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Home > Archives > Employee working with ARTS, late 1970s.

Employee working with ARTS, late 1970s.

Black and white photograph from the 1979 Amtrak Annual Report (p6).

Employee working with ARTS, late 1970s.

The Amtrak Automated Reservation and Ticketing System—ARTS for short— was fully implemented on June 27, 1974. It eliminated the need to hand-write all ticket reservations, thereby saving time and reducing the risk of lost paperwork. A major milestone was achieved when ARTS issued more than 1 million tickets in August 1978.

Due to growing ridership in the late 1970s, ARTS was at times overwhelmed with calls that then triggered delays and shutdowns. In response, Amtrak developed a new system called ARROW that launched in 1982. With ten times the computing capacity, ARROW restored an optimal two- or three-second response time.