Will Picking Up Tickets Prevent "No Show" in Reservation Sys

[wisEBfan]

I'm on the westbound EB on Tues July 1, with a reservation for a sleeper officially boarding in Columbus, WI. However, the bus service that Amtrak is running from Milwuakee to La Crosse, WI (to meet the EB coming out of Chicago on the detour due to flooding) is not picking passengers up in Columbus (or Portage, WI). Thus, I would have to board the bus in Milwaukee or Wis Dells, WI. I don't want my ticket to fall into a "no show" status by default if I opt for Wis Dells, which is much more convenient for me both in terms of distances and time of boarding, rather than going to Milwaukee. As of now, I have not yet picked up the tickets (usually get them printed the day of travel).

If I go to the station in Columbus today (Sunday) and have the tickets printed and thus have picked them up, would this prevent my reservation from being shifted by the computer system into a "no show" status if I don't board the bus in Milwaukee, but rather meet the bus in Wis Dells? I don't know at what point they are checking the status of Columbus passengers, and making an official determination as to whether we did in fact show up or not. Clearly, it is not in Columbus, since there is neither a train nor a bus calling there to pick anyone up. But Wis Dells is officially two stops down the line from my official boarding point of Columbus, WI. I did call the 800-USA-RAIL number, and the operator seemed to feel this would be OK, but didn't seem too clear about it, so I thought I'd make a post here to see if anyone has had experience with "no show" status when tickets have been printed prior to the day of travel.

Another related idea would be to keep the same reservation number, but shift the point of boarding to Wis Dells, but I have a feeling that the computer system wouldn't allow that.

The train is basically a sell-out (although that seems to vary a bit from day to day), and I don't want the system to cause my seat/roomette to drop into "no show" of course.

Thanks for any insight anyone might have on this.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I believe there are people at Amtrak who can reroute your trip at no additional charge in a circumstance like this where a train isn't running its full route. However, if you call Amtrak's main 800 number and speak with the first agent you get, they may not know this, may not know how to do this, and probably can't do this themselves and will probably treat this the way they would you deciding you feel like changing your reservation at the last minute on a day when the trains were running normally, purely for your own convenience. You might want to simply wait until the start of business hours tomorrow, call Amtrak's 800 number, and ask for ``customer service'' when you get an agent. Beyond that, you might even want to ask for a supervisor if the first person you talk to in customer service can't change your boarding point to a later point in your trip at no charge.

The downside of that is that customer service doesn't work on Sundays, and I assume with your desire to get the tickets printed today that you'd prefer to not take the chance of needing to get to Columbus tomorrow or Tuesday.

It appears that you cannot pick up tickets in Wisconsin Dells. My understanding is that in general, if you book a train ticket less than three days before travel, Amtrak can give the tickets to the conductor who will have them for you when you get on the train. Of course, that assumes there is an Amtrak conductor involved; I'm not sure how that works with the bustitution. You can certainly ask customer service about this, although I'm not sure I'd be confident that any information about this that they might have would be reliable. When I rode a bustituted #448 last month, there was an Amtrak conductor on board, but I think there are some circumstances where Amtrak puts passengers on a bus where no Amtrak conductor rides the bus. If I were taking that bus, a customer service agent at the 800 number telling me that there would be a conductor on the bus would not be enough assurance for me to feel confident it would work out; I think I'd make the effort to get the tickets printed prior to the trip.

Amtrak has been known to run express and local buses when bustituting. If your tickets are for the wrong station, it strikes me as possible that they will not have enough seats at the station where you want to board the bus.

I believe someone has said on these forums that to get a Quik-Trak machine to print a ticket at all, it has to be printed out 10 minutes prior to the time the train is scheduled to depart the station listed as the departure station on the ticket, but it can be printed at any Amtrak station that has a Quik-Trak machine.

 

[Walt]

I don't want my ticket to fall into a "no show" status by default if I opt for Wis Dells, which is much more convenient for me both in terms of distances and time of boarding, rather than going to Milwaukee. As of now, I have not yet picked up the tickets (usually get them printed the day of travel).

There is no on-board ticket processing, right? So, the "system" would never know if a reserved roomette's intended passenger is on board yet, or not, until days later when the collected tickets are finally entered into the system.

With a messed up train route, with temporary busing, I really don't think that an attendant would assume a particular passenger will never show up, and give away their reserved roomette, at least until the very last bus connection point has been passed (if ever). No?

 

[amamba]

I believe someone has said on these forums that to get a Quik-Trak machine to print a ticket at all, it has to be printed out 10 minutes prior to the time the train is scheduled to depart the station listed as the departure station on the ticket, but it can be printed at any Amtrak station that has a Quik-Trak machine.

Really? I commute into North Station (Boston) everyday via the MBTA commuter rail. I have some amtrak tickets purchased/reserved for rides in July & September, and when I spoke to the agent at 1-800-USA-RAIL she told me that I could pick up my tickets anytime between now and then on the Quik Trak machines at North Station (even though I am leaving from South Station). She didn't say anything about it only being 10 minutes prior to departure.

Anyone know this for sure? I suppose I could just try to print my tickets on Monday, but I'm worried that I will lose them in the meantime. I do want to pick them up a few days prior.

 

[transit54]

I believe someone has said on these forums that to get a Quik-Trak machine to print a ticket at all, it has to be printed out 10 minutes prior to the time the train is scheduled to depart the station listed as the departure station on the ticket, but it can be printed at any Amtrak station that has a Quik-Trak machine.

Really? I commute into North Station (Boston) everyday via the MBTA commuter rail. I have some amtrak tickets purchased/reserved for rides in July & September, and when I spoke to the agent at 1-800-USA-RAIL she told me that I could pick up my tickets anytime between now and then on the Quik Trak machines at North Station (even though I am leaving from South Station). She didn't say anything about it only being 10 minutes prior to departure.

Anyone know this for sure? I suppose I could just try to print my tickets on Monday, but I'm worried that I will lose them in the meantime. I do want to pick them up a few days prior.

No, I think you misread that. They must be picked up a minimum of 10 minutes prior to departure, not no more than 10 minutes prior to departure. So you could print them from now till 10 minutes before your train is scheduled to leave. If it's scheduled to leave in 8 minutes, however, you can't.

At least that's my interpretation of the above. I'm glad I know that now, because I could forsee myself being in a situation where I'm might be running late for a train and would need to print my tickets right before it left.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I believe someone has said on these forums that to get a Quik-Trak machine to print a ticket at all, it has to be printed out 10 minutes prior to the time the train is scheduled to depart the station listed as the departure station on the ticket, but it can be printed at any Amtrak station that has a Quik-Trak machine.

Really? I commute into North Station (Boston) everyday via the MBTA commuter rail. I have some amtrak tickets purchased/reserved for rides in July & September, and when I spoke to the agent at 1-800-USA-RAIL she told me that I could pick up my tickets anytime between now and then on the Quik Trak machines at North Station (even though I am leaving from South Station). She didn't say anything about it only being 10 minutes prior to departure.

Anyone know this for sure? I suppose I could just try to print my tickets on Monday, but I'm worried that I will lose them in the meantime. I do want to pick them up a few days prior.

No, I think you misread that. They must be picked up a minimum of 10 minutes prior to departure, not no more than 10 minutes prior to departure. So you could print them from now till 10 minutes before your train is scheduled to leave. If it's scheduled to leave in 8 minutes, however, you can't.

At least that's my interpretation of the above. I'm glad I know that now, because I could forsee myself being in a situation where I'm might be running late for a train and would need to print my tickets right before it left.

Yeah, I probably could have made that clearer by adding a few words. My understanding is that picking up the tickets anytime between roughly 11 months and 11 minutes before departure works fine. (Though not printing tickets too far in advance does have some advantages where you have easy access to a Quik-Trak machine, such as not paying the 10% penalty if you decide you need a refund, being able to change your reservation more easily, and reducing the risk that you'll lose a difficult to replace document.)

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I don't want my ticket to fall into a "no show" status by default if I opt for Wis Dells, which is much more convenient for me both in terms of distances and time of boarding, rather than going to Milwaukee. As of now, I have not yet picked up the tickets (usually get them printed the day of travel).

There is no on-board ticket processing, right? So, the "system" would never know if a reserved roomette's intended passenger is on board yet, or not, until days later when the collected tickets are finally entered into the system.

With a messed up train route, with temporary busing, I really don't think that an attendant would assume a particular passenger will never show up, and give away their reserved roomette, at least until the very last bus connection point has been passed (if ever). No?

If there are separate buses from Milwaukee and Wisconsin Dells, and the train crew ``knew'' a passenger was going to be on the Milwaukee bus(es) and there were no more buses coming from Milwaukee, they might conclude that the passenger wasn't going to show up. However, my guess is that they probably won't get around to trying to sell onboard upgrades until sometime after the bus from Wisconsin Dells shows up.

I'm realizing I'm kind of confused about where the belief that a Columbus, WI ticket is good for boarding earlier when that stop is skipped came from. Did Amtrak make any explicit statement at all about where passengers holding Columbus and Portage tickets should board the bus?

 

[wisEBfan]

I'm on the westbound EB on Tues July 1, with a reservation for a sleeper officially boarding in Columbus, WI. However, the bus service that Amtrak is running from Milwuakee to La Crosse, WI (to meet the EB coming out of Chicago on the detour due to flooding) is not picking passengers up in Columbus (or Portage, WI).

One additional oddity: The above was based on my telephone call to the 800-USA-RAIL early this (Sunday 6/29/2008) monring, which was prompted by the June 27, 2008 item from the NARP website, which read in part:

"First the good news—beginning today, the Empire Builder will resume service through to and from Chicago, albeit on a detour between Chicago and La Crosse, WI via. Canadian Pacific and Union Pacific. Bus service will be provided between Milwaukee and LaCrosse, stopping at Wisconsin Dells and Tomah only."

I got the phone number of the station in Columbus, and just spoke to the Amtrak person who staffs the station, asking about bus transportation for today (Sunday 6/29/2008). He wasn't familiar with the above quote (and in fact, asked me from where I got the information). He further said he was currently (approx 12:15 local time) "waiting for faxes" to inform him about today's status. He, quite properly, didn't want to make any definite statements until he received the latest official word himself. Anyway, that response is a bit of a contrast from info being handed out by an operator at 800-USA-RAIL and the item on the NARP website. FWIW I just thought I'd pass it along for anyone who is/was planning to take the EB bus westbound out of Columbus over the next several days. Things might be changing on a day-to-day basis.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

Things might be changing on a day-to-day basis.

That may be a good argument for keeping your ticket listing Columbus as the point of origin; if they decide to send the buses to Columbus on Tuesday, I gather that would make your life easiest.

You could also try calling NARP (probably tomorrow morning, but I really don't know what their hours are), comment on all the confusion, and ask them to ask Amtrak to run the bus to Columbus.

While I'm not really surprised that this is as much of a disorganized mess as it is, it's also pretty disappointing that Amtrak can't figure out how to communicate better about this. One thing that I suspect might help would be to have a small group in the call center that handles all of the Empire Builder detour calls, who have a supervisor who is empowered to directly talk with whomever is responsible for planning out the bustitution, and have the regular agents transfer people who have questions about an Empire Builder departure in the near future transfer calls to this group. Arrow might need to gain a feature that will allow calls about certain train numbers for particular dates to be flagged as needing to go to a particular group of call center representatives, and if it does, that won't happen in time for it to help any with the current round of flooding, but between this and the Coast Starlight, I'm not exactly getting the impression that major natural disasters are something that have never happened to Amtrak before. Then again, handing every call center rep a piece of paper saying to transfer calls about the Empire Builder's run in the next two weeks to extension xxx where the group that's keeping track of all of the details of the detour can talk to callers may not require very much technology.

 

[wisEBfan]

I'm realizing I'm kind of confused about where the belief that a Columbus, WI ticket is good for boarding earlier when that stop is skipped came from. Did Amtrak make any explicit statement at all about where passengers holding Columbus and Portage tickets should board the bus?

After I hung up, I realized I had the same thought. To answer your question, the Amtrak operator I got from calling 800-USA-RAIL, told me (after waiting on hold for about five minutes) that she had checked a memorandum, and that Columbus passengers had to get to Milwaukee "on your own" to board a bus in Milwaukee. She explicitly said Milwaukee, without any mention of any alternative. It was at that point that I asked about boarding the bus at Wis Dells instead, and that was when it wasn't completely clear about whether a "no show" status would get into the system, even if I had gotten my ticket printed prior to the day of travel.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

After I hung up, I realized I had the same thought. To answer your question, the Amtrak operator I got from calling 800-USA-RAIL, told me (after waiting on hold for about five minutes) that she had checked a memorandum, and that Columbus passengers had to get to Milwaukee "on your own" to board a bus in Milwaukee. She explicitly said Milwaukee, without any mention of any alternative. It was at that point that I asked about boarding the bus at Wis Dells instead, and that was when it wasn't completely clear about whether a "no show" status would get into the system, even if I had gotten my ticket printed prior to the day of travel.

You could try calling back, and asking the same set of questions as if the previous call had never happened, and see if you get the same answer. I have certainly heard of situations where different call center agents apparently live in different universes.

It's possible that the agent had a memo that said that, and it's also possible that the agent saw that there was indeed bus service at Milkaukee and jumped to the conclusion that that was where you needed to board.

(Are the Hiathawa trains still running to Chicago?)

 

[wisEBfan]

(Are the Hiathawa trains still running to Chicago?)

AFAIK: yes. In fact, people in Glenview IL are directed to take that to Chicago to link up with the EB there.

And thank you for your comments. They have been helpful. I'll try calling the 800-USA-RAIL number again later today and see what kind of response results.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

I got the phone number of the station in Columbus, and just spoke to the Amtrak person who staffs the station, asking about bus transportation for today (Sunday 6/29/2008). He wasn't familiar with the above quote (and in fact, asked me from where I got the information). He further said he was currently (approx 12:15 local time) "waiting for faxes" to inform him about today's status. He, quite properly, didn't want to make any definite statements until he received the latest official word himself. Anyway, that response is a bit of a contrast from info being handed out by an operator at 800-USA-RAIL and the item on the NARP website. FWIW I just thought I'd pass it along for anyone who is/was planning to take the EB bus westbound out of Columbus over the next several days. Things might be changing on a day-to-day basis.

How much did you talk to the Columbus station Amtrak staff person about what you want to do? While the recieving a fax thing is not entirely promising about his ability to communicate back to the people coordinating the buses, I bet he's a lot more likely to be able to point out to them ways that this could work better than someone at 800-USA-RAIL.

 

[Joel N. Weber II]

One other thing I don't understand: why are they skipping those two stops?

It sounds like you're able to drive to both Columbus, WI and Wisconsin Dells, which would suggest to me that a bus probably would find usable roads connecting those two stations. So I don't think that's the reason to skip Columbus, WI.

And I've been on a bustituted #448 where the particular bus I was on was on was pretty much full (there may have been a small number of empty seats, but if so, you could count those empty seats with the fingers on one hand), and it picked up a very small number of people at Pittsfield (that could be counted on the fingers on one hand) and dropped off an approximately equally small number of people, and then ran express to BOS. So I don't really think that Amtrak skipping low usage stops for their convenience is a likely compelling reason to skip Columbus, either. (Then again, it sounded like they may not have been running bus service to BBY at all when I was on the bustituted #448, but it's not all that hard to get from BOS to BBY on the subway earlier than a #448 train would have reached BBY, given how much faster the bus was, and the $2.00 subway fare for someone with no pass and no CharlieCard wouldn't exactly be the end of the world.)

 

[wayman]

At least that's my interpretation of the above. I'm glad I know that now, because I could forsee myself being in a situation where I'm might be running late for a train and would need to print my tickets right before it left.

Well, with unreserved trains you sort-of can, and I have! I once used the QuikTrak at 4:45 to buy a ticket for the "All Aboard" 4:49 Keystone, by booking a ticket for the 5:xx Keystone. Since Keystones are all unreserved, all the tickets say is "valid for one year after [date of purchase]"; it didn't matter which train I'd actually told the QuikTrak I was going to take, my ticket was just as good for the 4:49 as any other train for the next year. I dashed over to Stairway 9 and was the last one down the stairs, stepping onto the train minutes before departure.

I didn't have much more time than that years back when I took the LSL out of NYP and had to see a ticket agent (I don't know if there were any QuikTraks then). The train started moving about two minutes after I stepped on, having run from the ticket window down to the platform. A very Cary Grant moment!

 

[PaulM]

I'll also be on the EB July 1, #2/0731, fortunately boarding in Chicago. Let me know how you fared.

Of course, if it doesn't make any better time than the first UP detour last night, I'll probably sleep through La Crosse when you board.

Paul Marlin

 

[wisEBfan]

One other thing I don't understand: why are they skipping those two stops?
It sounds like you're able to drive to both Columbus, WI and Wisconsin Dells, which would suggest to me that a bus probably would find usable roads connecting those two stations. So I don't think that's the reason to skip Columbus, WI.

That's a good point, and it should have got me distrustful of what I was hearing from 800-USA-RAIL. I did call a second time, and this time the Amtrak operator, after having me on hold for 15 minutes while she searched for info, told me that everything is "not clear" but she said my choices were boarding a bus in Milwaukee, or driving to La Crosse. Upon my pressing her just a bit, she changed that to say she had no information about intermediate stops across Wisconsin. I think what happened is that the NARP post was correct for June 27th, and Amtrak employees finishing up their work day on Friday left info posted for the operators to the best of their knowledge as of June 27th. It was this info that the weekend operators were thus running into when they went to search today, since no one was bothering to update it during the weekend for them. Incidentally, I also called the Amtrak station in Milwaukee, using three different phone lines into the station, but none connected to a live human.

My initial reaction to the "official" info was to lend it some credence because Toma and Wis Dells stations are fairly close to the I-90/94 road (which is now completely open again after being closed between Madison-Milwaukee and also north of Madison at the interchange leading to Portage). However, Portage and Columbus are not as close to the I-90/94 interstate. And with county and state highways in some cases still flooded, my initial thought was they wanted to stay on only interstate roads or large divided highways such as 151 out of Madison to Columbus. Portage is only a minor stop. And going up to Columbus and back on the main roads would be about a 40 mile detour. Additionally, there had been some flooding right around Columbus, closing some roads leading into Columbus such as 60/16 (although today they were open). So it was possible the thinking was let's stay away from these two, just let people from south central Wisconsin drive to the Wis Dells.

Anyway, tired of phone calls, I just drove over to Columbus to see for myself if a bus showed up today or not for the 5:05 PM departure. With about 15 minutes before departure time, a chartered bus with MN tags on it, was sitting there. One couple standing around outside said they had spent several hours on the phone yesterday trying to get a line on what was happening. Their information was that there wasn't any bus in Columbus previously, but it began service yesterday Saturday 6/28/2008. There weren't that many people on the bus today with 15 minutes to go, nor many cars in the parking lot, which struck me as unusual, especially with an essentially sold out train. Makes me wonder if passengers had been calling 800-USA-RAIL (as the secondary window that opens on the Amtrak site in response to clicking the disruption link tells them to do), and getting outdated information.

Anyway, my concern about "no show" status is now a moot point, assuming that a bus today means a bus each day in the upcoming week. Thanks again for your helpful thoughts about this.