BWI - PHL Commute

[Ryan]

Guest rewards for free travel is pretty easy.

But, you've identified the problem with monthly passes and AGR - you only get a point per dollar spent, do you'll end up building points up very, very slowly.

If you have a MARC monthly pass from BWI airport, you can get a free card to use the garage at BWI for free. You can get a BWI-BAL monthly pass for $100/month. I think that parking in the BWI garage will run $9/day, so it would be cheaper to buy the MARC ticket than pay the $180/month in parking (assuming I'm right about the $9 and you average 20 workdays per month).

 

[amamba]

Okay, since you are all so awesome at responding to my questions, here's another thought: how realistic is it to roll over guest rewards for free travel. I do wish that Amtrak had a more stream-line program for those that commute. For example, buy 3 monthly passes and get one free. That would help with the high cost of using the train. For me, the train is great because I can work while commuting on the train and the stop is close to work/home on both sides but I need to mentally work through how much this is really going to cost (and if there are any tricks/tips to saving some $$). Thanks all!

My understanding is that congress set the price of the monthly passes at something that is a percentage of the low bucket fare.

So yeah, it would be great to have some promo on the monthly passes but doubtful that would happen. Honestly I would just be thrilled if congress would go back to allowing up to $250 of a monthly commuter/train pass come out of paychecks pretax like they did last year, rather than having it go back to $110 or whatever it is again now.

My H's pass from PVD - BOS is $360/month but that's not really that bad compared to other ones that are out there.

 

[Ryan]

I've heard rumblings that they were trying to get the Mass Transit benefit back up, but nothing firm yet.