> due to freight having priority
Fun fact: by law, Amtrak has priority. Not that it matters much, even back when laws themselves mattered.
Fun fact: by law, Amtrak has priority. Not that it matters much, even back when laws themselves mattered.
Could this be fixed by legislation on max train length to ensure all trains fit in sidings? Yes. Will that legislation get passed? No.
An interesting video on the subject: https://youtu.be/qQTjLWIHN74?si=t3u3iyZj1kRQQUCe
Increasing train length on tracks not designed for it is a safety issue. Think about it, you have a whole bunch of separate carriages. Some are turning because that's wher they are on the track. Others are going uphills, yet others downhill. All of these forces become a problem that arguably increases the likelihood of derailment, the kind of which we had in East Palestine, Ohio a few years ago.
The labor situation is so bad that there was the threat of a strike in the Biden administration. For what? Paid sick leave, mainly. Biden got Congress to use their powers to end a strike by "essential" workers and then quietly later went and partially conceded to their demands.
Retiring crews haven't been replaced so the labor is at dire levels, all to slightly increase profits. It was estimated that if UP conceded toa ll the union's demands it would reduce their profit by 6%. Not revenue, profit.
[1]: https://www.fractracker.org/2024/06/exploring-the-fallout-of...
Yes there are myriad other reasons Amtrak gets delayed, it is not like this is the only bottleneck they have, but that doesn't mean this is not also a key problem.
I’d take Amtrak’s word on it.
everything I've heard doesn't add up. So I know someoneeis lying but not who or how much
I love that the US moves so much freight by train rather than truck, but everything I hear about how trains are run in the US sounds terrible.
Biden for all his pro-union talk intervened to prevent a strike, valuing consumers and capital over the union.
https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/tracking-productivity...
Apparently the problem is the law is not enforced that much? And that there are loopholes around it.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/norfolk-southern-agrees-give-...
But when you don't have them or only every 100km or whatnot, or any of the potential places (such as in a train station) just isn't long enough to accept and buffer a 3 miles long train... then good luck, there just is no physical opportunity for the faster passenger train to speed ahead, not to mention the absurd amount of energy wasted in braking and then re-accelerating that 3 mile freight monster.
Fixing this would be possible - either by limiting the maximum length of a train or by forcing the extension of parallel rail segments. The former makes logistics significantly more challenging plus it requires more staff (which is the real problem, long haul isn't wanted much these days, neither rail nor road), the latter is darn expensive and someone has to foot the bill - Congress certainly won't.
> Fixing this would be possible - either by limiting the maximum length of a train...
It can't be both. Splitting a freight train and then stopping and starting the smaller trains would take the same amount of energy as stopping and starting the single long freight train.
Unless they're deliberately moving empty freight cars to make it artificially long.
Are you sure about that? I've never looked up the law, but my understanding is that, for most (all?) of its routes, Amtrak is running on privately owned track, and, on such track, freight has priority.
(I'm surprised at the number of downvotes. The replies indicated that I'm wrong, which is awesome in the sense that I like riding Amtrak and want it to have priority, and so I understand the frustration; but I think that I cannot be the only one who has heard from every Amtrak rider they've talked to that freight has priority, and surely it's a good thing to seek an authoritative answer? Maybe it looked like I was rhetorically saying that someone was wrong rather than honestly seeking clarification.)
But for some reason the government basically stopped enforcing it like 40 years ago.
So in practice it tends to work the other way.
Fair warning I haven't read the text of the law in full, only heard this second hand.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/15427