Well said, Bobby.
Amtrak, like any organization or individual, can always do better then they currently are at. They are nowhere close to being perfect and still have along way to go to reach much better service. On many routes west of the NEC, they have reliability problems due to shared trackage with the freight railroads. The freight railroads own the ROW, and Amtrak is a guest so the passenger trains run as extras and are subject to a lower priority. This is the opposite where Amtrak owns the ROW in the Northeast on the Northeast Corridor (NEC). This is one of the major causes of delays on their routes. There is also a darth of trains in the Midwest corridor. Granted they are working on HSR through the St. Louis/KC corridor, but there should be more frequent regular trains. A 3-days a week between Chicago and KC isn't quite what I would call frequent. The other issue too is they don't connect the major cities in the region such as Wichita to Oklahoma City or Kansas City to Oklahoma City. OKC is one of the largest central-cities in the lower Midwest and serves as a crossroads between Texas cities and the east to west main lines of the Union Pacific and other lines.
These issues became most apparent recently when I setup a storm chasing trip with my friends out in Oklahoma this coming May. Oklahoma City is about 1800 miles from Boston. Rather than fly out there, I looked into taking Amtrak as that would have been an interesting trip. I could have seen the eastern half of the US from Boston to Chicago then south. Going back would have been across Ohio and through the Appalachian and Allegany mountain ranges, and up through the famous Sand Patch curve as we head through Pittsburg on my way north. This sounded grand, but there are some problems here -- reliability and no direct connections. The Lakeshore Limited, which is a main leg on my way to Oklahoma goes from Boston to Chicago. This is about 986 miles. This is a 23 hour trip, and the train is usually late. So late in fact that it's garnered the name of "Lateshore Limited"! Now the next leg is a real stickler. Instead of going to Wichita, KS, or even Kansas City, MO then heading southeast to OKC, I then have to go all the way to Fort Worth Texas. That trip is another 994 miles, or another 23 hours on the Texas Eagle. The TE has a better runtime, but it's also usually late. The final stickler is I would have to bypass a southeast connection then take the Heartland Flyer from Fort Worth north again to Oklahoma City for another 4-1/2 hours. The total length of time on the trains would have been 59-1/2 hours each way. With the less than stellar on-time performance, I have to leave 3-days early to ensure my arrival time is early enough for my May storm chase, and this still doesn't guarantee I'll get in with enough lead time. As it is, I'll end up arriving, if the trains are on-time at 9:39pm, so who knows what time I'd get in on May 4th when my trip begins. So having said that, this means I have to get in a day early and pay extra for another hotel room out of my pocket. The cost of the train trip was $464 roundtrip, which sounds good. It is since it's about $110 - $120 less than a flight from Boston to OKC via Chicago. The hotel cost is another $90 - $110 for the extra night, so the travel costs are a wash then. The same trip, as done by air, will be 6-hours and is usually on or close to on-time.
I wasn't looking for a non-stop to OKC from Boston. I know that there's no way to make the trip in 6-hours since we're going over land instead of in the air, but at least a more direct route that was a bit more reliable is something that is needed. If Amtrak can match their on-time performance, like they have on the NEC, along with more frequent service, then they will gain more customers.
John
