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Ha, literally saw this while waiting for my Amtrak.
For medium-short trips, beats air travel hands down, cheaper, loads of space, reliable and limited security theater.
Took a high speed between Philadelphia and Newark, NJ. Got a deal for less than $30. It was a great ride at 120mph. Wish we had more of that.
120mph is not high speed though. It is 10mph below where the Shinkansen (130 mph) was (1964–1986) 37 years ago. Since 2014, Shinkansen trains run up to 200 mph on the Tōhoku Shinkansen.
if you think the bumpy Acela Express is a great ride you should try the Shinkansen.
It’s high speed for the US. It was a comfotrable ride. It wasn’t intended to be a comparison to other countries.
This is a race to the bottom. The rest of the world exists and lagging in infrastructure has practical impacts including apparently having no frame of reference to how harsh and noisy “high speed” trains are in the US.
You realize that we can understand there are better ways to do things and still enjoy the improvements you do have, right? Part of the reason we’re having this discussion at all is improving the system.
I know. I have been looking forward to the new Avelia Liberty for years, but without dedicated tracks the service will continue to be unreliable and unpleasant. It is not like it is cheap.
What’s the point that you’re trying to make?
American trains suck nananabooboo?
Great talk lol
Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. Get people on trains that go faster than cars and there will be more demand for more and faster trains.
It’s still faster than 55 mph though
May as well define 80mph as high speed rail and have a massive network with the stroke of a pen.
Can’t do that. Acela doesn’t achieve that as an average speed Boston —> NYC
Shinkansen was doing a top speed of 130 mph. At that time, the Hikari express service was making an average speed of 80 mph. Acela has a top speed of 150 mph and an average speed of 67 mph, comparable to the initial average speed of the Shinkansen Kodama (64 mph). It’s definitely not great by today’s standards, but Acela is essentially equivalent to the initial operating standards of Shinkansen (by average speed. Ride quality, reliability, etc. probably don’t compare as favorably thanks to the aging infrastructure of the NEC). People making unfair comparisons against American train service are well intentioned in pointing out that we need to do better and to modernize, but can make train travel appear less viable than it actually is in today’s conditions by doing so
The Kodama and Hikari have more frequent stops. The Nozomi is more comparable to the Acela Express in number of stops.
At most intermediate stations, Kodama trains wait for faster trains, including the Nozomi, Hikari, Sakura, and Mizuho, to pass through before resuming their journeys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodama_(train)
The numbers alone don’t tell you the full story. The difference in punctuality, ride quality, and reliability has to be experienced. This video of a high speed in China shows what I mean, and if anything the Japanese are better at it.
Pre-edit: Rereading, I definitely misread your comment because I saw 37 years ago and my perpetual 2000 brain decided you must be talking about the first year of shinkansen operations, 1964. You’re almost certainly correct in your initial assertion that 1986 Shinkansen well outperforms anything on the NEC
Nozomi did not exist in 1964 and the Hikari timetable of 1964 was more or less the same as today’s Nozomi (4 stops to Nozomi’s 5) across the Tokaido Shinkansen, which is all that existed at the time. At 33 miles per stop, the Acela is in the ballpark of the original Kodoma timetable (27 miles per stop with 12 stops), or today’s Hikari timetable (36 miles per stop, which definitely outperforms Acela at an average speed of 128 mph). Definitely not disputing your points on the intangibles or the fact that Acela is not up to snuff when compared to the state of the art, but it does compare favorably to Shinkansen as it opened, which is just to say that we don’t even have to start from scratch to realize the benefits that Japan and so many other countries have reaped from their HSR systems, we just have to actually invest in improving and expanding what we have at a competitive level. I think overall we agree, so I’m probably just being pedantic
It is worse when you realize that the NEC for a brief moment when the Metroliner was first introduced was almost competitive at least when it came to trip time and average speed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metroliner_(train)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Speed_Ground_Transportation_Act_of_1965
Going on vacation soon, gonna take a train 😎
Early next year I’m looking at a mini trip into Chicago to do the Field Museum and while we could just drive there easily enough we’re eyeing up taking Metra or Amtrak just for sheer ease of not driving into Chicago (both have stops inconveniently far from where we live so no time savings but plenty of annoyance and cost savings by not needing to pay for parking or worry about traffic
I always feel like instead of interviewing the CEOs of stories of interest, they should instead interview the people involved in the story.
The CEO is just saying “people want to take the train”. Oh, really? That’s what you think, guy who stands to profit if people take the train?
Instead, interview the passengers. THEY can tell you why they actually took the train. And no one passenger has the full story. So you need to interview hundreds of passengers, and probably get repeating redundant answers. THAT’S when you know you’ve got to the heart of the matter through good old fashioned investigative reporting.
Ah, but who am I kidding? Real journalism is dead. They’ll just interview the CEO, and make it a fluff piece.
Earlier today I wondered if Twit.tv was still in operation. It’s a podcast network about technology. I would watch back in 2005. I remember they built a dedicated streaming studio in 2010. Then in 2012 or so, I stopped watching after a controversial series of decisions. Today I googled to see if they still existed. Turns out back in July they closed their studio, and are now streaming remote via zoom. The CEO tried putting a positive spin on it in a letter that began “Beginning July q6th, we’re excited to begin a new chapter in remote streaming!”. This is what the CEO wrote.
So I’m SURE even if Amtrak business were down instead of up, he’d try to frame it as some kind of noble act of pollution saving, or some corporate speak to say they’re consolidating their trips to serve more people (despite serving far less). The CEO is NOT the person to interview in these stories.
The CEO is just saying “people want to take the train”. Oh, really? That’s what you think, guy who stands to profit if people take the train?
It’s not the CEO, it’s the chair of the board of directors. Amtrak is government chartered and majority owned by the US government, and its board of directors are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, essentially making it a government position.
And it’s two paragraphs out of like 10, where several other experts were interviewed and quoted.
I have my beef with Newsweek, but your criticism here misses the mark.
Jour-na-li-sm? What’s that? Is that in any way related to the text that is next to animated ads and after the cookie notice?
Pretty cool. My local stop in Columbus WI got upgraded with an ADA platform recently. It has the original 100 year old structure, maintained but never expanded/improved (until now)
I took Amtrak between Seattle and Vancouver recently. Great trip, stellar views, and overall just a super easy way to cross the border. No crazy invasive checks or waiting in lines, it was just like getting off a plane, but in the middle of downtown.
great, now all we need is more fucking trains
the money is always going to get in the way. its just not profitable… because thats the end-all be-all of the untie states. profits above anything else whatsoever.
don’t forget you also have to beg the freight companies to let you run those trains
Because efficient rail with positive externalities has to be privatized and profitable, while inefficient roads with negative externalities are a massively subsidized public good, for “reasons.”
I love my car, it is free 🤡
We do need more fucking trains, yes
If you have the money, you can get a sleeping compartment on any of the long-haul Amtrak routes. They won’t stop you, as long as it doesn’t disturb other passengers.
As this is the worst timeline, the best we can do is some 20mph Tesla tunnels
I’d have a train except Scott walker gave our train we already paid for away for free, because trains are a liberal plot to make America weak and communist!
The 2022 Amtrak Connects Us plans have several new lines through Wisconsin specifically (extending Hiawatha services to Green Bay, a second Empire Builder route with more towns connected and a station in Madison) and the expanded Borealis service has exceeded ridership expectations in less than a year which bodes well politically for other Midwestern Amtrak projects
You can go to Lagos and ride it, if you want!
I took a train trip from Raleigh to DC earlier this year. It worked okay, but had big delays in both directions, and the seats were only a little bit bigger than economy flight seats, not super comfortable for 6’2" me. The Wifi was also out for most of the trip and that route takes you through a whole lot of cellular dead zones. Still hard to argue with a $105 round trip ticket though.
My understanding of the scheduling issues is that freight rail companies break regulation by overloading their trains and jumping the line over passenger rail… Amtrak has been lobbying for the government to enforce existing laws to prevent it. I doubt that the incoming administration will do much to alleviate those pains though.
the seats were only a little bit bigger than economy flight seats
Ohh rly? I am sorry you feel that way
and the seats were only a little bit bigger than economy flight seats
I find them to be much larger, comparable to business class on an airplane. It’s much, much easier for me to get work done on a laptop (or eat a meal) on an Amtrak train than on economy seats, or even economy plus seats. Plus having a lot more aisle space to walk around is huge.
The comment about seats is objectively false, I am not sure what this person is smoking lol
Commuter rail has bigger seats than international flights
I live in a town with a kickass bus service and extensive pedestrian infrastructure so my car’s in a storage lot until the next time I need to go somewhere that far out of the way.
The article doesn’t specify as to why, and I’m curious.
An absurd amount of New Yorkers, myself included, moved out of the city in the last four years. As a result, Metro North has seen a substantial increase in traffic in and out of the city.
Did this happen in other cities too, or is the increase in Amtrak traffic more organic?
A couple of months ago there were all sorts of stats trying to explain it. It should be easy to search but you’ll find a lot
The state of passenger rail in the United States on lines that don’t serve New York City is pretty pathetic, so I’d think that an increase in the number of New York passengers, by itself, would actually represent a significant increase in the total number of passengers, nationally.
It absolutely does in regard to all train traffic, but this article is specifically about Amtrak. NYC is serviced by MTA, and trains into the city are provided by their subsidiary, Metro North.
NYC is served by several train lines, including Amtrak. Some of the others are LIRR and NJ Transit but I didn’t find a complete list in a brief search
Numbers are almost identical to 2019 Amtrak ridership, so kind of a stretch to call it a new record.
If it were just stochastic variation, I’d agree, but ridership was growing for years up to 2019. It (mysteriously!) cratered in 2020 and 2021, so I think that the fact that it’s already topping the 2019 number is notable.
This did happen elsewhere but most such places do not have much rail service so I’m not sure it’s behind the trend.
