expired Posted by serra | Staff • Mar 17, 2023
Item 1 of 1
expired Posted by serra | Staff • Mar 17, 2023
Amtrak 'Night Owl Fares' Off Peak One-Way Coach Fares to/from Select Cities
(Select Northeast Cities)from $5
$115
Amtrak
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1. Most of the routes are in the Northeast because Amtrak/other passenger rail (commuter trains) own the trackage between DC - Boston, therefore they have absolute control over what and how many trains to run on those tracks. Almost everywhere outside of the Northeast, the tracks are owned by freight rail companies and they basically prioritize running freight trains almost all the time. Amtrak will have to negotiate (aka pay) to run trains on those tracks and even then, freight companies are super reluctant to do so.
2. There is a lot of talk about are trains faster or slower than planes. The answer is for the most part planes (if we count direct travel time). However, that does not take into account all the indirect travel time there is. For example, if I am a person who works in midtown NYC and I want to head to a meeting in downtown DC, to catch a plane I will have to go from midtown to the airport (15 min - 1 hour), arrive early for check-in + security (1 - 2 hours), get on the flight and hope there are no delays (0 - hours), fly to DC (45 mins), land + head back downtown (15 min - 1 hour). For a person catching a train, they merely have to walk to station 15 minutes early, catch the train and do nothing (or work) until they arrive in downtown DC.
3. Another reason why trains, especially outside the Northeast, don't work is that US cities are super-sprawled out. The joys of arriving downtown in a train only works if from the station one can easily walk to their destination. Since cars are functionally required for anything, that kills any time savings one can get from arriving downtown. For example, NYC is the densest city in the US at around 30,000 people per square mile while Paris is almost at 60k per square mile. LA only tops out a 8k per square mile
Yeah, the US could certainly do better, but we're not a huge embarrassing outlier compared to every other first world country like we are with imprisonment, gun deaths, maternal mortality rates, executions, etc etc.
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It would be nice if the US had dedicated passenger rails instead of leasing from freight companies - almost all delays I've experienced have been due to a freight train.