Amtrak is Still Fighting the Elements

by Jim Mathews / President & CEO

Yesterday’s news that Amtrak is having to cancel 20 trains on the Northeast Corridor is part of an ongoing battle with exceptionally harsh winter conditions and their lingering effects on equipment availability.

Amtrak blamed a combination of winter-weather-related equipment issues and units still unavailable for service for cancellations yesterday and today -- seven Acela, ten Northeast Regional, and three Keystone Service trains. Locomotive reliability in bad weather has become a pressing issue and Amtrak really needs to get a handle on it. At the same time, this has been an exceptionally tough winter for nearly all modes of travel. That doesn’t make it any easier on passengers, but let’s put this week’s service changes into a larger context.

In late January at the height of Winter Storm Fern (I hate naming winter storms, but this one really deserved it), Amtrak’s operational statistics show that even on the storm’s worst day, roughly 60 % of planned trains operated, with service returning to about 85% – 90 % of planned capacity within just a few days.

No, that’s not perfect. But I’d argue that this reflects a targeted and geographically constrained disruption in the storm’s core footprint rather than a systemwide collapse, and that's a real contrast to what we saw in the Nation’s skies. It also highlights a disciplined approach to safety; cancellations were deployed where conditions or host railroad issues made movement unsafe. And most passengers were told in advance that their trains were going to be canceled. Not so for airline passengers, many of whom found themselves camping in airport waiting rooms without ever being told outright that an aircraft would never come.

Compare that to the airline system during the same storm: national carriers canceled roughly 30% – 35 % of scheduled flights at the peak of the storm, more or less comparable to Amtrak. But double-digit cancellation rates persisted for several days as aircraft and crews were mispositioned. That’s a classic example of how hub-and-spoke networks amplify disruption far beyond the storm’s actual footprint. There’s a saying that the multiple of anecdote isn’t data, but I can personally attest to being delayed from Friday night around 9:30 to nearly 3:30 Saturday morning a full five days after the storm hit. Amtrak, by contrast, by that time had resumed operating at near full capacity.

In this light, Amtrak is indeed putting up a tough fight against the elements. It’s not perfect, but the railroad is managing operational continuity where it’s safe to do so while adjusting schedules where weather and equipment realities demand it. That’s a degree of resilience that is often underappreciated in public conversation and the social-media anger chamber. Even under severe winter conditions, Amtrak degraded service deliberately and recovered steadily, while the airline system experienced nationwide cascading disruptions extending well beyond the storm itself.

In other words, when severe weather hit, passenger rail behaved like critical infrastructure -- degrading gracefully -- while much of the airline system experienced wholesale collapse.