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There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

nytimes.com

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Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#351

Post by bluewater »

supernova87a wrote: post #88

I have no comment on whether taking that train journey is worth it or not. All I want to say is that the UI developers for the Amtrak booking site should be shot. That site is one of the ugliest, confusing layout-infected, poorly designed sites I have ever seen for a travel booking page. (aside from 3rd world countries which have an excuse) Just try putting in dates, selecting a fare, and report back. If there were a…

Agreed on the poorly laid out website. I book once or twice a year and will always call in. The customer service reps are friendly and helpful. They’ll input different parameters and will hold a reservation I think for 24hrs without charge. If you don’t book the seat just goes back into inventory.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#352

Post by vonmoltke »

dangrossman wrote: post #292
cjensen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When evaluating the price, consider that it is also a hotel room and comes with free meals. Compare it to air fare + hotel room for X days + decent meals for X days and the price becomes less painful.

Amtrak's been stripping meals out of the service to save money. The Silver Star [correction: not Silver Meteor also], which runs the length of the east coast from Maine to Florida and back, for example, has no meal car. You can buy the roomettes and the rooms, still for significantly more than a plane ticket, but they do not come with meals. There's a "snack" car for all passengers with a microwave where you can buy…

Silver Meteor still has one. Only Silver Star dropped it.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#353

Post by tasuki »

gk1 wrote: post #12

For anyone interested in more train-travel stories I've written (partially) about my trip across Russia, starting with: https://www.gregkogan.com/journal/russia-trans-siberian-rail... Still have half the trip left to write about, which I'll do bit by bit.

Read it all - super interesting!

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#354

Post by 333c »

zackkitzmiller wrote: post #89
afarrell wrote: post #6

Note that the author took a sleeper car. In terms of price, this is a bit of a luxury. As someone who has taken the Lateshore Limited service all the way from Chicago to Boston in just a regular seat, I would strongly advise you NOT to do that. It is just miserable.

I disagree. I often take Amtrak from NYC to Chicago (and back) and just love it. The trip is about 24 hours each way. Train riders are generally friendly. Someone always has a couple of guitars, so it's fun to play and sing along. The bar car is typically friendly and the food car is generally pretty good eats. Also, some of the stopovers in small midwest towns are a few hours long so you can get out, stretch your le…

> some of the stopovers in small midwest towns are a few hours long

What line did you ride? From my brief search, it doesn't seem like this is usually the case.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#355

Post by ghaff »

munk-a wrote: post #333
ghaff wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough. It's mostly the coastal corridor that's good with a couple on inland spurs from NY/New Haven up to St. Albans and Montreal that aren't terrible. But otherwise, there's something of a gap between commuter rail systems (which are pretty hub and spoke in any case) and what Amtrak covers.

As a former vermonter... The St. Albans service is terrible, trains go into Essex Junction (basically, Burlington) once a day and the train leaves NYC at 11:33 am and gets in at 8:18 pm, eight hours for what is a five hour drive with a single train a day. I don't disagree that some other services might be alright, but that's clearly not one of them.

I haven't kept up on those services. I know they've come and gone over the years but I was being charitable. I used to semi-regularly take the train from White River Junction to Philadelphia but I pretty much only use the Acela/Northeast Regional these days and that's really the "good-ish" part of the service I'm aware of. (Where good-ish is defined as preferable to driving, the bus, and plane--so long as not doing the whole length.)

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#357

Post by pacala »

Aloha wrote: post #328
Zimahl wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 numb…

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.

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.

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#358

Post by tomatotomato37 »

reaperducer wrote: post #275
otachack wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

Apparently this was contested a couple years ago in the courts:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/wp/2016/04/29/...

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#359

Post by landryraccoon »

rayiner wrote: post #306
barrkel wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I have a suspicion that the reason the US has poor government services compared to other countries is in large part because too manypeople in the US believe government services are poor. If the wrong people get in charge (and very likely if the ideology is widespread) they make little effort to improve things other than to cut costs. Competition usually improves things, it's true, but natural monopolies are…

Government services in the U.S. are both bad and expensive. The NYC MTA spends seven times as much money to build subway per mile than London or Paris. It spends about twice as much per passenger mile for subway service as London's Tube. We spend more per student than almost anyone else on schools. Why would someone in the U.S., confronted with the evidence, believe that government services aren't poor?

The US government should model its train service after Europe, since Europe clearly knows what it’s doing and the US clearly doesn’t.

Also, would you then be consistent and argue that the government shouldn’t be spending so much on highways for cars, since it’ll just waste that money too?

Re: There is no reason to cross the U.S. by train, but I did it anyway

#360

Post by landryraccoon »

Aloha wrote: post #332
barrkel wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, I have a suspicion that the reason the US has poor government services compared to other countries is in large part because too manypeople in the US believe government services are poor. If the wrong people get in charge (and very likely if the ideology is widespread) they make little effort to improve things other than to cut costs. Competition usually improves things, it's true, but natural monopolies are…

There is no good economic rationale for long distance trains. The only part of Amtrak that is actually profitable is the NEC, the rest of it generally loses money.

The federal highway system must be even worse then. It brings in zero revenue and costs way, way more than the trains.
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