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.