Northbound Acela ar/dp data WAS-NYP-BOS

Good administrators make the most of the resources they have, then use their success to go get more. That's how government bureaucracy works. Think FBI under Hoover, NASA under Kennedy. I would imagine that Eliot Spitzer's office isn't exactly hurting for funds these days either. Install the right administrator, and the money follows. The vacancy is the first step.

Here's some new departure and arrival data for Amtrak's Northeast corridor. Overall it looks quite good, except for train 2118.
Note: It is unclear whether or not train 2190 operated yesterday.

I still think that Amtrak needs to add a few minutes to the schedule south of NYP. If almost every train is a few minutes late into NYP then this tells me that either (a) the schedule is too tight, or (b) that there was track work that delayed all trains yesterday. My guess is that the answer is (a).

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; and what standards you measure against.

Using the 15 minute DOT standard, Acela did well on the WAS-NYP leg (93.3%), but worse on the NYP-BOS segment (80%). Is this good enough? I submit that an even tougher standard is called for, the one used by the nation's busiest commuter line, the Long Island RR, which considers any train reaching its terminal more than 5:59 behind schedule to be late. I favor this standard because it reflects what business travelers expect; the LIRR delivers, overall generally between 90% and 95% OT.

Using the LIRR standard, we get OT rates of 73% and 40%, respectively, for the WAS-NYP and NYP-BOS runs. Obviously, there is room for improvement. I suspect congestion may be the biggest problem, but better dispatching can help, but it is difficult to plan for contingencies, i.e. the local in front taking too long at a station. Amtrak could build in more wiggle room, but that leads to diminished expectations (remember, the 20th Century Ltd. took 16 hrs. to do NYP-CHI; the Lake Shore Ltd. takes close to 20.) Does anyone know how they do it in Europe and Asia?

Despite some adjustments back in the Spring timetable (which are still in effect), that led to lengthening of trip times (between NYP and WAS) and at the same time discontinuing some station stops, continued poor ontime performance for the Acela Expresses.

Aren't they single-tracking part of the NEC towards WAS for some trackwork, or is that only on weekends? That would have quite an effect on OTP.