Capitol Corridor: I'm sorry! Options

[KevinKorell]

February 17th Signal Outage between Martinez and Suisun

Some of you may have been caught in the delays last Friday evening due to a signal outage between Martinez and Suisun. Below is a message from Capitol Corridor's Managing Director about the incident.

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Capitol Corridor passengers,

I truly apologize for the delays that were experienced by Capitol Corridor riders Friday evening. These delays were extensive; in fact, some of the worst in the history of the Capitol Corridor.

At about 4:30pm Friday afternoon, Union Pacific Railroad (UPRR) had a major signal outage that stopped all train traffic between Martinez and Suisun. To compound this delay, the timing and location could not have been worse - a Friday evening prior to a three-day weekend along the busiest stretch of Capitol Corridor’s route.

I could elaborate on the technical and communication problems, but that is not the purpose of this message.

This is an apology.

I want all the Capitol Corridor riders that were inconvenienced to know that the CCJPA will be working with Amtrak and UPRR to learn our lessons from this signal outage and its cascading impacts to the passenger and freight trains. We will be working together to establish processes and protocols to ensure that similar outages are either prevented or resolved in a much more expeditious manner.

We did not deliver top quality service to our passengers this evening, but we (CCJPA, Amtrak, UPRR) will make sure that we do everything in our means to recover from this evening's poor performance and return to our top form.

David Kutrosky,
Managing Director