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Amtrak tooting its horn

Amtrak making progress at Fredericksburg station

By EDIE GROSS

Date published: 3/19/2004

By EDIE GROSS Plans to provide better track info

Amtrak will take several steps over the next six months to improve communication with its passengers at the Fredericksburg train station, according to a letter the company sent yesterday to U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Davis.

Travelers should notice more reliable train announcements, new signs and more loudspeakers, wrote Joe McHugh, Amtrak's vice president for government affairs.

"I honestly think they're trying to put their best foot forward," said Davis, who has worked on this issue for the last three months.

The congresswoman, whose 1st District includes Fredericksburg, got involved in December after receiving calls and letters from constituents frustrated that they never knew which track the Amtrak trains would arrive on.

Some residents had even been left at the downtown station after waiting on the wrong platform.

After Davis contacted Amtrak, employees at the Alexandria train station began using TV monitors there to track trains coming into Fredericksburg.

Those employees announced some trains here, but they missed a few, so Davis insisted on a meeting at her Spotsylvania office March 5.

Davis was stern during that meeting, telling Amtrak officials that she would not support any more federal subsidies for their operation--$1.2 billion this year--if they couldn't at least address the problems in Fredericksburg.

At the time, McHugh promised to send a timeline to Davis within two weeks, outlining exactly what kinds of improvements Amtrak would make at the station and when.

McHugh's letter, sent a day before that deadline, outlined several initiatives to help riders at the Fredericksburg station:

To avoid leaving behind a passenger who is running from one track to the other, an Amtrak crew member now gets off the train at Fredericksburg and checks the tunnel under the station, according to the letter.

"Once the crew is satisfied that we have boarded all the passengers, then and only then do they leave the station," McHugh wrote.

Since the March 5 meeting with Davis, Amtrak employees in Alexandria have been required to keep a log of every train announcement they make, McHugh wrote. Records indicate that no trains have been missed since then, he wrote.

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Date published: 3/19/2004