This was once touted as an alternative to driving and flying between Washington and New York and Boston at comparable comfort and speed to flying. Is this a major disappointment, and does it have a negative effect on the future of train travel in the US?
___________
Amtrak cancels once-ballyhooed Acela Express because of brake problems
Saturday, April 16, 2005
By Devlin Barrett, The Associated Press


WASHINGTON -- The Acela Express, Amtrak's much-ballyhooed hope for high-speed train travel, was shut down indefinitely Friday because of brake problems, leaving thousands of travelers scrambling for other transportation.

The beleaguered rail service pressed slower trains into use along the Northeast corridor between Washington, New York and Boston.

All Acela service will be suspended at least through next Wednesday and most is likely to be shut down for much longer because of newly discovered cracks in disc brakes, said Amtrak chief operating officer Bill Crosbie.

"We're very early into this," said Crosbie, estimating it was likely to take more than two months to do all the repairs, depending on the availability of replacement parts.

Millimeter-sized cracks were found in 300 of the Acela fleet's 1,440 disc brake rotors.

Amtrak said the extra trains would not be able to compensate for all the lost Acela seats. People with reservations who cannot get a ticket on another train -- or don't want one -- are entitled to a refund, the company said.

Amtrak normally runs 15 Acela weekday roundtrips between New York and Washington and 11 between New York and Boston. Acela accounts for about 20 percent of Amtrak's Boston-New York-Washington weekday service, some 9,000 passengers. On Friday's that's usually about 10,000.

The cracked brakes come at a bad time for Amtrak. A Senate committee will debate next week whether to end the rail service's federal subsidy -- as the Bush administration has recommended -- and radically reshape train travel in the United States.

"We're always under political pressure," said Amtrak CEO David Gunn. "I don't think that this will be a factor per se."

When Acela service was launched Dec. 11, 2000, the trains were billed as the faster, brighter future of Amtrak. Running only in the Northeast corridor, the trains can reach speeds of 150 mph and feature amenities such as conference tables in passenger cars, pub-style cafe cars with expanded menus and three audio music channels with headphone outlets at each seat.

The manufacturer, Bombardier Inc., had no immediate explanation for the cracks found on the steel spokes of disc brakes on most coaches.

"We want to get them up and running as soon as possible, but until we really understand the issue fully that's going to be an open question," said Bombardier spokesman David Slack.

The cracks were discovered during routine inspections, and no brake failures or other safety problems had occurred, Amtrak said.

That was little comfort to stranded business travelers and those who had made weekend plans.

Standing in line at New York's Penn Station, accountant Linda Priebe feared she wouldn't make it home to Baltimore Friday.

"If they can't give me a ticket to go in a couple of hours, I'm going back to the hotel," she said.

Art curator Stanley Babcock wasn't ready to give up.

He said he was ready to ride sitting on the floor. "Otherwise all my hotel and restaurant plans will be ruined."

Most other Amtrak service was scheduled to operate normally, but the company added four more regional trains Friday to try to handle the displaced passengers.

"It's going to be a challenge for us because we have limited additional equipment," said spokesman Cliff Black.

Lawmakers already upset over the Bush administration's plans to end most funding for Amtrak argued the incident shows Amtrak needs more help, not less.

"When Amtrak is terribly underfunded and has to operate on a shoestring budget, these kinds of things will keep happening, which will really disrupt people's lives and our economy," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

The White House seeks to radically reshape what Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta had called "a dying railroad company."

A day before the Acela cancellation, the administration sent Congress a plan to reshape Amtrak as a private operator focused on running trains, not maintaining tracks or stations.

President Bush proposed in his 2006 budget eliminating Amtrak's operating subsidy. If the railroad ceased operating, the administration has offered to set aside $360 million to run trains along the Northeast Corridor. The current budget gives Amtrak some $1.2 billion in operating subsidies and capital investment.

Acela Express service also was halted in August 2002 after inspectors discovered cracks on a bracket holding a shock-absorbing assembly to one Acela Express locomotive. Additional cracks were later found around the assemblies of other locomotives.
_______

I think it is a disappointment indeed. Acela is not that much faster than existing trains on the route, the trains are unreliable, punctuality is bad and the project has cost a lot of taxpayers money.

I'm not sure if Amtrak could have done better though. Amtrak's budget is very limited, the North-Eastern Corridor is a difficult line with oldfashioned infrastructure and American federal safety rules prohibit just importing proven technology from Europe.

This being said, the North-East is one of the few areas in the USA which have a serious potential for high speed rail, due to the high population density and a reasonably good underlying public transport system.

The White House seeks to radically reshape what Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta had called "a dying railroad company."

A day before the Acela cancellation, the administration sent Congress a plan to reshape Amtrak as a private operator focused on running trains, not maintaining tracks or stations.

President Bush proposed in his 2006 budget eliminating Amtrak's operating subsidy. If the railroad ceased operating, the administration has offered to set aside $360 million to run trains along the Northeast Corridor. The current budget gives Amtrak some $1.2 billion in operating subsidies and capital investment.
What the hell to these pig-molesting old farts know?
If you design a company to focus on operating trains and not maintaining tracks and stations, that means that they won't own the tracks and stations and that means that they'll have to rent their use, quite probably with other service providers in busy areas like New York, which means shared track space, which means unreliability will strongly be in effect.
Profitable railways tend to own their own infrastructure. This allows them to provide reliable service. Even with non-profitable systems, subways and such have dedicated track that they own and it is through that keystone that they are able to provide reliable service.
What is needed in the US is new infrastructure. The New England rail network has enough people with enough economic generation to give it treatment similar to Japan's bullet trains but at about half and one-quarter the scale (network size and operation density respectively). With the exception of the 3 west coast states, virtually all money is made by the North East. It should have the infrastructure for good rail travel both for the sake of sustaining it now and allowing to continue in growth in the future.

The North East Corridor like many other areas in the USA is completely urbanized, there are many many towns between each big city so the velocity of any HST would be limited a lot by regulations and security subjects.

Why do need such gay ass regulations on HST in US?

The bright side: the trains are always sold out, they are cheaper for businesspeople than airlines, if you buy a last-minute ticket.

They are about the same time as airlines between NYC and DC (if you include the time it takes you to get to the airport, etc.)

Why do need such gay ass regulations on HST in US?
Name specific ones?

.....
What is needed in the US is new infrastructure. The New England rail network has enough people with enough economic generation to give it treatment similar to Japan's bullet trains......Sounds like a great idea. I wouldn't mind making the same sell if I was a politician running for office. But where's the money going to come from? We barely have enough money to patch up the pot holes on the freeways let alone build any new infrastructure. And if you think the freeways are falling apart the rails are even in worse shape. :) I don't think the north east can pull off a shinkansen but of all places in the US, the north east has the most potential for HSR. It's the most urbanized, densly populated, and has the most developed transit to connect buses to the train stations.

Art curator Stanley Babcock wasn't ready to give up.

He said he was ready to ride sitting on the floor.hmmm now that's one way to cut down on costs. Maybe if they built trains with no seats they'll have enough to buy new brakes. :)

Name specific ones?

One of the most important is that the crashworthyness limits are much tighter in the US, leading to a much heavier and thus more expensive and less efficient train. And even more important, this also meant that they couldn't just by a standard European train. So a brand new train had to be developed -> so all R&D costs are devided on a very limited number of trainsets, making them very expensive. European trains are sold in much larger quantities, making them cheaper.

Another one is that the FRA doesn't accept unpowered cab cars (cars where the engineer controls the train) at high speeds. That's why Acela has two engines in its relatively short train, again making it more expensive.

Another problem is that part of the tracks around NYC is owned by Metro North. Metro North doesn't allow the tilting mechanism of Acela trains to function on their territory, limiting speed on the section between NYC and New Haven.

One of the most important is that the crashworthyness limits are much tighter in the US, leading to a much heavier and thus more expensive and less efficient train. And even more important, this also meant that they couldn't just by a standard European train. So a brand new train had to be developed -> so all R&D costs are devided on a very limited number of trainsets, making them very expensive. European trains are sold in much larger quantities, making them cheaper.

Yeah, this is because of the potential of having to share space with freight trains, which are much heavier. The reason why they can't buy an ordinary train is mainly political. US is a car country and the reality of things is that train R&D is a good way to "launder" money (not in the fullest sense of the world, but close) for someone.

Another one is that the FRA doesn't accept unpowered cab cars (cars where the engineer controls the train) at high speeds. That's why Acela has two engines in its relatively short train, again making it more expensive.
Yeah, if all trains were made lighter, this would make sense.

Another problem is that part of the tracks around NYC is owned by Metro North. Metro North doesn't allow the tilting mechanism of Acela trains to function on their territory, limiting speed on the section between NYC and New Haven.
Again, it's all about politics. BTW. Do you have any idea as to why they don't allow this?

Yeah, this is because of the potential of having to share space with freight trains, which are much heavier. The reason why they can't buy an ordinary train is mainly political. US is a car country and the reality of things is that train R&D is a good way to "launder" money (not in the fullest sense of the world, but close) for someone.

That's right. American safety rules for trains are suited for lines with heavy, slow freight trains, where impact protection makes a lot of sense. And America has a lot of them, so in general, the safety rules are very fitting for the American situation.

But on passenger lines with high speed traffic, it makes it very expensive and not very effective: even with the heavy Acela, an accident would be disastorous. On passenger lines, effort is better spent on *preventing accidents* rather than *surviving crashes*, just like in air travel. Examples like Japan and France show that very light trains can still be very safe, because safety systems effectively prevent accidents to happen. So for the North-East Corridor and some other passenger corridors, safety regulations could be better changed to a more European or Japanese situation. If that doesn't happen, high speed rail in the US is going to be very difficult.

Again, it's all about politics. BTW. Do you have any idea as to why they don't allow this?

No, don't know. I suspect that Metro North is afraid of being held responsible in court if an accident happens with a malfunctioning tilting device.
Probably

What a piece of shit the Acela is!!!!!

^ Well what did you expect? Its a Bombardier!!!! :rofl:

http://www.egghof.com/Bombardier/Bilder/Talgo350.jpg

Talgo and Bombardier made this beaut of a high speed train to run on the Spanish high speed rail network. It will travel at a top speed of 200 mph.

Bombardier can make amazing trainsets. It is not bombardier's fault, it is the federal government obsessively large weight requirements that strain the physical structure of the ACELA trainsets.

I like most of Bombardier's products, to tell you the truth. Take Vancouver's SkyTrain. It is simply amazing!

http://www.egghof.com/Bombardier/Bilder/Talgo350.jpg

Talgo and Bombardier made this beaut of a high speed train to run on the Spanish high speed rail network. It will travel at a top speed of 200 mph.


Beaut?! It looks like a cross between a duck and a 1970's vision of what flying cars would look like!

^ actually, they do call it "El Pato," the duck, in Spain :)

http://www.egghof.com/Bombardier/Bilder/Talgo350.jpg

Talgo and Bombardier made this beaut of a high speed train to run on the Spanish high speed rail network. It will travel at a top speed of 200 mph.

Bombardier can make amazing trainsets. It is not bombardier's fault, it is the federal government obsessively large weight requirements that strain the physical structure of the ACELA trainsets.

This Talgo train is called "pato" ("duck") here in Spain! :D
Its top speed is 217,53 mph (350kph). :cool:
Its commercial speed in Barcelona-Madrid high speed line will be 205 mph in 2007. :)

Cheers!
:wink2:

It does look like a duck! What I don't understand is what Bombardier knows about making trains? They do jets alright, but trains? Could it have been their lack of experience in making high-speed trains that led to the problems with Acela? I hope it works out, and they resume service.
_________
Amtrak brake supplier Bombardier short of replacement parts for Acela trains
Tue Apr 19, 7:13 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AP) - Bombardier, the company that helps build Amtrak's Acela Express trains, has only 80 disc brakes in stock, not nearly enough to replace the 300 damaged brakes discovered on the railway's 20-train, high-speed rail fleet.



David Slack, a spokesman for Montreal-based Bombardier, Inc., said Tuesday he did not know how long it will take the company to supply Amtrak with enough brakes to put the Acela trains back in service. Bombardier and Alstom SA of France build the Acela trains.



Amtrak pulled the Acela trains out of service last Friday after discovering millimetre-size cracks in 300 of the fleet's 1,440 disc brake rotors. Each Acela train has 72 brakes.



Amtrak put one Acela train back in service Monday for a New York-to-Washington run, but the train did not make a scheduled trip from Washington to Boston because the wheels did not match perfectly, officials said.



Later Monday, Amtrak officials said there would be no Acela service at least through Friday, possibly longer. Amtrak normally runs 15 Acela weekday roundtrips between New York and Washington and 11 between New York and Boston.



The Acela problem comes as U.S. President George W. Bush is urging the U.S. Congress to eliminate Amtrak's operating subsidy and privatize it. A Senate subcommittee is to debate Bush's proposal Thursday. The current budget gives Amtrak about $1.2 billion US in operating subsidies and capital investment funds.



Acela normally makes up about one-fifth of Amtrak's service along the northeast corridor, carrying an average of 9,000 riders on weekdays.



Amtrak's four-member board of directors had a telephone conference call meeting Tuesday to get an update on the Acela status and to discuss a financing plan for the railway. The board's chairman, David Laney, said during a break that the members were still "hammering out a few issues" and the meeting could resume Wednesday.



On the Toronto stock market Tuesday, Bombardier (TSX:BBD.MV.A) shares closed unchanged at $2.63 Cdn.

It does look like a duck! What I don't understand is what Bombardier knows about making trains? They do jets alright, but trains? Could it have been their lack of experience in making high-speed trains that led to the problems with Acela? I hope it works out, and they resume service.

I think you're out of the loop, Bombardier does all kinds of transportation, their jets are just the most expensive part of their business and so is the most well known. They started by inventing the snowmobile and branched out in everywhichway from there. Bombardier is one of the top in the world for trains. Visit their website to see what I mean. www.bombardier.com

Sounds like a great idea. I wouldn't mind making the same sell if I was a politician running for office. But where's the money going to come from?

If the US can't afford it then frankly who can? I'm was pro the war and everything but is a $400bn defence budget not a bit excessive. Syphon about $10bn dollars from it (or other areas perhaps?) and you could at least begin to build a decent HSR network in the NE corridor. Build new separate lines just for passengers so that some of the trains safety restrictions can be reduced allowing 'off the shelf' european trainsets to be purchased. Hell one novel idea may be to put up taxes! Perhaps tax gasoline to a similar extent as other countries and you'd soon raise enough, you may even get a double dividend in terms of protecting the environment through a reduction in fuel consumption and a good sustainable transport system. If it worked well the cost savings to businesses of reduced traffic congestion may even offset the costs (esp in a region as prosperous as the one we're talking about).

It isn't impossible and it doesn't have to be difficult, the money can be found esp in the USA which is afterall the wealthiest nation on the planet. It's about having the will to do it, its about explaining to the public how it may be beneficial (environment for starters). The US has massive potential for HSR, finding room for an HSR route shouldn't prove too difficult. They could simply go alongside the highways.

I know this post readas as very anti US which is very unlike me. I just think that as far as transport, and esp the effects of transport on the environment goes, the US has got it very wrong. I don't see that the US has any excuses, esp financial ones!

@odegaard, this mini rant wasn't aimed at you, your quote just inspired me. It seems you are pro HSR too, so get out there and run for office! ;)

I know this post readas as very anti US which is very unlike me.

No, it isn't anti-Us. It is just a fair criticism.

As a short lived operator of the trainset, I must disagree with the majority of the opinions on this thread. The Acela was a breakthrough of technology on the NEC, and has really paved the way for new high speed trainsets. Sure, the sets failed sometimes, but what do you people expect when Amtrak recieves ill fated subsidies from the government? A billion dollars is not nearly enough to operate a railroad, pay the crews, renovate bridges, tunnels tracks, rebuild wrecked rails, railcars and locomotives, and every other responsibility the railroad must pay for. For as long as Acela has been in operation, her record has been great considering all she has to work with. And if she was given the monies needed to be a success, she could have been a phenomenon in North American railroading. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. Acela deserves to be praised.

I think you're out of the loop, Bombardier does all kinds of transportation, their jets are just the most expensive part of their business and so is the most well known. They started by inventing the snowmobile and branched out in everywhichway from there. Bombardier is one of the top in the world for trains. Visit their website to see what I mean. www.bombardier.com

Keep mind that in the case of the Spanish trainsets, it was also the Spanish train manufacturing firm TALGO (one of the first companies to expand the use of articulated trainsets) that made the "Duck."

As a short lived operator of the trainset, I must disagree with the majority of the opinions on this thread. The Acela was a breakthrough of technology on the NEC, and has really paved the way for new high speed trainsets. Sure, the sets failed sometimes, but what do you people expect when Amtrak recieves ill fated subsidies from the government? A billion dollars is not nearly enough to operate a railroad, pay the crews, renovate bridges, tunnels tracks, rebuild wrecked rails, railcars and locomotives, and every other responsibility the railroad must pay for. For as long as Acela has been in operation, her record has been great considering all she has to work with. And if she was given the monies needed to be a success, she could have been a phenomenon in North American railroading. Unfortunately, that isn't the case. Acela deserves to be praised.

I do not blame the ACELA at all. I blamed failed federal government transport policies for the faults.

I'm somewhat confused...is Acela dead? Or is it simply being repaired right now?

It will be back in service by summer.

Glad to see that Amtrak is committed to bringing back Acela. Will it ever be expanded elsewhere? SF-SD corridor or the Midwest or Florida (whose HST plan seems dead in the water)? I think those are the only other areas that could support it. Right now anyway.
_____________________
Acela Trains May Return by Summer
Service Restoration To Be Gradual as Repairs Are Made
By Mike Musgrove
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 21, 2005; Page E01

Amtrak said yesterday that it expects to have its high-speed Acela Express trains running again by summer but did not offer a specific timetable for restoring full service on the high-speed premium line, which was suspended last week because of a brake problem.

Under a new schedule announced yesterday, Amtrak said it plans to add 13 Metroliner trains between Washington and New York starting Monday to help make up for the Acela's lost capacity. The Acela typically made 15 trips each weekday between the two cities and 11 trips between New York and Boston. The railroad said it is gathering train cars from across the country to bulk up its Northeast corridor fleet.

Amtrak chief executive David L. Gunn said Acela trains will return to service as they are repaired. "The trains will come back gradually," he said. "They will not come back all at once."

Amtrak shut down the Acela line last Thursday night after discovering millimeter-sized cracks in brake components during routine testing.

The cause of the cracks is still unknown. William L. Crosbie, senior vice president of operations at Amtrak, said Amtrak still does not have an explanation for what caused cracks in about 300 out of the 1,440 disk-brake rotors in the 20-train Acela fleet. He said a team of engineers and metallurgists is evaluating the defect.

Both Crosbie and David Slack, a spokesman for the train's manufacturer, Bombardier Inc., said the part will probably require a redesign.

"With 300 disks with cracks in them, there's an issue and I think everybody on the face of the planet is aware of that," Slack said. "At the end of the day, we need to find a permanent fix. Just ordering more of the same part isn't the answer."

Slack said that the now-cracked disk-brake rotors were expected to last about 1 million miles before needing replacement. He figured that the Acela parts had gotten "half a million miles, maybe 600,000" miles of use.

Each Acela train has 72 brakes, but Crosbie said there are only 70 replacement disks available.

Montreal-based Bombardier is working with its suppliers, Knorr and Wabco, to get enough replacement parts to restore Acela service, Slack said, but the company does not know how long that will take.

Unlike Amtrak's other trains -- the Metroliner and regional trains -- the Acela fleet is maintained by the consortium of companies that was contracted to build it, Montreal-based Bombardier and Alstom. Amtrak is scheduled to take over maintenance of Acela trains next year, Gunn said.

Gunn said he did not expect that Amtrak will have to pay for the fix because the trains are still under warranty from Bombardier and Alstom.

When service was initially suspended, Amtrak officials said it would be down until today. On Monday, the railroad ran one Acela train between Washington and New York, but it halted the service again when mechanics discovered at the end of the trip that the wheels on one side of the cars were more worn than those on the other side.

Crosbie said the wheel wear on that train was a routine maintenance issue, unrelated to the brake problem. But it convinced him that it was too much trouble to run Acela trains again until a comprehensive solution to the brake problem was found.

Gunn said the increased schedule of Metroliner trains "should allow us to retain the lion's share" of revenue that the Acela line brings in for the railroad.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm not happy about the loss of the trains," he said. "Ridership on the [Northeast] corridor is growing, and the Acela provides a significant amount of capacity," he said.

But Gunn also said he does not expect to lose many Amtrak customers as a result of the suspended Acela service because there had already been some migration by passengers from Acela trains to the less-expensive Metroliner trains. He noted that Metroliner trips offer "almost the same premium service" and sometimes are only 10 minutes slower than the higher-priced Acela trains.

Howard Kipen, a business traveler about to hop on a Metroliner train on his return trip to New York City yesterday afternoon, was not troubled by having to ride a different train than usual. Kipen said the only drawbacks of taking a Metroliner instead of his scheduled Acela train were that he had to call Amtrak to rebook his ticket and that it was less comfortable to work on his laptop computer in the Metroliner trains.

Still, he lamented the struggling status of the railroad, which has lost $500 million each year for the past 10 years. "I think it's sad that they're in this state," he said. "This is the only part of the country where you can travel efficiently by train -- and it's broke."

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/digitaljoe/acela.jpg
Acela leaving Manhattan.
Source:AP Photo

It was a prudent move on the part of Amtrak to suspend service until the brake issue is resolved. After all, look at what happened to the ICE train in Germany. A derailment like that in the congested Northeast Corridor would be a disaster.

Glad to see that Amtrak is committed to bringing back Acela. Will it ever be expanded elsewhere? SF-SD corridor or the Midwest or Florida (whose HST plan seems dead in the water)? I think those are the only other areas that could support it. Right now anyway.
If we get something betwene SF (or Sac) and LA/SD, it may not exactly be Acella, because they're talking about 200+mph speeds. I don't know how fast acella was designed for.

April 24, 2005

Acela, Built to Be Rail's Savior, Bedevils Amtrak at Every Turn

By JAMES DAO
his article was reported by James Dao, Matthew L. Wald and Don Phillips and written by Mr. Dao.

WASHINGTON, April 23 - It was called the American Flyer, and its goals were ambitious: to speed train travel between Northeastern cities, steal customers from air shuttles, provide the model for a nationwide fast rail system and help its deficit-prone parent, Amtrak, earn a profit.

"These trains will enable Amtrak to carry its customers into the 21st century aboard 21st-century trains," said Thomas M. Downs, Amtrak's president, at a 1996 ceremony announcing a $611 million contract for the new trains.

Today that train is called the Acela, and instead of being Amtrak's savior, it has become a frustrating burden. On Wednesday, the company announced plans to sideline all 20 Acelas until summer to replace cracked brakes. It was the third major disruption of the high-speed service since it came on line in 2001.

The tale of the Acela is in many ways the story of Amtrak itself, where political pressures, tight budgets, contested regulations and design changes turned a high-speed train into something slower, more expensive and less reliable than what Amtrak had promised.

A reconstruction of Acela's history involving dozens of interviews and a review of court documents and other records shows that Amtrak was under intense pressure to deliver its new train as quickly as possible. And that rush to do something bigger and more complicated than the railroad had ever done led to a series of missteps that many experts believe contributed to the problems that have plagued the Acela to this day.

"There is an old saying in the acquisition world: you want it bad, you get it bad," said Tom Till, who led the Amtrak Reform Council, a group created by Congress to study the railroad's problems. "That's exactly what happened with Acela."

Before the first train was built, the Federal Railroad Administration required it to meet crash safety standards that senior Amtrak officials considered too strict. That forced the manufacturers, Bombardier Inc. of Canada and GEC Alstom of France, to make the trains twice as heavy as European models. Workers dubbed the trains "le cochon" - the pig.

Some experts have speculated that the added weight contributed to a series of problems, including the latest one, with Acela's wheels, brakes and shock-absorbing assemblies. Federal regulators are still investigating the cause of those problems.

During construction, Amtrak also discovered that the coaches were four inches too wide to use their full tilting mechanisms, which allowed the trains to speed around curves. As a result, trip times were slower.

Once the first trains were delivered, Amtrak - which had counted on the Acela to wean it off federal subsidies - pushed the trains into service without extensive testing.

"The company at that time, as it always is, was under intense pressure to produce results and revenue," said George Warrington, Amtrak's president from 1998 to 2002 and now executive director of New Jersey Transit.

All told, Amtrak ordered 9,000 engineering changes that increased costs, delayed production - just selecting draperies for the windows took two years - and added thousands of pounds of weight, the French-Canadian consortium said in a lawsuit filed in 2001. Amtrak argued that the manufacturers produced shoddy equipment and an outdated interior design, all behind schedule. The litigation was settled out of court in 2004.

The design problems, breakdowns, production delays and litigation have caused some rail experts to question why Amtrak selected a bid that involved an essentially new design.

One reason, current and former Amtrak officials say, was that the ideal off-the-shelf train did not exist. But another reason was money: the French-Canadian consortium offered the lowest bid and best financing deal, one heavily subsidized by the Canadian government. And cutting costs was paramount to Amtrak.

"They didn't have the cash," said Amtrak's president, David Gunn, who took office after the contract was negotiated and the trains had begun running. "There wouldn't be anything if they hadn't done it this way."

Despite its many problems, Acela remains Amtrak's most successful service. Until last week, it was generating about $300 million a year, enough to cover its operating costs. Ridership had been increasing, and surveys showed passengers liked its quiet coaches and plush amenities.

But even Mr. Gunn has said openly that the train was poorly conceived and badly built, and he has vowed never to buy another one.

"If you're buying equipment, you want evolutionary change, not revolutionary change," he said this week. "For us, this was revolutionary."

With Amtrak running annual deficits of over $1 billion, the Bush administration has called for ending federal subsidies and breaking the company up through bankruptcy. Some Amtrak supporters in Congress worry that their efforts to maintain federal support for the railroad has been weakened by the Acela's continuing problems.

"For those of us who care about Amtrak, the Acela mess couldn't come at a worse time," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. "It makes our job harder to fight for it."

Search for a Fast Train

A high-speed rail system had long been the dream of Amtrak officials. W. Graham Claytor Jr., Amtrak's president from 1982 to 1993, envisioned a system of sleek trains that would be tested on the corridor between Boston and Washington, adapted to the Midwest and the South, and eventually run down the spine of the California coast.

Inspired by the successes of Japan's bullet train and high-speed networks across France, Germany and Spain, Congress also became involved. In 1976, and again in 1992, it authorized billions of dollars to improve the railbeds and electrical systems along the Northeast Corridor. And it set a goal that Amtrak must provide Boston-to-New York service in under three hours.

It was more than an arbitrary benchmark. Marketing experts said that travelers would consistently choose to fly, even with the added costs and inconveniences of traveling to airports and waiting for flights, over train rides lasting longer than three hours. And bankers demanded that Amtrak reduce its train times to receive financing.

"Literally," said Joseph Vranich, the author of a book about Amtrak, "minutes matter."

To reach that goal, Amtrak repaired bridges, replaced wooden ties with concrete ones and electrified the track from New Haven to Boston. But it did not have the billions of dollars required for changes that would allow trains to travel over 150 miles an hour consistently: constructing straighter tracks and replacing aging overhead electric lines.

Instead, they focused on acquiring a new train to replace Amtrak's aging fleet of Metroliners, which were built in the 1960's.

In 1992, Amtrak began testing two European trains between Washington and New York: the Intercity Express, or ICE train, from Germany and the X2000 from Sweden. Some Amtrak officials thought the X2000 was well suited for the Northeast Corridor because of a tilting mechanism that reduced centrifugal force on passengers when the train sped around curves. The line between Boston and New York is among the most winding in the country.

But the Swedish company decided not to bid on the contract because it did not want to make the changes required by federal regulators to adapt its lightweight European train to America, said a former senior Amtrak official who asked not to be identified because he has taken another job in the transportation industry.

At the same time, the new Republican majority in Congress was pressing Amtrak to become self-sufficient. The railroad's board was looking for a high-speed train that could help achieve that goal by attracting new riders without costing too much. Bombardier-Alstom's bid seemed to promise all that.

The companies proposed adapting the fast French TGV train, which Alstom had designed, with tilt technology. They pledged to assemble the cars with American workers in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and Barre, Vt. They agreed to maintain the trains for a relatively low price. And they offered, with the assistance of the Canadian government, a generous package of loans worth more than $600 million to help Amtrak buy the trains, a virtual no-money-down deal.

"We were under the gun" to cut costs, said Tommy G. Thompson, who was chairman of the Amtrak board from 1998 through 2001. "The Acela was a vehicle by which we thought we could reach self-sufficiency."

But, he added, "We had problems with Bombardier from the get-go."

When Amtrak began seeking bids for a new train, it hoped to avoid creating "some customized product that looked like a Defense Department project," Mr. Downs, the former Amtrak chairman, said in an interview. "But it didn't work that way."

Instead, in Bombardier-Alstom, Amtrak had chosen a company that had to design an almost entirely new train. In addition, Amtrak and the Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees the railroad, began issuing thousands of design demands. Some were trivial, ranging from wall coverings to door chimes. But others were not.

'High-Velocity Bank Vault'

Unlike European and Japanese high-speed trains, most of which run on dedicated lines, Amtrak shares the Northeast Corridor with bulky, slow freight trains. The railroad agency has long required that passenger trains be heavier than European ones to withstand crashes.

Bombardier knew its new train would have to meet those requirements, a spokeswoman said. But Mr. Downs said he asked the rail agency to ease that standard for the new high-speed trains, to no avail.

"They decided they wanted to make this the safest train in the world," he said. "All my engineers thought the rules were nuts."

He dubbed the Acela "the high-velocity bank vault."

Railroad Administration officials contend that Amtrak did not object to the safety requirements.

The result was that the new train weighed more than double the French TGV train on which it was based. The added weight did not slow the new train down, as it ran up to 170 miles an hour in tests.

But several former Amtrak officials say the suspension system on the Acela may have been designed for a lighter train. "Heavier trains are harder to get started, and they are harder to stop," said Mr. Downs, noting the brake problems.

When asked if the problems were the result of marrying a European underbody to an American car, Robert D. Jameson, the acting federal railroad administrator, said that the cause was still under investigation.

"To the extent you take something built for another purpose and associate with the car bodies on these trailers and power cars, and they're not compatible, then potentially you have problems," Mr. Jameson said.

While the trains were being assembled, Amtrak discovered an embarrassing error, one that would provide fodder for late-night talk shows. Engineers realized that the car bodies were four inches too wide for their tilt systems to work properly.

If two Acela trains were going around a curve in opposite directions, and the tilt system on one broke, the trains could brush against each other. Limiting their tilt meant the trains would have to run at slower speeds around bends, but Amtrak said it would still meet its goals for trip times.

The consortium blamed Amtrak for making a sudden change in its safety requirements. But David J. Carol, Amtrak's vice president of high-speed rail, said at the time that "Bombardier has never been particularly candid with us about how this happened."

Consortium officials also complained about excessive meddling by Amtrak on the interior design. But a former Amtrak official, who asked that his name be withheld because he did not want to be publicly involved in the dispute, said railroad officials believed that the interior was being given short shrift, even though the train was supposed to attract sophisticated customers.

"It looked like a commuter car from the 1970's," the official said of the manufacturer's original plan.

Even Amtrak's initial $16 million marketing campaign for the new train drew criticism.

In the summer of 1999, the company announced that it had dropped "American Flyer" in favor of Acela, a fusion of "acceleration" and "excellence" devised by a New York consultant. (When he became Amtrak president, Mr. Gunn ridiculed the train's name, often opening speeches with a joke: "What is Acela? It's the room under the first floor.")

Rather than emphasizing the train's speed or convenience, the first advertisements featured dreamlike images with offbeat captions. Some riders told The Philadelphia Inquirer that one advertisement, picturing a man with an overcoat around his head and the words, "Depart from your inhibitions," made them think of a flasher.

The campaign was intended to build excitement for Acela's scheduled arrival in late 1999. But it ended well before the train's inaugural run, which was delayed for a year because testing uncovered cracked bolts and a tendency of the wheels to oscillate on the rails, a dangerous condition known as "truck hunting."

When the Acela finally made its first trip from Washington's Union Station on Dec. 12, 2000, Secretary of Transportation Rodney E. Slater said it would "transform transportation along the Northeast Corridor" and "serve as an engine for economic growth."

The train arrived in Boston 6 hours 43 minutes later, just 12 minutes late.

Today, Acela is capable of reaching 150 m.p.h., but travels that fast only on an 18-mile stretch in Rhode Island and a 10-mile stretch in Massachusetts. It has not achieved Congress's goal of a three-hour trip from Boston to New York, typically making the run in 3 hours 20 minutes. And about a quarter of the time the trains are late, recent Amtrak statistics show.

Now, with the train out of service, frustrations are at a boiling point on the Metroliners that Amtrak has deployed to replace the Acelas. On the jam-packed "Vermonter" that pulled out of Union Station on Friday afternoon, dozens of passengers were left standing in the aisles, sprawled across luggage and pushed against walls. By the time it reached New York, the bar car was out of wine, and the train was an hour behind.

"It's been horrible, horrible, horrible," said Debbie Sugiyama, 37. "But they had no problem taking our tickets and our money."

Trouble in Washington

Amtrak officials are confident that customers will flock back to the Acela once it returns to service, whenever that may be. Less certain is the railroad's future on Capitol Hill.

Created by Congress to be a for-profit private corporation, Amtrak is also required to provide a minimum level of intercity passenger service - even if that means maintaining unprofitable lines.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, underscored that conflicting mandate this past week. Defending Amtrak's money-losing long-distance trains, which serve her state, Ms. Hutchinson said, "My motto for passenger rails is 'national or nothing.' "

While Amtrak has some bipartisan support in Congress, it is also strongly disliked by a significant block of conservative lawmakers who view it as a poorly managed drain on the treasury and want it privatized.

Neither side can prevail, but they can fight to a stalemate. And the result is often that Amtrak receives enough to survive, but never quite enough to meet its needs for new equipment and better railways.

"The basic problem with Amtrak is that it has been on a starvation budget for 20 years," said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York.

The standoff in Congress makes it less likely that President Bush's proposal for radically restructuring the passenger rail system will gain traction on Capitol Hill. Representative John L. Mica, Republican of Florida, who strongly supports privatizing the railroad, said he is not optimistic about change.

"At some point, Congress and people in the Northeast Corridor are going to have to wake up and look at some serious alternatives to Amtrak," he said. "But maybe it hasn't gotten quite bad enough yet."

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/digitaljoe/acela_4.jpg
AP Photo

That was a good article...where was it published?
My take on Amtrak is the carrier does a pretty good job considering the low status granted to rail passenger travel versus air and automobile modes in the U.S. In spite of operating at a loss, Amtrak is able to maintain high levels of comfort and safety while offering affordable fares. I would support any legislative action to maintain a federally subsidized and nationally intact system. I believe that breaking up the system and awarding parts of it to private vendors is motivated by the politics of greed (like everything in D.C. these days) and that a such a privatization will come at the expense of U.S. taxpayers who will see safety and service decline in order to meet profits.

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/digitaljoe/acela_4.jpg
AP Photo

That was a good article...where was it published?
My take on Amtrak is the carrier does a pretty good job considering the low status granted to rail passenger travel versus air and automobile modes in the U.S. In spite of operating at a loss, Amtrak is able to maintain high levels of comfort and safety while offering affordable fares. I would support any legislative action to maintain a federally subsidized and nationally intact system. I believe that breaking up the system and awarding parts of it to private vendors is motivated by the politics of greed (like everything in D.C. these days) and that a such a privatization will come at the expense of U.S. taxpayers who will see safety and service decline in order to meet profits.
You may see a service decline to some extent, but I don't think you will see safety decline, because the company needs its reputation to stay high in order to attract business. There's actually more risk for safety hazards when the service is run by the government because they are mandated to service all areas equally (or something along that line), which is a hinderance to good safety standards with limited funds. Private companies are not so stupid.

You may see a service decline to some extent, but I don't think you will see safety decline, because the company needs its reputation to stay high in order to attract business. There's actually more risk for safety hazards when the service is run by the government because they are mandated to service all areas equally (or something along that line), which is a hinderance to good safety standards with limited funds. Private companies are not so stupid.
I can see your point, regarding the inefficiency of federally mandated safety standards, yet I feel private companies are more motivated to cut corners when it comes to safety. Yes, they are not stupid, and even though they have a reputation to maintain, they can afford to fix the damage with, let’s say, a good public relations team. In the U.S., publicly owned transportation infrastructure is under much stricter guidelines than in the private sector.
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/digitaljoe/c01.jpg
Metroliner traveling the Northeast Corridor, c. 1976.
Source: unknown

digitaljoe, the article was from NY Times.

Do freight trains actually use the track Acela travels on? I thought all New York-Boston traffic gets routed north through Albany then west... I've never seen a freight train between Boston and NYC. Or NYC to Washington, for that matter.

Amtrak says Acela misjudged brakes

Published April 28, 2005
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Amtrak President David Gunn said yesterday he thinks the makers of the Acela Express trains overestimated the life expectancy of their brake rotors, forcing Amtrak to pull the entire fleet out of service for repairs.
"I believe they misjudged the life of the rotors," Mr. Gunn told the Associated Press during a break in a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing on Amtrak's fiscal 2006 budget. "Their life expectancy was less than they had planned, and they were caught without a supply."
Helene Gagnon, a spokeswoman for Montreal-based Bombardier, Inc., said the brakes' disc face -- or front of the disc -- showed normal wear. What caused the cracks on the spokes of the brakes was under investigation and will take weeks to determine, Miss Gagnon said.
When the train brakes are applied, the brake pads rub against the disc face, causing friction, she added.
Bombardier and Alstom SA of France make the Acela trains and have said the brakes were supposed to last 1 million miles. The current Acela fleet had about half of that mileage, Mr. Gunn said.
Mr. Gunn said the timetable for bringing back the Acela trains on a gradual basis was still this summer, adding that Bombardier and Alstom had yet to give Amtrak a delivery schedule for the brakes.
Amtrak was forced to pull all of its 20 Acela trains out of service April 15 after finding millimeter-size cracks in 300 of the high-speed rail fleet's 1,440 disc brake rotors. Each Acela train has 72 brakes.
The brake problem surfaced when a Federal Railroad Administration worker performed a routine inspection April 14 after a high-speed run to test whether Amtrak could speed up the Acela trains slightly on curves in New Jersey between Trenton and Newark.
Amtrak's chief operating officer, Bill Crosbie, said last week that the brake part is unique to the Acela and that there was no active production line casting them. Mr. Crosbie said the companies had fewer than 70 disc brakes in stock.
Miss Gagnon said the number of discs on hand when the Acela problem arose was "sufficient for normal maintenance purposes on the Acela fleet."
"We understand that this is not a normal circumstance, and we are working with our suppliers to obtain more brake discs and get the fleet back in service as quickly as possible," she said.
Amtrak has had to replace its Acela train routes with slower trains to operate its Washington-to-Boston trips.
Acela Express began operating in December 2000 and was billed as Amtrak's answer to high-speed rail. The trains run only along the Northeast Corridor, with top speeds of 150 mph. Acela trains can get from Washington to New York City in two hours and 48 minutes, while its regular fleet takes more than three hours.

Great news! It'll be back
_____________________________
Acela Service to Return in July, Amtrak Says
By Rip Watson
Bloomberg News
Friday, June 10, 2005; A02

Amtrak next month will resume Acela high-speed train service, which was suspended in April because of brake problems, the railroad's chief of operations said yesterday.

The return will be gradual, with all 20 Acela trains back in service in the fall after repairs are made, William L. Crosbie said at a House Transportation Committee hearing in Washington. He didn't give a specific month.

The trains, which can reach 150 miles an hour, serve New York, Washington and Boston, and account for more than 20 percent of Amtrak's ticket sales. Amtrak has said the suspension of Acela service has cost it about $1 million a week.

The trains, made by Bombardier Inc. and Alstom SA, were taken out of service April 15 after inspectors found cracks in about 20 percent of brake rotors.

The railroad is testing a new type of rotor to replace the cracked ones, Crosbie said. The replacements change the rotor design to reduce vibrations when the brakes are applied, said R. Clifford Black, an Amtrak spokesman. The vibrations may have caused the cracks, Black said.

Amtrak has been working with equipment suppliers such as Knorr Brake, a unit of closely held Knorr-Bremse AG of Munich, to develop the replacement parts.

Metroliner trains, which take about 15 minutes longer than Acelas to reach New York from Washington, have run the 15 weekday New York-Washington round trips since April.

The Acela problems arose as Congress debated funding for Amtrak, which has received about $30 billion in subsidies since it was founded in 1971, including $1.2 billion this fiscal year.

The railroad originally expected to have $75 million when the fiscal year ends on Sept. 30 and now forecasts the amount will be as little as $35 million.

Acela has been an "incredible fiasco," Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.) said at the hearing. The high-speed trains were delayed almost a year by flaws such as wheel cracks before starting in 2000. The trains also were suspended in 2002 after shock-absorber parts cracked.

Mica also criticized Amtrak for losses on food service, in part because of high labor costs.

Fred E. Weiderhold Jr., the railroad's inspector general, said yesterday that Amtrak loses more than $130 million a year on food service. The railroad could reduce costs by $94 million by paying its food-service workers wages similar to those of restaurant employees and by reducing expenses for food storage, he said.

Amtrak workers receive 3.5 times the average annual compensation of about $15,000 for restaurant employees, Weiderhold said.

Yet another case of people twisting the story to make it sound like Amtrak is the hugest mistake ever made by man.

Acela was one of the best services Amtrak EVER had. It had nothing to do with high speed rail, yet everyone is insisting it is this great failure because it hasn't lived up to being high-speed. The attraction of the north east corridor is not speed, it's the service. Acela finally brough comfortable trasnportation directly to the city center, so people didn't have to deal with other hassles. They could simply take the subway to the rail station, hop on a train, and be able to work or relax without having to be squeezed in like cattle.

The time difference between Acela and Metroliner is like 15 minutes. You can't tell me there is that much more interest in Acela purely because of those 15 minutes? It's service and quality. Attractive, modern looking and feeling trains, tolerable service, and convenience.

I wish they would stop trying to turn everythign Amtrak does into a failure simply so they can fund more airlines.

June 12, 2005
Amtrak: Stuck in Its Tracks
By MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — Amtrak, it turns out, may be too sick to kill.

The national passenger railroad has never managed to pay its own way, absorbing $29 billion in federal aid over its 34-year history. That has made it a perennial target for budget-cutters and fiscal conservatives, who say that what Congress cobbled together in 1971 from the fading passenger operations of the major freight railroads was not a phoenix but a Frankenstein.

Now, the Bush administration is talking about forcing Amtrak to reorganize itself in bankruptcy. It's a strategy that an ordinary transportation company might employ to address problems like Amtrak's high costs and crushing debt and pension obligations. Several major airlines have tried it in recent years, some more than once.

But for Amtrak, bankruptcy would be poison. It wasn't Amtrak's doing, but the bankruptcy law covering railroads would provide it with hardly any benefits at all. To start with, Amtrak could not renounce its labor contracts unless it liquidates itself. So there is little hope of reducing costs in bankruptcy except by shedding operations.

Doing that won't help much either: unionized workers would still be entitled to severance payments of up to five years' wages, which would probably have to be made up by the federal treasury. Last week, a House committee heard testimony on why Amtrak even loses money selling tuna sandwiches for $4.50. Amtrak may be the only restaurant chain where every busboy has a pension plan, and the railroad says it can't run trains without feeding the people who ride them.

And the most unprofitable Amtrak operations, the long-distance trains, are also the ones that, politically, the railroad cannot live without. In public, the railroad counts how many stations and distant cities those trains serve, but its internal calculus includes how many congressional districts they run through. (Its one profitable train, the Acela, has not run since April because of mechanical problems.)

Amtrak's pension problem has a twist as well. Airlines and other companies have revamped or dumped their pension plans in bankruptcy, but the system for railroad workers is a unique pay-as-you-go retirement fund that resembles Social Security in miniature.

Along with the midcareer employees who transferred to Amtrak when it was created came responsibility for payments to the railroad retirement system to provide their benefits. The freight railroads' fear of that pension burden falling back on them has given them some incentive to support Amtrak's existence.

They also prefer the Amtrak they know to Mr. Bush's concept of competing private passenger operations. "Amtrak is composed of people who know railroads," said Peggy Wilhide, a spokeswoman for the American Association of Railroads.

Amtrak's main asset is the Northeast Corridor, the tracks connecting Washington, New York and Boston. The administration has discussed putting it in the hands of an interstate compact of some kind but the corridor needs so much work that it would be hard to give it away.

Similarly, Mr. Bush wants to give the states control over the long-distance trains outside the corridor by making them pay the operating deficits. The states are not volunteering for the honor.

If Amtrak goes bankrupt anyway, Congress could always step in to rescue, but the railroad says that might fall foul of the constitutional requirement that bankruptcy laws be "uniform."

Even if bankruptcy is unattractive, insolvency remains a concern for some lenders, says Clifford Black, an Amtrak spokesman. That makes projects more difficult to finance.

Lenders and vendors would be reassured by an appropriation for Amtrak, which is included in the current House budget resolution but not in the Senate version.

In a bit of poetic justice, the fate of Amtrak, with its perennial problems keeping to a schedule, is in the hands of Congress, whose on-time record for budgets is even worse.

Amtrak poised to restore Acela service on limited basis to Boston
Move comes 3 months after brake woes sidelined trains
By Keith Reed, Globe Staff | July 22, 2005

Amtrak plans to restore the beleaguered Acela Express service to Boston tomorrow, more than three months after the last high-speed train pulled out of South Station, but with a fraction of the trips it used to have.

The rail carrier will operate only one daily Acela round trip from Boston, compared with six round trips between New York and Washington since Amtrak began phasing in its flagship service two weeks ago. There were 14 daily round trips from Boston before all 20 Acela trains were sidelined April 15 after cracks were discovered in their brake discs.

The first Acela train will arrive in Boston tomorrow afternoon, with its first departure from South Station at 11 a.m. on Sunday. From Boston, Acela travels to New York and Washington.

Since fewer than half of its Acela fleet is back in operation, Amtrak needed to run the trains where most of its passengers are, said Marcie Golgoski, an Amtrak spokeswoman.

''Right now we're putting the equipment where the largest demand is and where we can best serve the most passengers," she said. ''I have been given no indication that the service we previously had won't be reinstated. We're just trying to get on our feet."

About 78,600 passengers rode Acela between Boston and New York in March, the most recent full month in which the trains ran. That's less than half the ridership than between New York and Washington, where 169,000 people rode Acela, according to Amtrak.

Yesterday some passengers waiting for trains at South Station hailed the return of the high-speed train. Taking Acela was a faster trip to New York than Amtrak's regional trains and was a more convenient option than taking a shuttle flight to LaGuardia Airport in Queens and then taking a cab to Manhattan, said Carla Portelli.

''It's three and a half hours from door to door," she said. ''That's a lot better than getting a cab, going up in the air, coming down and getting in another cab."

Other passengers, though, didn't miss Acela as much. Amtrak passenger Andrea Chace said Acela's speed advantage -- it goes from Boston to New York in about 25 fewer minutes than conventional trains -- was not enough to justify the premium fares that Amtrak charged for the service. A one-way fare to New York on Acela typically costs about $99. A one-way fare on a regional train to New York starts at $69.

''I'm not a big fan," of Acela, Chace said. ''If it was a legitimate time difference, then maybe I would care."

Of the 20 Acela trains, eight have been outfitted with new brake discs and six of those have been deployed for service. Two others are being kept aside to replace other trains in emergencies such as a breakdown or derailment, while five out of the six trains running are being used for New York to Washington runs. One train will cover the entire Boston to Washington line.

Acela had been out of commission since Amtrak found more than 300 cracks in Acela's brake discs. Knorr Brake Corp., the discs' maker, and Bombardier Transportation, which leads the consortium of Acela manufacturers, have yet to determine a cause for the cracks.

To fix the problem, the companies decided to replace the cracked discs with discs of a different design that are supposedly less prone to cracking.

That doesn't convince Julia Cox, a native New Yorker who was riding an Amtrak regional train home from Boston yesterday.

''I am skeptical about the brakes," she said. ''What's next?"