Amtrak 1974 vs 2016 ticket price wise......

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Dave Van

Dave Van

Service Attendant
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Oct 23, 2013
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Location
Hills of West Virginia
I am cleaning out my garage to make room to actually park a car in there!! One box I found my Amrak ticket from July 1974 from Los Angeles Union to Davis Ca. I bought the ticket two days before departure.....not sure if pricing varied like it does today.......but my two day advance ticket was $24.75. I looked at what a ticket in Dec booked today would cost for the same trip. It was right at $57, not a huge increase by any standard. Inflation alone makes the price $123.......so it looks like Amtrak is more a bargain today than 1974. I know as a teen that $25 was a big chunk of cash back in the day. Just thinking out loud.
 
Wonderful find! My cousin's have my great uncle's pass for any Wabash passenger train from the 1950s, he worked out of Detroit. Not sure position for certain but I think he was a road foreman, but I could be completely wrong on that. Amazing though that you still have a ticket
 
I remember around 1974, a one-way ticket from Boston to New York cost $12.00, and a Levi's denim jacket cost $12.00. Both those things were among the coolest items on the planet!

When I did a quick on-line check for a train ticket from New York to Boston tomorrow, the cheapest seat (one available) was on a 12:10 PM Acela, for $112.00. First-class Acela tickets were as high as $291.00. Looking into the future a bit, on December 7, Saver tickets were available for as low as $49.00 (with first-class Acela tickets as high as $248.00). A quick on-line check found that Levi's denim jackets were about $70 (as low as $23.15 at Diapers .com).

I think in 2016 you're less likely to walk up to the ticket counter and get a cheap seat on the next train than in 1974. But cheaper seats are available now if you plan ahead a bit, and they are about the same value as a Levi's denim jacket still.
 
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Don't know about that year but in late 1960s Eastern air line shuttle off peak LGA-BOS was $12.75 + tax
 
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west point said:
Don't know about that year but in late 1960s Eastern air line shuttle off peak LGA-BOS was $12.75 + tax
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And if the plane was full when you arrived, they'd roll out another section, just for you! Really!
 
In the Summer of '75 I travel Coach from Chicago to Norman OK and that ticket was $47 and some Pennies. Cannot make a direct comparison to today as the Lone Star is long gone.
 
railiner said:
west point said:
Don't know about that year but in late 1960s Eastern air line shuttle off peak LGA-BOS was $12.75 + tax
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And if the plane was full when you arrived, they'd roll out another section, just for you! Really!
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Except now it will be a jet-powered Electra - From a newspaper ad I have announcing the retirement of Eastern's Constellations.
 
Eastern did run several shuttles with just one or two passengers aboard. And the four engine turboprop electras were later replaced by 3-jet 727's and 2-jet DC-9s.
 
And you could rush from the curb, straight through the Shuttle terminal, stopping only to fill out an ID slip, which you deposited into a box at the gate.

No ticket? No problem...the stewardesses came down the aisle with a cart that had a credit card scrubber on top. She would sell you a ticket (cash or charge) enroute...she would also collect tickets at the same time (like a RR conductor)... :)
 
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I ran some numbers on the Silvers a few years ago. The general rule seems to be (both with Amtrak and, I suspect, the airlines) that the higher coach buckets are roughly in line with fares from the 1960s and 1970s but the lower buckets are an improvement from the customer's end. On the sleeper/First Class side of things it's more complicated, since "back then" you didn't have the benefit of low-bucket fares to balance off the room charges...but IIRC the fares from then often line up with about bucket 3 or 4 (of 5).

The Acela also stands out as an exception: Acela First, at peak hours, is now going for >$400 WAS-NYP. That translates into about $67 in 1971; in 1971, a Metroclub seat ran $27.40 WAS-NYP.
 
One thing I recall from around the beginning of Amtrak, or just before, was a disparity of the fares in diffferent regions...for example, coach between New York City and Chicago was something like $51.25, and between New York and Atlanta was like $36.12....roughly the same distances apart. A considerable difference....

I believe the western fares were also lower than the northeast...
 
railiner said:
One thing I recall from around the beginning of Amtrak, or just before, was a disparity of the fares in diffferent regions...for example, coach between New York City and Chicago was something like $51.25, and between New York and Atlanta was like $36.12....roughly the same distances apart. A considerable difference....

I believe the western fares were also lower than the northeast...
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There are still some odd fares. For example from my summer trip this year, Baltimore to Atlanta was about twice the price of Raleigh to Tampa. Also, tickets from Chicago to Atlanta are more expensive than Chicago to Florida, California, and the Pacific Northwest.
 
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Back then, fare tariffs were strictly based on mileage. Nowadays it's all on yield management...
 
Another off example I have found is this. When I'm booking FLO-WAS on 98 a train that is discharge only after Fredericksburg it was 62 dollars to Alexandria and to Washington propped on the same train was 102. A difference of eight miles with no one getting on the train. Needless to say I took Metro from Alexandria.
 
Seaboard92 said:
Another off example I have found is this. When I'm booking FLO-WAS on 98 a train that is discharge only after Fredericksburg it was 62 dollars to Alexandria and to Washington propped on the same train was 102. A difference of eight miles with no one getting on the train. Needless to say I took Metro from Alexandria.
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Oh, that's nothing. The Dyer-Chicago "jump" is pretty infamous (NYP-DYE is usually a few hundred less than NYP-CHI on the Cardinal, so booking NYP-DYE and DYE-CHI is usually the solution), and then there's the old "Anniston drop" (NYP-ATL will be far more expensive than NYP-ATN).
 
Anderson said:
Seaboard92 said:
Another off example I have found is this. When I'm booking FLO-WAS on 98 a train that is discharge only after Fredericksburg it was 62 dollars to Alexandria and to Washington propped on the same train was 102. A difference of eight miles with no one getting on the train. Needless to say I took Metro from Alexandria.
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Oh, that's nothing. The Dyer-Chicago "jump" is pretty infamous (NYP-DYE is usually a few hundred less than NYP-CHI on the Cardinal, so booking NYP-DYE and DYE-CHI is usually the solution), and then there's the old "Anniston drop" (NYP-ATL will be far more expensive than NYP-ATN).
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Those are some good tips....thanks! :)
A few years ago, I found that booking Chicago to Poplar Bluff came out cheaper than Chicago to St. Louis...

There must be lots of these gems, if you take the time to search them out...
 
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