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My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago. We purchased a private cabin. We were 8 hours late leaving Seattle and

My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago. We purchased a private cabin. We were 8 hours late leaving Seattle and couldn't get into our cabin until we got to Spokane because of some sort of merge of trains coming from Portland and Seattle. Got to Spokane, got our cabin, another 6 hour delay. By the time we reached the upper Midwest, they were rationing food, literally cutting every meal (that we had already paid for) in half. We eventually arrived in Chicago about 22 hours late. The train was disgustingly dirty and the employees were surly and unhelpful. Having taken dozens of train trips in Japan since 2001 I was incredibly excited for the American train experience. It was shit and I will never take an Amtrak again.

sushisushisushi 8y ago
>It was shit and I will never take an Amtrak again. All Amtrak lines are operated a little differently, AFAIK. As far as the West Coast is concerned, I find both the Pacific Surfliner and the Coastal Starlight to be pleasant and enjoyable (although not very affordable). The Northeast Regional on the East Coast is pretty affordable, runs often, and makes traveling between cities in the Northeast megalopolis without a car pretty trivial, which is nice. All that's to say that I wouldn't judge Amtrak by its least-used routes.
munk-a 8y ago
My wife and I were (up here in Canada) looking for a nice mellow train ride with scenery, out of Vancouver you can catch a train to Jasper and on northward to Prince George but... the cost of both of us to ride and have a cabin for two is 5k, so alternative to taking a 4 day train ride is flying out to london three separate times for the weekend. Alternatively we could book a fancy hotel room in down-town for two weeks and have a ritzy stay-cation. I don't know why continental american train service is so stupidly over priced and inconvenient, but I really hope at some point they realize they are currently uncompetitive and could actually make more money offering a better service for a more reasonable fee.
- Scoundreller 8y ago
  Canada Post is doing the same thing. Probably all others too. Their continuous response to lower revenues is to raise prices. This just feeds ever-more innovation in the message and package delivery markets, sabotaging themselves.
  - munk-a 8y ago
    Canada Post is doing that to their letter service which I think is just a write off at this point. Their package service is amazing and far exceeds the US though. The existence of flex delivery boxes has made it less terrible to receive packages if you live in a Condo/Apartment and is beloved by my fellow non-detached-home-owning co-workers (which, given this is Vancouver, is everyone)
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      The package service comes at a price though. Canadian shippers could only dream of US rates for first class mail packages and flat rate boxes with insurance and tracking. Canada Post did a good job of privatizing outlets, and as you said, leveraging that network for the last mile. What Vancouver is missing is staffed front-desks like Toronto ;)
      - munk-a 8y ago
        Coming from the US the last thing I want is a US style post office, I love my 7/11 post pick up spot (though my current one is now a shoppers I assume US folks won't recognize that)... Dedicated post offices are incredibly silly, embed them into stores, and offering to reimburse clerks for the time they spend actually dealing with mail is wonderful. It means that instead of having one location in little old New Westminster we've got 6, downtown vancouver (just the penisula up to chinatown-ish) has 14 post offices in 2.3 sq. miles... that's way better than some gigantic greek revival building in the middle of town that absolutely everyone has to spend 30 minutes on a bus to get to.
- NittLion78 8y ago
rayiner 8y ago
Yay government-run train service.
- abalone 8y ago
  Other governments do it just fine.
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Who? In most of Asia trains are privatized. In Europe, the passenger rail companies are in various stages of privatization. Rail in the UK is more or less privatised. Deutche Bahn, SNCF, Trenitalia, DSB, etc., are private companies. The government is involved in the sense they are the largest or sole shareholder, but they are run as for-profit corporations. For example, they compete in other countries. Many, such as SNCF, are on the path to further privatization: https://www.railway-technology.com/features/french-rail-reform-sncf-brink-privatisation https://www.railway-technology.com/features/french-rail-refo.... Amtrak, though legally an independent corporation, is in practice operated like a government agency.
    - taoistextremist 8y ago
      Amtrak isn't a government agency though. It's a public-private partnership AFAIK
      - rayiner 8y ago
        Amtrak is a corporation owned by the U.S. government. That structure is typical for rail operators. What's different is that Amtrak is operated like part of the government, while European rail operators are actually operated like private companies. For example, the CEO of Deutsche Bahn is paid like a private CEO, while the CEO of Amtrak is paid like a senior government officer (and right now, actually, not being paid at all).
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Quasi-public to be accurate. That said, Amtrak came into existence because most of the private rail companies had failed or were failing. Had the federal government not stepped in, we'd arguably have no long distance passenger rail service outside the Northeast Corridor (where Amtrak basically makes the money that it then loses on pretty much every other route in the country).
Zimahl 8y ago
For those that don't know, the Empire Builder from Seattle stops in Spokane to hook up with a train that is coming from Portland. The combined train then goes all the way to Chicago. If either are delayed it can result in waiting for the other and long delays are apparently the norm and not the exception. My wife and her grandfather took the train from Portland to Minnesota in the fall of last year. There were a number of issues with the service on the train that make it bad enough, but the speed of the train is a major problem of why these trains are somewhat worthless for travel. Freight trains get priority on the rail lines so many times the train was stopped for possibly hours waiting for freight trains to pass. On my wife's trip the refrigeration went out at some point so cold food was no longer available, nor was food that required refrigeration before it was cooked. Fortunately they disembarked soon after that happened. The rest of the train was still a day or so from Chicago and those passengers were stuck with god knows what to eat.
- Aloha 8y ago
  Passenger trains do get priority in the US, your mileage may vary by railroad to how forgiving they are for schedule delays. Basically Amtrak has to keep to a specific schedule, if ut misses it's window it loses the priority it had.
  - pacala 8y ago
    I took a train from Chicago to LA almost 20 years ago. There were 6 passenger cars attached to 60+ freight cars. There was a 20+ hours delay. All the stops were in dilapidated industrial areas. A ridiculous experience. Never again. For a transcontinental trip: drive a car or a van.
    - Aloha 8y ago
      Amtrak has never run Mixed freight trains, so this must not have been on amtrak.
      - TkTech 8y ago
godot 8y ago
I took the Coast Starlight (connects SF and LA) a couple of times in the past 10 years, and I have had a pleasant experience each time. Food was good and while the train wasn't sparkling clean, at least in the areas I cared about (my seat and car) it was fine. Just the bathrooms weren't great. Admittedly this is a shorter trip than yours; this one is only an 8~10 hours ride.
- dang 8y ago
  I like that train because it's perfect for getting work done.
- abhgh 8y ago
  I tried taking the train from Santa Barbara to San Jose - I have heard a lot about the picturesque route - but the train was delayed at arrival by a few hr, and since I had a prior engagement, I'd to rent a car and drive to SJ.
- 333c 8y ago
  I've taken the Coast Starlight about 4-6 times between SF (well, Emeryville) and Portland/Seattle. Most were pretty much on time, except for one time when the train hit a person/car on its trip up from LA. It arrived around 5 hours late at the station and ended up being something like 10 hours late by the time we disembarked. It can be frustrating to experience long delays if you have a tight schedule, but otherwise I think it makes the most sense to just relax and enjoy the view. I'll be taking the California Zephyr (Chicago to Emeryville; said to be one of the most picturesque routes) this May, which I'm quite looking forward to. It will be my first time riding that line, and my first time in a sleeper.
  - zehaeva 8y ago
    I took the California Zephyr ... uh ... 25 years ago? It was a lot of fun! And a beautiful ride! I hope you enjoy it!
  - Kadin 8y ago
    > It can be frustrating to experience long delays if you have a tight schedule Very true. Although I've had some awful delays on airlines as well, and given the choice between being stuck on a passenger train and in a plane, I'd take the train every time. (Though admittedly the airlines have gotten slightly better about not leaving passengers on planes to stew in their own juices on the tarmac for hours and hours. But it took some people really slapping them around in court I think.)
otachack 8y ago
I believe the reason is because freight gets higher priority on the rails than travelers in the U.S.
- reaperducer 8y ago
  Yes, and no. To the railroads it gets higher priority. But if a freight train bocks a passenger train the railroad gets fined by the hour (quarter hour?). However, the freight railroads often just eat the fine as a cost of doing business. Like delivery companies do with parking tickets.
  - plopz 8y ago
    Fined by who? Aren't all the railways privately owned and just licensed by Amtrak?
    - Aloha 8y ago
      Amtrak doesn't even license it - Amtrak is actually owned mostly by the freight railroads.
      - vonmoltke 8y ago
        The National Passenger Rail Corporation is a federally chartered corporation whose controlling interest is owned by the US federal government.
        nerfhammer 8y ago
        Yup. It's the rails underneath it that are mostly owned by freight or other rail companies.
    - vonmoltke 8y ago
      The law that created Amtrak provided for it to operate on tracks owned by freight companies, with usage fees, under the condition that passenger trains get higher priority than freight trains. Part of that condition is fines, payable from the freight company to Amtrak, for Amtrak train delays caused by the freight company. Unfortunately, for various political reasons that part of the law has almost no teeth so freight companies openly flout it or treat the meager fines as the cost of doing business. It's a big part of the reason that passenger rail sucks in the US.
reaperducer 8y ago
My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago I've done the Empire Builder back-and-forth between Seattle and Chicago, or Saint Paul about six times in the last six years, and never had anything like that happen. I can only assume that things have improved since your trip. The worst thing I experienced was a four-hour delay in Milwaukee because of a broken down freight train blocking the line. But we were free to get out and walk around and stretch our legs.
deanalevitt 8y ago
I've done some longer distance trips with Amtrak and generally had a pretty good experience outside of Union Station in Chicago which was awful.
Mr_Shiba 8y ago
Don't sweat! We've got a wonderful car culture here in America, AM I RIGHT!?
- dang 8y ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
  - Mr_Shiba 8y ago
    I don't consider bashing a toxic-unsustainable transport culture unsubstantive.
    - dang 8y ago
      What makes it unsubstantive is the low signal/noise ratio of your own comment. Happening to be right, such as when criticizing something evil or dumb, doesn't by itself add to that. Also, you've posted a lot of these unsubstantive comments. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site more to heart? We'd be grateful. These other links also might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html
ddebernardy 8y ago
On the plus side, there's a saying that suggests a good way to know if your couple can weather the test of time is to sit on top of each other for a long enough period of time -- such as a weeks-long camping trip, or a long, harrowing bus or train ride. That makes you quite lucky, and you eventually got married. Most couples don't know if their future marriage is seaworthy until they hit their first major storm.
sandworm101 8y ago
You were heading east. Notice that all these reporters start in the east and head west. Buy a ticket and start your journey as close to DC/NY as possible. It is very different. I dont know why. I suspect power politics, or the interaction with freight trends, but i have heard this from many travellers.
city41 8y ago
That's too bad. I've taken the train from Denver to Iowa and from Chicago to Iowa several times. Very relaxing and very enjoyable. It's my favorite form of travel. You of course have to accept it takes much, much longer than flying and even driving. Good to be aware longer train rides might not be as nice.
- Gibbon1 8y ago
  Denver to Chicago would be perfect for high speed rail. An express high speed train could beat air travel door to door.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    No it wouldn't. The ridership cliff for HSR is around the 3-4 hour mark, or about 500-600 miles--Denver-Chicago is 1,000 miles, well outside that range. What would work quite well, though, would be something like the Auto Train: you can get an overnight ride that ferries your car and you don't have to drive the thoroughly boring drive of the Great Plains.
    - justjash 8y ago
      That would be great. The drive across Kansas is torture.
    - Gibbon1 8y ago
      By the time you got to the airport and through security theater and on the plane, then cleared for take off, HSR would be stopping in Omaha.
segmondy 8y ago
I just priced from my Midwest to West Coast and it's almost $5,000 for 2. As if that didn't giving me pause, your comment really put the nail on the lid.
- dmckeon 8y ago
  For Chicago to Los Angeles, in June, I’m seeing pricing for two people at USD 286, 358, 688, or 723, depending on seating or roomette, for direct or via Texas, and 1109 max via Sacramento & the coast. Granted, I may be misreading the Amtrak site, whose UI/UX is sub-optimal.
riffic 8y ago
That just sums up the American experience for just about anything. The country is disintegrating internally and I would blame it squarely on its military-industrial complex.
cynoclast 8y ago
>Amtrak Found the problem.
geebee 8y ago
Huh. Anecdotally I’ve heard from friends who took a scenic train from San Francisco to Denver and San Francisco to Seattle and found it a pleasant experience. I think this was specifically a train for fun and scenery. The destination is part of the point too but this wasn’t marketed or intended as transportation as a means of getting from point a to b. In short I’m sure your experience is a reliable indicator of at least some of the state of train travel in the us. But it can be better than this, as a niche industry.

sushisushisushi 8y ago

>It was shit and I will never take an Amtrak again. All Amtrak lines are operated a little differently, AFAIK. As far as the West Coast is concerned, I find both the Pacific Surfliner and the Coastal Starlight to be pleasant and enjoyable (although not very affordable). The Northeast Regional on the East Coast is pretty affordable, runs often, and makes traveling between cities in the Northeast megalopolis without a car pretty trivial, which is nice. All that's to say that I wouldn't judge Amtrak by its least-used routes.

munk-a 8y ago

My wife and I were (up here in Canada) looking for a nice mellow train ride with scenery, out of Vancouver you can catch a train to Jasper and on northward to Prince George but... the cost of both of us to ride and have a cabin for two is 5k, so alternative to taking a 4 day train ride is flying out to london three separate times for the weekend. Alternatively we could book a fancy hotel room in down-town for two weeks and have a ritzy stay-cation. I don't know why continental american train service is so stupidly over priced and inconvenient, but I really hope at some point they realize they are currently uncompetitive and could actually make more money offering a better service for a more reasonable fee.

Scoundreller 8y ago
Canada Post is doing the same thing. Probably all others too. Their continuous response to lower revenues is to raise prices. This just feeds ever-more innovation in the message and package delivery markets, sabotaging themselves.
- munk-a 8y ago
  Canada Post is doing that to their letter service which I think is just a write off at this point. Their package service is amazing and far exceeds the US though. The existence of flex delivery boxes has made it less terrible to receive packages if you live in a Condo/Apartment and is beloved by my fellow non-detached-home-owning co-workers (which, given this is Vancouver, is everyone)
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    The package service comes at a price though. Canadian shippers could only dream of US rates for first class mail packages and flat rate boxes with insurance and tracking. Canada Post did a good job of privatizing outlets, and as you said, leveraging that network for the last mile. What Vancouver is missing is staffed front-desks like Toronto ;)
    - munk-a 8y ago
      Coming from the US the last thing I want is a US style post office, I love my 7/11 post pick up spot (though my current one is now a shoppers I assume US folks won't recognize that)... Dedicated post offices are incredibly silly, embed them into stores, and offering to reimburse clerks for the time they spend actually dealing with mail is wonderful. It means that instead of having one location in little old New Westminster we've got 6, downtown vancouver (just the penisula up to chinatown-ish) has 14 post offices in 2.3 sq. miles... that's way better than some gigantic greek revival building in the middle of town that absolutely everyone has to spend 30 minutes on a bus to get to.
NittLion78 8y ago

rayiner 8y ago

Yay government-run train service.

abalone 8y ago
Other governments do it just fine.
- rayiner 8y ago
  Who? In most of Asia trains are privatized. In Europe, the passenger rail companies are in various stages of privatization. Rail in the UK is more or less privatised. Deutche Bahn, SNCF, Trenitalia, DSB, etc., are private companies. The government is involved in the sense they are the largest or sole shareholder, but they are run as for-profit corporations. For example, they compete in other countries. Many, such as SNCF, are on the path to further privatization: https://www.railway-technology.com/features/french-rail-reform-sncf-brink-privatisation https://www.railway-technology.com/features/french-rail-refo.... Amtrak, though legally an independent corporation, is in practice operated like a government agency.
  - taoistextremist 8y ago
    Amtrak isn't a government agency though. It's a public-private partnership AFAIK
    - rayiner 8y ago
      Amtrak is a corporation owned by the U.S. government. That structure is typical for rail operators. What's different is that Amtrak is operated like part of the government, while European rail operators are actually operated like private companies. For example, the CEO of Deutsche Bahn is paid like a private CEO, while the CEO of Amtrak is paid like a senior government officer (and right now, actually, not being paid at all).
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Quasi-public to be accurate. That said, Amtrak came into existence because most of the private rail companies had failed or were failing. Had the federal government not stepped in, we'd arguably have no long distance passenger rail service outside the Northeast Corridor (where Amtrak basically makes the money that it then loses on pretty much every other route in the country).

Zimahl 8y ago

For those that don't know, the Empire Builder from Seattle stops in Spokane to hook up with a train that is coming from Portland. The combined train then goes all the way to Chicago. If either are delayed it can result in waiting for the other and long delays are apparently the norm and not the exception. My wife and her grandfather took the train from Portland to Minnesota in the fall of last year. There were a number of issues with the service on the train that make it bad enough, but the speed of the train is a major problem of why these trains are somewhat worthless for travel. Freight trains get priority on the rail lines so many times the train was stopped for possibly hours waiting for freight trains to pass. On my wife's trip the refrigeration went out at some point so cold food was no longer available, nor was food that required refrigeration before it was cooked. Fortunately they disembarked soon after that happened. The rest of the train was still a day or so from Chicago and those passengers were stuck with god knows what to eat.

Aloha 8y ago
Passenger trains do get priority in the US, your mileage may vary by railroad to how forgiving they are for schedule delays. Basically Amtrak has to keep to a specific schedule, if ut misses it's window it loses the priority it had.
- pacala 8y ago
  I took a train from Chicago to LA almost 20 years ago. There were 6 passenger cars attached to 60+ freight cars. There was a 20+ hours delay. All the stops were in dilapidated industrial areas. A ridiculous experience. Never again. For a transcontinental trip: drive a car or a van.
  - Aloha 8y ago
    Amtrak has never run Mixed freight trains, so this must not have been on amtrak.
    - TkTech 8y ago

godot 8y ago

I took the Coast Starlight (connects SF and LA) a couple of times in the past 10 years, and I have had a pleasant experience each time. Food was good and while the train wasn't sparkling clean, at least in the areas I cared about (my seat and car) it was fine. Just the bathrooms weren't great. Admittedly this is a shorter trip than yours; this one is only an 8~10 hours ride.

dang 8y ago
I like that train because it's perfect for getting work done.
abhgh 8y ago
I tried taking the train from Santa Barbara to San Jose - I have heard a lot about the picturesque route - but the train was delayed at arrival by a few hr, and since I had a prior engagement, I'd to rent a car and drive to SJ.
333c 8y ago
I've taken the Coast Starlight about 4-6 times between SF (well, Emeryville) and Portland/Seattle. Most were pretty much on time, except for one time when the train hit a person/car on its trip up from LA. It arrived around 5 hours late at the station and ended up being something like 10 hours late by the time we disembarked. It can be frustrating to experience long delays if you have a tight schedule, but otherwise I think it makes the most sense to just relax and enjoy the view. I'll be taking the California Zephyr (Chicago to Emeryville; said to be one of the most picturesque routes) this May, which I'm quite looking forward to. It will be my first time riding that line, and my first time in a sleeper.
- zehaeva 8y ago
  I took the California Zephyr ... uh ... 25 years ago? It was a lot of fun! And a beautiful ride! I hope you enjoy it!
- Kadin 8y ago
  > It can be frustrating to experience long delays if you have a tight schedule Very true. Although I've had some awful delays on airlines as well, and given the choice between being stuck on a passenger train and in a plane, I'd take the train every time. (Though admittedly the airlines have gotten slightly better about not leaving passengers on planes to stew in their own juices on the tarmac for hours and hours. But it took some people really slapping them around in court I think.)

otachack 8y ago

I believe the reason is because freight gets higher priority on the rails than travelers in the U.S.

reaperducer 8y ago
Yes, and no. To the railroads it gets higher priority. But if a freight train bocks a passenger train the railroad gets fined by the hour (quarter hour?). However, the freight railroads often just eat the fine as a cost of doing business. Like delivery companies do with parking tickets.
- plopz 8y ago
  Fined by who? Aren't all the railways privately owned and just licensed by Amtrak?
  - Aloha 8y ago
    Amtrak doesn't even license it - Amtrak is actually owned mostly by the freight railroads.
    - vonmoltke 8y ago
      The National Passenger Rail Corporation is a federally chartered corporation whose controlling interest is owned by the US federal government.
      - nerfhammer 8y ago
        Yup. It's the rails underneath it that are mostly owned by freight or other rail companies.
  - vonmoltke 8y ago
    The law that created Amtrak provided for it to operate on tracks owned by freight companies, with usage fees, under the condition that passenger trains get higher priority than freight trains. Part of that condition is fines, payable from the freight company to Amtrak, for Amtrak train delays caused by the freight company. Unfortunately, for various political reasons that part of the law has almost no teeth so freight companies openly flout it or treat the meager fines as the cost of doing business. It's a big part of the reason that passenger rail sucks in the US.

reaperducer 8y ago

My (now) wife and I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago about 10 years ago I've done the Empire Builder back-and-forth between Seattle and Chicago, or Saint Paul about six times in the last six years, and never had anything like that happen. I can only assume that things have improved since your trip. The worst thing I experienced was a four-hour delay in Milwaukee because of a broken down freight train blocking the line. But we were free to get out and walk around and stretch our legs.

deanalevitt 8y ago

I've done some longer distance trips with Amtrak and generally had a pretty good experience outside of Union Station in Chicago which was awful.

Mr_Shiba 8y ago

Don't sweat! We've got a wonderful car culture here in America, AM I RIGHT!?

dang 8y ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
- Mr_Shiba 8y ago
  I don't consider bashing a toxic-unsustainable transport culture unsubstantive.
  - dang 8y ago
    What makes it unsubstantive is the low signal/noise ratio of your own comment. Happening to be right, such as when criticizing something evil or dumb, doesn't by itself add to that. Also, you've posted a lot of these unsubstantive comments. Could you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of this site more to heart? We'd be grateful. These other links also might help: https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hackernews.html

ddebernardy 8y ago

On the plus side, there's a saying that suggests a good way to know if your couple can weather the test of time is to sit on top of each other for a long enough period of time -- such as a weeks-long camping trip, or a long, harrowing bus or train ride. That makes you quite lucky, and you eventually got married. Most couples don't know if their future marriage is seaworthy until they hit their first major storm.

sandworm101 8y ago

You were heading east. Notice that all these reporters start in the east and head west. Buy a ticket and start your journey as close to DC/NY as possible. It is very different. I dont know why. I suspect power politics, or the interaction with freight trends, but i have heard this from many travellers.

city41 8y ago

That's too bad. I've taken the train from Denver to Iowa and from Chicago to Iowa several times. Very relaxing and very enjoyable. It's my favorite form of travel. You of course have to accept it takes much, much longer than flying and even driving. Good to be aware longer train rides might not be as nice.

Gibbon1 8y ago
Denver to Chicago would be perfect for high speed rail. An express high speed train could beat air travel door to door.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  No it wouldn't. The ridership cliff for HSR is around the 3-4 hour mark, or about 500-600 miles--Denver-Chicago is 1,000 miles, well outside that range. What would work quite well, though, would be something like the Auto Train: you can get an overnight ride that ferries your car and you don't have to drive the thoroughly boring drive of the Great Plains.
  - justjash 8y ago
    That would be great. The drive across Kansas is torture.
  - Gibbon1 8y ago
    By the time you got to the airport and through security theater and on the plane, then cleared for take off, HSR would be stopping in Omaha.

segmondy 8y ago

I just priced from my Midwest to West Coast and it's almost $5,000 for 2. As if that didn't giving me pause, your comment really put the nail on the lid.

dmckeon 8y ago
For Chicago to Los Angeles, in June, I’m seeing pricing for two people at USD 286, 358, 688, or 723, depending on seating or roomette, for direct or via Texas, and 1109 max via Sacramento & the coast. Granted, I may be misreading the Amtrak site, whose UI/UX is sub-optimal.

riffic 8y ago

That just sums up the American experience for just about anything. The country is disintegrating internally and I would blame it squarely on its military-industrial complex.

cynoclast 8y ago

>Amtrak Found the problem.

geebee 8y ago

Huh. Anecdotally I’ve heard from friends who took a scenic train from San Francisco to Denver and San Francisco to Seattle and found it a pleasant experience. I think this was specifically a train for fun and scenery. The destination is part of the point too but this wasn’t marketed or intended as transportation as a means of getting from point a to b. In short I’m sure your experience is a reliable indicator of at least some of the state of train travel in the us. But it can be better than this, as a niche industry.