Sunday, June 15
(THE DAY FROM
HELL)
I knew that I never
should
have scheduled a trip that begins on Friday the 13th.
I
got up at 5:55
a.m., as we
were leaving Detroit Lakes, MN, over 3 hours behind schedule. We passed the Westbound Builder, also
over three hours late. I showered
and packed up my stuff and waited for our arrival in Minneapolis. An announcement was made in the train that
all passengers for whom Minneapolis is not their final destination
should check
in at the ticket counter in the station.
I thought that was rather odd.
Any time that I have been on an Amtrak train where passengers
are being
transferred to buses with different destinations, they tell you to go
directly
to the buses. The buses have signs
in the windows giving their respective destinations, and agents at the
bus
doors to collect the tickets. The
passengers just go to the appropriate bus. That
is not the way they do things in Minnesota.
We arrived in
Minneapolis at
9:25 a.m., and I said good bye to my car attendant, Dan Foley, and gave
him a
token of my appreciation for his helpful and friendly service. Leaving the train, we all marched into
the station. I could see what
appeared to be three buses in front of the station, but we were not
allowed to
go to the buses. By the front door
of the station was a single agent standing behind a counter, with the
line of
passengers stretching from the counter out through the rear doors of
the
station. He made several
announcements that only passengers who have Amtrak connections in
Chicago were
to be in the line. Of course the
other passengers who were not transferring in Chicago but had
destinations
other than Minneapolis, couldn't understand who was taking care
of them. So these passengers kept getting
in
line and going up the counter and the agent would angrily announce
again that
the line was only for people with connections in Chicago.
And so it went, one agent processing
one passenger at a time into one bus at a time. And
after he processed 5 or 10 passengers, he would go
outside to the bus, talk to the driver, count the passengers on the
bus, talk
on his cell phone, then come back to the counter and process a few more
passengers. This man clearly
wasn't in any hurry to get the passengers to their destinations. Maybe he liked the overtime that he was
making on Sunday, Father's Day.
Eventually, the first two buses got loaded with the passengers
transferring
in Chicago. Then he starting
processing the passengers who were not transferring in or going to
Chicago, but
had destinations other than Minneapolis.
These passengers were going on the third bus, and it eventually
got
loaded and left at 11:00 a.m. It
took over one and one half hours to load three buses.
The agent then came back to the counter and announced to
those of us still waiting for a bus that the next bus would be here at
11:30. He then disappeared through
a door and didn't appear again until after the next bus arrived
at 11:45. He then began processing
passengers for
this bus, which he could have completed while we were waiting for the
bus to
arrive. The fourth bus was finally
loaded and we left at 12:22, three hours after the train arrival.
While I
don't blame Amtrak
for the busing, which was necessitated by weather factors beyond their
control,
I do blame them for incompetent bungling of a situation where they took
three
hours to accomplish something should have been accomplished in less
than an
hour. Busing of passengers to multiple
destinations is handled routinely at Amtrak stations such as Los
Angeles and
Bakersfield. Minneapolis knew
about this situation at least a day in advance, so they had plenty of
time to
draw in the required manpower and the required number of buses. I would venture a guess that 75% of the
passengers who were put through this drill will never set foot on
Amtrak again.
But the fun
didn't end when
we left the station. Our driver
got on board and the first words out of his mouth were "I
don't work for
Amtrak." We left Minneapolis
without
incident, and traveled to Wisconsin Dells, where we stopped for lunch
at a
Burger King, courtesy of Amtrak (up to $5.00). Leaving
the Burger King after a 45 minute stop, we got back
on the Interstate, drove for about a mile, and traffic came to almost a
complete stop. The Interstate was
closed and we were being funneled into a detour where the traffic was
moving at
about 5 miles per hour. Apparently
this closure had been in place for some time, and some of the
passengers knew
about it and were asking the bus driver why he didn't take a
different
route. His response was that
Amtrak told him to take this route so that he could stop at the Burger
King. He also said that Amtrak had
told him that the road was open (no detour). At
any rate, we drove along at 5 to 20 miles per hour for
about two more hours.
We finally made it
to Union
Station in Chicago at about 10:00 p.m., after sitting in the
Minneapolis
station for 3 hours and sitting on a bus for nine and one half hours. I got my bag off the bus and caught a cab
to my hotel, the Downtown Travelodge, which was a little over a mile
away. Considering that I was sitting all
day,
I don't know why I was so tired, but I was, so I went to bed
shortly after
checking into the hotel.
