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The decommissioning of the station at Union Station on Thursday was prompted by Amtrak's decision to upgrade its servers during rush hours and the fall of a worker on a circuit board that shut down computers and dragged delays that have affected more than 60,000 commuters in the Chicago area.
The cause of Thursday's incident was provided by Senator Dick Durbin, D-Ill., Who spoke with Amtrak's CEO, President Richard Anderson. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari did not dispute the characterization of Durbin.
Durbin added that Anderson acknowledged that Amtrak had made a series of errors, the most important being the upgrading of the servers during rush hours, rather than in the middle of the night when the number of trains running is reduced.
"They tried to do a server upgrade, unfortunately, in the middle of a busy day, exactly at the wrong time," Durbin said during a phone interview on Friday. A worker fell off a ladder and hit a sign, causing the shutdown, said Durbin, who praised Anderson's honesty.
Former CEO of Northwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines, Anderson told Durbin that Amtrak had decentralized its communications system, which "was not a smart thing to do," Durbin said. Every server across the country is facing maintenance issues and fragmentation is not making things easy, Durbin said. Durbin said Anderson was considering centralizing Amtrak's communications system.
Durbin and US Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., On Friday sent a joint letter calling Amtrak to immediately implement the necessary changes.
"The significant impact of yesterday's signaling failure raises questions about the reliability of the Union Station signaling and computer system and the policies and procedures in place to prevent and respond to this type of emergency. "Says the letter.
Earlier Friday, Amtrak had stated that the root cause of the incident, which had affected the switches and signals, was "a human error".
"We have not been able to provide the service that Amtrak customers, Metra commuters and the general public expect from us," Amtrak said in a statement. "We own the system. We will solve this problem. "
Metra and Amtrak flights returned to normal for the Friday morning race, but the scene was completely different at Union Station on Thursday night as more than 60,000 commuters from the Chicago area returned home and faced a lot of important delays.
On Thursday, at approximately 8:30 am, a signaling problem affected all railway lines operating from Union Station, including Metra BNSF, Milwaukee West and Milwaukee North, Heritage Corridor, North Central and the southwest. Some passengers had waited more than two hours Thursday morning.
Due to this failure, the Amtrak regulators were no longer able to automatically control train movements. Amtrak had to manually handle the signal and switching points and only allow one train at a time to move, according to Metra.
Metra spokeswoman Meg Thomas-Reile said Thursday's problem resulted in 98 delays and 33 train cancellations on morning and evening trips. About 130,000 Metra passengers use the train lines to get from Union Station on weekdays.
Metra said in a statement that he was "deeply troubled" by the event.
Faiza Rasheed, 22, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is an affected passenger who climbs to Metra to get to school. Rasheed said he spent two hours on the train Thursday morning, which cost him a lab in his chemistry class that his teacher did not let him apply makeup.
She would have paid for an Uber, but the train had not arrived at a station when it stopped.
"It was horrible," Rasheed said.
The delays are a result of past problems, including delays related to the deployment of Positive Train Control. Passengers on the busy BNSF line at Metra have experienced overcrowding and mechanical breakdowns. Returning on November 8, another failure of the Amtrak signaling system prevented trains from entering or exiting Union Station, according to Metra BNSF's Twitter feed.
"Most passengers do not want to say who is to blame, they just want a more predictable travel experience." Period, "said Joseph Schwieterman, transport expert at DePaul University.
Durbin said the country needed a "massive investment" in its rail stock and that he was looking for all the federal dollars that he could find.
Twitter @marywizchicago
Twitter @ElviaMalagon
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