Lake Shore Limited 448 loads from western NY

[rs9]

I will be taking a Wednesday trip from Rochester to Boston on the Lake Shore Limited in May. I'm going back and forth between coach and business class and was curious if anyone had insights on what the volume of ridership is generally like for this segment.

Judging by 2019 data, it seems like the majority of traffic on the LSL is Chicago-western/central NY and western/central NY to NYC. But of course things could be different now in the pandemic era.

https://www.railpassengers.org/site/assets/files/3447/45.pdf

Essentially if I have a decent chance of two coach seats to myself I'd prefer not to spend the extra money, as I'm already paying for two business overnights on my trip. Thanks for the help!

 

[AmtrakBlue]

I will be taking a Wednesday trip from Rochester to Boston on the Lake Shore Limited in May. I'm going back and forth between coach and business class and was curious if anyone had insights on what the volume of ridership is generally like for this segment.

Judging by 2019 data, it seems like the majority of traffic on the LSL is Chicago-western/central NY and western/central NY to NYC. But of course things could be different now in the pandemic era.

https://www.railpassengers.org/site/assets/files/3447/45.pdf

Essentially if I have a decent chance of two coach seats to myself I'd prefer not to spend the extra money, as I'm already paying for two business overnights on my trip. Thanks for the help!

When you pull up the booking on the website or app, it tells you the current % of seats sold

 

[rs9]

When you pull up the booking on the website or app, it tells you the current % of seats sold

Yes, but that isn't much use for advance bookings. The train is currently 10%, like the vast majority of listings at this point.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Well the east bound train is the last train across Upstate and can be quite busy between NYC and Buffalo. With a large quantity of people transfer from other trains to the Boston section at Albany.

The west bound train is more of a discharge only from Chicago. Pre-pandemic due to the less reliability of train that starts in Chicago vs a train that starts in Buffalo.

With the pandemic it’s going to be more of a guess game depending on your day of travel and month. Some trains are quite full and need more capacity other are quite empty. Not running the LSL 7 days a week is causing artificial supply and demand issues as a add on bonus.

In recap you find out when you board the train.

 

[oregon pioneer]

I just took that trip both ways (eastbound in January, westbound last weekend). It might be worth considering that mask compliance seemed way better to me in Business, and that Business seating is 2 x 1, so you can get a single seat to yourself. Covid could be all finished by May, but it doesn't look too promising right now.