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I generally trend towards flights because US trains are pre-emptible by commercial traffic. My experience has been delays are de jure versus the exception.
by ecspike 9y ago
I generally trend towards flights because US trains are pre-emptible by commercial traffic. My experience has been delays are de jure versus the exception.
- addicted 9y agoI think Acela is an exception to this, but I may be wrong.
- leeter 9y agoLegally it's supposed to be the other way around, but not all railroads give way. Many just take the fine that Amtrak levies on them and shrug.
- ams6110 9y agoI don't think that's right. For most intercity service, the tracks are owned by a freight line and freight has priority. There are some routes where Amtrak owns the track or at least has priority rights agreements but they are the minority.
- jcranmer 9y agoThe way it works is that the freight railroads are supposed to clear a slot for Amtrak's timetable. If Amtrak misses that slot, then the freight trains get priority. The end result is that trains are either on time or substantially delayed (6+ hrs) with no "slightly" late performance.
- ghaff 9y agoThe Northeast Corridor isn't without its delays but it works pretty well in my experience. Long haul Amtrak trains, on the other hand, I'm led to understand can be a real horror show with delays largely because of pre-emption by freight as you say. I'm not sure the current status, but there's presumably a lot of upgrades happening on the Northeast Corridor, in part just to update old infrastructure and in part because it's near capacity at certain times. It's also the region that makes all the money that's then lost in pretty much the whole rest of the country.