With the much-publicized problems of Amtrak’s Acela Express trains - their reliability is faltering and a number of design glitches remain to be fixed - some critics have begun calling the trains Edsella Express, writes Bill Stephens at Trains.com.

That’s a reference, of course, to the famously unsuccessful Ford automobile that never matched its hype or sales expectations. Although a lot separates the train’s problems from the car’s - and calling it an Edsel overstates the extent of the woes - there are some common threads.

It would have been hard for the Acela to live up to its billing. After all, Amtrak promised it would be the salvation of the railroad. The train would generate $180 million annually, eliminate the railroad’s red ink and help spread high-speed rail across the country. Why, once regions outside the Northeast saw the swift train, they’d demand them, too, or so the argument went.

I never really bought any of this. It was always too much to expect a train to whisk passengers along at 150 mph while trying to carry the entire railroad on its streamlined shoulders.

And despite its flaws - like being built too wide to take full advantage of its tilt technology - the train is a thoroughbred forced to run on a merry-go-round. The Northeast Corridor is falling apart, and the Acela Express can hit the vaunted 150-mph mark for only 18 miles of its Boston-Washington run.

That being said, the Acela Express has been a commercial success. How else can you explain those airline shuttle advertisements that pan the train?

The stylish Acelas have lured frequent flyers out of the shuttles - and kept them. Acela revenue is higher than for the Metroliners they replaced, if you can believe Amtrak’s curious way of reporting revenue. Rail’s market share is growing in the Boston-New York segment of the Northeast Corridor. And Amtrak is now the dominant carrier between New York and Washington.

But nothing threatens to make travelers jump ship like unreliable service.

Increasingly, Acela Express is arriving late - or even not leaving at all - due to a variety of problems with the trains themselves. In July, only 74% of the trains were on time, giving them the worst record on the Northeast Corridor. That figure doesn’t include the 35 runs that were halted before they began. Last year, Acela OTP ranged as high as 90%.

As reported on NewsWire last month, Amtrak assembled a protect train of Metroliner equipment and had it on standby at Washington Union Station in case the railroad couldn’t field the daily requirement of 15 Acela Express train sets from the 18 it has accepted from the Bombardier/Alstom consortium.

Now, as The Washington Post’s Don Phillips reported this week, Amtrak is considering cutting back Acela Express service between Washington and New York until Bombardier and Alstom can make more than 200 modifications to the trains. The process is expected to take months, and will cover a range of issues, from brakes to fixing the trains’ complicated restroom doors.

"You'd think that after 170 years of railroading, you could have a crapper door that works," the always colorful Amtrak President and CEO David L. Gunn told The Post. Indeed.

Gunn is no fan of the trains, although he says that passengers love them when they work properly. He says they’re overpowered and have too few seats. The railroad won’t buy more of them, he promises, but it may order two additional cars for each train set to boost capacity.

Last year Bombardier filed a $200 million lawsuit against Amtrak, claiming it "disrupted its ability to produce and deliver" the trains. Amtrak fired back immediately, and blamed Bombardier for the delayed delivery of the train sets, which debuted more than a year behind schedule.

Lawsuits and the inevitable appeals tend to line lawyers’ pockets more frequently than they solve problems. And it’s far easier to point the finger of blame than to join hands and solve problems. So give Gunn and new Bombardier President William Spurr credit for putting aside their companies’ differences and working toward solutions.

The two executives have agreed to form a recovery plan to fix the trains’ problems. "We said there would be no legal talk," Gunn told The Post. This is reason for optimism that the Acela Express can get back up to speed sooner, rather than later, and keep the new riders it has attracted.

Repairing the trains won’t fix the larger problem, however, which is the multibillion-dollar backlog of capital needs facing the deteriorating Northeast Corridor. The potential of a 150-mph train is not fully realized when it has to slow for ancient catenary, creaky bridges, and malfunctioning signals.

The Acela Express may not be an Edsel, but the corridor is becoming an old clunker south of New Haven, Conn. Get the corridor back up to snuff, and lick the Acela Express’s reliability problems, and then we’ll see what high-speed rail really can do in this country.