Just four days after a slow-news-day Saturday rant about Amtrak Cascades’ illegible timetables, the timetables have been fixed. Amtrak Cascades’ Twitter account sent out the update Wednesday afternoon. They’re still not perfect, as the inclusion of the Empire Builder is useless for trips along the Cascade corridor, and the tables are still very difficult to read on mobile. But the main problem, the backwards timetables reading right-to-left in the Southbound direction, is now fixed.
Score another one for transit blogging creating more urgency than months of public requests getting lost in the bureaucratic ether. Thanks to WSDOT to their attention to this small but important matter.
It’s nice I guess.
I still get no city names when I view it on my iPhone, which is the biggest problem for me. This is the first thing that Google produces too, when it used to becAmtrak’s PDF version of this timetable.
Looks like a green version of Amtrak.com. (at least the non-mobile version)
I like it.
It brings out more of a local Northwest flavor.
BTW, the Empire Builder is a connecting train for Train #500.
There used to be more convenient connections before the oil trains started playing havoc with the Builder’s schedule.
I have to be honest,
I’ve NEVER looked at WSDOT’s website to book or even find out information for the Cascades service.
Was it a highly visited website?
But at least in looks more like what one sees from the national Amtrak sources.
I don’t imagine regular riders like us use it that often, but it is heavily marketed to tourists, on the back of thruway buses, etc.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
Well, this should work better than poking the newcomers in the eye with a sharp stick.
The proliferation of oil trains is a lot worse than an inconvenience to Amtrak passengers. It’s bad enough that the huge haulage of both oil and coal is now taking down the most environmentally important mode of long distance transportation.
For both passengers and freight. Major industries other than coal and oil are taking losses. But in addition, from what I’ve been reading, the oil aboard every mile-long train of tank cars is unusually dangerous, well on its way to matching gasoline.
I’ve heard different assessments as to what would happen if some hardware came apart under Downtown Seattle. But remember, the BN tunnel barely clears the DSTT a block north of IDS. Google “Lac Magantic, Quebec.” And then use your imagination.
Personally, the general official silence on this subject proves to me how far downward the last seven years of Depression have pushed our national economy that the very worst of its industries can take down all the rest.
Almost matching the depth to which the elected officials of both major parties are stuck nose-down in the pockets of the forces subjecting our people to danger miles beyond anything ISIS can inflict. Why should any terrorist waste a dime on sabotage, when all he has to do is religiously fundamentally kick back on ‘Vegas, watch the news, and take credit?
Mark Dublin
A populist governor in the late 19th century would have stationed the National Guard
For the record, I did not intend to include the sentence underneath my signature. I’ve never been in any governor’s position. And I don’t know of any incident where such a thing ever happened.
I also know that in the Populist years, across the political spectrum people looked at both oil and coal as beneficial prosperity. However justified their complaints were against bosses and owners, populists and organized workers saw only thousands of well-paid beneficial jobs.
At political events I’ve attended these last several years, I’ve found myself in greater sympathy with the locomotive engineers and other railroad workers from towns that haven’t had a decent working economy for forty years than with any other interest represented.
But I used to live a block from the BN drawbridge across the Ballard locks. And my twice-weekly transit transfer, truly value a cafe and two restaurants close to tracks alive with these trains. I had last night’s supper directly across Dock Street from one freight a minute.
And a missed connection with my Olympia bus in Lakewood can cost me some serious distress at the end of a hard day. So my objectivity on this subject is sub-zero.
With all real hard-core hate, the deeper it is, the more inadvisable to hold. I’ve told you my thoughts are contradicted by people I respect. So of everything I’ve ever written here, on this one I’m pleading for correction as serious as warranted.
Mark Dublin
I think I know the reason why the 28 (Empire Builder) is included, if you are going from the south and need to get to, let’s say, pasco or spokane, you might want that information included in there, though the online booking system would still give you better guidance of when to transfer. I have made the Eugene to Pasco trip before.