If you’ve been following my columns over the last few years, you would have concluded that I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the U.S. national passenger rail carrier, Amtrak. I ride the rails in Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and elsewhere in their system regularly.
Like flying often on a particular airline, riding often on Amtrak means you’re going to run into problems from time to time. Yesterday morning, I ran into Amtrak security problems at Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, or better said, a lack of security there. More on that below.
I’m a proponent of inter-city rail travel in the U.S. and a proponent of Amtrak. I ride the rails in Europe when there and see first-hand how good and efficaciousness, quality inter-city rail service can be. It’s a shame the U.S. government has historically made inter-city rail the poor step child to air and auto travel. Rail travel is environmentally effective and energy efficient.
If the U.S. would invest in true high speed inter-city travel, in my opinion, we would reap the significant benefits which Europe, Japan and China are already racking-up. Amtrak’s Acela, not so high speed, high speed rail service already rivals air travel between “short distant” city pairs such as Philadelphia and New York. Riding Amtrak between these cities’ centers is faster than car or plane travel, and about break-even in cost, plus its better for the environment and generally easier than traveling by air or car.
Even in this budget crunch time for Congress, they need to fund high speed (200+ mph) rail between high volume rail city pairs immediately. It will create jobs, improve the environment, and lessen our dependency on foreign oil. It would be a significant positive investment in America and for Americans.
Most of the time Amtrak gets me to such destinations as New York, Boston, Washington and Richmond, Virginia, quickly, and on time, with far less stress than air travel, and much more speed and comfort than car travel.
Yet Amtrak, like the airlines, is not without its faults, and sometimes serious problems.
Last December in my column, Amtrak: Signage needed to help passengers board the right train, I wrote about my experience being directed to the wrong Amtrak train. Several people, along with me were directed by an Amtrak employee to that wrong train, and almost immediately after we boarded, it was too late to get off.
I will commend Amtrak for quickly helping us, but if they would adopt more of the operating practices of their European counterparts, few if anyone, will have the same problem. I’m happy to say that Amtrak has fixed many of their station platform track signs. Once again it’s easier to tell which train is which. Most train gates now have train information posted at the gate, but not all. Every gate should have its train information posted.
In my opinion, however, that’s not enough. Each train in Europe has the train number clearly displayed on the outside of the trains themselves. This needs to be adopted by Amtrak. If every passenger train car is properly identified by train number on its side, easily visible by all, it’s my belief that virtually no one will get on the wrong train, and if they do, they will only have themselves to blame.
In May, 2009, in my column, Hey Amtrak, travel photographers are not terrorists!, I wrote about being threatened with arrest for photographing the auto-train and the Sanford, Florida Amtrak station by an over zealous Amtrak security person, citing non-existent federal security regulations. This was despite I was a ticketed passenger on the station’s platform and other non-restricted areas. I’m not the only one who has been accosted by Amtrak security in their stations and threatened with arrest even though they were following Amtrak’s own regulations.
I am happy to report that in 2010, I was able to take many photos in Amtrak stations, along their tracks and on Amtrak trains without the threat of arrest or deletion of ones images from memory cards. So far the deal worked out between Amtrak and the National Press Photographers Association is being followed by Amtrak.
Yesterday, I had an important photography shoot and workshop in New York City. As is my custom, I purchased an Amtrak round trip ticket between Philadelphia and New York. I took the 5:15 a.m. Regional because we were getting a very early start in New York, Sunday.
Standard operating procedure for Amtrak is to assign a gate agent who examines every passengers’ ticket before permitting them to get on the train platform. This not only ensures each person boarding the train is an Amtrak passenger, but also can help ensure each passenger boards the right train. Sometimes there is an Amtrak police officer at the gate with an explosive sniffing dog, and another who examines passengers’ luggage.
This morning when my train’s boarding was announced, each passenger strolled to the gate and walked down the stairs to the platform, without any Amtrak gate agent or security at the gate. No one checked our tickets.
To me, that was inexcusable. I call on Amtrak to investigate the matter and immediately see that it doesn’t reoccur. Passengers were unnecessarily endangered and there was no agent to help ensure each passenger got on the correct train.
Come on Amtrak, get your security act together.
After many years working in corporate America as a chemical engineer, executive and eventually CFO of a multinational manufacturer, Ned founded a tech consulting company and later restarted NSL Photography, his photography business. Before entering the corporate world, Ned worked as a Public Health Engineer for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. As a well known corporate, travel and wildlife photographer, Ned travels the world writing about travel and photography, as well as running photography workshops, seminars and photowalks. Visit Ned’s Photography Blog and Galleries.
