June 29, 2010|By Michael Dresser, The Baltimore Sun
Calling the service on the Amtrak-operated MARC Penn Line "unacceptable," Maryland's top transportation official demanded that the national passenger railroad conduct a "top to bottom review" of its MARC operations to prevent a recurrence of lapses that have plagued the service in recent weeks.
The statement by Maryland Transportation Secretary Beverley K. Swaim-Staley came the day after she was aboard a northbound Penn Line train that overshot a scheduled stop at the MARC station in Odenton — forcing passengers to continue to the BWI Airport station to catch a southbound train back to their destination. The incident came a week after passengers on the same train, No. 538, were stranded for two hours in sweltering heat on the tracks near Cheverly.
Amtrak, which operates the Penn Line under contract with the state, apologized to MARC passengers for the Monday night incident at Odenton –- as it did the week before after the so-called "hell train" incident. A spokesman for Amtrak also expressed regret that passengers were initially given a false explanation of why the station was skipped.
In a message to MARC customers, Swaim-Staley said she had "experienced firsthand the severe frustration of my fellow passengers at the failure of Amtrak to carry out even this very basic task of stopping at a scheduled station."
She and Maryland Transit Administration chief Ralign T. Wells were taking the train to talk with riders when passengers realized that something was wrong.
"Someone literally yelled, 'Mr. Wells, your train just went past the station,' and Ralign and I looked at each other in complete dismay," Swaim-Staley said. She said she immediately called Amtrak President Joseph Boardman from her cell phone, and that he ordered that the next possible Acela train stop at BWI station to take the passengers back to Odenton.
According to Swaim-Staley, Boardman told her that crew members were unfamiliar with the Penn Line because they were brought in to replace regulars tied up in the investigation into last week's incident.
Swaim-Staley noted that two other Penn Line trains were delayed for more than an hour each Monday night because of mechanical problems with equipment Amtrak is under contract to maintain. She said she has been in touch with Amtrak's top management to demand a "full accounting."
"It is understood that machines, and the equipment that supports them, will break down at times. However, these most recent incidents reflect a failure of Amtrak rather than simply the failure of equipment," Swaim-Staley said. "The system Amtrak has in place to operate MARC is proving to be inadequate. I am asking Amtrak to conduct a top to bottom review of its operation of MARC and to aggressively initiate the changes necessary to see that similar incidents do not occur again."
She said her statement did not address the state's relationship with CSX, operator of the Camden and Brunswick lines, because the problems on those lines have not been as prevalent.
The secretary's statement came after Boardman released a statement in which he apologized to the more than 150 passengers aboard Train 538 who were inconvenienced by the missed stop.
Boardman said the incident is being reviewed but the early indication is that "the engineer began to slow the train too late and as a result continued past the Odenton station by about three car lengths before coming to a stop." He said the train could not back into the station because another train was coming up behind it.
Amtrak said Odenton-bound passengers were transferred to an Acela Express that made unscheduled stops at BWI and Odenton to pick them up and drop them off. The railroad, which operates the Penn Line under contract with the Maryland Transit Administration, estimated the delay at 30 minutes. The Amtrak chief and other managers appeared at the Odenton station Tuesday morning to apologize to commuters in person.
Several MARC riders reported that the train crew's first reaction was to blame track conditions rather than engineer error. Kevin Cup of Severn, who said he was sitting in the lead passenger car of the train that overshot the station, said regular passengers noticed that the train was approaching Odenton too fast.
"Just before we passed the station (at full speed), the train's brakes were applied sharply and very briefly (as if the engineer tried too late to make the station stop in time)," Culp wrote in an e-mail. "The brakes were immediately released and we came to what I can only describe as a stop under 'normal' braking about 1 mile north of the station. The train sat there idle for about 2-3 minutes until the trip resumed north. A conductor apologized and indeed blamed the missed stop on 'rail conditions.'"
Culp, like other riders, found the explanation unsatisfactory.
