Does Amtrak overbook?

Bernie said:

I was on a Keystone train yesterday, from NYP-PHL (so the reserved portion), and it was significantly overbooked. I had to stand the whole way, and there were many others standing. There was only one conductor and she didn't help at all (not that there was anything she could do). I texted Amtrak and after a little back and forth they refunded my ticket. But I would have preferred being bumped to the next train rather than having to stand for 80 minutes.

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There were issues on the Keystone line yesterday so it might have been a case that the train consist for your train or a train before it was delayed getting to NYP and they let passengers aboard the "next available" train.

Just-Thinking-51 said:

No, they do not overbook. That said equipment may not be available as planned.

However seat assignments are not available other than Acela. So find a seat can be issue.

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That is, finding a good seat can be an issue. Does the reservation software make sure there is an empty seat for the conductor to do his paperwork?

Back in the 1970s when I was riding the Northeast Corridor, all the coach seats were unreserved, and there were times that I had to stand the whole way.

alanh said:

There are still some regional "unreserved" trains where you don't buy a ticket for a specific train, just for a route. These can have more riders than seats.

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Calling it "unreserved" is somewhat of a misnomer by Amtrak. I'm pretty sure that every prepurchased single-ride ticket has a scheduled train number and date on it where all scheduled passengers will be available on the train's (virtual) passenger manifest whether or not they've boarded. I've also been on the Pacific Surfliner where they were short-staffed and the conductor announced that he was going to bulk lift (an option on the conductor's app) every ticket that was scheduled since he was unlikely to reach ever passenger in time.

It's also possible to just board a train and buy a ticket from the conductor, and theoretically a lot of people can do that. I did that once, where there was no surcharge since there was no ticket sales at the station. At first the conductor was kind of angry at me for wasting his time since it was clear that I had a mobile phone and credit card. But then he loosened up and went into detail about the onboard ticket he was issuing, which looked like an old school train ticket.

Someone willingly posted this to a public website, so I'm not sharing any private information (plus the ticket has long expired). But it certainly has a train number and date. My understanding is that the ticket (if unused) is valid for a single ride up to a year from when the reservation was made.



I don't know if they "overbook" so-called unreserved trains, but there is the option is to use an unused ticket on an earlier or later train than scheduled, so there's the theoretical possibility that a lot of passengers opt to board a particular train beyond its theoretical capacity. There are also multi-ride and monthly passes that don't account for such passenger on specific trains; passengers just show up. Not sure about now, but at least at one time it was possible to get those and use them on certain reserved routes. Also possible to use those multi-ride and monthlies on reserved Pacific Surfliner trains. I think some comments here have been that it can get really crazy when there are a lot of people going to Del Mar Racetrack during the racing season. Supposedly every seat is taken and they rely on using the cafe car.

There are some outliers other than multi-rides and monthlies. I remember when I used to ride the Capitol Corridor a lot and there was the option to use an unused unreserved ticket on the San Joaquins for any overlapping city pair, like EMY-MTZ. I'd think that's not likely to happen much. I did it once just to see if it worked. The conductor said it was OK and my ride was credited with points to my AGR account.

I looked it up, and apparently anyone with a multi-ride or monthly pass who wants to use it on a reserved train will need to make a confirmation for that train to apply the the pass. I suppose that's different than the old process of just getting on and having the conductors deal with the possibility of a full train.

daybeers said:

I think the only other example is PHL-HAR on the Keystone.

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It would be the same city pairs, but trips in the Pennsylvanian between Harrisburg and Philly (and intermediate stations) were also unreserved. You only had reserved tickets if you were traveling either west of Harrisburg or east of Philly. Not sure if that is still the case or not.

Stremba said:

It would be the same city pairs, but trips in the Pennsylvanian between Harrisburg and Philly (and intermediate stations) were also unreserved. You only had reserved tickets if you were traveling either west of Harrisburg or east of Philly. Not sure if that is still the case or not.

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The only "unreserved" services left are Capitol Corridor and Pacific Surfliner coach.

https://www.amtrak.com/unreserved-coach-class-seat

I have a conductor friend who once told me about double bookings of sleeping car space caused by the travel agents that sell package tours on Amtrak. She stated that two parts would show up for the same space, which was a headache to sort out. I have never personally experienced this. I suspect booking directly with Amtrak would protect one form these types of complications.

Steve4031 said:

have a conductor friend who once told me about double bookings of sleeping car space caused by the travel agents that sell package tours on Amtrak

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In the days of paper, and especially hand-written tickets, I’m sure there was a lot more cases of duplicate sales…
IIRC when there was an abundance of sleeping cars, each train would have at least one unsold “protect” bedroom to cover such problems.

“Protect” rooms would also cover rooms with mechanical issues, which were common in the seventies…

Oh, I recall those paper tickets and booking issues from a 1974 trip on Amtrak with my family. I was 8 years old. On 3 of 4 legs, accommodations were incorrect. We booked connecting bedrooms on the San Francisco Zephyr, the South West Limited from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, and from Albequrque to Galesburg. We were given adjacent bedrooms on the Zephyr, but the wall did not open up.

The most memorable segment was from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, where we were each given a roomette.

As people have said the surfliners are unreserved. Some trains get pretty full but i’ve only seen standing room only once, and that was on a Sunday of a three day weekend I believe.

Steve4031 said:

I have a conductor friend who once told me about double bookings of sleeping car space caused by the travel agents that sell package tours on Amtrak. She stated that two parts would show up for the same space, which was a headache to sort out. I have never personally experienced this. I suspect booking directly with Amtrak would protect one form these types of complications.

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The BidUp system is not perfect either. There was a time where I bid up to business class on a Northeast Regional (on the night owl), and got it, and was assigned a seat. When the conductor scanned my ticket, it said I was not in Business Class. I let the conductor poke around on the app on my phone so that he could verify that my ticket is legitimate and on the correct train. The conductor had to call to make sure that they wouldn't sell the seat out from under me since there was an obvious sync issue. It turns out that they did sell the same seat twice, but since I was already in it, they moved the other person who had the seat (presumably to one of the unselectable accessible seats)

BCL said:

The only "unreserved" services left are Capitol Corridor and Pacific Surfliner coach.

https://www.amtrak.com/unreserved-coach-class-seat

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The Keystone Service is still partially unreserved (PHL-HAR only) with certain blackout dates. Tickets come with a number on them, but as the service is unreserved, there is no need to ride that particular train. At least pre-COVID, SRO trains were common, especially at peak periods.

Septa9739 said:

The Keystone Service is still partially unreserved (PHL-HAR only) with certain blackout dates. Tickets come with a number on them, but as the service is unreserved, there is no need to ride that particular train. At least pre-COVID, SRO trains were common, especially at peak periods.

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I've only ridden it once and when I booked there was no option for unreserved service. It was NYP-MVN. I do remember getting off in Philly to board another train to get to Malvern. It was also kind of weird as there weren't any announcements per se, but we grabbed our seat checks and a conductor on the new train said that was the proper procedure.

That was a while ago, and I couldn’t tell you one way or another. At one point the Keystone was diselized until Gunn’s heroic restoration of the corridor, likely explaining the change.

Currently PHL-HAR is unreserved service; PHL-NYP is reserved service, so your NYP-MVN trip would require a reservation today if it were still bookable. The Commonwealth wants the flexibility, but unreserved a random few, short NEC trains being unreserved would be a nightmare.

Septa9739 said:

That was a while ago, and I couldn’t tell you one way or another. At one point the Keystone was diselized until Gunn’s heroic restoration of the corridor, likely explaining the change.

Currently PHL-HAR is unreserved service; PHL-NYP is reserved service, so your NYP-MVN trip would require a reservation today if it were still bookable. The Commonwealth wants the flexibility, but unreserved a random few, short NEC trains being unreserved would be a nightmare.

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I don't know exactly how that worked, but it wasn't considered two segments, but considered one segment even though we had to physically get out and onto a shorter train. It was the same equipment type - AEM-7 locomotive with Amfleet cars, but I think a shorter consist.

As an AGR member I would have liked two segments. I think it was maybe $52 one-way which got me 104 AGR points. But if it were two segments it would have been 200 points back in 2013.

That was a really weird return to NYC though, taking SEPTA and NJT. NJT was crowded and I remember seeing a woman refuse taking the last seat at the suggestion of a conductor because "I don't know this guy" who would have been sitting next to her if she took the seat. I also remember seeing an Amtrak train passing our train, when a passenger in front of me said to a companion "That's the rich people train". And yeah the total fare was less than half what Amtrak would have cost.

It sounds like some kind of last-minute substitution or other extraordinary circumstance, because I don’t know of any time in recent (even 10 year ago) history where a single-segment ticket would have required changing trains and taking seat checks with you.

If I were to wager a guess, NYP didn’t have a Keystone set available (be it due to some mechanical issue, or some earlier service disruption causing trainsets to be out of place), so they ran a regular Regional set to PHL and had another Keystone set that was short-turned there to complete the leg to HAR.