Sometimes You Can Be Late and On Time, Too

LOS ANGELES –I arrived here this morning on the Southwest Chief after the two night trip from Galesburg, Illinois. By my watch, we pulled into Los Angeles Union Station at 8:11 a.m., four minutes ahead of schedule.

But were we really “on time”?

I’ve written before about the chronic delays affecting many Amtrak trains. Some of the blame for the late arrivals can be laid at Amtrak’s door – equipment failure, etc. – but most of the time the problem is just too much rail traffic.

With the exception of the Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, Amtrak must run their trains over track owned by the several major freight railroads. Often Amtrak trains get caught behind slow moving freights or are shunted off onto a siding to allow a freight coming the other direction to pass.

This can cause problems for passengers, of course. Relatives arrive at the station to pick up Aunt Sadie only to discover her train is three hours late. Or passengers expecting to arrive in Los Angeles at 9:00 in the evening find themselves wandering around Union Station at 2:00 a.m. instead. Worse yet, connections are missed … but the next train doesn’t come until tomorrow and maybe there’s no space available.

To mitigate this problem Amtrak pads its schedules.

For example, it takes the southbound Coast Starlight 46 minutes to reach Tacoma after departing from Seattle. But, according to its timetable, Amtrak allows one hour and 34 minutes for the northbound Coast Starlight to cover that same stretch at the end of its trip up the California coast from Los Angeles. The extra 48 minutes is there to absorb any unforeseen delays that may occur en route.

They do the same thing for the Southwest Chief which runs daily between Chicago and Los Angeles. After departing Los Angeles, the eastbound train takes just 35 minutes to reach its first stop at Fullerton; the westbound Chief is allowed 1:41 to cover that same distance. Today, we needed every bit of that padding, because we lost nearly two hours after leaving Albuquerque yesterday afternoon.

As I was trundling my little rolling suitcase into the main terminal, I passed a fellow passenger who was being greeted by his son.

“Well, here you are,” said the young man, “right on time!”

Well, yes … sort of.