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Editorial: Bay Bridge closed; Sac's Amtrak riders vexed
Published 12:00 am PDT Sunday, September 16, 2007
Story appeared in FORUM section, Page E6
Long suffering train riders were belatedly rescued when the city of Sacramento finally took over the dysfunctional parking lot at the Amtrak station in downtown Sacramento. Parking fees plummeted as service improved.
It's no wonder then that train riders were unprepared for a parking lot fiasco on Labor Day weekend. The city closed off 90 percent of the Amtrak lot's spaces to accommodate visitors to Gold Rush Days in Old Sacramento, adjacent to the train station. To make matters worse, the Bay Bridge was closed for repairs. People traveling to the Bay Area had been advised to take transit. A bigger-than-usual crowd of train riders should have been expected.
Many train riders, The Bee's Travel Editor Janet Fullwood among them, arrived at the parking lot to find most of the spaces closed off to them and the rest filled. Fullwood detailed in a column how she ran inside the station to seek help from Amtrak officials, who shrugged their shoulders and informed her, unhelpfully, they did not run the parking lot.
Fullwood had to scramble: "I ran from the belly of the Old Sac Garage and made it onto the train by the skin of my teeth, perspiration running down my back." But others missed their trains, "thrown for a loop by the lack of communication between the city, Amtrak and the public."
Howard Chan, the city's parking services director, owned up to the mistake. The city failed to anticipate that the station would be extra busy that weekend and communicate with its Amtrak partners.
Old Sac festivals require use of Amtrak's lot seven days a year. Chan promises in the future that the city will get the word out to Amtrak officials and train riders to make sure they are accommodated.
Let's hope the disappointed, harried riders will give Amtrak another chance.
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