Amtrak Cancellations

electricron wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 3:47 am

gprimr1 wrote: ↑Wed Jan 05, 2022 1:00 am You are, but here's the problem for some people, they may still want to travel, and in that case, a full refund is a horrible proposition.

Consider my friend. He lives in MD, visiting family in NY. He needs to travel to get back to MD. He buys his tickets 6-8 months in advance, so he gets the best deals on saver seats, sometimes paying only $30 dollars or so for a ticket.

Sure, he gets a full refund of his $30, but he's still stuck in NY and needs to get home so now he has to buy a ticket 24 hours prior to departure. His new ticket cost $120 dollars, 4 times what he paid before.

And, what is so wrong with that?
You book early for a super saving discount fare, you are relying upon Amtrak to run that train.
You could book not as early and pay the regular fare, you are not relying upon Amtrak as much to run that train.
That's the risk you are taking for booking so early.
I believe that is very similar case with all modes of public intercity travel.

I think we're used to the airline model for rebooking.

Take back in 2007 when I had to deal with a clusterfluffle of United, US Air, and Expedia. United canceled both flights on my way to Pittsburgh, and rebooked over the phone... only to reboot again at the airport due to how their code-share system "worked". Not once was I charged a rebooking fee or the difference between tickets. If there was, they ate the cost because the fault was on them not living up to the carriage contract.

What does Amtrak's Contract of Carriage say? "Protected if reaccomidated, else refund only."

...someone needs to call the ombudsman.

Trains NewsWire got a hold of the internal employee advisory.

There were some cancellations, though. While booked passengers were asked via email or text to choose a different train or travel another day and no advisories were issued, an Amtrak employee advisory obtained by Trains News Wire attributed annulments to “staffing shortages caused by the pandemic.”

Related cancellations that are still active are the Night Owl (65-66-67) through Jan 6th.

Unrelated is the truncation of the Crescent (19/20) between New Orleans and Atlanta due to NS doing a maintenance blitz.

They're spooked over Winter Storm Izzy now and just made the call around 5pm EST, posting to Twitter:

CANCELED
DEPARTING 1/15: Texas Eagle 21 from CHI, 22 from SAS, City of New Orleans 58 from NOL, 59 from CHI, Capitol Limited 30 from CHI, Cardinal 50 from CHI.

DEPARTING 1/16: Capitol Limited 29 from WAS, Cardinal 51 from NYP.

Railjunkie wrote: ↑Thu Jan 13, 2022 10:56 pm Just got a new job bid sheet tonight. If you traveling between January 24th and ?? check your reservation. Trains are being cut back nationwide due to the lack of motive power and equipment.

Yuck. Are they having trouble getting staff to repair the equipment?

Okay, there's two rounds of cancellations going on here.

Weather related: (https://www.amtrak.com/modified-service ... nter-storm)

• Jan 15th: Trains 19/20, 91/92, 50, 30, 58&59, 21&22
• Jan 16th: Trains 552, 29, 19&20, 147, 43, 79*80, 73/74/75/76/77/78
• Jan 17th: 156, 660, 661,662,615, 42. Keystone 667 starts in Philly.

COVID-19 Omnicron related: (https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... -march-27/)

Overall, plans will amount to an 8% reduction in train departures over the 63-day period. That will include 8% of Northeast Regional departures; two weekly departures on nine long-distance routes, which will be reduced to five-day-a-week operation; complete suspension of the Silver Meteor for the 10-week period; and 6% of state-supported regional service. However, the head of one regional operation contacted by Trains News Wire was unaware of the national network cuts or the staffing impacts on that individual’s service.

If you noticed, I linked to the advisory for the weather related one. I could not find even a press release for the longer-term adjustment. I do see the NY Times and Bloomberg Government report independently, though.