Acela back, but many passengers aren't

After rapid repairs, trains far from full

By Mac Daniel, Globe Staff, 8/20/2002

he Amtrak ticket clerk at South Station had just pulled up the heavy white board from her closed window yesterday when her first customer asked for a one-way ticket on the 6:15 a.m. Acela Express to New York.

''There is no Acela Express,'' she said without looking up from her computer screen. After being reminded that the high-speed service was restarted yesterday after one of the most severe service cancellations in Amtrak history last week, she turned to a supervisor.

Yes, the supervisor assured her, the 6:15 was running.

''It's supposed to be on Track 7,'' she said after issuing a ticket. ''It's not here yet, but they say it's going to be.''

Less than a week after the entire fleet of Amtrak's most profitable rail line was pulled out of service because of dangerous cracks found in locomotive shock absorber assemblies, nine of the 18 Acela Express trains resumed their runs yesterday.

The quick restart and short public notice led to trains that were less than a third full on the route's popular northern half linking Boston, Providence, New Haven, and New York.

Before the recent shutdown, an estimated 50 percent of all Amtrak passengers traveling between New York and Boston were riding the two-year-old high-speed rail service, making it the economic backbone of financially strapped Amtrak and a strong competitor to airline shuttles.

Travel industry analysts said last week's three-day shutdown might have led some riders to abandon Amtrak and return to airline shuttles that connect Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C., the three major cities served by the Acela Express.

Delta Air Lines flights from Logan to New York and Washington had a significant increase in passengers last week, but airline officials said they could not directly attribute that to Acela's problems.

Amtrak officials said they hoped Acela Express service would return to its full schedule by week's end. It was only late Sunday that Amtrak officials announced that half the Acela Express fleet would roll yesterday after it was shut down twice in three days. Conductors and passengers said the trains are usually packed with a business crowd. About 10,000 people ride the Acela Express between the three cities.

The 6:15 a.m. Acela Express from Boston to New York, a six-car train with a capacity of 340 passengers, had 58 passengers leaving Boston. By the time the train pulled out of New Haven, there were 98. In New York, where the train arrived at 9:50, approximately 10 minutes late, Amtrak employees did not restock the cafe car en route to Philadelphia and Washington.

A return 10:03 a.m. from New York to Boston had 60 passengers, some of whom took off their shoes and socks and rested their bare feet on the adjoining seat's slide-out tray. Space was so plentiful that one family returning to Boston from a Manhattan vacation placed their luggage in an empty row of seats behind them. This train was also 10 minutes late.

Amtrak spokesman Bill Schulz could not provide ridership figures yesterday for all Acela Express runs made, nor could he say if the repaired trains were under any kind of speed limitation. ''It'd be pretty simple to assume that, in the middle of August, given the circumstances, we'd see fewer passengers onboard,'' he said.

The 18 Acela Express trainsets (with two locomotives each) and 15 Amtrak high-horsepower locomotives were taken out of service early last week after cracks developed in a bracket attached to a shock absorber that controls the engine's lateral movement. All 51 locomotives were made by the Canadian-French consortium of Montreal-based Bombardier of North America and Paris-based Alstom S.A.

Two Express trains were put back into service Wednesday. But with plans to put five back in service last Thursday, Amtrak officials again halted all service after the cracks were found to be more severe than previously detected. With that news, the 15 high-horsepower locomotives, which are used on conventional Amtrak runs, were also pulled from service. Amtrak officials said the 15 high-horsepower locomotives were given a low priority for repairs after Amtrak borrowed locomotives from New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania transit agencies.

With repair crews working 15-hour shifts over the next three days, seven of the total of 320 mounting plates on the Acela Express locomotives or ''power cars'' were replaced, according to Bombardier officials. The remaining plates had their cracks ground down or welded shut.

The repairs, however, are only temporary. Lecia Stewart, vice president of high-speed rail for North America for Bombardier, said the company is working on a long-term solution, which involves redesigning and testing a new bracket.

But the rapid rollout of half of the Acela fleet even suprised Amtrak CEO David L. Gunn. Bombardier and Amtrak are locked in a legal battle stemming from a federal lawsuit the company has filed against the railroad claiming that Amtrak's design specification for the Acela Express train resulted in a costly two-year production delay.

Still, Gunn praised the company's efforts yesterday.

Stewart added, ''It's very clear that we're working very closely with Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration to put this problem behind us.''

Amtrak typically sends out 15 Acela Express trains daily, with three kept in reserve. Thirty departures were made yesterday, down from 50 on a normal weekday. The line made 13 out of a typical 18 Acela Express departures linking Boston and New York.

On train 2153 southbound from Boston to New York, passengers talked of having alternative travel plans already in place when news came that the 6:15 a.m. train would be running yesterday.

''The airport is awful,'' said software designer David Abjornson, 36, of Boston.

''They process you through airline shuttle security like you're dog food,'' said consultant Jill McKinney of Brookline.

Thomas Till, executive director of the Amtrak Reform Council, an independent federal commission that issued a report earlier this year recommending changes to help Amtrak become financially independent, said he admired Gunn's honesty in addressing the problem.

He said the problems with the broken brackets stem from past practices that the reform council recommended changing, including Amtrak's purchase of a new train prototype without running lengthy field tests.

''They did the required testing for equipment safety by Federal Railroad Administration, but they didn't do the long-term testing after they were certified.''