Pets on Amtrak - New Law in Congress

miamicanes wrote:OK, since you're so confident that the slightest hint of an allergen will ruin your trip, here's an experiment. Suppose you were offered a free Amtrak trip of a lifetime, under the following rules:

Route: Miami to New York. New York to Chicago. Chicago to Seattle or Portland (your choice). Seattle/Portland to Sacramento. Sacramento to Chicago. Chicago to Los Angeles. Los Angeles to New Orleans. New Orleans to Chicago. Chicago to DC.

For each segment, you will travel in a "virgin" sleeper car that has never previously been occupied by a pet, in the roomette or bedroom closest to the vestibule towards the dining car. On each segment, there's a 50% chance that a roomette or bedroom at the opposite end of the sleeper car is occupied by a passenger with a cat. You are not allowed to proceed further into your sleeping car to try and investigate or do additional detective work. You have only your own body and the ambient air in both your room and the corridor between your room and the vestibule to the remainder of the train.

After each segment, you have to guess whether or not the cat was present on that segment. At the end of the trip, your score is calculated as follows: segments with undetected cat + (2 x segments with false-positive alleged cat when no cat was present).

If your score is 0 (100% correct, every segment), cats will be banned from Amtrak for the rest of your life... or at least from any train you're personally riding on.

If your score is 1, 2, or 3, the experiment is inconclusive, and has to be repeated with more allergic passengers... but taken as evidence that you're unlikely to reliably notice the presence or absence of a cat in a different sleeper car.

If your score is 4 or higher, it's presumed that you can't reliably tell whether or not there's actually a cat. You're either not as vulnerable and sensitive as you thought, or cats are just one item on a laundry list of allergies or other problems that you're going to encounter anyway. Statistically, they could probably stick a cat in the compartment next to yours, and you probably couldn't tell the difference either way.

Would you feel confident enough to participate, and would others accept you as their allergic representative proxy? Remember... if they choose somebody who's TOO hypersensitive, they're just going to run up the score with too many false positives.

My argument is that you wouldn't, and that in a true double-blind test, you'd be wrong (with at least one false-positive) on at least 4 out of the 9 trips. If you had allergic reactions, they'd be as likely to be due to something else (like local pollen). I would genuinely be shocked if there's ANYBODY who could actually make the trip and correctly determine the presence or absence of the cat on every single segment.

At some point, some level of separation between pets and passengers with allergies is "good enough", and to demand 100% allergen-free purity that doesn't exist ANYPLACE where visitors aren't forced to disrobe and undergo invasive scrubbing first is unreasonable. I happen to think that keeping pets in one sleeper car, assigning passengers with genuine allergies to the other, and maintaining a list of "soft" pet rooms (in non-pet sleeper cars used for rescue purposes that have been subsequently cleaned) to keep those same allergic passengers away from them, is more than good enough to address the problem by keeping ambient allergens down to levels below what you'd encounter from contact with pet owners somewhere like a restaurant or movie theater *anyway*.

Aaaaaaand once again, you're making up nonsensical fantasy...this time in the form of a game....that still costs money....while failing to answer (for at least the third time) the direct, REAL questions and concerns put in front of you. I'm also glad to see you're so cavalier about the health of people. Statistically, I could probably have sex with someone that I've known for two minutes and not get some sort of disease. I suppose you'd like to try that too?

Ok. You really have nothing to add and it is clearly visible. Your opinion has been noted. However, I'll make a deal with you. When Amtrak starts ordering new equipment or we start living on the moon or whatever fantasy you'll dream up next, we'll come back to your posts.

PS: Since this is all fantasy at this point, I have a counter scenario. If we engage in your ludicrous test and I'm one of the people that has an actual reaction, would you mind if I sneezed on you with out covering my nose/mouth? Would you mind if I wiped my my nose on your clothes when I run out of tissues? I mean, I don't see why you would mind, but I'm courteous enough to ask first.

Every argument you make for dogs and cats can be made for bikes, boxes, gerbils, mice, frogs, coffins, porn, plants, trucks, jet skis, waverunners , fruit and smokers.

bikes, boxes : Did Amtrak cease to allow pallet shipping? As far as I know, if you box up the bike and furnish it to Amtrak on a pallet (so they can use a forklift to load it), they'll allow you to transport it between most major stations.

gerbils, mice, frogs, and assorted other non-venomous reptiles & small animals: it's called "picking your battles". I'm not bothered by things like ferrets or hamsters, but I know there are lots of people who might tolerate cats & dogs, but get really weird about "other" animals. If the only way to scrape enough support is to settle for cats & dogs, so be it.

coffins: fine, I'll address your argument head-on. If it's legal, and somebody is willing to buy up the entire coach car for transportation of the coffin (sitting on bed-flattened seats on one side) and the funeral party itself (in the other seats), more power to them. I wouldn't want to be a passenger IN that car, but that has less to do with the presence of a dead embalmed body in a $10,000 box that's screwed shut than the mourners themselves.

porn: er... I assume you've never heard of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. They have these cool devices called "Android phones" and "iPhones" (among other things), not to mention wireless data cards... all of which can download porn by the gigabyte on demand. In most parts of the eastern US, at least, it works quite well on trains. Oh, you mean view it in public? I challenge you to find any public venue not itself sex-related that would allow open viewing of porn. I think people in Florida have gotten arrested for viewing porn on an iPad in the back seat of a car that was visible (and photographed by) somebody in another car who reported it to the police.

plants & fruts: beyond Amtrak's jurisdiction. Talk to states.

trucks: if you mean pickup trucks and large SUVs, Amtrak's future AutoTrain carriers SHOULD have at least some ability to handle them, if only because they're common now (but weren't in the early 1970s when the first-gen Autotrain racks were designed).

smokers: once again, assuming Amtrak's ban wan't based upon conflict with state/local laws that apply to a given train, I have no problems with them designating either a separate car or negatively-pressured portion of a car for use by smokers.

Many of these arguments point to one of Amtrak's fundamental cultural problems: its contentment to just tread water and subsist in a state of gradual decline instead of aggressively pursuing new travel markets where it could offer compelling advantages, at premium fares, over competing services. In many ways, Amtrak is afraid to succeed. It wants to do "not badly", but is seemingly terrified of doing "too well". Most of the arguments made so far accept Amtrak's limited rolling stock as an eternal given, and express worry that pet travel might become too popular and overwhelm it. In any sane universe, if demand for pet travel causes room demand to surge, that's a hint that maybe Amtrak should take advantage of the near-zero interest rates available to the federal government and buy more cars to GROW THEIR SERVICE by aggressively marketing it to pet owners and smokers.

Aaaaaaand once again, you're making up nonsensical fantasy

No, it's called "the scientific method". You come up with a hypothesis ("people with pet allergies, even severe ones, are unlikely to experience problems that reliably correlate to the presence or absence of a cat in another room"), a method for testing it (previous post), and you test your hypothesis.

If somebody with allergies can't reliably determine whether or not there's a pet nearby, the pet's presence or absence isn't the problem. Or at least, it's insufficiently serious to merit continuation of an across-the-board ban.

Actually, I forgot one of the best arguments of all: Amtrak currently allows service animals without restriction, and does NOTHING to segregate passengers with them from passengers with allergies. If Amtrak were to officially allow passengers with pets in some sleeping car compartments, established new procedures for keeping passengers with allergies as far away from them as possible, and required passengers with service animals to observe the same policies, passengers with allergies would be BETTER OFF than they are now.

miamicanes wrote:

Every argument you make for dogs and cats can be made for bikes, boxes, gerbils, mice, frogs, coffins, porn, plants, trucks, jet skis, waverunners , fruit and smokers.

bikes, boxes : Did Amtrak cease to allow pallet shipping? As far as I know, if you box up the bike and furnish it to Amtrak on a pallet (so they can use a forklift to load it), they'll allow you to transport it between most major stations.

gerbils, mice, frogs, and assorted other non-venomous reptiles & small animals: it's called "picking your battles". I'm not bothered by things like ferrets or hamsters, but I know there are lots of people who might tolerate cats & dogs, but get really weird about "other" animals. If the only way to scrape enough support is to settle for cats & dogs, so be it.

coffins: fine, I'll address your argument head-on. If it's legal, and somebody is willing to buy up the entire coach car for transportation of the coffin (sitting on bed-flattened seats on one side) and the funeral party itself (in the other seats), more power to them. I wouldn't want to be a passenger IN that car, but that has less to do with the presence of a dead embalmed body in a $10,000 box that's screwed shut than the mourners themselves.

porn: er... I assume you've never heard of AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and US Cellular. They have these cool devices called "Android phones" and "iPhones" (among other things), not to mention wireless data cards... all of which can download porn by the gigabyte on demand. In most parts of the eastern US, at least, it works quite well on trains. Oh, you mean view it in public? I challenge you to find any public venue not itself sex-related that would allow open viewing of porn. I think people in Florida have gotten arrested for viewing porn on an iPad in the back seat of a car that was visible (and photographed by) somebody in another car who reported it to the police.

plants & fruts: beyond Amtrak's jurisdiction. Talk to states.

trucks: if you mean pickup trucks and large SUVs, Amtrak's future AutoTrain carriers SHOULD have at least some ability to handle them, if only because they're common now (but weren't in the early 1970s when the first-gen Autotrain racks were designed).

smokers: once again, assuming Amtrak's ban wan't based upon conflict with state/local laws that apply to a given train, I have no problems with them designating either a separate car or negatively-pressured portion of a car for use by smokers.

Sure you can box up a bike and ship a coffin...on trains with baggage cars that have staffed stations. But Congress isn't attempting to pass legislation to allow any the above items access to most trains like they are pets. They allowed Amtrak to decide what is best for their needs. Why is it different and why aren't you pushing for equal treatment?

miamicanes wrote: Many of these arguments point to one of Amtrak's fundamental cultural problems: its contentment to just tread water and subsist in a state of gradual decline instead of aggressively pursuing new travel markets where it could offer compelling advantages, at premium fares, over competing services. In many ways, Amtrak is afraid to succeed. It wants to do "not badly", but is seemingly terrified of doing "too well". Most of the arguments made so far accept Amtrak's limited rolling stock as an eternal given, and express worry that pet travel might become too popular and overwhelm it. In any sane universe, if demand for pet travel causes room demand to surge, that's a hint that maybe Amtrak should take advantage of the near-zero interest rates available to the federal government and buy more cars to GROW THEIR SERVICE by aggressively marketing it to pet owners and smokers.

I hardly see increasing ridership every year over the last 10 years as treading water or existing in a gradual state of decline. Additionally, in the same time frame, Amtrak has clearly worked in conjunction with states to increase and/or add lines, frequencies, services and equipment.

However, Amtrak doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is largely financed by the feds and the states. This goes back to one one sensible thing you said above: picking your battles. I suppose you think no one is lobbying for equipment or funds. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately, this isn't click your heels three times and you'll get what you need. Despite what you think, ridership is at an all time high. Equipment is becoming stretched. At some point, choices need to be made and priorities need to be established. With the limited pool and resources and funding, what will give the biggest bang for your buck? Which services should you concentrate your firepower on?

I've said before and I'll say it again. Unlimited funds and a new fleet of cars with all the latest bells and whistles that can supplement (not replace for now) the existing fleet? Why not? The pet car should be considered right along the side the restoration of the Inland Route, the return of the cafeteria Car (which would replace the current cafe car set up) and emergency generators or a supplemental system to provide HEP to disabled trains. There are many wonderful ideas floating around this board that I would love to see implemented....prior to this.

However, what we want is irrelevant. It is what we have (or don't have really) that is at hand.

miamicanes wrote:

Aaaaaaand once again, you're making up nonsensical fantasy

No, it's called "the scientific method". You come up with a hypothesis ("people with pet allergies, even severe ones, are unlikely to experience problems that reliably correlate to the presence or absence of a cat in another room"), a method for testing it (previous post), and you test your hypothesis.

If somebody with allergies can't reliably determine whether or not there's a pet nearby, the pet's presence or absence isn't the problem. Or at least, it's insufficiently serious to merit continuation of an across-the-board ban.

So, if a few people are impacted and a few people aren't, there's no need to consider the ones that are? By your logic, Amtrak and NJT doesn't need to take steps from preventing Penn Station or the MMC from flooding. After all, with all the storms over the last 100 years, the tunnels and the MMC never flooded to a major degree until Hurricane Sandy came along. Since it is a statistical anomaly, I guess this incident shouldn't be considered when across the board contingency plans are drafted, right?

miamicanes wrote: Actually, I forgot one of the best arguments of all: Amtrak currently allows service animals without restriction, and does NOTHING to segregate passengers with them from passengers with allergies. If Amtrak were to officially allow passengers with pets in some sleeping car compartments, established new procedures for keeping passengers with allergies as far away from them as possible, and required passengers with service animals to observe the same policies, passengers with allergies would be BETTER OFF than they are now.

Once again, this was something that was imposed. However, they must be reserved and Amtrak has guidelines restricting the limit. You'll probably say why can't they do the same thing for pets. The reality of the situation is service animals (along with the police dogs) caused the kind of problems I've mentioned (which is why I said, I'm speaking from an operational standpoint, not an emotional one). However, service animals (and police dogs) are treated differently since they are deemed as necessity. Therefore, you work around them. Pets aren't a necessity. If you recall, Amtrak USED to allow comfort animals, because some people REALLY need their pets. Again, after a slew of incidents (some of which I alluded to) and ridership increased, they banned them too.

Digging thru old timetables, I see Amtrak first had a policy officially published in the June 10, 1973 timetable that says:

"Private Room passengers may keep one pet if the wish, except on certain trains, details upon inquiry. Pets in rigid, well ventailated containers no larger than 18" in any dimension can be taken into these certain trains. A seeing-eye dog can go anywhere in the train his blind master goes. Dogs may be exercised at stops along the way. Dogs, cats or birds (in suitable containers) can be carried in all trains having baggage car service."

In later time tables, I see things were added like "pets are not allowed other than service dogs on the Southern Railway System" and then later rules like "Pets are only allowed on trains traveling more than 400 miles in private rooms" and "No pets on Metroliner".

Then finally, in the 1978, I see Amtrak officially implements the "No Pets except Service Dogs" policy. The reason stated is actually due to an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act. Looking at Wikipedia, it says for the amedment: "The Act was further amended in 1976 (Pub.L. 94–279) to further regulate animal treatment during transportation. Animals were to be kept in adequately-sized traveling accommodations, and to be kept from fighting amongst one another. The definition of animal was broadened to rid the law of the possible interpretation that dogs used for hunting, security, and breeding were not included in its protections"

If you removed the baggage handlers from stations along the line and went to staffed baggage cars instead, I could see a policy for transporting pets in safe containers on shorter runs where the animals wouldn't have to be fed, watered and exercised. However, with the prevalence of environmental allergies to cats and dogs, the possibility of fleas and animal feces and urine contaminating rolling stock, not to mention the risk of dogs biting or cats scratching passengers, especially small children, it would be harmful to the public at large to accommodate pets in the coaches and sleepers.

However, there is a big lobby associated with pet food and other pet related expenditures, especially since pet ownership increases in an aging society. So there's probably some surprisingly well funded lobbying behind this move in Congress.

Ugh, don't get me started on pet food. Cat and dog food is largely marketed as "yummy people food for pets" in reality most of it is worse than mcdonalds. Go to the butcher, get some chuck or raw Cornish hens, throw in a spoon of raw squash or pumpkin & done. For cat, a nice slice of raw eel or some shrimp will suffice, no milk or dairy products, contrary to popular belief, most domestic cats cannot digest milk & dairy.

Part of the issue with that, plus behavior & relating to public exposure on amtrak, is that most dog owners for example are highly clueless about anything to do with their dogs.

This whole bill is a can of worms and the fish aren't biting.

However, there is a big lobby associated with pet food and other pet related expenditures, especially since pet ownership increases in an aging society. So there's probably some surprisingly well funded lobbying behind this move in Congress.

I would agree with this if there was any chance that it would put a dent in pet stuff sales, but you could fill all the trains in the Amtrak system with only pets, wall to wall, and you still wouldn't have 1% of pet stuff sales.

I do like the concept of trading baggage attendants at stations for a staffed baggage car. I'm not saying I speak from having crunched the numbers, but it's an interesting out-of-box solution.

Tadman wrote:I do like the concept of trading baggage attendants at stations for a staffed baggage car. I'm not saying I speak from having crunched the numbers, but it's an interesting out-of-box solution.

A staffed baggage car would solve a lot of issues associated with routes that have only one train with baggage service per day, if only at intermediate stations, where it is a tremendous burden to provide an employee to handle baggage for a single train. There might be an issue with unions. I believe this has been discussed in relation to VIA Rail.

Tadman wrote:

However, there is a big lobby associated with pet food and other pet related expenditures, especially since pet ownership increases in an aging society. So there's probably some surprisingly well funded lobbying behind this move in Congress.

I would agree with this if there was any chance that it would put a dent in pet stuff sales, but you could fill all the trains in the Amtrak system with only pets, wall to wall, and you still wouldn't have 1% of pet stuff sales.

I do like the concept of trading baggage attendants at stations for a staffed baggage car. I'm not saying I speak from having crunched the numbers, but it's an interesting out-of-box solution.

goodnightjohnwayne wrote:

Tadman wrote:I do like the concept of trading baggage attendants at stations for a staffed baggage car. I'm not saying I speak from having crunched the numbers, but it's an interesting out-of-box solution.

A staffed baggage car would solve a lot of issues associated with routes that have only one train with baggage service per day, if only at intermediate stations, where it is a tremendous burden to provide an employee to handle baggage for a single train. There might be an issue with unions. I believe this has been discussed in relation to VIA Rail.

Ok. I'll bite. Amtrak had and eliminated the onboard baggage car attendant (actually the combined flag/bag) position in the 90s to save money. They folded that position into the train crew function.

At the same time, smaller stations that have a single train tend to have station caretakers. They usually handle pretty much everything from ticketing to red capping to baggage to station maintenance.

I'm not sure what union issue you are referring to and how this would expedite the movement of the trains.

An onboard baggage person would be a good idea. It means they can have the bags for the next station ready by the baggage car door, before the train arives in the station. This should expediate station stops.
However, time may be lost if there is no station caretaker, as passengers would have no idea where to place their bags prior to train arrival.
This function is shared by the onboard crew in New Zealand,(all onboard jobs are shared by all crew), and there are no station staff, except at the biggest stations.
If the onboard baggage person duties also included cleaning the toilets, then i woud be all in favour.

It was the 99 contract I believe, it wont be coming back. As any railroader can tell ya once its gone its gone.

I know for a fect that at least a few Amtrak Stations are only staffed by one person at any given time and some for the entire day. That one person opens up, sells tickets, cleans up including everything, handles checked baggage and any other jobs connected with that one station. There is at least one and probably more stations in Florida in that particular situation.
Noel Weaver

When I wonder about a operational question sometimes, I look at how Disneyland and Disney World does it! I'm not kidding; there is entire books on problem solving from them! I remember that Disneyland for its Kennel they offer to park guests for a small fee, you pay for a nice kennel, get food and water for your pets stay, but they don't walk your pet; they a matter of fact, highly suggest you come walk your pet at various times during the day. The snowbirds who take their grandchildren to the parks generally put their dogs in the kennel and do ever 3-4 hours go walk their dog.

So thinking how this could work on Amtrak operationally, I could see the LD routes that use Superliner cars getting kennels installed in the lower level baggage rooms and perhaps with the assistance of the car attendant at certain stops, pets could be fed and walked.

Also, keep in mind even airlines have a limit per flight on how many pets can be on board; I think most of them it is 2 pets. I don't see why not Amtrak should have a pet limit. They also require about a 48 hour minimum notice that you want to book a pet and its first come first serve for those 2 spaces. This helps plan things ahead...