Amtrak, and the Future of the United States of America
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I boarded the Amtrak train number 69 after waiting in the confines of Penn Station, which has been compared by a very perceptive journalist to a roach motel. Train number 63 boarded at the same time and was bound for Toronto. The crowd waiting for trains # 63 and 69 was large and disorganized. What Amtrak didn’t tell us was that #63 and #69 were the same train, the back part for people heading for Canada, the front part heading for Albany. The line waiting in front of track 5/6W, the usual place of departure of trains heading north, was redirected and broken off with the announcement that the gate was set to 8E; the effect was that instead of a single line, a mass of people funneled through a single gate where two conductors checked for the magic numbers printed on the tickets, 63 and 69. Arrived on the platform, people were directed to the front and back of the train, Canada versus non-Canada persons.tips dan trik android
After almost three hours of a fairly uneventful ride, the conductor walked up and down, announcing that the train, once in Rensselaer station, would stop in a position, beyond the platform, that would not allow us, the 69-people, to deboard the train. Indeed, as we arrived at the station we overshot by a large margin. Instead, the back of the train, containing all those 63-people who were headed for Canada and without intention to leave the train, was parked along the platform. We were told that it would take a few minutes. After half an hour, our train moved forward, still further north and increasingly out of reach of the station. Then it backed up, apparently after a switch had been operated, and slowly went backwards to a different platform. By the time the doors opened, 45 minutes had gone by.
Clearly, Amtrak was run by people who belonged into a mental asylum. As we left New York, the people headed for Rensselaer were directed precisely to the part of the train that would keep them from deboarding at the point of destination. To put it the other way round, even given the fact that we were sequestered in the front, a quick stop of the train with the correct alignment with its front part to the platform would have solved the problem — if a problem was ever perceived, that is — and made everybody happy.
But NO. This is Amtrak, dedicated to the idea of driving you back into your car, back onto the street. It is dedicated to the idea of oil dependence for the next Millennium.
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