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Not to mention, Amtrak has a couple of distinct advantages: They know roughly how many people they've sold tickets to, and if someone doesn't have a ticket they aren't going to be buying food in the dining car. They can limit capacity with reservations - I know the evening meal they require...

One other thought if you want to stay super-local is use the Emery Go-Round service. It's a free bus that connects a fair amount of shops and restaurants, and also goes to the nearby BART station.

Why? Amtrak hasn't announced that they've removed the mask mandate from their trains. Until that happens, I would expect passengers to mask up, just as they did when Amtrak had a mask mandate before the all-encompassing federal one.

The TSA will not enforce the mask requirement at this time. No news from Amtrak whether they'll have an Amtrak-specific mask requirement or not.

It's gonna be a mess. I do not envy anybody on the front lines who's expected to enforce mask wearing, particularly now where there's quite a bit of uncertainty (and technically is it still "by federal mandate" - verbiage I've heard a lot - if the federal mandate has been struck down?) EDIT TO...

A US District Court judge has struck down the CDC's mask mandate on public transportation. From Thrifty Traveler: As of this moment the Amtrak website still states that there's a mask requirement, and I don't think the current removal precludes Amtrak (or other transportation companies) from...

I would highly recommend looking at other websites other than Amtrak's portal for hotel reviews - I use Google Maps, but there's other services like TripAdvisor or simply checking out the "user reviews" on other online booking portals. The star rating Amtrak (and most other websites) use reflect...

Yeah, there's no way to get much of anywhere west of Fargo/Grand Forks even at this point. Roads closed in much of the western half of the state, and even the eastern half is almost completely "no travel advised."

Tragic event today in NYC. From AP News:

Down at the bottom of this page there's a list: Amtrak Timetables | Rail Passengers Association | Washington, DC - note that a couple of the trains (not the Empire Builder) are back to daily service. For the Empire Builder specifically it's departures on Thursday and Friday from their...

I think it's perfectly reasonable for Amtrak to offer on-board entertainment via personal devices - and certainly not a relic of the past. Heck, I'd argue that one of Delta's selling points for some people is that almost all of their planes still have seat-back entertainment options - and that's...

It was $26 NYP - BAL - not sure if that's the lower or higher of the two buckets but it's the lowest I've seen outside of the very-limited-time sales and such. I was a bit surprised to see it too as it seemed as though pricing had taken a big jump a couple weeks ago.

On the plus side, I noticed that's no longer a hard and fast rule. I was able to get a saver fare on a Friday in July on the NEC which was almost completely blacked out before.

I find it interesting that Flixbus is pushing so hard to keep fares at that $22 mark instead of letting it go up based on demand. Given that they own Greyhound, any "competition" there would wind up in their pockets either way.

One thing I noticed today that's concerning - at least on the Empire Builder, the days of the week that currently have no train are now priced at the highest bucket through the end of September (departure date,) both in coach where only the Flexible fare is available, and in sleeper where it...

Here's another big change: The next major enhancement on Amtrak. com and the Amtrak app, slated for release in 2022, expands on the existing search result experience by presenting a seven-day calendar of available fares: those of the requested date as well as the lowest fare up to three days...

From what I read somewhere, apparently the TSA will use special tape over the doorway as a seal to see if the bus door(s) had been opened in transit. If the seal is intact, the bus is considered secure; if not, the passengers would have to unload outside of security and re-clear.

Consider me extremely suspicious of this program. From WVTM:

No testing requirement or expectation. Amtrak sends a (useless, imo) questionnaire having you confirm that you haven't been exposed to COVID, you're not feeling sick, etc. etc. I've always clicked the check mark to confirm but honestly I don't think the crews really check.

MSP has a very well-integrated system with the Go-To card. Despite having commuter rail (granted, ran by the same agency that runs the majority of local transit,) light rail, and bus service (including service run by both the major agency and 4 suburban transit agencies,) there's a single fare...