So how did a $499 Amtrak Rail Pass cost a 51 year old, unemployed, disabled Veteran $8,000? Let me share with you a brief tale of how Amtrak dodged their 10 point pledge.
A quick bit of history to what brought me to write this little jewel. On May 22, 2021, I was hit head-on at full speed while riding my motorcycle and thrown between 30 and 40 feet. I have no memory of the wreck. Multiple surgeries, life threatening complications, steel plates and rods, traumatic brain injury diagnosis, and physical rehab later, I was able to walk -after I learned how to once again.
I lost my job, my freedom, my ability to fully articulate half of my limbs. The wreck basically wiped out my entire identity. Suicide has been considered more times than I care to remember, but rest assured, the count is still active and climbing.
I could not afford to go anywhere. Until I received my settlement, I was trapped in my fiance’s house. Once that money arrived, I had options. I still had no income and the settlement wasn’t “life changing” so I couldn’t go crazy, but I could at least do something.
I discovered Amtrak had a Rail Pass program. For $499, I was given 10 segments to use in order to travel. Without giving too much detail about how the plan works, I’ll say that for $499, I could ride the train around ¾ of the western part of the country and get back home on the 10th segment. It sounded like a no-brainer. I stuffed a backpack and a small luggage roller for the trip.
The Original Trip*
This chart will be important to understand as my story moves along.
Leaving Home
My original departure date was 8/23 on Amtrak’s Cardinal 51. On 8/22, I received a text message from Amtrak stating that my departure train was canceled and they had no alternative options to get me to Chicago.
Due to complications with other forms of available travel, I could not make the Chicago segment and had to cancel it. After the first flight was canceled and the second flight was delayed, Spirit Airlines brought me into Kalispel, Montana a full day ahead of schedule. An Uber brought me to Whitefish from Kalispell. An extra hotel room was required due to my early arrival.
Whitefish / Spokane
The Amtrak out of Whitefish was about an hour late to arrive for the segment to Portland, Oregon through Spokane, Washington.
Just before Spokane, we were informed that the leg from Spokane to Portland had been canceled due to mechanical issues. We would be placed on a charter bus for a 5 hour ride to our destination. Amtrak assured me that my roller luggage would be transferred to the bus.
Portland
Five hours later, I arrived in Portland… With no roller. It wasn’t on my bus and the bus it could have been on was two hours late. I had to spend the night in Portland without clean clothes or toiletries due to arriving ahead of the train once again and without my luggage.
The next day, my luggage was not present. They assured me it was either on the train due to arrive later that day or had already been sent to LA since that was my final destination for the segment I was on.
Los Angeles
Just outside of LA we were informed that the segment from LA to San Antonio was canceled.
I was trapped in LA for the night. Due to previous hotel reservations for San Antonio, I had to book a flight to get there on time. Another flight meant another early arrival and another unexpected room rental.
The flight leaving LAX was delayed by 2 hours. My trip was so absurd by this point I honestly didn’t know what to think anymore.
Texas
The San Antonio, Texas to Little Rock, Arkansas segment was delayed into Little Rock by 2 hours due to a toilet failure. While enroute, I used my previously canceled segment credits to add Winslow, Arizona and Trinidad, Colorado to my journey.
Arkansas
We arrived at the station around in the middle of the night. Myself and the others inside the station encountered an aggressive street hustler who forced himself and his services on people who departed the train. He didn’t take no for an answer. Employees knew he was there and seemed to know him but did nothing to remove him from the station’s lobby. Rather than continue dodging his “assistance” all of us left. I got a room for the night instead of just sleeping in the station till morning. That was a nice $30 Uber ride just for a few miles due to the time of night.
The following morning, I logged into my online travel itinerary to discover all the information for my entire trip had vanished. It was as though I had never reserved a single segment. The short of it – my online profile had somehow been corrupted and was no longer usable. All future reservation edits/adds/deletes/updates would only be available by calling into customer service..
I told the rep to cancel all remaining segments and that I would get back to them after I had some time to calm down and consider my next move. I then contacted the hotels I had booked, explained my situation and begged for a refund without penalties. All I could do at that point was wait to hear back from each hotel.
Exhausted from the consistent problems, the only way to minimize Amtrak’s influence was to reduce how much I relied on them. I selected one final city to spend my time at before going home – Granby, Colorado.
Colorado
The train leaving Granby was about an hour late for arrival. It didn’t concern me much since I had no more reservations to keep and was going home. There was a sadness and yet a certain level of relief that it was over.
Chicago
…But it wasn’t over. Once in Chicago, it was announced that all train departures for that day were canceled due to bridge-related issues. The following day would also be canceled for the same reason. I spent two days in Chicago waiting to just get home. According to employees, the bridge is ancient and often creates issues for them.
The length of this delay required me to cancel and reschedule my VA doctor appointments. And as anyone associated with the VA knows, appointments are rarely available in the near future. It would be a month before I could see my doctor again.
Once home, I contacted Amtrak through multiple channels in an attempt to ask them to make things right by way of a refund. Ideally, the full amount spent. Worst case scenario, they’d hand back half. They chose option C. A refund of the $499 Rail Pass along with the advice that I should have purchased travel insurance.
Amtrak advertises that they’ll be there when we’re ready to travel and boasts their 10 point pledge… But to be blunt, I’d say they failed.
So I should pay Amtrak for my trip as well as bet against my trip by paying a third party company to help cover my costs “in case shit happens” when what happens is almost exclusively Amtrak’s equipment breaking down? “Our unreliability is not our problem? You should have invested in our failure?”.
I learned that the very first train cancellation from my hometown to Chicago was canceled due to having too many broken engines in their Washington, D.C. repair yard. They call things like this a “service disruption”.
The freight companies are blamed for a majority of the delays but honestly during my entire trip, I encountered very few moments where we stopped or slowed to allow a freight train to pass. After an entire month of dealing with Amtrak, and from where I sat, almost all our delays and/or cancellations were on Amtrak’s behalf.
A $2.8B operating budget, a $100M in revenue, and yet reliability is still crippling travel -and the cosmetics of their engines look as though they’ve been through a war. Now they have been granted $16B for upgrades and expansions for the Northeast? Where is the money going? Based on what I experienced, I’d have to say it’s not going to be on their engines. Since they don’t own most of the track they run on, I’d also say it won’t be there either.
I budgeted $3,500. I spent $8,000. After crushing my entire trip, Amtrak tossed me $499 for my troubles. Did I benefit from any from the experience? Would anyone have? The answer is a resounding NO. If anything, I came back in a darker place than when I left.
I’m asking anyone who reads this – please help me get this in front of someone at Amtrak who is willing to make things right. Because if it happened to me, it can happen to you.
Thanks to Google’s timeline, I can show just how much time I spent on a trip that was supposed to be completely based on train travel.
*Travel chart dates are as accurate as I can approximate due to all of my information being no longer being available through Amtrak’s website.
Off The Rails 