Search results

Amtrak should allow standby: if you have a ticket on a train from Point A to Point B, you should be able to use the ticket on other trains from Point A to Point B on the same day as your ticket, space permitting. In the Northeast, if I want to fly from NYC to DC or Boston, I can buy a plane...

Well, the country is in the midst of increased crime rates. As prosecutions of NYC subway turnstile jumpers showed that a turnstile jumper likely has committed other crimes, every enforcement can result in other crimes being stopped. I had never seen a fare evader on Amtrak before but this was...

Plenty, if Amtrak became known for actually doing something about fare evasion, resulting in fewer fare evaders. But your point is valid, so perhaps Amtrak could prosecute fare evaders if Amtrak discharged people from trains at stations where railroad police are available.

On a recent Acela Express trip, train staff caught two people who tried to ride without paying. However, Amtrak didn’t seem to take steps to require the fare evaders to pay for tickets. Shouldn’t Amtrak try to collect ticket prices from fare evaders? The first was a passenger who got on in...

Correct. I was recently re-routed to Asheville’s airport, instead of Greenville/Spartanburg. Uber/Lyft to downtown Greenville (which has an Amtrak station) is about an hour and $60. Trains to Asheville will have a hard time being time-competitive with driving (2 hours to Charlotte) and...

I’m a morning person so an early arrival or departure is fine. I’ll take the southbound Crescent, since it arrives before dawn. Perfect! I won’t take the northbound Crescent since it leaves in the middle of the night Amtrak long distance trains should be timed to leave major metros in the...

Good point. There ought to be a new additional train that originates in Atlanta and heads north.

Yes, the delays do start south of Atlanta but ridership has historically been high in Atlanta and north of Atlanta so my concern is impact on ridership. Maybe a separate train originating in Atlanta would be the solution.

No, I’m not focusing on the wrong part of the route. If you look at historical on-time performance information, the northbound Crescent out of Atlanta and Greenville is often hours and hours late. The scheduled 11pm departure from Atlanta often ends up being much later, making the Crescent...

No because (1) some trains are not national trains; they are state-supported, and (2) a national administrator could be like GA or SC, hostile to passenger rail.

The northbound Crescent's delays, particularly between Georgia and the Carolinas, are still atrocious, with the train frequently hours late. I see that Virginia is working with Norfolk Southern to increase the number of Amtrak trains in the state. Why is timekeeping on Norfolk Southern lines...

The time on the train is much more productive, so the amount of wasted time in transit on the train is actually much lower than the amount of wasted time on the plane. I can walk from my office to the local train station, board into my sleeping car room immediately, work almost without...

in Amtrak’s defense (as infuriating as downgrades are): 1. Airlines switch planes and downgrade people. And I have been downgraded a few times on airlines from paid first class to coach, with only a pittance of a refund. 2. I took Amtrak on an overnight trip in the 1980s and our sleeping car...

Good point but no: I started to book a room for my trip (to check availability) and 4 rooms were available for the entire trip that I was going to take.

Flex dining: implemented due to government requirements to break even on food service. Reducing frequencies: lots of railroads reduced frequencies due to the pandemic, including Via and the MTA. So did airlines, and so did Amtrak in the northeast. Unstaffed stations: plenty of railroads have...

Do you think that people who work in Amtrak’s long-distance group actually chose to work there, spend a big portion of their lives working there and simply don’t care one bit about what they work for? Maybe Amtrak as an institution favors other lines of business but to disparage every single...

Sure, it makes sense to not accept BidUp requests if the train will be sold out. I don’t understand why my close-to-low-bucket-fare offer was rejected when the Crescent departed with 4 empty rooms. Looks like the Amtrak algorithm could use some tweaking.

Maybe Amtrak doesn’t have the data needed to make BidUp run smoothly? I’ve booked coach tickets lately on Amtrak for long-distance trips and have put in BidUp bids for rooms. Both times, I haven’t been upgraded. Even though this most recent time, my bid was close to the low-bucket price for a...

I took an airline called Tower Air in the 1990s. Horrible experience and I vowed never to take a discount airline again. And I haven’t, except for one trip on JetBlue just to see what all of the fuss is about. I have no interest in taking an intercity bus ever but my one trip on Greyhound...

Did you get a refund between the price you paid minus a coach ticket price on the date when you bought the ticket? Or is the difference between the price you paid minus a coach ticket price now (likely a smaller refund)? Airlines do the latter and it really ticks me off.