There has been no news on the status of the reconfiguration project for the Acela café car in some time. The line item for "Acela Bistro Reconfiguration" is gone from the monthly reports for the current FY. Amtrak may indeed have decided to can the project in favor of spending funds on ordering 40 additional coach cars. But the new coach cars are 2-3 years away at a minimum and the Café (ok, "Bistro") reconfiguration would provide some additional seating sooner than that. But Amtrak have decided that buying new coach cars with 65 seats each was a better investment for the limited funds available.
Too bad if they did drop the reconfiguration project, because the current Acela Café car configuration is a poor use of space and a bad design in a time when people want tables for workspace and laptops, not tall stool chairs with small table space. The tables on the café cars on the Northeast Regionals are always busy when I take a Regional between NYP and WAS on weekdays, but I have seen few people sitting in the café car "lounge" on the Acelas.
