go especially if you're expecting a set of equipment and then it fails to show up. Before NYP can even say anything, CNOC has to give them the line up of " "Yes, we'll hold 97 in WAS for connections, but we'll let 19 go and cab the remaining passnegers, etc." It takes time to coordinate these moves along with the other chaos that envelopes NYP on any given day. Did you also realize that during this, there was another service disruption when a NJT took a bath in one of the tunnels so now there are also capacity problems?

Probably not, but that's not necessarily for you to know.

The bottom line is you're not the only person impacted. There were MANY trains impacted by this major disruption and operations in Chicago has NOTHING to do with ANYTHING that occurs in or out of NYP, which can only be accessed electrically and by tunnel.

There are severe delays surrounding NYP multiple times a week.Poke your nose in the NJT forum on the other board you used to frequent.Hell, there was almost a fiasco today when two separate incidents occurred within minutes. Fortunately the timing of the incidents allowed for a quick resolution (with minor delays), but if the same thing happened a few hours later, it would have caused a ripple through the various railroads that utilizes NYP.

 

[lstone19]

Penn station is the busiest station station in Amtrak's system. I'm not sure who the person you're ranting about is, but he's probably trying to think of what to do with the other 100's of impacted passengers. Chicago doesn't have ANYWHERE near the traffic of NYP and remember, the ENTIRE Albany line was shut down for HOURS.

ALL of it.

Now, you're trying to not only find crews, you're trying to find trains for the 100's of inconvenienced passengers since NYT only starts two trains on that line. As for connecting passengers, remember most trains out of NYP are well represented and here comes a batch of late connecting passengers. So, yes it takes time to figure where everyone can fit. It takes time to figure out when everyone can go especially if you're expecting a set of equipment and then it fails to show up. Before NYP can even say anything, CNOC has to give them the line up of " "Yes, we'll hold 97 in WAS for connections, but we'll let 19 go and cab the remaining passnegers, etc." It takes time to coordinate these moves along with the other chaos that envelopes NYP on any given day. Did you also realize that during this, there was another service disruption when a NJT took a bath in one of the tunnels so now there are also capacity problems?

Wow! What a "blame the customer" response.

Speaking as someone in a management position at a major passenger airline, what a BS response. Based on what neroden posted, he was expecting nothing more than Customer Service (perhaps Amtrak uses a different term but at airlines pretty much worldwide, Customer Service is the term for the customer contact employees (ticket agents, gate agents, etc.) at a station) to do its job. Re-accommodating customers who missed connections is a basic part of the job. Meanwhile, you've listed a whole bunch of things that aren't part of Customer Services's job as things that you apparently think get in the way of them doing their job. Customer Service does not (or at least should not) be involved with assigning crews or assigning equipment. You assume those groups will do their jobs and meanwhile you do yours. I can tell you where I work if a flight is planned to operate, Customer Service assumes the flight will operate and does not concern itself with verifying that Crew Scheduling has a crew and the aircraft routers have a plane or that maintenance has the plane ready to go. Perhaps one of Amtrak's problems is too many people trying to do other people's jobs rather than their own.

I don't know how Amtrak does it but much of our re-accommodation process is automated. When a flight is delayed and a passenger will misconnect, programs automatically protect the passenger on the next available flight (without canceling the original space until the original actually departs). If Amtrak doesn't have similar technology, it should.

At the end, you said "There are severe delays surrounding NYP multiple times a week." All the more reason that re-accommodating misconnects should not be all that hard for NYP Customer Service to do.

 

[VentureForth]

An excellent reply, Larry. Having been in customer relations for a major resort, if there is a problem with overbooking, I help the customer. I don't coordinate housekeeping and maintenance.

 

[jis]

Yes, I agree. That was an excellent post from lstone, specially considering the typical "beat up on the customer" fest that has been going on in this thread. Whether it was an individual's failure or not we'd never know, but clearly there was a significant systemic failure at Penn Station that day, and that is not the only time such has happened. Which is more the reason that it needs managerial attention to fix or mitigate better than is the practice now. The fact that NYP is the busiest station in the system is no excuse for condoning such failures.

 

[Thirdrail7]

An excellent reply, Larry. Having been in customer relations for a major resort, if there is a problem with overbooking, I help the customer. I don't coordinate housekeeping and maintenance.

As someone who has done customer services for an actual railroad, I'll add something to the dialogue.

Lstone, I'm not sure how you construe what I stated as "blaming" the customer. In fact, the only thing that even reaches that realm is my comment asking whether the fact that an employee was killed or a random trespasser made a difference in his response.

Neroden is on another board with me (and I believe Lstone is as well) so he is well aware of my positions. I explain operations. It isn't a matter of blame or rationalization. It is a matter of reality.

So, let's address it..

Ventureforth and Lstone appear to think that re-accommodating is just a matter of overbooking and that customer service has nothing to do with crewing, staffing or manipulating the trains.

Here is what is lost on the comments above.

Reassign to what? As I previously mentioned, NYT starts has two Empire starts: 63 and 69. Once they leave, every Empire train is a "looper," meaning it comes in from Albany, loops and heads out as another train. If nothing comes in, nothing goes out and nothing came it for quite some time. So, it isn't a matter of trying to figure what trains 100's of displaced Albany, Rutland and Niagara Falls passengers will ride. It is a matter of actually finding equipment to operate trains and dealing with questions such as:

What is coming in? When is it coming in? Do we have crews? Are they rested for the trip? Which train is being canceled since we are short a set of equipment now that the train has been impounded? What train has enough room to accommodate two loads? Customer services can not begin their aspect of the operation until those basic operational questions are addressed. How can you tell passengers your train will or will not operate if there is no equipment? It is very much their job to be involved in the calls since they are the ones that actually have the passengers and know where they're going. When CNOC decides they want to stub a train, it is up to customer services to pipe in and inform them how this will impact the passengers. It is up to them to advocate for their positions.

As for connections, when you have disruptions, you attempt to work around this by shutting down inventory to the trains you hope to use as connections. As an example, let's say train 30 has 40 passengers connecting to train 148 on the corridor. However, 30 is operating 5 hours late. They'll block the required number of seats on the nearest train to the projected arrival time. In this case, train 188 will suffice but we'll block up 198 behind as well since it will probably lose more time. In the case of 280 and the fleet caught behind it, they all started landing during rush hour. Every train is pretty much packed to the gills. There is no space to block off. You also trying to squeeze late ALB trains into a station that only has 5 tracks they can use as LIRR and NJT ramp up their operations resulting in a "no room at the inn" scenario. You have to wait for a train to leave before the next one can enter. Additionally, you are also trying to find out from CNOC (which has little to do with NYP) what trains they intend to hold for connections because ultimately, the actual terminals only have so much say in the matter. If NYP states they want to hold 94 for passengers, CNOC may not sign off since they may have been in contact with Metro-North who said "it's now or never." Stuffing a passenger attempting to get to Manassas on train 193 out of NYP doesn't mean much if 19 is not going to hold in WAS for the connection.

These are the kinds of things that a few people are trying to nail down behind the scenes as you think nothing is occurring. It isn't a matter of "housekeeping and maintenance." It is matter of trying to help as many people as possible with one stroke. This is true to the case when one of the trains that you intended to use as a connecting train (plan B) is now trapped behind a disabled train in a tunnel, creating another conference call and causing the loss of another set of equipment. NYP customer service may have no information to give since CNOC (who has to negotiate with all of the host railroads and terminals) may not have given the final operating plan since the situation is still evolving. Using the Manassas situation as an example, customer services must now work with connecting terminals to see if cabbing or busing will help. Absent that, they start lining up hotels and working to secure space for next day travel or returning you to your originating terminal. This is not done on a system level. This is done on a local level.

Ultimately, when you're short equipment and everything is completely off schedule, some group will most likely end up on the bottom of the totem pole. However, New York at rush hour has a train departing literally every minute. A member named Lirr42 from another board once loaded up departure schedule from 5pm for NYP which included all trains from the three operators. It was quite the list. I doubt Chicago has anything like it.

This is not blaming Neroden. This is pointing out what actually happens on a railroad that isn't entirely under its own control, is at capacity and what happens during evolving situations. Lstone, I don't fly, but let me ask you something. If Delta wants to take off or hold for connections, do they have to check with Southwest to see if they approve? I say it that way because Amtrak can't hold 19, 97 or deviate the trains without the sign off and cooperation of NS and CSX, the host carriers. They can not call Metro North and say "hey, we REALLY need 280 and 290 in NYP. We also need you to dig out 281 from behind all of your locals and and give them the golden rail because the crews are on short time and we need the equipment before rush hour."

Well, you can call them and say that. It just won't do much as they say "suuurrrre" and hang up on you! ^_^

Customer services is involved in the process because they need to know the answers to the above questions and they are the ones that know where the passengers land.. They also spend a great deal of time advocating for the passengers, but (and this remains a peeve of mine) it is ultimately operations that holds the final say.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Thirdrail7, I am an infrequent rider and have yet to step foot in NYP (other than my recent cross-platform transfer), but I seemed to have followed your 1st post regarding all the "operations" that need to take place to accomodate the passengers and your 2nd post just now reaffirmed what I thought. There is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes, in a lot of places, that the customer does not see (or seem to care about).

 

[FormerOBS]

I don't want to get into this except to agree with Thirdrail's very last comment. The customer service people are in the very unenviable position of trying to deal with a problem and satisfy the customer when the cards are all held by the Operations people, some of whom have shown that they don't care about making the job any easier for the customer service people. That's not right, and I won't try to justify it, but that's how it often is.

Tom

 

[jis]

This is not blaming Neroden. This is pointing out what actually happens on a railroad that isn't entirely under its own control, is at capacity and what happens during evolving situations. Lstone, I don't fly, but let me ask you something. If Delta wants to take off or hold for connections, do they have to check with Southwest to see if they approve? I say it that way because Amtrak can't hold 19, 97 or deviate the trains without the sign off and cooperation of NS and CSX, the host carriers. They can not call Metro North and say "hey, we REALLY need 280 and 290 in NYP. We also need you to dig out 281 from behind all of your locals and and give them the golden rail because the crews are on short time and we need the equipment before rush hour."

Well, you can call them and say that. It just won't do much as they say "suuurrrre" and hang up on you! ^_^

The moral equivalent of CSX and NS in the case of airline operation in the US is FAA ATC, flow control, slot allocation - the whole shabang. In addition they have their own operations - sort of CNOC for each airline to deal with too, who cannot always satisfy all demands for the best outcome for everyone.

So they face exactly similar crap but from a different source.

Customer services is involved in the process because they need to know the answers to the above questions and they are the ones that know where the passengers land.. They also spend a great deal of time advocating for the passengers, but (and this remains a peeve of mine) it is ultimately operations that holds the final say.

Well put. That is reality. One important mitigation under the worst circumstances is to be able to provide real time or near real time status information. Some airlines do much better than others in this area. At the end of the day, if a huge thunder head is sitting atop the airport throwing lightning bolt, ground operations will come to a standstill and nothing will move too much, until the situation clears. Some airlines have come to the conclusion that their passenger information system and the IT infrastructure supporting it is a business differentiator and they have upped the budget for upgrading them enabling near real time information flow. That is a very encouraging thing IMHO.

 

[Thirdrail7]

Yes, I agree. That was an excellent post from lstone, specially considering the typical "beat up on the customer" fest that has been going on in this thread. Whether it was an individual's failure or not we'd never know, but clearly there was a significant systemic failure at Penn Station that day, and that is not the only time such has happened. Which is more the reason that it needs managerial attention to fix or mitigate better than is the practice now. The fact that NYP is the busiest station in the system is no excuse for condoning such failures.

I do recall you once saying that Sunnyside employees were too lazy to turn a set of equipment without knowing that the entire shift that could perform the task was completely eliminated because of cutbacks. Again, my posts are about providing behind the scenes details. You may accept them, dispute them and question them but they are designed to give you an idea of what may occur behind the scenes.

.

This is not about blaming any passengers. This is about what is happening.NYP (and all of the other terminals) could bulk up layers of workers and employees to attempt to prepare for every contingency You used to have an wide array of tools (equipment, personnel, mechanical forces, terminal space for manipulation) at your disposal to handle situations like this. Those tools vanished in recent years. Will they return? Not likely (which is why certain facilities can not short turn equipment these days) and it some cases, it absolutely shouldn't. Under normal operating circumstances, a few passenger service employees are ample to handle everything that occurs (with a little room for error). However, there are going to be cases like the above where there isn't enough to take care of everything that is occurring at once. Is more management the answer? Not in my book. The process needs to be streamlined. However, it is not as simple as saying "do this and that" and we have a train. Railroading is cause and effect. What you do today may have an impact on something days later. It is about balance.

I still believe it worth mentioning NYP is the busiest station in the system. It is probably one of the busiest passenger stations in the railroad systems. One delay can create 1000's of minutes in delays to three railroads. This is not Chicago. There is no comparison. That is why a train like 2253 can escape without all of its passengers in the chaos the ensued when you had a last minute track change mixing with a narrow, double stacked platform (2212 arriving and unloading behind 88 which is loading on the adjacent platform.) There is no place like NYP.

Two managers trying to work with operations to find accommodations for roughly 11 trains of impacted passengers (current and future) is better than one, but not as good as four.

 

[jis]

I actually mostly agree with what you say above, including your criticism of me for which I made amends and apologized in the past. Even the most perfect among us make mistakes, you know? And I have never made any claims to such perfection.

 

[neroden]

Let me be blunt and clear about this. The problem at Amtrak is one of *communications*.

This is entirely under Amtrak's control and failures are entirely Amtrak's fault. In fact, it is mostly under the control of the customer service people -- although if the operations people fail to communicate, then that is their fault.

Had I been told, half an hour out of New York (and an hour after 280 started moving again), "Amtrak has concluded that we can't hold the Silver Meteor at NY or WAS; you will miss the train," that would have satisfied me *completely*.

Amtrak was unable to even have someone with the authority to do anything contact me. They had not done so *two and a half hours after the train arrived in NY*. This is a FAILURE, and an inexcusable one. So don't even try to make excuses for it.

Two managers trying to work with operations to find accommodations for roughly 11 trains of impacted passengers (current and future) is better than one, but not as good as four.

(1) Passengers on other delayed trains could be handled later, and were likely to be much less angry.

(2) They had an hour and a half *after* train 280 was moving again to arrange to accomodate the passengers on train 280. They failed to even communicate with the passengers on train 280. Even after arrival. Even half an hour after arrival. Even 2 and a half hours after arrival.

Look, there are no excuses for this. None. If there aren't enough "managers" then the managers can delegate some of the tasks to some of the employees sitting around doing nothing at the Club Acela.

There is a comparison with Chicago. The comparison goes as follows:

(1) Chicago is running customer service communications fairly competently

(2) New York is not

At the end, you said "There are severe delays surrounding NYP multiple times a week." All the more reason that re-accommodating misconnects should not be all that hard for NYP Customer Service to do.

And all I was actually asking for was communications! I, like many passengers, can do my own rescheduling *if I have some information*.

 

[lstone19]

Thirdrail, a lot of other posts are in between but neroden was on the incident train heading to NYP. His connection was to a non-Empire Service train so reaccommodating him (and the other passengers on that train) really should have been independent of anything Customer Service was doing for passengers trying to get on Empire Service trains. For that matter, unless ES trains were being cancelled rather than just operating very late, I'm not sure what reaccom was even needed for those passengers other than trying to move people up to earlier trains.

I don't know how many people on neroden's train were making connections at NYP but my guess is a very small percentage. Once the train was moving again (neroden said they were still 90 minutes out), NYP had plenty of time to start reaccommodating on the Corridor trains.

I disagree that CS should be worrying about all the operational details. Let those group do their jobs, let CNOC quote a departure time for a train, and CS should just be working to whatever the quoted time is. If one of our Customer Service reps at an airport was trying to rebook someone but rather than just rebooking on the next available flight, stopped and said "well let me see if there's a crew for the flight, and let me see where the plane is, and let me see ... " (well you get the idea), he'd never get the passenger rebooked in a timely manner. Sometimes you just don't have time to come up with the perfect recovery plan, so you have to do the best you can in the time available.

 

[VentureForth]

Training. Delegation. Communication.

 

[jis]

At the end, you said "There are severe delays surrounding NYP multiple times a week." All the more reason that re-accommodating misconnects should not be all that hard for NYP Customer Service to do.

And all I was actually asking for was communications! I, like many passengers, can do my own rescheduling *if I have some information*.

This last line is something that many airlines have now managed to internalize and have built into their business planning. The net requirement from this is complete and as close to real time as possible communication about what exactly is going on. They still falter on sometimes being more optimistic than is realistic, but they are getting better.
Of late I have been really impressed with how they manage to move me to a later flight "on the fly" as soon as they realize that a connection may be missed. I can see that happen in real time on my iPhone/iPad sitting in the plane using the nice WiFi service too, and so much of the tensions regarding "what happens next" is relieved.

Really timely and as accurate as possible communication is absolutely critical in this day and age.

 

[cirdan]

.

This is not about blaming any passengers. This is about what is happening.NYP (and all of the other terminals) could bulk up layers of workers and employees to attempt to prepare for every contingency You used to have an wide array of tools (equipment, personnel, mechanical forces, terminal space for manipulation) at your disposal to handle situations like this. Those tools vanished in recent years. Will they return? Not likely (which is why certain facilities can not short turn equipment these days) and it some cases, it absolutely shouldn't. Under normal operating circumstances, a few passenger service employees are ample to handle everything that occurs (with a little room for error). However, there are going to be cases like the above where there isn't enough to take care of everything that is occurring at once. Is more management the answer? Not in my book. The process needs to be streamlined. However, it is not as simple as saying "do this and that" and we have a train. Railroading is cause and effect. What you do today may have an impact on something days later. It is about balance.

I don't think you need to have an army of passenger service helpers on standby day and night just in case there is a major problem. But there is always a possibility to draft people from other places such as back-office jobs and make sure they have the training to handle these situations and then be able to draft them at short notice.