Amtrak’s Broken Builder

Eighty-five years after its debut as the Great Northern Railway’s premier passenger service to the west, the Empire Builder is broken. Extreme freight congestion in the northern plains, particularly in North Dakota’s Bakken region, has resulted in major delays for Amtrak’s passenger service between Chicago and Seattle and Portland. Five years after the Empire Builder had some of Amtrak’s best on-time performance rates, even outpacing Amtrak’s high-speed Acela train between Boston and Washington, delays of three to five hours are now commonplace. It was even worse this winter, when the train was sometimes 12 hours late. In June, the westbound Empire Builder, train No. 7, stayed on schedule a scant 10 percent of the time. The eastbound train, No. 8, had a zero percent on-time rate. Passengers are also starting to notice the delays and are abandoning train travel in droves. Ridership on the Empire Builder from June 2013, when it moved 49,813 people, to June 2014 has dropped 19 percent. The decline comes just two years after the train had its best year ever, hauling more than 543,000 people in 2012, a 15.8 percent increase over the previous year. Meanwhile, the Empire Builder’s decline comes as flights out of Glacier Park International Airport are up more than 12 percent. But it wasn’t always this way. On June 11, 1929, the first Empire Builder departed Chicago with a train of luxury passenger cars that were, according to the Great Northern Railway Historical Society, “the last word in comfort, amenities and speed for their day.” The train’s name came from the Great Northern’s founder, James J. Hill, who dedicated his life to building a railroad empire that still spans the continent today. The train crossed the country in a brisk 63 hours. In 1935, an added bit of luxury arrived when the train was outfitted with air-conditioned passenger cars...more