October 13, 2003 -- Amtrak's high-speed "Acela" service hasn't lived up to its name recently, with up to 30 percent of trains running late, according to the Associated Press. So the beleaguered US national railroad is tweaking schedules in the busy Northeast Corridor, as part of an attempt to improve Acela's ratings.
Train traffic jams are causing many of Acela's problems, says Amtrak spokesman Dan Stessel. Many commuter trains share northeastern tracks with Acela, so if an Acela train slides five minutes out of its assigned time-slot, the delay can stretch to 30 minutes or more as the 120-mile-an-hour speedster gets stuck behind 30-mile-an-hour commuter trains.
This is a lesser version of the problem that cripples Amtrak's nationwide schedules: without priority on the freight tracks they use across most of the country, Amtrak trains regularly get stuck at 10-mile-an-hour crawls behind mile-long trains of coal and wheat.
To give Acela more leeway, starting October 27 Amtrak is dropping the New Carrollton, Maryland station from Acela schedules, and sending only half as many trains to the Metropark, NJ and Baltimore-Washington Airport stations. Four out of eleven daily stops at New Haven, Conn. will also be cancelled. All those stations will still be served by a cohort of slightly slower Metroliner and Regional trains.
Several weekend Acela departures will also be knocked out and replaced with older, slightly slower Metroliner trains so Amtrak can try to overcome the maintenance problems that have plagued Acela since its inception.
In other tweaks, an evening Acela departure from Boston to New York at 6:40 PM will be added to the schedule (the current last departure is 5:15 PM.) The 8:20 AM Boston-New York train will be cancelled, though there will still be trains at 7:15 and 9:15. Outside the Northeast Corridor, the thrice-weekly Cardinal train through West Virginia and southern Ohio (one of Amtrak's slowest and most-delayed routes) will be extended north from Washington to New York, allowing a one-seat ride from New York and Philadelphia to West Virginia.
We're big fans of train travel here at Frommer's, but Amtrak hasn't been giving Americans the train travel they deserve recently. With proper investment and commitment, trains could be a compelling alternative to crowded highways along popular corridors like Los Angeles-San Diego, Detroit-Chicago-Milwaukee, Houston-Dallas-Austin, and Miami-Orlando-Tampa. Modern, European-class trains could link business centers at speeds much higher than car travel and without airport security hassles.
But as our readers have been recounting on our bulletin boards (www.frommers.com/cgi-bin/WebX?13@@.eeb6550) Amtrak is plagued with delays, starved for funding, treated as second fiddle on the tracks, and often run by a staff that acts with the hopeless misery of people about to be laid off (as, every year, they fear Congress will stop running the railroad.)
We'll keep reporting frequently on Amtrak (www.amtrak.com)-- we think that especially in the northeast of the country, it's a fine and useful way to travel. But we wish the railroad had the resources, commitment and luck to be a truly world-class train service, rather than a half-fast afterthought in a highway-obsessed nation.