A new federal report says Amtrak is losing out on a market of disabled people — who make up at least one out of seven Americans — because it's done a poor job of listening to their complaints. The report cites problems from difficulty boarding if the passenger uses a wheelchair, to being blocked from bathrooms and cafe cars, to unclear signage in stations and on trains.
The report, from Amtrak's Office of Inspector General, says the company lacks an "overarching strategy" to improve service to disabled customers.
When given a choice how to travel a long distance, many disabled people pick trains. Airplanes are stressful, especially for people who use wheelchairs.
"Many of the people I work with would rather be on an Amtrak train, even if it costs some time, than to try to get through an airport and onto an airplane," says Charles Petrof, a senior attorney at Access Living, a Chicago independent living center that advocates for people with disabilities.
Many, because of their disability, can't drive. Airplanes can be treacherous for people who use wheelchairs. Wheelchairs and motorized scooters are too wide for an airplane's aisle so people need to transfer from the wheelchair to an airline seat — which often means being lifted by airport staff. Petrof says a former boss had a bone broken when she was lifted roughly. She then sat on her flight in pain until she got to her destination, where she was lifted again and returned to her wheelchair.
Wheelchairs and scooters end up in cargo holds with luggage and often — in about one out of every 100 cases, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation — come back broken.
On a train, a passenger can sit in their wheelchair or store it nearby.
Petrof says Amtrak has done more to listen to complaints from disabled customers–since 2020. That was the year Amrak tried to charge two of Petrof's co-workers, who use wheelchairs, $25,000 for a round-trip ticket for the short ride from Chicago to Springfield. The usual fare was $16.
Amtrak said it didn't have room for two wheelchairs and needed to reconfigure the car.
NPR told that story and Amtrak was embarrassed.
"Those $25,000 tickets," Petrof says. "They are calling us regularly to make sure that doesn't happen again. They are being proactive."
Amtrak officials now ask people who are blind or who use wheelchairs to test out designs for new trains. They've asked for advice on how to modernize train stations to make them more accessible.
Amtrak hired a staff person to work on accessibility and, last year, included on its 10-member board of directors, David Capozzi, who uses a wheelchair. Capozzi says he's come to prefer trains after finding his wheelchair broken and lost on airplane trips. He has long experience in accessibility issues as former executive director of the U.S. Access Board, a federal agency that sets standards for disability access.
"Improvements have been made," Capozzi says of Amtrak's efforts to listen to disabled customers. "Certainly, there is work to be done. Any complaint is too many complaints."
That was the conclusion of the Inspector General's report — that Amtrak is getting better but can do more.
Advocates of several disability groups that have criticized Amtrak in the past also praised Amtrak for listening, but say they want to see more.
Kenneth Shiotani, a senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network which has issued reports critical of Amtrak, praises its recent work but says it needs to move more quickly to buy new train cars that are more accessible. An order of new train cars, with the cafe car on the same level as the rest of the train so wheelchair users can reach it, was supposed to take five years to build and deliver, he says, but took 11 years instead.
The Inspector General's report notes missteps that created poor customer service. Last year, an Iowa woman with multiple sclerosis said she missed a family funeral in New York because, when she got to the station in Omaha, a conductor said she arrived too late to get help to load her bags. When she returned the next day, she says an agent insisted, incorrectly, that she pay extra for her wheelchair and for her service dog. Amtrak says it refunded the woman's fare.
Capozzi says less attention gets paid to the cases where Amtrak staff take extra steps to accommodate disabled passengers — like a woman who recently said she's unable to sit for long periods of time because of a medical condition. She was given two seats but charged for one.
Aubrie Lee and Peter Saathoff-Harshfield love to ride trains and blog and post about their travels on You Tube. Recently, they took a three-week trip from their home in the San Francisco Bay area to Oregon, then to Chicago, to New York and back home to California.
Lee, who has muscular dystrophy, uses a power wheelchair. Saathoff-Harshfield has low vision.
On Amtrak, they said they look out the big windows with wonder at the American landscape — of mountains, rivers, lightning in the night sky over Nebraska. On long rides, they meet people on board and make friends.
The train, says Lee, "is almost like a destination in itself… It is part of the adventure."
They also see things they'd like Amtrak to fix. Amtrak's website, which they use to book tickets, is hard for people with disabilities to access, they say. For Lee, boarding a train in her wheelchair can be easy or hard, depending on the station and what kind of lift they use, she said.
The Inspector General's report included photos of luggage piled up in the area reserved for wheelchair users to either sit in their chair or to stow it if they transfer to a train chair. Lee says it's a common problem.
On their recent trip, Lee's ability to move around depended on what train they were riding. On train routes east of Chicago, the sleeper car was next to the cafe car and Lee could move from one to the other.
But on the route west of Chicago, the cafe car was on a second level and Lee stayed in the sleeper car.
The Inspector General's report focused on problems with Amtrak's customer service. But another issue has been the company's failure to modernize train stations to make them more accessible.
When the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, 35 years ago this month, Congress gave Amtrak an extra 20 years to make its stations accessible. Lawmakers recognized that this was expensive work, complicated by the architecture of old stations and that some are owned by Amtrak and others by local governments.
Still, even with that extra time, Amtrak made only small efforts to fix stations, which prompted action by the U.S. Department of Justice.
In 2020, Amtrak entered a settlement agreement with Justice Department for its failure to modernize stations, eventually paying $2 million to disabled people who'd been unable to use trains.
Since then, it's accelerated the work on stations. It helped that President Joseph Biden — a fan of Amtrak trains who frequently used them to commute home to Delaware when he was a U.S. Senator — championed the work.
Amtrak says it will spend more than $1.8 billion on the project, with some $1.3 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law by Biden in 2021, and that it aims to bring its stations into full compliance by the end of 2029.
Copyright 2025 NPR
