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This sucks. BOYCOTT AMTRAK. I will. And I will tell all my friends to do so as well Not too many of us ever do the train thing and now we won't..evah!!
What do you expect? It's government-run. There are no efficiencies when it comes to government-run business.
When you look at that disaster, you don't have to wonder how well health care would be run if it was run and/or controlled by government.
Ello Ello, Sydney here, you forgot to mention that the reason why we had to switch trains at 4 in the am was because of a mosquito infestation in the train! ha. i myself traveled further to Chicago and was a total of 18 hours late. whats typical? after you got off Red, they gave us free lunch and dinner. the only "thank you for your not killing us for f*ing up your trip" compensation. let me know when the song hits the charts, was fun spending the time with you,
Ciao,
Sydney
Government literally cannot do anything right.
Not nearly as bad as your story, but I had to pick my sister-in-law up from the Norman, OK dump off point (I wouldn't call it a station because there was no one there and she stood outside in the middle of the night by herself while inmates from the jail across the street yelled at her to make phone calls for them.)
She had traveled from Fort Worth(less), TX to Norman, OK a 2 and half hour car ride, however by Amtrak it takes 4 and 15 minutes. Of course it arrived 40 minutes late. Next time (if she every rides again she will make sure she rides the extra 30 minutes to Oklahoma City so she is not alone in the middle of the night with luggage by a prison.
I hate Amtrak also, but the one thing I will say is that the people (employees) on the trains have been nice. I got fucked out of some money by them one time when I was directed to a station for a 5:30 a.m. departure and told I could pick up the ticket I paid for online at the window. Well, the window didn't open till 6 a.m. so I had to buy another one. Rather than reimburse me the $117 they only gave me a voucher for another ride. Luckily I knew I would need it but I was still pissed as shit at this so next time I rode a train I locked myself in the bathroom, actually several in sequence, and wandered around while the conductor was collecting tickets. In this way I scored a free trip because once I sat down and fell asleep I was assumed to have paid. I have since made a few thousand dollars worth of trips on the East Coast doing this although a couple times I had to buy tickets with cash pretending I was going to do this all along. I think their service is better back east but I never get to where I want to go on time. But since I cheat, the price is right for me.
I've ridden Amtrak a number of times to NYC and Richmond, VA. Their timeliness is terrible. One time, they were over 2 hours late arriving in Richmond. By the time they arrived at the station I was going to, they were over 3 and 1/2 hours late! One of the reasons they got further behind was because they had to change engines in Union Station. Normally, if you're behind schedule, you'd bust ass to make up some time. They didn't do any such thing. We spent at least 20 minutes waiting while they took their sweet time changing engines. It was ridiculous.
I wonder how many of Amtrak's problems are due to its not being able to make ends meet.
I agree. Amtrak is a wonderful part of this country's infrastructure, but it's run very, very badly and if we're going to subsidize it - as we should, I think - it needs to be a much more responsive organization.
Here's my take:
http://tinyurl.com/amtrak-fails
This is how our Government runs a business and they think that they can run our health care system??
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