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A few weeks ago I was in Chicago as part of a cross country train trip and wrote about some of my problems there: leaking windows in the sleeper and locomotive failures that delayed the departure or cancellation of most trains, including my SWC.
The problems continue and apparently pushed Fred Frailey, Trains columnist and blogger, to publish this at Trains.com. While he acknowledges that weather and freight delays are part of it, the primary culprit is servicing the locomotives and equipment at their very nice 14th st. Chicago maintenance facility.
Not sure if all will have access to the link, but the bottom line was this: **********
"This has been a hard blog to write. I am struggling to be fair, but you can tell I’m unhappy, even angry. Maybe another point of view would help. So I asked D. J. Stadtler, Amtrak’s vice president of operations, to read this. I said I would publish anything he wishes to say in response. D. J. gets the last word:
“Fred you are absolutely correct, Chicago has been a tremendous struggle for us this winter, the past couple weeks especially. As you know, our goal is to exceed our passengers expectations in Customer Experience. As of late in Chicago, not only have we not exceeded their expectations, we have been far from even meeting them.
“I could list many reasons for this, be it limited equipment, staffing issues, numerous traction motor failures due to grounding conditions, late inbounds resulting in late outbounds thereby perpetuating the cycle, or any number of other issues. I could explain to you the different things we are attempting to do with GE to improve the reliability of the locomotives, or our evaluations of our staffing levels to ensure that when trains are late coming in we have adequate staff to turn them around quickly, or the fact that we are looking at ways to streamline our quality review processes so that we don’t send out equipment that is not ready to be sent out.
“I'd be happy to detail those fixes if you'd like, but at then end of the day when you (and others) see a train board that says DELAYED virtually top to bottom, we have not done our jobs, and that is all that matters. There is not one thing that impacts this, but many, and we are looking at everything. We need to do better and we know it, and we are committed to turning things around quickly.†***********
Glad to see Amtrak accept responsibility. Now if they could only fix their problems.
Ocala Mike Member # 4657
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Here's my own encounter with "Chicago problems," albeit not related to Amtrak. For many years, I've been a member of the Amoco Motor Club, which morphed into the BP Motor Club in 1998, and which has been subcontracted to the Allstate Motor Club since 2010. I never had any kind of problems until the past month, when a check I sent to Carol Stream, IL in payment of their annual dues was somehow mishandled, almost certainly at their end, resulting in my membership lapsing.
I spent all of yesterday and 1/2 of today trying to contact their Billing Department, which they had the audacity to "shut down" for days due to the weather. Bottom line; I'm probably going to switch to AAA on the theory that if large multi-billion dollar corporations can't man their call centers due to cold, snow, and ice, they need to move! It's Chicago, it's winter, and it's snowy and icy; been like that since, like, forever. What's different now for all these companies?
Southwest Chief Member # 1227
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My cousin used to work in the Amtrak electrical department at Chicago. He quit due to frustration over how long it took to do anything. He's enjoying his job working as an airline electrician a lot more.
Not getting into any specific details or name names but I'll just say seniority and union were some of the words he mentioned to me.
So obviously there are issues other then weather going on in Chicago.
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