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Didn't the EuroStar get new trainsets a year or 2 before the pandemic? I also don't get how you can work for a "business" publication and not see why it would be dumb to retrofit equipment that is expected to be retired within 2 years.

I've had to carry my luggage a mile on foot from my house to the nearest Amtrak station to get to the airport a couple of years ago. And this was a duffle bag, not a rolling suitcase. If people can't be bothered to roll a suitcase a few hundred feet to a train, they were never going to take the...

Amtrak really does need a different version of business class for its overnight trains. One historical note is that the older tourist sleepers carried 24 people on the low end and 32 on the high end. When Budd designed it's replacement for the tourist sleeper after World War 2, it was a 32 seat...

$1000 for a room! Ay Dios Mio! Nevermind that before deregulation the cost of just the room would be over half that and you wouldn't get any of your food covered. Given what Amtrak's accommodations are and that they can set their own fares, $1000 for what she got is more than you would get just...

Why I don't think additional service along any existing or historical LD route should be planned in the same light is the logistics involved. To have NEC level service along the entire length of the route would essentially make it a 24 hour operation. I grew up in a family of postal workers, so...

Why I think this is still not any better has to do with how Amtrak would treat this. Amtrak has a bias towards the NEC and the rest of us are lucky to be considered an afterthought. If additional service is justified somewhere, existing once a day trains don't need to be considered for short and...

I see the method to the madness but still disagree with it. I'm looking at it from a level of service standpoint. Long distance as a service being over 24 hours in run time, coachs, sleepers, dining car and cafe car. And corridor as a service level being coaches, business and cafe car. There is...

I wouldn't say its a bogus distinction so much as inadequate terminology. Thinking of the routes more like the railroads did before Amtrak would make more sense, such as having a route being the path of the train travels and the long distance vs corridor vs whatever you want to call the...

I've thought about bringing most of the long distance trains up to 2-3 times per day. I know people keep thinking that you can make the end to end run times convenient, the issues is you really can't. Either you space them out evenly and accept a weird departure and arrival time on some or have...

I remember the last time BART was shut down when they went on strike. The whole Bay Area was backed up by 6am. Shutting down our public transit systems would be beyond stupid.

It's one thing to read an article that actually supports it's arguments with verifiable data. And it's not hard to find studies comparing a mostly electric rail system vs air travels emissions. Thinking Greyhound or Megabus is better than Amtrak almost entirely because it's privately owned is an...

I had to watch an interview with him while I was in college and the subject was public transportation. He heaped praise on Megabus because "it's private" but Amtrak steals your freedoms because it's public. That was when I learned he and most other anti rail people are not serious people. At...

I'm not reading anything from the Cato Institute. It's as valuable as reading something from "Baby Seals for Seal Clubbing".

The YouTuber I'm referencing is closure to my age, so very much a millennial. Southwest still give you a drink and peanuts on some flights, no idea what the time limit is if there is one. I still think it's unreasonable to expect anything beyond transportation on an under an hour flight.

I've primarily flown on budget airlines (Southwest, Frontier, United and British Airways) so my expectation of a flight is basically nothing beyond the transportation. And I do count United and British Airways economy section as a budget carrier. But for someone like me, expecting anything out...

I remember watching a YouTube review a flight once and he was mad that he didn't get a drink service in business class! The poor baby! The flight was under and hour and my thoughts were "dude, why'd you waste money for business class on a flight under an hour?" I wouldn't say it's a generational...

I have one of the now out of date printed ones, I don't think it's that hard to look at. I'm surprised they even printed one at all.

I also know from having read the Staggers act and other related acts from the deregulation era that that was the time period when the feds fully overrode state regulations on rail. I can't remember which state this was, but one state required a 6 person crew and the neighboring state required a...

Amtrak doesn't do the last step. Airlines tend to depending on what the yield managing spirits say on any given day.

Another reason why yield management algorithms price things high and lower them is to prevent capacity from selling out immediately. Airlines do this too to some extent. For example it being high at one point, lower say 6 months out or when they think tourists are buying space, adjust then based...