[germinalphrase]

No amount of investment matters if trains can’t run on time. My experience with Amtrak has been that unless you are starting at a hub (e.g. Chicago/Seattle) there is almost a zero percent chance your train will be on time. Even worse, the discrepancy isn’t a matter of minutes but hours.

My latest - and last - attempt at taking the train from St. Paul to Columbus, WI (nearest stop to Madison) was scheduled to leave at 8 am. At 8:30, we were told by Amtrak staff they “expect the train within the half-hour”. They kept saying this until 1pm. I could have driven the route in less time than I spent waiting fruitlessly for the train to arrive.

[mulderc]

Different lines have different issues. Where I live the Amtrak cascades line is pretty good and I rarely had issues with it not being on time when I was using it regularly for over a year. The Coast starlight on the other hand was always late and you just had to build that into your plans.

A lot of this issue comes from freight stealing priority from passenger trains. By law, passenger trains have priority but Amtrak has no way to enforce this which makes Amtrak trains less likely to run on schedule.