Sleepless,
I do agree that there is a certain amount of charm to the type of seating that you have suggested. However, I see a few problems with this type of seating for Amtrak.
First and sadly most obvious, is the fact that Amtrak simply cannot afford to retrofit their current fleet of trains with these seats. Even if Amtrak actually had money with which to buy new trains, I doubt that they could find a manufacturer willing to substitute the normal type of seating with ABH seating without additional costs.
Secondly, something that Amfleet has already touched upon would be the lack of a window for the second tier. While I note that you have mentioned and I saw on the web page that there is a virtual reality window, I personally and I suspect that most people who do travel Amtrak want to see the real thing. That’s one of the reasons that many people take Amtrak. On a plane you can’t see much out of that tiny window at 30,000 feet even if you have the window seat. So at 30,000 feet virtual reality would actually be beneficial and welcome. On a train, I want to really see what’s going by the window. I don’t want to feel like it’s a movie. Yes I realize that a camera mounted on the engine might actually show me more than what I see out the window, but somehow it’s just not the same. If both were combined however, that could be a real treat. Being able to see what's coming and then look out a real window to watch it go by would be awesome.
Third and perhaps the biggest problem that I see with the ABH system, is the ladder needed to climb into the seat. People tend to move about a train far more than they do a plane. If it’s a short flight you may not see very many people get up. Even on a long distance flight, movement in the cabin is still far less than what you would experience on an Amtrak train. Remember that a plane can get you from NY to Miami in a little over 2 hours, while Amtrak takes about 26-27 hours. On a plane the average person might need to go to the bathroom once during that flight. On Amtrak at a minimum I’d expect at least 6 or 7 trips to the bathroom, and maybe more. Then add in the need for 4 meals in either the diner or the café car, a couple of walk a bout’s just to stretch your legs. You’ve now got at least a dozen times that a person going from NY to Miami would need to climb up and down that ladder, all while the train is bouncing and pitching around. A train from Chicago to California would easily double the above numbers, if not triple them.
That said Amtrak already has problems with people falling off the ladders in the sleeper cars, and the ladders only get used at night for bed. Trains tend to bounce around a lot more than planes do. Therefore since ABH would require many more passengers to climb up and down far more often than they would in an airplane, I suspect that you would end up with a very high injury rate. That sounds like a recipe for disaster waiting to happen. In fact I can see professional accident victims(PA's) lining up to ride the train in an upper seat, just for the opportunity to fall on a good bounce and sue Amtrak. Yes PA's do exist sadly, in fact Disney World actually has a department within it's police force whose sole job is to follow know PA's around the park just waiting for them to try to fake an accident.
Yes I like the idea of the seats ability to fully recline, and the other safety factors which both you and the web site mention are very nice. It does hold great charm for planes, but I’m not sure how you fix the above problems for Amtrak use. If Amtrak could afford to lose the coach seating by going with single level ABH only, then I would endorse ABH in a heartbeat. For that matter if Amtrak could live with one row of ABH seats on each side of the car and a row in the center of the car, so that you had two isles running down the length of the car, that would also work. This would also solve the window problem, but I’m just not sure the bi-level concept would work well for Amtrak. Plus I don’t know if they can afford the loss of seating in a single level ABH configuration.
Even if you can overcome those difficulties, still remaining is the cost factor. Amtrak currently can’t even afford to repair its damaged cars, let alone refurbish it’s current fleet. Plus forget about buying any new cars, even though they desperately need new cars.
