Suggestions on how to make a tight connection

[Trogdor]

Early next October, we have same day connections in Chicago between the Capitol Limited No. 29 and the Southwest Chief No. 3. Although both reservations were paid for using cash, due to circumstances beyond our control they are not under the same reservation number. Under normal conditions, this would not be a tight connection since there is about six hours between trains. Even so, to be on the safe side, this morning we called Amtrak and, after being connected to an agent, asked that our CL and SWC reservations be linked together. She didn’t know what that was or apparently how to do it. According to her, the only way our CL and SWC reservations could be combined was to first cancel them and then remake them. We thanked her but said that we’d rather keep things as they were. Would we have been better served to have spoken to someone in Customer Relations?

The agent is correct. Despite popular myth on here, there is actually no way to "link" separate reservations in a way that will generate any kind of automatic recognition or misconnect protection. "Linking" reservations, at best, consists of entering text comments onto the reservations telling the agent reviewing a reservation to also look at the other one. The problem is, these are text comments and are not going to be recognized by any automated process that looks for connections and automatically rebooks in case of a misconnect or schedule change. You are dependent on someone manually going through every reservation in search of these comments and then acting on them, and I guarantee nobody is doing that (and it's not just a case of Amtrak IT, there's basically no reservation system out there that will link two separate reservations in an automated fashion).

 

[joelkfla]

The agent is correct. Despite popular myth on here, there is actually no way to "link" separate reservations in a way that will generate any kind of automatic recognition or misconnect protection. "Linking" reservations, at best, consists of entering text comments onto the reservations telling the agent reviewing a reservation to also look at the other one. The problem is, these are text comments and are not going to be recognized by any automated process that looks for connections and automatically rebooks in case of a misconnect or schedule change. You are dependent on someone manually going through every reservation in search of these comments and then acting on them, and I guarantee nobody is doing that (and it's not just a case of Amtrak IT, there's basically no reservation system out there that will link two separate reservations in an automated fashion).

I don't know what's behind the curtain, but if the reservations are stored in a well-designed and thoughtfully indexed database, it should be fairly trivial to design a query finding reservations in the same name terminating and originating in a given city on the same day.

 

[Amtrak709]

Just a curiosity: Is there a published list of "legal" connecting times in key hub cities in Amtrak? I am sure the times exist as they are obviously a part of the reservation system--perhaps they are unique to each connecting situation. I know when I worked for the C&O station agent in WBG, we had access to some manual list (of course that was way back in the late 1960's).

 

[zephyr17]

Just a curiosity: Is there a published list of "legal" connecting times in key hub cities in Amtrak? I am sure the times exist as they are obviously a part of the reservation system--perhaps they are unique to each connecting situation. I know when I worked for the C&O station agent in WBG, we had access to some manual list (of course that was way back in the late 1960's).

It is guideline, 60 minutes, which is system wide except for the NEC.

Unlike airlines, where MCT is largely a function of the size of the hub airport and difficulty and time required to navigate between gates there, Amtrak connections are a function of inbound train OTP. A Hiawatha to Michigan Service connection at CUS is a very different thing than a Zepyhr to Capitol one.

Connecting trains are not linked algorithmically. Connecting city pairs are manually entered in Arrow, per multiple sources, particularly an Amtrak AGR employee who was posting with official sanction as AGRInsider at Flyertalk (Flyertalk had/has a convention of official company representatives having xxxInsider handles), who is no longer with Amtrak and no longer posting there.

In any case, it is a guideline. There is a guaranteed connection between the Starlight and Sunset in LA despite the time between trains dropped to 49 minutes when the Starlight's schedule was changed last year. The Starlight's OTP is such that the connection is mostly made. However, the connection between the Empire Builder and the Wolverine (354) at Chicago is cut under the new schedule, despite the fact it is scheduled at 65 minutes between trains. The Empire Builder often runs late, so when the connecting time was reduced from 115 minutes to 65, they cut the guarantee.

The way to see if a connection is guaranteed is to enter the origin and destination and see if it comes up with a routing. It is guaranteed if it does. One caveat to that is that since all connections are entered city pair by city pair, sometimes some intermediate points are left out. If that is the case and it looks like the connection ought to be guaranteed, try major cities on the same routes, like Portland to Salt Lake rather than Chico-Elko. If the major cities show a connection, you can go ahead and book between the intermediate points using Multi-City.

The city pair by city pair entry requirement results in connection offerings often being messed up for a couple weeks after a schedule change, while they re-establish them. Even if the underlying Arrow system requires city pair by city pair entry and they don't to mess with that antique, why Amtrak IT cannot build a tool that they can at least enter connecting train numbers, and have it spit out city pairs that can be fed directly into Arrow is beyond me.