My r/t to Chicago would now cost $80 instead of $50 in March. Buiness class is sold out.
A good sign Amtrak travel is increasing
- Thread starter MIrailfan
- Start date
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Speaking as seniors, to travel from California to Ohio to visit family, our options are (a) fly (b) drive (c) ride a bus (d) take the train. We don’t like to fly, driving long distances is too tiring for us, and taking the bus is NOT an option that we would ever choose. Since we’re rail fans already, taking the train is our option of choice. Since we only indulge in one long-distance train trip a year, we can well afford to “splurge” on a bedroom, even if it is currently overpriced. (This is offset somewhat by what we save by using the travel points we’ve earned from our previous train trips.) Even if we have to make do with flex dining, this is more than outweighed by the many other aspects of traveling by train that we enjoy: the scenery, the people we meet, monitoring Amtrak radio traffic using our scanner, jotting down notes on things that happen to include in the trip report that we will share later, etc.
All AU members should be gratified that ridership is starting to pick up again. With increased ridership, operating loses should go down as well as, we trust, the cost for tickets.
Eric & Pat
All AU members should be gratified that ridership is starting to pick up again. With increased ridership, operating loses should go down as well as, we trust, the cost for tickets.
Eric & Pat
- Joined
- Jul 16, 2010
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- 4,888
Fat chance! Service is likely to really start going downhill since their "enhancements" have proved so successful.
The only things they have enhanced are the prices. Why should they stop now? If enough people are willing to pay this much for less, they should be willing to pay more for even more cuts.
Wait until they start the real cuts:
Extending the schedules
Not really going back to "traditional" meals but only some portion of them.
Keeping the prices high but making meals optional at extra cost.
No enhanced bedding.
Removing more Lounge cars.
Calling sleeper service experiential while the onboard service deteriorates more because they have fewer SLAs and other staff and the good ones leave.
Amtrak management does not want long distance. Look at all the "futures". Not one enhancement for LD but lots of short distance trains that could replace them once the above cuts start taking effect.
And I'm an optimist. I'm thinking the present administration will actually get some reasonable money into Amtrak and the other side won't take over one house in the next two years killing all hope of actually spending that money and then take over completely in four years with Amtrak as their #1 target for zeroing out funds.
