Note to NorthEast Joe's successor - if you want to improve Amtrak's credibility, how about starting by projecting realistic arrival times for late LD trains.
For the last two weeks and more I've noticed that westbound train #1 is about one hour late leaving El Paso. Curiously on this stretch of well maintained 2MT CTC with recession reduced traffic, AMTK still can't make up much time. It is still an hour late in Deming, NM, BUT WAIT ...... per Track-Your-Train it is scheduled to make up 30 minutes between Benson, AZ and Tucson which are 45 miles apart. Doesn't that work out to ~180 MPH? - high speed rail travel must be here! Instead of projecting conservatively, the time allegedly will be made up by Maricopa (137 miles from Benson) rather than Yuma (283 miles).
No one with working brain cells is being fooled. Amtrak - please hire a competent programmer to fix this. There are plenty of unemployed / underemployed ones available.
Links to my Google Maps ---> Sunset Route overview, SoCal metro, Yuma sub, Gila sub, SR east of Tucson, BNSF Northern Transcon and Southern Transcon *** Why you should support Ukraine! ***
Mike, I think the idea is to help passengers -- and the people who meet their trains -- with planning. If a little padding here and there -- and I'm acquainted with it -- helps with OT arrivals for trains that would otherwise be chronically late, possibly causing missed connections, among other problems, I'm all for it.
After all, with Amtrak, we're not talking Donald Steffee (sp?) here.
MikeF90Note to NorthEast Joe's successor - if you want to improve Amtrak's credibility, how about starting by projecting realistic arrival times for late LD trains. For the last two weeks and more I've noticed that westbound train #1 is about one hour late leaving El Paso. Curiously on this stretch of well maintained 2MT CTC with recession reduced traffic, AMTK still can't make up much time. It is still an hour late in Deming, NM, BUT WAIT ...... per Track-Your-Train it is scheduled to make up 30 minutes between Benson, AZ and Tucson which are 45 miles apart. Doesn't that work out to ~180 MPH? - high speed rail travel must be here! Instead of projecting conservatively, the time allegedly will be made up by Maricopa (137 miles from Benson) rather than Yuma (283 miles). No one with working brain cells is being fooled. Amtrak - please hire a competent programmer to fix this. There are plenty of unemployed / underemployed ones available.
Obviously, you have not mastered schedule padding 101. Even in CTC 2MT territory there can be known activities that are accounted for by extended schedule times. Schedule times are not set at optimum run times over each territory.
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