You must log in or register to comment.
As a Tor user, I will not patronise an anti-Tor establishment.
In light of all of Amtrak’s other problems, they have a looong way to go.
I would be tempted to try train-hopping on freight trains.
It is not only the AmTrack website. The rail line is really bad as well. In summer your train can be stopped because the rails are too hot. The rails expand too much and warp enough to make it unsafe to run the train on.
I think we need a new system from the ground up.
That’s a problem that can be solved with an angle grinder
It’s impressive how terrible the amtrak website is. I’ve used amtrak pretty extensively over the years and haven’t been able to login in over a year. I know it’s probably due to some verification code that my tech stack violates but the site certainly doesn’t fail gracefully. I won’t touch the app, of course.
I can still buy tickets, but I need to checkout as a guest and manually enter my rewards number for each transaction. I imagine at some point I’ll need to transact by phone or in person.
It’s a complicated problem. Part of it is that Amtrak is so broken that people wonder if it’s even fixable.
I recently went to a concert in another city for my birthday. I looked into what Amtrak options there were, because I get panic attacks in traffic, and they only offer overnight service, with a middle of the night swap from bus to train. It also would have cost $250 round trip for two tickets vs <$100 in gas to drive, and taken 12 hours vs the 7 to drive.
So instead of taking the extra time off work, we wound up driving, and I had multiple panic attacks instead.
Another part of the problem is that the US likes to talk about whether or not people deserve transit options. Like, my local bus only comes by four times a day between 6am and 6pm, but because I live in a low-income area, I apparently don’t even deserve a bench at the bus stop.
the worst part of Amtrak is how often it’s late, making it not only more expensive than driving or flying but also less reliable.
Old story. That happens when so much of the tracks is owned by freight rail, so little proper passenger rail infrastructure exists and laws that would require passenger rails to be given priority being so weakly enforced and largely ignored, never mind that the infrastructure is maintained as freight rail needs it, which is really bad for passenger rail purposes.
This is the bigger thing I think, Luke AmTrak at least west of the Mississippi doesn’t have a whole lot of options for long distance travel, there’s functionally one train that goes west from Chicago and one train that goes east to Chicago and that’s only if you want to be in the north, but if the rails were govt owned, it would be easier to justify adding more trains and more destinations because they could start making the service note reliable.
it wouldn’t be as much of an issue if Amtrak ran more than once a day in megacities and thrice a week elsewhere
It would be even more of an issue because freight rail would fight the higher track usage of Amtrak even more, making the service even more unreliable. Amtrak needs its own infrastructure and between metropolitan areas there needs to be HSR corridors. This is quite a task even in countries with functioning institutions and capabilities to build infrastructure at a reasonable price. The US isn’t such a country.
We don’t have any buses. Or sidewalks. Or bike lanes. Or trains. Even walking near the road is super dangerous. Tell me more about your limited bus schedule.
I thought this was going to annoy me but it was hilarious
Hilarious! Love it! “one free checked car per passenger” is gold.
To be fair, only one time in my adult life have I flown somewhere and NOT rented a car as soon as I landed.
I have traveled all over the world and I have never driven a car.
My friend showed me a map of their snowbird parents’ neighbourhood in AZ and it’s literally an hour walk to the nearest non-house with zero bus service.
Rest of the world can’t comprehend such levels of car-brainedness.
That’s insane. But just imagine how rich they are on all the taxes they don’t pay! Probably jet setting all over the world…
deleted by creator
I bet you’re American. I know you have terminal car brain. It’s a great shame, over here public transit has always been so good that I genuinely never felt the need to get a car. I save so much money, save on the environment, don’t have to breathe carcinogenic exhaust fumes in traffic and in garages on my commute, can spend the time working or watching shit on my phone…
It should be a no brainer but I know the US has been going through a rough patch for… checks watch… a few centuries.
Huh. The only time I breathe shitty air is when I travel to cities. I mostly just avoid cities though. Not so much because of the traffic or crime or pollution though. It’s city people. Fucking insufferable.
deleted by creator
If you visited my area you wouldn’t have to drive one. You could even get a hotel with a shuttle, and if you stayed downtown you could walk a lot of places. But if you wanted to go anywhere other than walking from your hotel you’d have to hire an Uber. If you were near the part of town where I live, there are zero options other than cars.
I have traveled a lot of the world also. But I don’t like cities, nor do I visit them. When I visit countries I like to visit mountains, wilderness and remote villages and camp in the wild under the stars. I have rented many 4x4s.
Yeah for sure. Thing is I save so much on not owning a car that whenever I need it, I can easily just book a cab.
And I save so much by not living in an inflated city that I can afford to rent cars all over the world.
So you only flew to the Americas?
Or you don’t like cities abroad?
I don’t like cities anywhere. I don’t travel to visit cities, I travel to experience remote areas in different parts of the world. I’ve lived in Europe and used lots trains but the places I enjoy are usually more difficult to get to
car industry would lobby any meaningful change to it.
Spent a couple of weeks in Japan and got to take the shinkansen twice. Of course Tokyo’s subway system was awesome aside from shutting down at midnight but I had no problems getting around in Osaka or Kyoto either. The shinkansen is so dope it’s hard to describe. They provided the best views I got of Fuji on the way down to Osaka and back from Kyoto. I tried to get a picture of a passing train but it was over in a blink. I took a train from San Francisco to Chicago and it took 3 days. The scenery was beautiful but the roomlette was like trying to sleep in the Disneyland Star Tours ride. 3 days proved too long to rely on edibles and sublingual distillate and I ended up with CHS. The southerly route back was awful, nothing but the drabbest of views and I didn’t get a roomlette for the trip back and trying to sleep in economy was very difficult and uncomfortable.
Man, I’d love to be able to get on a train to Tulsa or Springfield, or Kansas City. The problem is that they’d have to lay entirely new rails because the only ones around here are for freight and stay pretty busy all around the clock.
If only people tended to live together in big conglomerations this would be so much easier to solve!
My brother bringing the receipts!
I live on a hill in Alaska, am I qualified to be an urban transpotstion person or do you need to live in the denali mountain range?
What is the bottom right graph and what is the source for it? Looks interesting
The railway is good for staying relatively close to the railway. But if you want to go out and touch grass as people say you really need a vehicle. Maybe the Green Wave will fix all this in a few years. But they got to be affordable and they’re not at all
Only in car oriented societies. In Austria it is certainly harder to get around with only public transportation if you are not along railway corridors or in metropolitan areas but it is still perfectly feasible to get almost anywhere with train and bus. If you have a Klimaticket it doesn’t even cost anything other than the flat rate of that ticket, which many already have just for commuting alone. (Just for context a Klimaticket for entire Austria, almost all trains and regular bus service included for a full year is 1400 EUR.)
c/fuckcars stans when someone doesn’t have 30,000 people within a square mile of their home:
A big share of the US population lives along feasible HSR corridors. The reason that this HSR doesn’t exist isn’t because there is no potential for it, but because the country is underdeveloped and honestly struggles to stay afloat infrastructure wise.
You use ELR in lower population areas
Look at Russia & China, they’re just as spread out, more so, yet they have an excellent rail network that covers the whole country
It’s normal that people don’t look beyond their tiny horizon. If I was king of the world I would order everyone to live in town and later on the countryside. And in at least 20 different countries of the world during their lifetime. I believe that would completely change how people see each other. Best people generally speaking are those who travel a lot (cultural travel, NOT business).
I guess it’s covered by 5., but the real, actual reason we can’t have trains is the civil engineering firms can’t extract infinite money from a completed railway.
Also, have you considered how any public works project that runs longer than a single term of the elected official who gets it approved, is letting the next guy get all the credit for it? That’s much worse than having functional mass transit.
Have you looked at railway maps?
There’s a huge sprawling
rainwaterrailway network across America… It’s just only used by freight cause the bastards that own it decided passengers are unprofitableAssuming rail autocorrected to rainwater, agreed. There are interesting parallels between rail in the 1800s and the life cycle of the internet - successful network technology explodes in utility and popularity, then is cannibalized and constricted
It’s the story of the USA in general, y’all seem to fall for it every time, gov makes something mildly socialist, corporate muscle their way in, cannibalise and constrict it, and then everyone’s told “see, there’s no way it could have worked! USA is just too big/different/free/wild
delete as appropriate”
California seems to be good at infinite money extraction for rail that never finishes.
The conservatives that filed the many, many lawsuits that delayed construction over and over again are the same people complaining about how long it’s taking to be completed. They caused the delays and are the most vocal about the delays. It makes no sense.
https://theauthoritarians.org/
This book explains it. But it’s really frustrating.
I mean, it makes perfect sense particularly if you don’t want (really, get paid to not want) people to get off cars
I guess it’s covered by 5., but the real, actual reason we can’t have trains is the civil engineering firms can’t extract infinite money from a completed railway.
Actually, they kinda can. Railroad tracks need upkeep just like roads do. Maybe not to the same degree and maybe the costs work out differently but they do need to be maintained. So there’s plenty of opportunity to grift the hell out of a railroad buildout.
I was assuming the repair would be done by a different firm, but that’s fair. It probably ends the cost-plus contract that the construction firm had, at a minimum.
In seriousness the problem seems to be the contract doesn’t incentivize the correct behavior, but I would love to hear from someone with actual knowledge on the topic.
Also, maybe there are too many opportunities to kill projects via zoning ordinances, and its inarguable that oil, auto, and other industries actively combat these projects.
Have you SEEN what the UK is doing? HS2 is at around 700 million/mile (about 900 million USD) now, you can absolutely extract infinite money from a rail line without even finishing it.
It is the entire English speaking world that lost the ability to built passenger rail without it costing multiple times of what it costs in other developed countries.
That’s what I meant, every big project I know of in the US spends money continuously with no prospect of being finished
What I don’t get is why people are okay with all-day drives that could be comfy train rides. Not to mention commute traffic jams of everyone going in the same direction at the same time every workmorning and workevening.
Honest answer? Partly because I can operate on my schedule and not the train’s schedule. And the rest of it is getting to have adventures along the way that otherwise would mean getting off the train, finding a bus, taking a long bus ride to the thing, taking a long bus ride back to the train, getting on the train again…
Sometimes I drive to Seattle, sometimes I take the train. There are times when I like the relaxing ‘let someone else get me there’ vibes, but there are times when the train schedule doesn’t work with my schedule, or I want to check stuff out on route, like fun restaurants I’ve read about, cool educational places, silly tourist traps…
I remember seeing a sign for ‘World’s Largest Egg!’ one trip, so I just took that exit and went to find the World’s Largest Egg, because why not?
And another reason is sometimes I just don’t want to be around a lot of people. One crowded train trip up I was treated to a child that felt the best way to pass the time on the 3.5-hour journey was to scream. A lot. It was also a trip where I’d forgotten my headphones. Not fun.
Ive heard maybe a dozen or so people whip out the ol “if everyone at the light hit the gas at the same time, at least 3+ more cars could get through the intersection”
If only there were some way to connect these many single cars into one vehicle… And if only it were cheaper… And faster… And didnt have to stop as often…
I also can’t comprehend all-day drives over all-day trains. If I take a train on my own or with my family, those are (partially) actionable hours. I can read a book, grab a coffee, work on my laptop, draw with my kid. If I go by car, best I can do is a podcast.
Since I don’t own a car, my point of view is also biased by not having to make sense of a large investment. But if you factor is the costs of having the car, gas and tolls… I’d rather go by train. If necessary, I can rent a car at my arrival destination.
If you’re just one person a train can be attractive if you have reasonable transportation to and from the station. A car gets really cheap once it’s a family of 4. Planes also offer significant time savings for a comparable price.
Because public transit is for poor people/minorities, and if they used it they’d be around a bunch of poor people/minorities.
Then they can’t fly less than Leer, a 747 is as “public” as any Amtrak train.
I think this is a big factor. A lot of people are racist, and a lot of people are like pathologically anti-social.
and they see themselves as temporarily embarrassed [m|b|tr]illionaires, right?
I would love to have public transit where I live that could easily get me to work, without having to take the freeway and deal with traffic. There isn’t a train near me which goes to my workplace, sadly.
That seems more like a task for a bus and/or tram network alongside trains, maybe also a taxi (I’d argue there should be a public transit form of taxis to fulfill a hole not covered by existing modes).
Of course, that’s not a personal failure, that’s a policy failure.
Funny thing, there is a public taxi system where I live. Though the taxi doesn’t even go near my place of work. Also, there use to be bus lines going through here, but that disappeared.
