Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Freight & Oil Shipments Reportedly Causing Amtrak Delays


According to KXLY News, shipments of freight and oil are bumping Amtrak's use of rail lines, causing the trains to detour.
Amtrak uses BNSF Railway Co. lines and says "severe freight train interference" is causing long delays along the Chicago-to-Pacific Northwest Empire Builder route.

In North Dakota, Amtrak trains are reportedly being forced to bypass Grand Forks, Devils Lake and Rugby, areas of heavy oil activity. Passengers in those cities are being bused to either Minot or Fargo to cath west-and-eastbound trains.

For it's part, BNSF says it's investing records amounts of money to expand capacity to help alleviate the problem.

2 comments:

Charles said...

We went out to our lake cabin on February 9th and when in Rathdrum about 11 am Amtrax was heading east then, just a few hours late. :)

SRTC Staff said...

Wow yeah, just "a few" hours late considering it comes through middle of the night usually. It's been sitting here at the station a lot of mornings too when I get here at 7:30 a.m.


About SRTC

SRTC is the federally designated Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) for Spokane County. Urbanized areas with populations exceeding 50,000 people are required to have an MPO. SRTC was formed to address the county's transportation planning needs. It provides coordination in planning between the public, cities, small towns, the county, the state, transit providers, and tribes.

SRTC offers services including transportation monitoring, transportation modeling, census information analysis, travel demand forecasting, historical traffic count analysis, geographic information systems, and trip generation rates.