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Even if there was a ~25% decrease in Amtrack trip length, would there be any meaningful increase in use? I’ve looked at longer Amtrack trips and the time it ta

Even if there was a ~25% decrease in Amtrack trip length, would there be any meaningful increase in use? I’ve looked at longer Amtrack trips and the time it takes to travel across just a few states relative to flying just doesn’t make sense to me.

banannaise 2y ago
Making a service better is a good thing regardless of whether it increases use. That said, there are some people for whom train travel makes a lot of sense, especially if you make it more efficient. You just don't happen to be one of them.
- bequanna 2y ago
  I guess the exact same argument could have been made in the 40s-50s for adding additional lanes on roads just for horse powered passengers. Some people enjoy the nostalgia, sure, but we’ve moved on and have better options. The US will likely never embrace (or need) longer range high speed passenger rail like Europe. I don’t understand why we would dedicate more public money or policy to continue to prove this point. Other than a few retirees who have time to kill, who would be interested in taking an Amtrack train from Chicago -> LA? This trip via Amtrak takes 3 days. I am not interested in my tax dollars subsidizing pleasure trips for Senior citizens.
  - katbyte 2y ago
    It’s not the same? Trains are great for the environment and pack a lot of people into a small area. Roads and cars do not.
  - banannaise 2y ago
    Treating rail like an outdated and obsolete technology is weird. American rail infrastructure is, in many cases, outdated and obsolete. Rail as a technology is not. For freight, it is far more efficient than basically any other land transportation technology, even in the present state. For passengers, it is also more economically efficient than road travel, although the present quality of infrastructure often makes it impractical, and it lacks the aggressive subsidies of road travel. > Other than a few retirees who have time to kill, who would be interested in taking an Amtrack train from Chicago -> LA? This trip, which is an extreme example, takes 43 hours today (per the Amtrak ticketing portal). Driving this route (which people do) takes 30 hours and must be split up over 2-3 days due to fatigue. Greyhound takes 46 hours. Megabus does not serve California. Even with the current (bad) state of rail infrastructure in this country, the only more efficient travel method for this trip is flying. An upgraded conventional railway (similar to the Acela Express) would cover that distance in about 30 hours. An average high-speed rail would take about 15-20 and could be done in a day. Also, why are you pretending that this infrastructure doesn't serve shorter trips as well? A plane from Chicago to LA only serves Chicago and LA. The Amtrak route also serves Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff. The route you were referring to (the Texas Eagle, 66 hours) serves Springfield, St. Louis, Little Rock, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Tucson, and dozens of smaller cities.
  - tzs 2y ago
    There might not be many people taking that train from Chicago -> Los Angeles, but I wonder how many people take it for part of that route? There are 32 stations on that route. I had occasion once to take Amtrak from East Texas to Los Angeles and there were only a handful of other people doing that, but there were a ton of people who got on and later got off between East Texas and Los Angeles. For these long Amtrak routes they are probably best thought of not as a means to travel from one endpoint to the other, which will almost always be faster and cheaper to do by air, but rather as a collection of local or regional routes arranged end to end that share trains.
ipdashc 2y ago
> any meaningful increase in use The weird thing is that Amtrak already seems to get plenty of use. The way people talked about it, I assumed all the trains would be near empty, but no, the few times I've ridden it they've all been pretty decently filled up. I've even seen them sell out on the website sometimes. I guess they just lose so much money per passenger that there's no point in adding more capacity, but I do wonder why they don't just add a few more cars onto the train... (possibly ironic given the title, I know)
sandworm101 2y ago
>> time it takes to travel across just a few states relative to flying just doesn’t make sense to me. The time/cost it takes is so bad, more often than not, that driving remains the faster/cheaper option. And in many parts of the country, those areas not immediately beside large airports, driving often remains competitive against flying too.

banannaise 2y ago

Making a service better is a good thing regardless of whether it increases use. That said, there are some people for whom train travel makes a lot of sense, especially if you make it more efficient. You just don't happen to be one of them.

bequanna 2y ago
I guess the exact same argument could have been made in the 40s-50s for adding additional lanes on roads just for horse powered passengers. Some people enjoy the nostalgia, sure, but we’ve moved on and have better options. The US will likely never embrace (or need) longer range high speed passenger rail like Europe. I don’t understand why we would dedicate more public money or policy to continue to prove this point. Other than a few retirees who have time to kill, who would be interested in taking an Amtrack train from Chicago -> LA? This trip via Amtrak takes 3 days. I am not interested in my tax dollars subsidizing pleasure trips for Senior citizens.
- katbyte 2y ago
  It’s not the same? Trains are great for the environment and pack a lot of people into a small area. Roads and cars do not.
- banannaise 2y ago
  Treating rail like an outdated and obsolete technology is weird. American rail infrastructure is, in many cases, outdated and obsolete. Rail as a technology is not. For freight, it is far more efficient than basically any other land transportation technology, even in the present state. For passengers, it is also more economically efficient than road travel, although the present quality of infrastructure often makes it impractical, and it lacks the aggressive subsidies of road travel. > Other than a few retirees who have time to kill, who would be interested in taking an Amtrack train from Chicago -> LA? This trip, which is an extreme example, takes 43 hours today (per the Amtrak ticketing portal). Driving this route (which people do) takes 30 hours and must be split up over 2-3 days due to fatigue. Greyhound takes 46 hours. Megabus does not serve California. Even with the current (bad) state of rail infrastructure in this country, the only more efficient travel method for this trip is flying. An upgraded conventional railway (similar to the Acela Express) would cover that distance in about 30 hours. An average high-speed rail would take about 15-20 and could be done in a day. Also, why are you pretending that this infrastructure doesn't serve shorter trips as well? A plane from Chicago to LA only serves Chicago and LA. The Amtrak route also serves Kansas City, Albuquerque, and Flagstaff. The route you were referring to (the Texas Eagle, 66 hours) serves Springfield, St. Louis, Little Rock, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, Tucson, and dozens of smaller cities.
- tzs 2y ago
  There might not be many people taking that train from Chicago -> Los Angeles, but I wonder how many people take it for part of that route? There are 32 stations on that route. I had occasion once to take Amtrak from East Texas to Los Angeles and there were only a handful of other people doing that, but there were a ton of people who got on and later got off between East Texas and Los Angeles. For these long Amtrak routes they are probably best thought of not as a means to travel from one endpoint to the other, which will almost always be faster and cheaper to do by air, but rather as a collection of local or regional routes arranged end to end that share trains.

ipdashc 2y ago

> any meaningful increase in use The weird thing is that Amtrak already seems to get plenty of use. The way people talked about it, I assumed all the trains would be near empty, but no, the few times I've ridden it they've all been pretty decently filled up. I've even seen them sell out on the website sometimes. I guess they just lose so much money per passenger that there's no point in adding more capacity, but I do wonder why they don't just add a few more cars onto the train... (possibly ironic given the title, I know)

sandworm101 2y ago

>> time it takes to travel across just a few states relative to flying just doesn’t make sense to me. The time/cost it takes is so bad, more often than not, that driving remains the faster/cheaper option. And in many parts of the country, those areas not immediately beside large airports, driving often remains competitive against flying too.