expired Posted by serra | Staff • Mar 17, 2023
Mar 17, 2023 1:25 PM
Item 1 of 1
expired Posted by serra | Staff • Mar 17, 2023
Mar 17, 2023 1:25 PM
Amtrak 'Night Owl Fares' Off Peak One-Way Coach Fares to/from Select Cities
(Select Northeast Cities)from $5
$115
Amtrak
Visit AmtrakGood Deal
Bad Deal
Save
Share
Top Comments
65 Comments
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ridi...of-motion/
https://www.glimpsefrom
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.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
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.
Source: Last year I took my 2 kids to Western Europe. We flew to 5 distinct locations within Europe (Europe to Europe). Our HIGHEST ticket price was $39/each. Most of the time we were paying ~$25. Train tickets were generally priced at $75 to $100 each. Buying a rail pass for our trips was going to cost $1200. We flew instead, which was much quicker, and paid a total of $425.
Here some examples
2021 Porto - Lisbon high speed rail for 2 person 26 EUR (13 EUR per person)
2019 Rennes to Paris Montparnasse TGV OUIgo for 2 person 32 EUR (16 EUR per person)
2018 Paris Montparnasse to BIARRITZ TGV Ouigo for 3 person 75 EUR (25 EUR per person)
I also travel to the French Riviera last year stop by cities (Nice, Cannes, Marseille, Barcelona) none of the train ticket cost more than 30 EUR per person most are 10 EUR-20EUR we even took the first class train.
And a few years back when they still offer First class on Renfe.
I took a First class train from Madrid to Seville with access to rain station lounge, also meal and wine during the trip I paid less than 30 EURO per person
Could flying faster than train, possible but you better count the amount of time it takes from door to door...most of time it is not the case
for example if you want to fly out of Paris and you stay at a hotel in the city it would take 40min to 1 hour to get to the CDG and you need to get to the airport at least an hour earlier, so you already spent at least 1.5-2 hours before even boarding the plane Talk about misconception here.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
I believe this deal is due to Amtrak being forced to cancel NYP-BOS overnight trains - track work in the Bronx i think?
Sometimes you can get lucky and find seats somewhat cheap on Acela if you book far enough in advance. Last time I took it, I got $61 for Bos-NYC.