[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.