U.S. House votes to cut Amtrak funding, allow pets

[jis]

Having traveled in many places in the world, it seems to me that Amtrak's pet transportation ban policy is an exception rather than anywhere near any norm that exists in the travel industry. Therefore, i believe Amtrak should catch up with the rest of the world, and permit pets under specific set of rules, e.g. must be confined to a carrier, and such related constraints. I don't see any reason whatsoever to not do so. It is quite obvious that de facto, Amtrak already carries pets. Might as well provide a clear set of rules for doing so and even collect some money for it, instead of the current state of affairs. it is sort of like prohibition, and equally silly. Just iMHO of course. :help:

 

[Ryan]

Not this topic yet again. The horse is not merely dead, it's most sincerely dead. Let it decay in pieces.

Feel free to not click on the topic and read it if you're disinterested.

 

[Guest]

Having traveled in many places in the world, it seems to me that Amtrak's pet transportation ban policy is an exception rather than anywhere near any norm that exists in the travel industry. Therefore, i believe Amtrak should catch up with the rest of the world, and permit pets under specific set of rules, e.g. must be confined to a carrier, and such related constraints. I don't see any reason whatsoever to not do so. It is quite obvious that de facto, Amtrak already carries pets. Might as well provide a clear set of rules for doing so and even collect some money for it, instead of the current state of affairs. it is sort of like prohibition, and equally silly. Just iMHO of course. :help:

Also the number of fake service animals would likely plummet. Assuming there really are fake service animals.....

 

[FormerOBS]

There really are fake service animals. I know of at least three situations where a "service animal" bit, or growled and threatened to bite, an employee or passenger. The train is foreign, unfamiliar territory for the animal. If it hasn't been properly trained, it can become suspicious, defensive, and possibly fearful. Then an animal that is normally docile and friendly, can behave in unexpected and dangerous ways. Real service animals are trained to stay calm in situations like that.

By the way, I hope everybody knows that they should NEVER distract, pet, or try to play with a service animal. If this is to happen, it should ONLY be with the advance permission of the owner, at a time when the animal is "off duty".

Tom

 

[Bob Dylan]

Excellent Post Tom, and the same disclaimers apply to LE Drug and Bomb Dogs who can be very defensive and aggressive!!

 

[neroden]

I'm curious about the rights of passengers and crew who are allergic to pets/pet dander.

There will be a designated pet car and they can go to a different car.

Which is FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR more than Amtrak does for people with ANY other allergy.

I'm allergic by inhalation to polyester -- does Amtrak do anything for me? Well, they will carry away the pillows when I request it, but they still dump them in the room even if my reservation says not to.

I'm allergic to guar gum by ingestion -- Amtrak has been unable even to *tell* me which foods contain guar gum and which do not, which would be a reasonable accomodation.

In short, people who are allergic to pets are being given gold-plated bend-over-backwards-to-be-nice-to-them kowtowing first class grade A treatment, and should stop complaining.

 

[neroden]

Allergies are not considered a threat, nor a disability,...

Allergies definitely can be a disability; I don't know how the courts have been ruling lately, but eventually they're going to rule that they are.
However, it is worth remembering that disabilities are subject to the usual "reasonable accomodation" rules. Allowing an employee to work a different car (not the pet car) is a reasonable accomodation. Banning all pets from intercity trains is not a reasonable accomodation, it's grossly unreasonable.

 

[neroden]

Excellent Post Tom, and the same disclaimers apply to LE Drug and Bomb Dogs who can be very defensive and aggressive!!

There are fake "drug" and "bomb" sniffing dogs too. :-(

An awful lot of them have been trained to "alert" based on facial & body language indications from the handler. A proper trainer has to give consistent, substantial negative reinforcement for false positives. This is done *sometimes*, by the best trainers, but it isn't done at all by the worse trainers.

Far too many police departments really like to have fake "alerts" as excuses to do warrantless searches of innocent people's luggage. So they get fake "drug" and "bomb" sniffing dogs who alert whenever the handler wants them to. They end up retraining all their dogs (some of who were originally trained properly) to alert whenever the handler wants them to. Most dogs want to make their handler happy, you see...

This is a well-documented problem.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

For instance, a NASA auth act could say "Go land on the Moon and also here's a billion dollars for that," but the appropriation looks at that and says "ha a billion no way that's going to work" and they appropriate ten billion instead to actually achieve the policy defined in the auth act.

Technically, that isn't supposed to happen - the appropriation committee isn't supposed to appropriate more than was authorized for a particular line item. But they're also allowed to break their own rules whenever they want.

Yes, it is an odd and goofy set of rules and responsibilities. Parts of it seem strangely redundant and counter-intuitive. This is literally the stuff I deal with at work and I hate when it leaks into my leisure time!

 

[SarahZ]

I'm curious about the rights of passengers and crew who are allergic to pets/pet dander.

There will be a designated pet car and they can go to a different car.

Which is FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR more than Amtrak does for people with ANY other allergy.

I'm allergic by inhalation to polyester -- does Amtrak do anything for me? Well, they will carry away the pillows when I request it, but they still dump them in the room even if my reservation says not to.

I'm allergic to guar gum by ingestion -- Amtrak has been unable even to *tell* me which foods contain guar gum and which do not, which would be a reasonable accomodation.

In short, people who are allergic to pets are being given gold-plated bend-over-backwards-to-be-nice-to-them kowtowing first class grade A treatment, and should stop complaining.

I want a separate car for people wearing perfume. Also, banning the Glade plug-ins some SCAs use would be awesome. I would definitely consider my asthma attacks a disability.

Since I realize these are unreasonable requests, I book a roomette and keep the door shut. I love that I have that option on Amtrak. On airplanes, I sometimes have to lean on my hand all casual-like and breathe through my shirt sleeve to help "filter" the air. It's a neat trick.

Anyway, I feel like having a designated "pet car" is akin to my booking my own little room with a door that I can shut against the perfumed air.

 

[OlympianHiawatha]

If this comes to be, if you are use to putting the cat out at night at home, then if you are in Sleeper you can just shove him or her out in the hall to wander the train at night

 

[Bus Nut]

I'm curious about the rights of passengers and crew who are allergic to pets/pet dander.

There will be a designated pet car and they can go to a different car.

Which is FAR, FAR, FAR, FAR more than Amtrak does for people with ANY other allergy.

I'm allergic by inhalation to polyester -- does Amtrak do anything for me? Well, they will carry away the pillows when I request it, but they still dump them in the room even if my reservation says not to.

I'm allergic to guar gum by ingestion -- Amtrak has been unable even to *tell* me which foods contain guar gum and which do not, which would be a reasonable accomodation.

In short, people who are allergic to pets are being given gold-plated bend-over-backwards-to-be-nice-to-them kowtowing first class grade A treatment, and should stop complaining.

Nathanael, people with pet allergies are getting nothing and furthermore, ADA is the law of the land, no matter what "pet policy" might be. (Service dogs are not pets.) You cannot confine disabled people to pet cars, okay?

I'm sorry that Amtrak was crappy to you about your allergies. Not listening is kind of lame and there is really no excuse for them, especially with their national, limited menus, not to disclose exactly what is in their recipes.

But neither passengers NOR employees are getting accommodated in any way by Amtrak. Clearer now?

 

[Bus Nut]

Ha, I mean to say accommodated in any way if they have dog allergies. So not so clear, I guess. :huh:

 

[Bus Nut]

Allergies are not considered a threat, nor a disability,...

Allergies definitely can be a disability; I don't know how the courts have been ruling lately, but eventually they're going to rule that they are.
However, it is worth remembering that disabilities are subject to the usual "reasonable accomodation" rules. Allowing an employee to work a different car (not the pet car) is a reasonable accomodation. Banning all pets from intercity trains is not a reasonable accomodation, it's grossly unreasonable.

I agree with your assertion that the courts will eventually rule differently with respect to allergies. That day has not yet arrived.

As for your assertions about the meaning and interpretation of ADA rules w/r/t transportation, you're way off base. If employees are swapping duties so one can work in another car, that is self-help and fraternity between employees, not an action taken by the employer, which is absolutely not required to accommodate public facing employees with allergies to service animals in any way. And people can--and have--lost their jobs due to being allergic to customers' service animals. Does that sound fair or right? Well I can assure you that it doesn't sound just to me ... but that's where the law is now ... USA 2015.

 

[FriskyFL]

Other than bona fide Service Animals (not the patently bogus "emotional support" ilk), they belong in baggage car. Human passengers are bad enough.

 

[SarahZ]

Other than bona fide Service Animals (not the patently bogus "emotional support" ilk), they belong in baggage car. Human passengers are bad enough.

The baggage cars are neither climate-controlled nor safe. If you wouldn't put a human back there, then an animal doesn't belong there either.

 

[neroden]

As for your assertions about the meaning and interpretation of ADA rules w/r/t transportation, you're way off base. If employees are swapping duties so one can work in another car, that is self-help and fraternity between employees, not an action taken by the employer, which is absolutely not required to accommodate public facing employees with allergies to service animals in any way. And people can--and have--lost their jobs due to being allergic to customers' service animals. Does that sound fair or right? Well I can assure you that it doesn't sound just to me ... but that's where the law is now ... USA 2015.

This is unfortunate, and it doesn't sound fair to me either. I hope that a compassionate employer would provide reasonable accommodations for their employees whether or not it's legally required at the moment.

I really do think the courts are going to reverse on this sooner or later: with reasonable accomodations required for people with diabetes and other autoimmune diseases, refusing to recognize allergies (which are medically also a process of immune reaction) as physical disabilities is going to come under scrutiny for lack of factual grounding.

It may be impossible to make reasonable accomodations for extremely severe allergies (of the 'if I inhale one particle from 10 feet away I die' variety), but it should be possible to accomodate "I can't touch that" levels of allergies.

 

[mjaynes288]

A disability is defined under the ADA as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. Severe allergies that cause breathing problems are covered under the ADA. If someone had this level of allergy they would be unable to preform a customer service job because they would react to the dander on pet owners' clothes. Most allergies do not substantially limit major life activities. They will never be covered by the ADA.

 

[FriskyFL]

Other than bona fide Service Animals (not the patently bogus "emotional support" ilk), they belong in baggage car. Human passengers are bad enough.

The baggage cars are neither climate-controlled nor safe. If you wouldn't put a human back there, then an animal doesn't belong there either.

Then that settles that. Until the new Viewliner Baggage cars enter service, animals shouldn't ride in the passenger cars. Nor should some of the human passengers, but that's another topic.

 

[SarahZ]

Other than bona fide Service Animals (not the patently bogus "emotional support" ilk), they belong in baggage car. Human passengers are bad enough.

The baggage cars are neither climate-controlled nor safe. If you wouldn't put a human back there, then an animal doesn't belong there either.

Then that settles that. Until the new Viewliner Baggage cars enter service, animals shouldn't ride in the passenger cars. Nor should some of the human passengers, but that's another topic.

Or, they can ride in a designated pet car, with a limited number of pets per train (four), with all animals contained in carriers (under the seat), as specified in the current Amtrak Pets Trial on the IL trains. So far, the trial is successful.

 

[Ryan]

That's far too much common sense. Be one of the cool kids and make hyperbolic statements insulting people instead.

 

[FriskyFL]

Other than bona fide Service Animals (not the patently bogus "emotional support" ilk), they belong in baggage car. Human passengers are bad enough.

The baggage cars are neither climate-controlled nor safe. If you wouldn't put a human back there, then an animal doesn't belong there either.

Then that settles that. Until the new Viewliner Baggage cars enter service, animals shouldn't ride in the passenger cars. Nor should some of the human passengers, but that's another topic.

Or, they can ride in a designated pet car, with a limited number of pets per train (four), with all animals contained in carriers (under the seat), as specified in the current Amtrak Pets Trial on the IL trains. So far, the trial is successful.

And who decides which passengers get the "honor" of riding in the kennel car? Slip the conductor a fin to ride in the odor-free car? Woe to the unlucky souls unfortunate enough to share the space with a cargo of crated animals during a lengthy delay. Yeah, this will work out just fine.

 

[MattW]

Other than bona fide Service Animals (not the patently bogus "emotional support" ilk), they belong in baggage car. Human passengers are bad enough.

The baggage cars are neither climate-controlled nor safe. If you wouldn't put a human back there, then an animal doesn't belong there either.

Then that settles that. Until the new Viewliner Baggage cars enter service, animals shouldn't ride in the passenger cars. Nor should some of the human passengers, but that's another topic.

Or, they can ride in a designated pet car, with a limited number of pets per train (four), with all animals contained in carriers (under the seat), as specified in the current Amtrak Pets Trial on the IL trains. So far, the trial is successful.

And who decides which passengers get the "honor" of riding in the kennel car? Slip the conductor a fin to ride in the odor-free car? Woe to the unlucky souls unfortunate enough to share the space with a cargo of crated animals during a lengthy delay. Yeah, this will work out just fine.

I guess the same thing they do on airplanes, they just move sensitive passengers to the next fuselage...oh wait.

 

[SarahZ]

And who decides which passengers get the "honor" of riding in the kennel car? Slip the conductor a fin to ride in the odor-free car? Woe to the unlucky souls unfortunate enough to share the space with a cargo of crated animals during a lengthy delay. Yeah, this will work out just fine.

It's a maximum of four pets, in crates, with absorbent material, in ONE car of the consist.

You make it sound like Barnum & Bailey's circus train.

 

[tonys96]

On many trains now, pax get no choice which cars they travel in when riding coach. They are assigned a car by the conductor or AC when tickets are scanned. All who are experienced riders are aware of that fact. SO........what happens when pax do not want to ride in the designated "animal car" for whatever reason (allergy, not wanting to be exposed to possible odor, noise, etc) ? Will they be accomadated in another car? Or will they get the corporate line of "We sold you a seat, and we are giving you a seat"? Just like a rider cannot switch seats due to a problematic seatmate.

In this case, will the animal's right's exceed the human pax's rights?