The dynamic, airline-style, pricing model that Amtrak adopted took away one of their significant advantages. It used to be that you could roll up to Union Station in DC and pay a reasonable price for "the next train to NYC." You didn't need to think too hard about schedules and it offered flexible transit without TSA security. Now, you have to plan months in advance or pay tons for last minute. If I'm planning months in advance, I'll choose air travel for the same or less money.
When I reserved my Amtrak roommette months in advance, only to find out last minute that I'd booked on the wrong day, they were happy to refund the cheap rate that I would have paid but of course they left me with the huge bill for the last minute economy seat. Airlines back up their pricing model with customer service that is empowered to help people. All Amtrak's in person representatives could do was tell me to call a 1-800 number.
European trains used to work like that, but don't anymore, and as much as I miss it as a customer – it just makes sense economically, as it helps seat occupancy rate greatly.
That's not to say that train seats should ever be more expensive than airplane seats at the same time to departure, obviously.
That's overly generalizing it. In most European countries you have a variety of train types, and only high speed lines always have variable prices. Intercity trains can sometimes be booked in advance with varying prices depending on the country, but often have normal prices too.
In the Netherlands there are only a handful of international trains which have variable prices; you can just hop in any local, regional express, or intercity train, and the only price variance is the fixed peak hours surcharge; no seat reservations, no demand based pricing.
International/high speed trains are the closest European comparison to Amtrak. The distances their trains span are enormous.
But yeah, a lot of European rail also still has a fixed-price fare you can buy on the day of departure – although that fare is usually much higher than the (dynamically priced) saver fare, if available. So functionally, it's just a cap of the maximum dynamic rate, at this point.
In France if you travel often it makes sense to buy Carte Liberté. You get fixed price for tickets all year, even for last minutes departures + free exchange of tickets including up to 30 mins after departure.
While China is making high speed trains we are making marketing innovations, if we do not wake up soon it will all be marketing and no product that's when we will be in trouble, NO MAJOR INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT IN THE LAST 20 years wow is this the place where the future resides really? they need to be proactive the CHIPS act is reactive not proactive and even then it may not be as successful as needed.
Marketing and finance. Unfortunately, lasting, reliable and deep economic growth can't exist without an industrial backbone. I don't know where Germany would be without its historically strong focus on exports. We'd be a hollowed out shell like the UK, I guess. It looks like that's the direction we're headed though with Volkswagen's gradual implosion.
You can pretty much still do that. I am seeing pricing for this afternoon for $103-138, depending on when you leave. Now, that does seem high, but convenient if you happen to be downtown near Union Station.
This seems like such a grim value prop. Even if you have a private bedroom, a table service dining option, and bar, you're still on a train, not a hotel. A hotel is not, unless it's a resort, what you're going to the destination for. So rather than spend as little time as possible getting to the destination, trading some amount of comfort, you instead spend about as much time as possible getting to the destination and get very little back from the experience, other than "views".
I'm in the midwest, so rail is not remotely convenient but Amtrak recently announced a three-day ride from Ohio to Florida that I was amazed at because it somehow seemed less appealing than just grinding out the 15-hour family road trip, let alone a 2 hour flight.
If you want more people riding trains, make them faster.
Rail travel on Amtrak is a novelty. The trip is the destination. Outside of a few routes that are essentially commuter routes, it's not cheaper or faster than alternatives, so I'm not sure why anyone considers it. "Ooohh it would be fun to take the train" is basically it, and that's fine. Amtrak is fun if you've got the time and never tried it, as long as you aren't delayed for 12 hours, which is actually pretty common. I tried it once. I was 24 hours late to my destination, and the train experience wore thin pretty quickly. I have not and will not consider it again. I'd rather drive and sleep in my car at rest areas.
The only time I've bought a train ticket is when the wife and I took a trip to see a musical in New York. We're only a four hour drive from New York, but I hate driving near it, and really hate driving in it. So we booked a hotel four blocks from the train station and just rode an early morning Amtrak. That was worth it. It took longer than a drive, but we slept through half the ride anyway.
But it was definitely a luxury "vacation" purchase. I looked at tickets while planning our last trip, going to Boston. It was insane. Hell, it was this past Labor Day weekend, when New Jersey rail was free for almost a week. Even then, of we'd have driven into NJ, took a free train into New York, then took an Amtrak to Boston, the tickets from NY to Boston would be so more than flying from Baltimore. How is New York to Boston not a cheaper line?!
I bought a NYC to Boston ticket for a few weeks from now for $35 this morning. Depends on many factors but once you know you can easily buy the cheap tickets.
Think cruise ship which is a hotel on water. However cruise ships are full of activites for when you are stuck on them while a train doesn't have room for a broadway show.
ohio to florida is too far for a train to make sense, but you are correct trains need to move faster to be useful. But faster needs expensive track work (at 300 kmh you look both ways see the tracks are clear and then get killed by the coming train you didn't see) so amtrack tries to cheat with slow service that is more evpensive than flying
Views are pretty great, to be honest! If your job allows remote work and the train route has cell or Wi-Fi coverage, I highly recommend giving it a try. I've had some of my most productive workdays on trains. (Not being able to schedule too many meetings certainly helps.)
I want them to be less expensive and faster; there’s no reason to take a train over airplanes when the trains take an entire day and cost the same or more than airfare.
> If you want more people riding trains, make them faster.
Amtrak passenger trains mostly run on rails which are owned by big RR corporations - running when, where, and if the corporation doesn't have some more-profitable freight train using the rails. And don't expect construction & maintenance standards (especially maximum speed & roughness of ride) to be any better than what the freight trains need, either.
I've used Amtrak's sleeper car. I've tried to use it twice, but the second time the train was scheduled to arrive at 12:05 AM or something like that so I fudged the date on the reservation. The first time I used it, the train was set to arrive at 10 PM or so. Perfect for sleeping, I thought. Well, the train was delayed for a long time, so we didn't actually get going until well after midnight, and since I'd arrived on time there was a lot of waiting on uncomfortable plastic seats, not designed for laying down on, in the lobby. They also don't keep the food service going overnight once you're actually on the train. If the train had been on time, I would not have been able to eat at all before arriving at my destination 8 hours away. But since they ran very late I was thankfully able to get some breakfast.
Oh, and as for the snafu mentioned with me booking on the wrong day, Amtrak's department that deals with issuing refunds does not operate past normal hours, so if you find yourself booked on the wrong day at the last minute, there's no way to weigh your options financially because you don't know how much they'll decide to give you back. The experience really sucked for other reasons, and although I love trains, I will never be riding Amtrak again.
My wife and I had planned a trip with kids on the sleeper cars from Vancouver to San Diego (with some stops along the way). We thought it would be a fun adventure.
After taking a trip to just Tacoma to catch a flight from there she told me "no way". The trains were extremely late, customer service non-existant and on returning the train sat locked up at the Vancouver station for 40 minutes with no announcement and no explanation later.
North American train service is a hot mess.
> But Amtrak’s problem isn’t demand—it’s supply ... Sleeper accommodations on the increasingly popular long-distance services often sell out months in advance, and much of the country remains underserved by rail
I guess I agree with this broadly but I'm not sure the locations trains travel to and capacity is the issues I'd pinpoint.
I've looked into traveling via train a few times now and generally speaking I haven't because the prices were too high and the trains were too slow.
I'd happily get on a train from Maimi to NYC if I could board at 6 pm and get off at 9 am like it really were a hotel on wheels.
But the reality is that it's a 35 hour trip on Amtrack today if there are no delays. I'd have to board at 11 am, get off at 9 pm the next day and transfer halfway.
Travel from DC through New England is about the only convenient use of Amtrak. Travel times in the midwest are an absolute joke. 12 hours from Pittsburgh to New York City vs. a 1-hour flight to Newark and <30 minute ride to Penn Station.
The Cascadia corridor is pretty decent, too. The train between Seattle to Portland is time-competitive with driving, and much more comfortable.
Be happy if you're even on the network. I'm in Nashville and we're not connected at all. Amtrak has proposed a plan of eventually putting it on the end of a route which would be convenient for going to Chattanooga or Atlanta and likely nowhere else.
Most of the state-supported routes (e.g., the trips between DC and other points in Virginia) are also pretty decent. But any long-distance route is pretty much a crapshoot.
I used to ride Empire service the time. Very comfortable ride, especially after about half of the train got out at Albany and I could get some quiet time in the dining car, along with one of those disgusting hotdogs or meatball subs or cup noodles. The long delays between Albany and Buffalo were annoying, but apparently that's no longer a problem. I loved the train compared to the bus or flying or driving, great way to travel. Although nothing beats the flexibility of driving, especially if you don't have a pickup (or a reliable taxi) waiting for you at the destination. And that's a big problem in the USA -- no connecting transit in most places, once you get off the train you're basically stranded.
I don't think you'll ever see HSR going that far. You can go from DC to NYC in a few hours, and it can be even faster if they upgrade the acela. They recently started service from Orlando to Miami and I think are planning tampa next. Texas also has HSR being built also, but is further out. CA has been working on HSR since 2008 and is like several billions and several years overdue
It shouldn't even need to be high-speed rail. NYC to Miami is just a bit over a thousand hours, and at 15 hours (6pm to 9am), that's an average of about 70mph.
The real speed of the train would need to be faster, accounting for the fact that the route is not direct and has stops in the middle, but it should be doable with "regular" train technology.
I'm going to be honest, they have an uphill battle. Why would I want to sleep on a train when I could just fly between cities during the day? I'm sure some people will cite not dealing with the TSA or airport security as a reason, but when it takes hours instead of actual days to get from Point A to Point B, people are going to choose the plane.
If I have the choice between traveling somewhere during daytime for a few hours or going overnight, I‘d choose overnight every time. Traveling during daytime always feels like wasted time to me, and it’s always a little bit exhausting. During the night I can sleep and arrive at my destination rested and ready to go.
I've taken intercity sleeper trains a few times before, and I'd take one over air travel in a heartbeat if it wasn't so much more expensive.
Beyond airport security, you can arrive at the station minutes, not hours, before departure, and train stations are usually right in the city center, saving even more time, to say nothing of comfort (I personally value an hour spent reaching a flight at five less hours of vacation time).
On top of that, it usually saves at least one night in a hotel!
All that is for European distances though, i.e. a single night spent on the train, not a night and the better part of a day and more.
Yeah it's just too slow AND too expensive to be an option. I've compared between the two before and train was like 4 days and $500 while the flight was 3 hours and $200.
I would much rather take my kids (aged <5) on a train to visit family than on a plane.
I thought that too until I looked at the complex connection I'd have to make (long layovers...) high prices and how long it takes. I end up making the 20 hour drive as the time lost is still my best value and I beat the train.
If you live in the Northeast Corridor (DC, Philadelphia, NYC, Boston) then the Acela express is really convenient. The only catch is that a Megabus trip is usually 1/3rd the price.
Amtrak isn't in a position to meaningfully change the quality of their service (e.g. speed/cost), so the only thing that's left is to juggle "Marketing Strategies" around in an attempt to grab a little bit more cash from the scenic tourism crowd.
It's a shame, though. I really love train travel, the sound, the smells, the locomotive technology - everything about it. Too bad Amtrak is stuck somewhere in the 1970's in terms of speed/cost.
Yes we know why, so your exorbitant fares can look better. I don’t think this is going to budge the needle. I want to use trains in the USA but it is simply never cost effective when I compare to airfare.
This can be true for cross country rides, but riding Amtrak is cheaper than flying for some regional corridors. This goes for Chicago to St Louis($30), Chicago to Kansas City($80), Chicago to Milwaukee ($19), Philadelphia to Boston ($55), Boston to Providence ($15), Philadelphia to DC ($25) and Philadelphia to NYC ($25).
When I look up a train from Chicago to St. Louis on google maps it's giving me the Texas Eagle for $93 and a travel time (station to station) of 5 hours 15 minutes. I can drive it in about 4 hours and $60 or less in gas.
The more direct route from Chicago to St Louis is via the Lincoln Service. Planning a little ahead, a trip next Tuesday from Chicago to St Louis on the Lincoln Service can be had for $30. You generally don't want to schedule at the last minute with Amtrak, unless you don't mind spending twice as much.
Train vs car is a different comparison, being able to accomplish things on the train (reading a book, doing work on your laptop with wi-fi) vs being in a car for 4 hours is a completely different value proposition.
Only 1 hour more and a bit more money for the ability to be productive or enjoy entertainment on a train is very appealing to me
We're also talking about Amtrak, so very likely it will unexpectedly be 9 hours, the WiFi won't work, and you'll arrive at your destination in the middle of the night and find that the public transit has stopped running for the day.
My grandfather worked on the railroad. He built a bona fide model train set for me to run in the early 80s. I've loved trains all my life, and I ride them as much as possible. It was so exciting when Phoenix finally got our light rail in 2008, and I could again ride the train as an ordinary commuting human. For a bonus there's a freight line right behind here, and sometimes I hear/see it.
Once, I took Amtrak up from San Diego to Santa Barbara. That was a lovely scenic trip. However, upon arriving in Arizona, it saddened me to discover that our Amtrak service is practically non-existent. There's not even a proper station in our city!
Wouldn't it be lovely to hop on a local train and ride it, to Flagstaff, Sonora, Grand Canyon, Tucson, Yuma, Santa Fe(DUH!) or beyond? But that's simply impossible for so many reasons. It'd be logistically crazy for me even to ride to San Diego from here.
So I've resigned myself to just abandoning Amtrak as a transportation option, and it's quite sad because they used to have a better reputation, but powerful forces ran them into the ground, and the American Southwest is so widely sprawling, that trying to get rights-of-way and tracks laid just for passenger rail is a fool's errand, because why not simply fly on Southwest Airlines?
Now that the airlines are being decimated and falling apart, however, I see a future with more impetus to ground transportation like that. I feel also that a CA high-speed rail project, greatly ridiculed, is pragmatic planning for a realistic future.
[dead]
America is just too big for trains. In europe you don't take a train between large countries. I tried to take a train from Madrid to Paris it was going to be like 11 hours while the flight was 2. Nobody does this. Trains are useful for within a country, which in the US is like traveling within a given state. Sure we could invest a lot in that. But the idea that people are going to cross the country on a train is idiotic.
America is too big for planes, too. If your transportation solution is flying, now everyone has to get around via endless highways or big, complicated regional airports, and you can only have so many of those. There's a reason why rural areas in North America have completely different politics from urban areas, and why so much of it is driven by a sense of isolation and abandonment. Trains promise to help here because they are able to stop in small places that will never, ever have practical airports.
A good rail network provides a reliable, consistent, repeatable, and straightforward three hour connection from Nowheresberg to the nearest city. Slow, but good enough to feel like they exist in the same planet. Unfortunately, that promise is subtle, and it plays out over decades, so the reward system we've created for ourselves is incapable of supporting it. And thus, we have Amtrak and confederate flags.
Giving Amtrak priority over freight on rail lines is a mistake. Amtrak travel times are still terrible and freight is delayed. Use each transportation system for what its good at. Trains: moving tons of freight efficiently over land. Planes: Moving people efficiently over long distances.
Amtrak is supposed to get priority over freight, in my experience the freight carriers rarely abide by that, so it seems silly to blame freight delays on Amtrak. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/30/business/norfolk-southern...
Passenger trains are more energy efficient on a passenger mile basis.
It depends. Coast to coast trains can pollute more than a flight: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/04/climate/trains-planes-car...