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I 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 stil

I 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 ago
Amtrak 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 ago
  I 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 ago
    Hmm. 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.
    - mastax 5y ago
      The northeast corridor (Boston to DC) is very popular and profitable for Amtrak. They have routes connecting major cities in the rest of the country but they're slow, expensive and unreliable. They're pretty much only ridden by train enthusiasts, people who are very afraid of flying, or banned from flying.
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        My experiences on Amtrak Boston to NYC (and previously BOS to BWI station) are that it’s slow, expensive, and unreliable in the NE corridor as well. I’m sure it’s profitable for Amtrak, but I’d estimate I arrive within 15 minutes of the published timetable less than half the time.
    - idunno246 5y ago
      they exist, but arent really used. the us is much bigger / less dense intercity. going across the coasts is six hour flights but days(4ish i think) by train and significantly more cost, with not many cities in the middle that people stop at. too few people would use so theres no motivation to make it faster. where it works decently well is northeast, because the cities are very close together(dc,philly,nyc,boston). but it's usually much more expensive than driving/bussing and takes roughly the same time.
    - cbm-vic-20 5y ago
      There are a number of reasons: * For most of the country, cities are really far apart. * The US has excellent freight rail network. They lease their lines to Amtrak, but they only have secondary priority. Passenger trains often have to wait behind slow freight, or even allow freight trains to pass them. * After WW2, the US aggressively built the interstate highway system, which simultaneously caused suburbanization and killed intercity passenger rail. Like the other commenter says, the Northeast Corridor between DC and Boston is an exception, as the cities are closer, and there isn't as much freight traffic, and the highways have a lot of car and truck traffic.
      - secabeen 5y ago
  - gumby 5y ago
    I’ve taken the Acela train between NYC and BOS quite a few times. You can go straight from penn sta to south station or back bay, which is pretty convenient when compared to the airports. As for speed: they don’t call it “Acela” for nothing: it can cruise at a blistering 80 MPH!! For up to 15 minutes! Actually in all my trips only once did it go that fast. And on that trip any gains were nullified by an unexplained 40 minute pause in the middle of nowhere (not near any station). When I compare it to the experience of Thalys, TGV, ICE, Shinkansen (all of which at various times I have used for regular work trips) et al: what a joke. The US does as well at building infrastructure as it does at winning wars.
- mulderc 5y ago
  It really depends on the line. I used the cascades line that connects cities in the pacific NW weekly for over a year and my experience is it was much more consistent than driving as the traffic bottlenecks are far less predictable than the Amtrak schedule. Additionally wifi and beer means I can do a variety of other things I can’t while driving.
dnautics 5y ago
When did you go to college? By the time I went to college, a train ticket (chicago-dc) was more expensive than a plane ticket.
quadrangle 5y ago
Train fans will always still take the train, and for good reason (they are a better experience in some ways), but the fundamental issue of whether we can address car traffic and congestion is about whether other forms of transit can be faster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQY6WGOoYis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQY6WGOoYis and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1G0Lyh3uik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1G0Lyh3uik are great overviews
missedthecue 5y ago
Did you go to college in the 1970s? Airfare has been cheaper than the Amtrak ticket for a while now.

throwawayboise 5y ago

Amtrak 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Hmm. 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.
  - mastax 5y ago
    The northeast corridor (Boston to DC) is very popular and profitable for Amtrak. They have routes connecting major cities in the rest of the country but they're slow, expensive and unreliable. They're pretty much only ridden by train enthusiasts, people who are very afraid of flying, or banned from flying.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      My experiences on Amtrak Boston to NYC (and previously BOS to BWI station) are that it’s slow, expensive, and unreliable in the NE corridor as well. I’m sure it’s profitable for Amtrak, but I’d estimate I arrive within 15 minutes of the published timetable less than half the time.
  - idunno246 5y ago
    they exist, but arent really used. the us is much bigger / less dense intercity. going across the coasts is six hour flights but days(4ish i think) by train and significantly more cost, with not many cities in the middle that people stop at. too few people would use so theres no motivation to make it faster. where it works decently well is northeast, because the cities are very close together(dc,philly,nyc,boston). but it's usually much more expensive than driving/bussing and takes roughly the same time.
  - cbm-vic-20 5y ago
    There are a number of reasons: * For most of the country, cities are really far apart. * The US has excellent freight rail network. They lease their lines to Amtrak, but they only have secondary priority. Passenger trains often have to wait behind slow freight, or even allow freight trains to pass them. * After WW2, the US aggressively built the interstate highway system, which simultaneously caused suburbanization and killed intercity passenger rail. Like the other commenter says, the Northeast Corridor between DC and Boston is an exception, as the cities are closer, and there isn't as much freight traffic, and the highways have a lot of car and truck traffic.
    - secabeen 5y ago
- gumby 5y ago
  I’ve taken the Acela train between NYC and BOS quite a few times. You can go straight from penn sta to south station or back bay, which is pretty convenient when compared to the airports. As for speed: they don’t call it “Acela” for nothing: it can cruise at a blistering 80 MPH!! For up to 15 minutes! Actually in all my trips only once did it go that fast. And on that trip any gains were nullified by an unexplained 40 minute pause in the middle of nowhere (not near any station). When I compare it to the experience of Thalys, TGV, ICE, Shinkansen (all of which at various times I have used for regular work trips) et al: what a joke. The US does as well at building infrastructure as it does at winning wars.
mulderc 5y ago
It really depends on the line. I used the cascades line that connects cities in the pacific NW weekly for over a year and my experience is it was much more consistent than driving as the traffic bottlenecks are far less predictable than the Amtrak schedule. Additionally wifi and beer means I can do a variety of other things I can’t while driving.

dnautics 5y ago

When did you go to college? By the time I went to college, a train ticket (chicago-dc) was more expensive than a plane ticket.

quadrangle 5y ago

Train fans will always still take the train, and for good reason (they are a better experience in some ways), but the fundamental issue of whether we can address car traffic and congestion is about whether other forms of transit can be faster. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQY6WGOoYis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQY6WGOoYis and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1G0Lyh3uik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1G0Lyh3uik are great overviews

missedthecue 5y ago

Did you go to college in the 1970s? Airfare has been cheaper than the Amtrak ticket for a while now.