A reader recently asked whether Amtrak’s Hiawatha passenger train service between Chicago and Milwaukee is notoriously tardy because it shares tracks with freight trains.
It’s a topical question because Amtrak has recently inaugurated Borealis, a second daily service between Chicago and Minneapolis with several stops in Wisconsin including Milwaukee, Portage and La Crosse. Like the Hiawatha train, it’s on Canadian Pacific Kansas City’s railroad, which Amtrak gives its highest marks among the half dozen Class I railroads whose tracks host its passenger trains.
State transit planners are also studying expanding Amtrak’s Hiawatha service westward to Madison and Eau Claire and north to connect the Fox Cities and Green Bay with passenger trains.
The Hiawatha train runs seven times daily along 82 miles of track connecting Milwaukee with Chicago’s Union Station. Nearly two-thirds of the track is owned by CPKC while the rest belongs to Metra, Chicago’s metro area commuter rail system.
Amtrak doesn’t dispatch its own trains though federal law says priority should go to passengers before freight. Even so, the host railroads, which decide which trains get priority at signals, has a patchy record of giving Amtrak trains preference. That makes all the difference for keeping passenger trains running on schedule.
So how does that Hiawatha train that connects the largest cities in Wisconsin and Illinois fare? The most recent data show around 88 out of 100 trains pull into the station within 15 minutes of their scheduled arrival. Sometimes it’s even better. And that actually makes the Milwaukee-Chicago line the second most punctual service in the nation’s intercity rail network.
“We do very well,” Amtrak regional spokesperson Marc Magliari said. “These trains run pretty reliably.”
More than 40% of the delays on the line are attributed to shared commuter rail traffic operated by Metra, according to the Federal Railroad Administration’s most recent quarterly report. That’s not to say freight interference isn’t an issue for Amtrak elsewhere in the nation. There are some services with dismal records: The Southwest Chief, a 2,265-mile route between Chicago and Los Angeles, is late more than half the time, with the passenger carrier blaming host railroad BNSF for much of the problem.
It’s a challenge that has vexed Amtrak’s leadership since its inception. The national intercity rail network was created in 1970 as a public sector operator to assume responsibility for unprofitable intercity passenger routes that had been in service since the 1800s.
But part of the deal — codified by Congress in 1973 — was that railway dispatchers would give priority to passenger trains over their own freight to maintain reliability in the system.
For those who have ridden the trains, that’s not often the case. For decades Amtrak’s passenger trains have been plagued by delays. For some longer-distance routes nearly half of the trains are more than 15 minutes late — though often even longer.
Amtrak claims railroads have ignored the law or objected that it applies to them. In 2008, Congress added more teeth to enforcing the law, but the nation’s railroads fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Amtrak’s favor. But it has been a slow process and the outcome is still uncertain.
Magliari said Amtrak realizes the single largest determination for customer satisfaction is punctuality.
“The train crew could be sweet and nice. The food on the train can be sweet and nice,” he said. “But if we sell you a ticket — and we don’t deliver you on the schedule on that ticket — chances are you’re not going to rate the trip very well.”
The passenger rail carrier is fighting back. Flush from its victory in the courts, it filed a petition last year asking federal regulators to investigate Union Pacific, which it says is illegally delaying its Sunset Limited Service that runs between Los Angeles and New Orleans.
The Surface Transportation Board has agreed to investigate Amtrak’s complaints in what it says is the “first of its kind” case that tests the rail industry’s legal responsibility to give preference to passenger trains.
The case continues, and its outcome could have an impact on the reliability of America’s expanding passenger rail network.
Wisconsin Watch readers have submitted questions to our statehouse team, and we’ll answer them in our series, Ask Wisconsin Watch. Have a question about state government? Ask it here.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
