Amtrak passengers faced major delays in the Chicago area on Thursday after a worker fell on a circuit board, according to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.
Durbin, the Senate’s minority whip, issued a statement Friday following his contact with Amtrak officials about a 12-hour disruption to train service at Chicago’s Union Station a day earlier, after the Senate recessed for the week.
Durbin said Amtrak CEO and President Richard Anderson told him the outage was caused when Amtrak “decided to do a server upgrade to their computers during peak hours of service.” In addition to that, “a worker fell on a circuit board, which turned off the computers and lead to the interruption of service that went on all day long,” he said.
Amtrak issued a public apology on Friday, and service is now back to normal.
Anderson told Durbin, “There will be changes made when it comes to computer programming and upgrades in the future.”
