Detroit-Holland Passenger Rail Study

[CSX_CO]

MQT wants "padding" on the schedule, but wants to be able to leave stations earlier than advertised. At which point, the "schedule" is merely a suggestion.

[Jetlink]

I don't think this will happen anytime soon. But if it does I hope it stops in Lake O.

[Saturnalia]

MQT wants "padding" on the schedule, but wants to be able to leave stations earlier than advertised. At which point, the "schedule" is merely a suggestion.

I see it as an advertised arrival time that is more likely to happen.

It isn't really all that different than airline schedules by the time it is all done (not in method but in result). The train can depart early if circumstances allow, but will also leave on-time or late. There is padding in the schedule, enough to chew up most minor occurances, in RRing probably train interfearance. The end result is passengers are more likely to get to "Point B" when Amtrak advertises, or before.

Most airline flights I've experienced included some mix of early departure and padding, which ended up with an on-time arrival, often even early. Say you're flying GRR to ORD on the Jetlink Xpress. At GRR, you push back 10 minutes early because the plane is ready and passengers ( who know to come early and be AT THE GATE for boarding) are on board in a timely fashion. We take off, and then gain a few minutes in the air, must be less headwind today. So, we touch down 15 minutes ahead of "schedule", but then the ORD traffic clog kicks in, and we get to our gate right at the advertised. A combination of padding and early allowed departure allows for this--without the early departure we'd be ten minutes late and without the padding even more!

So in Amtrak terms, it might look something like this, using P371 as an example.

Train leaves GRR 12 minutes early as all passengers on the manifest are accounted for. Q335 is a bit slow at clearing up Sunnyside, so we arrive in Holland only 10 minutes early, with about four minutes of padding installed. Because everybody is already on the platform, they board in 2 minutes and we're off 8 minutes early. We gain our four minutes stoppage time to Bangor, where we grab our two paying customers and depart 12 minutes early. Q326 is slow to hole up at Kirk, so we lose 6 minutes, but four minutes stoppage time gets us to SJM 10 minutes early. Thanks again to everybody on the platform, we are off 8 minutes ahead of the clock, with 12 minutes of stoppage time to CUS, so a total of 20 minutes early. This is good, because at Porter we end up slowing to get behind the 49 and 351, whom are following an NS freight. When we're finally at CUS, we are 2 minutes early compared to our advertised.

With out leaving early, this run would likely have run about 20 minutes late.

That's in theory, and of course more could happen. But I think it gives a better shot of getting people where they want to go by the time on the ticket. It isn't a "suggestion", merely it allows more time to cancel out delays which almost always happen, thanks to the way the railroad works.

There is no good way to eliminate railroad delays, since trains need to run and trains don't always run as planned or can be moved around according to a printed timetable. It allows trains to be more flexible but still get there by the time on the ticket.

I know some of you are skeptical, but why wouldn't it work? Aside your thoughts of it being a "suggested" schedule and that some people might be hosed by not following the very visible rules, what is the problem? I can't come up with any...I'd like to hear them - no sarcasm or ill-will.

[Bulby]

MQT, you seem to have a very narrow minded view of Amtrak passengers, much as certain forum members have a narrow minded view of MDOT and Amtrak itself.

Funny, at all the Amtrak stations I've been at in the last 3 months, I can't think of a single train that didn't have everyone waiting on the platform as it arrived. Load and go, even though sometimes they arrive 5 or more minutes early, and still leave late, not because of the passengers being late, but because you can only board so many people through 2 open vestibules, after you let the crowd off.

Get this straight, your idea may sound good to you, but it sounds like utter babble to those that actually work for railroads.

[CSX_CO]

The other problem is that Amtrak allows people to buy tickets on board still, or they used to. So, you leave early you're denying passengers the ability to buy tickets on board. So, until you eliminate buying tickets on board, making every passenger be in the manifest, you're going to lose out on revenue of people deciding last minute to take the train. Those passengers are usually charged full price for their leg of the trip, and that is good revenue Antrak will miss out on.

You still haven't addressed the agreements that are probably law stating trains can't leave before the advertised time. That's going to cost big bucks to change those in any state that has them. Money that could be spent paying the railroads for the additional hassles of Amtrak on their lines.

BYW you say it is simple rules. You say trains can leave 20, 5, 10 minutes early. Sounds like there are no rules to me. You know what are set rules? The timetable they put out. Pretty easy to understand. No caveats that "hey, we may leave early if we're running ahead of time, so you better be here 2 hrs in advance to make sure your butt is on our train."

Again, you're over complicating something, and doing nothing to fix the problems Amtrak faces, and creates for itself...

[ConrailMan5]

Another thing you seem to not consider MQT is the additional time making the train less attractive from the onset. If you add 5-10 minutes to every station stop along a wolverine train for instance, you add almost an hour to the schedule. Considering you can already drive to Chicago faster than the currently schedule allows from most cities, the extra time (which is not needed for most trains, 350 for instance has been running early into Ann arbor recently) will make the train option in attractive before anyone even buys a ticket, even if it is "running on time" more frequently.
All you are trying to do, as many many people have said, is put lipstick on a pig. Yeah it looks better, but it's still a pig and you haven't really fixed anything.

[railohio]

You have to call for a reservation, and then make the purchase onboard.