Every day there is something else or a familiar cause of delay. As of late, the morning train that I use has been arriving on Track 8. Even when I caught a later train after a planned late ride home the night before, there we were being assigned to Track 8. For anyone who doesn't count the track locations, Track 8 along with #15 and #16 are low level boarding locations. The architects and railroad managers decided that when they remodeled the Great Hall at Union Station and added a multi-level parking structure behind the old station that the trains and their passengers would take secondary status. Actually there is a match to the Track 8 location that is likewise low level boarding but it is rarely used for daily commuter trains. These two pairs of tracks allow Amtrak and maintenance crews to drive their baggage and service tugs in and out of the station.
When there are several arriving or departing passenger trains is not the time to be moving supplies and equipment along the boarding platforms. This has never stopped them from trying. Of course the movement of equipment along the platforms is not without its other negatives. Garbage and trash are hauled in and out along those same walkways dripping their fermented brew on the crumbling concrete and asphalt. That brings up the state of deterioration of the walkway themselves.
Back in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act promulgated accessibility regulations that included measures that were supposed to assure that persons who are blind or visually impaired could detect the edge of the raised platforms and know where the pedestrian paths and vehicle paths cross. Amtrak and the Union Station management opted to install the "yellow bumpy dots" that were the required minimum. These bright yellow plastic plates were riveted to the subsurface after the pavement was milled down a quarter of an inch to assure a smooth transition. With years wear from driving the station equipment over the plastic, they are both heavily soiled with grease and extensively broken. The smell of garbage and the poor condition of the walking surfaces testifies to the status of the commuter and passengers of the three railroads that utilize the station.
The character of the 7/8 and 15/16 track pairs is significant because anywhere from 600 to 900 passengers per train must climb and descend the steps of the train when the train is scheduled on those tracks. Most people are only marginally inconvenienced by those arrival locations. There are many people whose knees, ankles and hips do not fair well especially when descending and making that last step down to the pavement. Couple that with the poor conditions of the platform edges and damaged yellow detectable warnings, and you get a significant financial liability and risk of passenger injury.
The most inconvenienced of commuters are the persons who use wheelchairs who must wait until one of the train or station crew members drags a corroded dirty trash strewn aluminum lift along that cluttered broken pavement to the train car door when one waits until the accessibility equipment is properly positioned and ready to board or disembark the passenger. I describe this point of view from my perch on a wheelchair waiting by the doorway to enter or exit these trains.
Now to be fair, the conductors do not make track assignments. They do not maintain the station or the lift equipment. Although sometimes they get busy with other passenger assistance or forget that I am waiting, they do an excellent job of handling the accessibility of their trains. For those times they all have my forgiveness.
July 22, 2010 yet another cause of delay can be written into the log book. When we arrived at about 4:45 in the evening we discovered that due to "a police action" tracks 7 through 11 were closed ant out of service. No trains were being allowed to enter the station on those tracks. Furthermore, the trains already parked on those track in the station were not being allowed to leave.
I was about to suggest to Sandy that we go to the Center Café and wait out the delay when one of the station crew called me over to the MARC desk. They had just opened access to Track 13 and we were going to be able to leave. Sandy got separated from me when I stopped to talk with one of our regular conductors.
"You put her up to this didn't you?" he said. I didn't know what he was referring to but I played into the gig.
"Well, somebody had to," I said.
"You just didn't want to be on track 8 again."
"I never do, but I have to deal with it, don't I?"
I got to the usual Car 5 location where Larry already was situated and Sandy had just arrived ahead of me. "So you decided to not jump, huh, Sandy," I said cryptically. She did not know what I was talking about. I got the change to recycle the comment when Trish arrived. She too was not getting my sarcasm.
Sam knew. His office window overlooks the Union Station parking structure. He related the news that a woman was on the edge at the top threatening to jump while the police held back and negotiated.
I said that it is good that MARC riders are mostly a mellow lot because if anyone had a reason to want to jump off the garage, it was us. We put up with a lot of crap nearly everyday. The difference is that we are just angry enough to "have nothing better to do then write letters of complaint."
We put up with nearly continuous construction of both boarding platforms at BWI, the alternately partial then complete closure of one garage and partial reopening, the elevators out of service, the cross station arrival each evening with the steep narrow stairwell to the pedestrian bridge. This work has stretched on for over three years now. If anyone was going to snap, they would have done it by now. If everyone who had good cause to snap did, we would have felt an earthquake much bigger than our July 16th 3.6 one in Gaithersburg.
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