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Amtrak might add more routes, but they won't be faster than a car
- rmason 5y agoWhen they discontinued some of these routes it was cheaper to buy each passenger a first class airline ticket than have them take the train. I love trains and there are places where cities are close together and if the train went 150 mph or faster where it might make sense. I'd love to see a Cleveland to Detroit to Chicago train for example. But I'm not taking the train if travelling by car was faster, that makes no sense. We're not more than 5-10 years away from a time where travelling by car could mean sleeping (or working on a laptop) in the back seat until the end of the trip is possible.
- johnday 5y ago> We're not more than 5-10 years away from a time where travelling by car could mean sleeping (or working on a laptop) in the back seat until the end of the trip is possible. There is no reason to think that this is true beyond marketing and sheer optimism.
- ngokevin 5y agoIt's easy to think it if you take Elon at his word (5 years away in 5 years).
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago> We're not more than 5-10 years away from a time where travelling by car could mean sleeping (or working on a laptop) I have a feeling that we might be 5-10 years away for several decades.
- techsupporter 5y ago> But I'm not taking the train if travelling by car was faster, that makes no sense. If you are going purely for minimizing time, all forms of shared transport will be slower than going it alone. A plane trip on a commercial route is slower than getting a private jet, for example. The difference is in how much additional time the shared option takes, and how the experience varies, especially relative to cost. For an Amtrak cross-country trip measured in days, I agree with you; I won't ride that (outside of the trip being the reason for the trip) either. But Amtrak Cascades between Seattle and BC or Portland? I'll definitely take the train for that. I go from downtown to downtown in a bit longer than the time to drive, I don't have to deal with the TSA, I don't have to concentrate on driving myself, I can get food and use the restroom without stopping my trip, and I get a much better seat than on a plane. If the time comparison is within about 50% extra train versus plane or car, I'm taking the train every time.
- BrianOnHN 5y agoTo your point (I guess the downvotes are representing people's thoughts on Tesla), Self-driving could still have a major impact like this without being the "fully-autonomous" version. Virtual routes can be developed with negligible infrastructure(sensors) compared to a trains requirements. However, Amtrak has historically been a socialism that blue-collar towns are OK with participating in, so my guess is that this has more to do with giving government money to those people than solving any real transportation issue.
- ngokevin 5y agoWhat I figured was Amtrak travelers were train enthusiasts or looking for a nostalgic scenic route. There are also some benefits such as less stress than an airport, being able to have a sleeper car, a dining car, more space, and panoramic cars as you go over mountains and through deserts (Western US).
- sudosysgen 5y agoAmtrak and trains in general are great if you can work remote. Being able to start working as soon as you get on the train if you have nothing better to do is amazing.
- someguydave 5y agowhy not fly and get to your destination much faster and work remote from there?
- sudosysgen 5y agoSo I can spend an extra 2h at the airport? No thanks. The best of both worlds is obviously high speed rail.
- tmh88j 5y ago>What I figured was Amtrak travelers were train enthusiasts or looking for a nostalgic scenic route. I was genuinely surprised at all the comments here from people stating they like Amtrak, but that makes a lot of sense. After a dozen or so trips on trains around Europe I now loathe Amtrak and don't see myself ever taking another ride with them outside of extraordinary circumstances.
- vikingerik 5y agoI think most of the Amtrak likers here are comparing it to the plane travel experience, with all the hellish nonsense associated with that. It wins that comparison, even if it's mediocre for what the modern railway experience could be (not all of which is Amtrak's fault, as they don't own the rails.)
- dccoolgai 5y agoIt does not matter. The experience of riding AmTrak and just being left alone and getting your own space to work on whatever you want - especially in the quiet car - is fantastic. Every time the trip is over I find myself wishing it was just 30 minutes longer.
- b9a2cab5 5y agoHaving commuted to work via Amtrak before, the train car shakes far too much and mobile data is far too unreliable (even with 5G) to be able to work without interruption.
- brailsafe 5y agoI suppose this would largely depend on how reliant you are on a connection. If you're writing code, you should totally be able to do that, but maybe constant emailing or whatever would need more consistent connection
- toast0 5y agoEmail really should be OK with intermittent connectivity. We used to dial up, send and receive mail and drop the connection. Yes, there'd be some delays here and there, but that's how email works. However, good luck with modern email solutions, seems like most have forgotten how to work well without good connectivity. But if you need to poke at interactive things, it doesn't work well when the connection is spotty.
- wccrawford 5y agoMy experience on Amtrak is that the lines in the north US are nice, and the ones in the south are awful.
- thesausageking 5y agoWhat route? I've done NYC->BOS dozens of time and always get a lot of work done. Mobile data works for most of the route, the train is smooth, and the seats are roomie so you don't feel cramped like on a plane.
- ddreier 5y agoI'm probably different from most people, but I really wish there were more rail options in the US (I'm in Texas). It's a 4 hour drive from where I live to my hometown. I really don't enjoy driving, and would happily take a train even if it took twice as long as driving. I'd visit home a lot more too.
- Gibbon1 5y agoIf it's a high speed rail line at some distance it becomes faster to go by rail. Even slow rail. I once took the train from Glasgow to London and it was about 5 hours. Same drive I think is 7 hours. Personally I like to remind myself when I'm driving that every one taking mass transit isn't on the road with me.
- involans 5y agoThree West Coast Main Line operates speeds up to 125mph/200kmph, so very much high speed rail in US terms - faster than the Acela if I recall correctly.
- redler 5y agoI’ve seen 155 mph on the Acela, but it only cruises at those speeds for a few minutes on the NY to Boston leg. On these routes it’s not so much freight priority as track quality, segment grading, turn radius, etc. The old Metroliner trains could run nearly this fast. It’s disappointing.
- syops 5y agoIn 1995 China and the U.S. both had essentially zero miles of high speed rail. Today China has tens of thousands of miles of high speed rail and the U.S. still has essentially zero miles of high speed rail. We did invest $6 trillion in 20 years of most less pointless warfare.
- wonnage 5y agoPeople argue about how the demographics of china make this possible, america is too spread out, blah blah blah... I would rather have a thousand miles of pointless HSR than pointlessly bombing a bunch of taliban who are now back and no worse for wear
- 8note 5y agoChina's high speed rail is going to places where they want to increase the Han population.
- wonnage 5y agothanks for the vaguely xenophobic and mostly meaningless comment
- dang 5y ago"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead." a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mushbino 5y agoYou mean the only ethnicity targeted by the one child program?
- dang 5y agoPlease don't take HN threads further into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mattlondon 5y agoPrice is also a factor. In the UK it is often faster take the train on some routes than driving it, but the price is often absurd. For the cost of a tank/half a tank of petrol (£20-50) Vs potentially hundreds for a train ticket. E.g. London to Newcastle is about 280miles. By train I just got quotes for £320 return tickets. I could get there and back in perhaps 1.5 tanks of petrol (approx £60-70) in my hybrid, but will take about an 30mins longer by car (4 hours Vs 4.5 hours) Thanks but no thanks.
- sixothree 5y agoFrom my experience (not recent), Amtrak is barely competitive with flying.
- murderfs 5y agoComparing it now, it looks like it's only competitive if your time is completely worthless. A nonstop flight from Seattle to SFO or SJC is $50, and is ~2 hours plus whatever time it takes to go through security. Via Amtrak, it looks like the best case scenario is $57 for a ride that takes longer than 24 hours?!
- thaumasiotes 5y ago$50 is a depressed rate.
- jdavis703 5y agoIsn’t parking in London going to be really expensive though (I could be wrong, I’ve never driven in London)?
- pasture 5y agoWhat tickets were you looking at? I've had a look and booking a train for 14th Sept 18:00 (Kings X - Newcastle) with a return the next day at the same time, costs £112.60 (£74.25 with a railcard). That brings it a lot closer to the petrol price, but also gives you the advantage of not having to bother concentrating on the road and finding a place to park.
- unearth3d 5y agoI'm in NZ but would gladly take a train (no passenger rail on my island), time spent driving is time I usually can't charge for (eg general sales), and even where I can it's still hours that I can't design. It'd be worthwhile even if it was 10 % slower than driving.
- jdavis703 5y agoIn the US it takes 5 hours to drive from San Francisco to LA. It takes 11 hours to take the train.
- finfinfin 5y agoIf we could reduce that to 6-7 hours I would take the train every single time. Driving is an active process vs taking the train where I can work/read. Current 11 hours is just too long.
- jdavis703 5y agoI’ve taken the train to LA. It just totally sucks time wise (it’s been hours late every time I’ve taken it.) The worst part is it will be decades before HSR is even completed.
- treis 5y agoThere are buses that do the trip in that time. For what California is spending on HSR they could make the bus free and give passengers $50 for their trouble and come out ahead.
- byroot 5y ago> It takes 11 hours to take the train. How's that even possible? Looking at GMaps, there's roughly 650km of tracks between the two, so that's an average of 60km/h. Even regular speed trains in Europe easily average 100 to 120km/h. Are the tracks in terrible shape? Or are they stuck behind freight trains?
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- amelius 5y agoDoesn't need to be faster if you can sleep on the train. And comfort is also a factor.
- jdavis703 5y agoSure, but Amtrak doesn’t run enough frequency to make the night train use case work. Even on routes that support it, it’s going to be a day train on the opposite trip.
- BrianOnHN 5y agoVirtual routes can/should be developed to enable self-driving. Anything that can be reliably followed as a "track" by "computer vision" would work. Compared to a trains, the infrastructure investment would be negligible to install on major interstates. Cars that currently have cruise control with emergency stopping capabilities could utilize the "tracks" with minimal modifications. Confidence in your safety while being distracted and commuting is the value-add to transportation of Amtrak, and that could be replaced. However, Amtrak has historically been a socialism that blue-collar towns are OK with participating in, so my guess is that this initiative has more to do with giving government money to those people than solving any real transportation issue.
- neonate 5y agohttp://web.archive.org/web/20210902120449/https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/01/tech/amtrak-speed-trains/index.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210902120449/https://edition.cn...
- ljsocal 5y agoOnce again the comparison ignores the time associated with owning and maintaining a car. Next time you’re standing on line at the DMV, ask yourself “Self, would I rather be sitting in a comfy seat on a train looking out at the Pacific coastline?”
- leetcrew 5y agoamtrak isn't exactly cheap. I choose it over car/plane whenever it's practical, but I consider that more of a luxury than anything. a single DC<->NYC roundtrip is already more than my monthly car insurance.
- vuldin 5y agoThis is not a problem inherent to rail systems or travel. This is a symptom of the poor state of the US rail system.
- AceyMan 5y agoI am from Atlanta and went to uni in the Philadelphia area. I was... low-middle class, and we couldn't afford airfare each term for my travels home. (And I still spent Thanksgivings on campus. I know what Matt Damon's character felt like in 'The Martian'...) I regularly took the Amtrak line to make the route—seventeen hours, including an hour-long stopover in middle of the night for the scheduled locomotion change. It was one of the best regular experiences of my life and I met some cool and amazing fellow undergraduates from other east coast schools that I kept in touch with for years. You won't get that driving on the I-95, it goes without saying.
- throwawayboise 5y agoAmtrak can be OK as an occasional experience when you don't really care how long it takes to get somewhere. I did it once, and that was enough. For anyone needing to be somewhere on a schedule it is a disaster.
- ardit33 5y agoI take the NYC to Boston all the time, and the experience / service has been good. I live in NYC and have family in Boston, so Amtrack has been my main mode of transportation. I purposely take the slow train (not the Accela), as it is both cheaper, and easier to work while traveling (restaurant cars). For people that live in the midwest, I can see how Amtrack is this old rag-tag thing, that serves no purpose, but for the North Eastern Corridor, Amtrack is a life saver. I wish this country could invest more into rail routes, and make them faster, instead of spending trillion of dollars in sensless wars. With half of that 2 trillion dollars that we spent on Afghanistan, (and whatever we did in Iraq), we could have had high speed rail in most of the larger cities, at least 10 major routes, making it almost a national high speed rail system. Right now we have 0.
- vagrantJin 5y agoHmm. Interesting. The US has no intercity trains? Is there a reason? I've always seen the NYC subway in movies and just recklessly assumed all major US cities are connected by rail...which is silly of me in hindsight.
- ljsocal 5y agoOnce again comparisons ignore the time associated with owning and maintaining a car. Next time you’re standing on line at the DMV, ask yourself “Self, right now would I rather be sitting in a comfy seat on a train sipping an adult beverage and looking out at the spectacularly beautiful Pacific coastline?”
- tmh88j 5y ago>Once again comparisons ignore the time associated with owning and maintaining a car. Amtrak isn't exactly cheap. A 300 mile trip with Amtrak is the equivalent of 3 months of full coverage auto insurance for me, or 3-4 oil changes, or a brake job. I can drive a lot further than 300 miles with those services performed on my car. >Next time you’re standing on line at the DMV, ask yourself “Self, right now would I rather be sitting in a comfy seat on a train sipping an adult beverage and looking out at the spectacularly beautiful Pacific coastline?” I'm a huge car enthusiast, so definitely no. For me, driving a fast car on a road trip is just as much fun as the destination itself.
- ljsocal 5y agoI've owned a lot of cars and driven over a million miles. After all of that, for me, the full-in the $ and time costs associated with owning a car tips me into the "I'm done with it" camp. I'm glad you still enjoy it, if you ever need a freeloading passenger, I'm your guy! :)
- sokoloff 5y agoMost Americans already have a license and many already have a car. If I’m considering going to NYC on this long weekend, that time is already sunk and the car is ready.
- paul_f 5y agoCompared to taking the train, if you drive, when you arrive you have a car to get around with. You also get to leave when you want and not have to rely on the train schedules. Combine that with the car being significantly cheaper for that incremental trip and I find it difficult to ever justify taking the train.
- Kalanos 5y agoPlus you have to get TO the Amtrack and Back
- pcurve 5y agoI don't mind it not being faster than car. The problem though is, in most American cities, you still need a car to get around once you get there. Uber has made things better. (and why doesn't CNN have separate volume control for videos? They almost always play too loud)
- pornel 5y agoIt's bizarre how U.S. makes driving at 70mph "faster" when the rest of the world has 200mph trains.
- OneEyedRobot 5y agoIt really is a tough problem I think. If you put in high speed rail from my small town in the Sierras down to a nice beach, I'd be all over it. As you probably know, there's really not much in the way of point to point mass transit needed. Vacations are well served by air and car, commutes are everywhere to everywhere within urban and suburban areas. In addition, there's the personal security angle. The US ain't Japan. I figure if people wanted mass transit to be a thing, they'd start by heavily subsidizing comfortable buses. Super scalable, pretty quick, relatively cheap.
- pornel 5y agoNoooo, buses are awful. Why would you want to travel even slower in even more cramped space? 8 hours on a bus when it could have been 2 hours on a train with a restaurant? Train carriages are wider, taller, and can be much much longer, so you can have plenty of space. It's like a business class flight, but for economy price and arriving in the city center. Even "slow" trains can travel at speeds exceeding highway speed limits. In many European countries rail networks are better built than highway networks, so you can take a train from some Shitshire village to a nice beach.
- devilbunny 5y agoLuxury buses are a thing. Vonlane in Texas is a great example. Downtown to downtown, reasonably fast, and more space than a business-class air seat. The whole coach only has 22 seats, and charter rates - to the extent that I can find information on them - are very reasonable. I found one Houston Chronicle article saying that a charter from Houston to Rosemary Beach, Florida - just over 600 miles/1000 km each way - was $6600 round trip. That includes driver and attendant. For $300 per person, very reasonable. Or for group outings for sporting events.
- Railsify 5y agoThis will probably be good for elderly people that don't want to drive/fly.
- yummypaint 5y agoWhen you factor in the value of a person's attention, a slower train can still be a solid win. If you have work that can be done locally on a laptop, a trip that would otherwise burn a day driving can be converted into a productive workday. That can mean saving a vacation day etc
- weare138 5y agoBut you don't have to drive and you can drink.
- oliwarner 5y agoWhy does it need to be faster? You can get things done on a train. You're not personally liable for the maintenance. You don't have to park it when you get there. You don't need a security checkpoint. Good train service relies on other public transport but it's very different beast to either driving or air travel. Trying to compare solely on rolling time does the conversation a disservice.