Finally! I saw these new trains stationed at Philadelphia Train Station. They're beautiful. I just wished they could operate at real high speed throughout the NEC.
Oooof it is. I went through there on the way to Chicago and couldn't believe it. "Is this really it?" It's like a station in rural Idaho, not one in a major city.
> In the coming months, Amtrak will be operating both the current Acela equipment and the NextGen Acela trains as the new trains transition into the fleet.
I do hope that at the time of booking they make it clear which Acela it is. Airlines do this: they usually mention the type of plane while booking. I might just do a trip on the new Acela to experience the train.
I always wondered about that part of press releases. Why do they always claim some executive said a paragraph of text that they very obviously didn't say? Who are they supposed to be saying it to? Is it like a transcript of an imaginary press conference??
Great news! I hope prices go back down a bit thanks to the extra capacity. I used to take Acela 3 times a week about a decade ago and they were rarely completely full. Now they're more expensive and fully booked much of the time, which is a real shame.
Needing to book days in advance makes it unusable for short-notice trips (vs. driving), and due to the demand they basically doubled prices. It's now more expensive to take Acela than it is to take a plane; that wasn't the case a decade ago.
I live in Switzerland where people are so comfortable taking the train they treat it like an extension of their living room.
Only in rare cases do I even book tickets in advance, like when going to Milano… otherwise I just use the Fairtiq app, which is a nation wide system for paying for tickets, including busses and trams…
You swipe right before you step on, swipe left when you step off and the system automatically calculates the best ticket for you.
As others have noted, the bigger bottleneck on the Northeast Corridor is the tracks themselves (or more precisely, a small number of problematic old railroad bridges and tunnels). Amtrak has been moving to replace them under the Gateway project[1], but it's a significant undertaking given how critical the existing lines are.
Unfortunately, this doesn't seem like it will speed up travel much at all.
Based on my understanding, travel times in the northeast are limited not by the top speed of the trains, but by the tracks, and the fact that freight is prioritized.
Legally, freight is supposed to yield to passengers nationwide. It's in the legislation that created Amtrak over fifty years ago. It has never been enforced, and trump isn't about to do it. The UP/NS merger will make it worse. On Amtrak-controlled trackage, there is hope. Northeast Corridor is their show.
I have traveled a fair amount via Amtrak, and in general, I don't really like their newer cars. The old ones were fabric, huge bathrooms, spacious and comfy. The double decker ones had a feeling like you were almost in a traveling apartment. These new ones feel like the new plane interiors: more cramped, more plastic, etc. Nothing to scream at the sky about, but solidly a step down IMO. Maybe I'm just getting old lol. I suspect they are more economical though, and therefore more profitable.
The new Amtrak cars on Midwest and California service are made by Siemens. They are a huge downgrade in terms of customer comfort versus the old equipment. The seats are worse than a budget airline seat. This is in contrast to the old equipment where the coach seats were more comfortable than a domestic first class airline seat. The business class seats on the old trains were practically lay-flat, the new ones don't recline at all.
Unfortunately Siemens has become something of a monopoly outside of Asia and France for passenger trains and they've apparently decided that train travel should be uncomfortable, with bad seats and harsh lighting.
The upside to these new Acela trains is that they were built by the French railcar maker Alstrom, not by Siemens like the rest of the new Amtrak carriages.
Readit News
I do hope that at the time of booking they make it clear which Acela it is. Airlines do this: they usually mention the type of plane while booking. I might just do a trip on the new Acela to experience the train.
Everyone's using ChatGPT these days.
I live in Switzerland where people are so comfortable taking the train they treat it like an extension of their living room.
Only in rare cases do I even book tickets in advance, like when going to Milano… otherwise I just use the Fairtiq app, which is a nation wide system for paying for tickets, including busses and trams…
You swipe right before you step on, swipe left when you step off and the system automatically calculates the best ticket for you.
There isn’t a “fully booked”.
[1]: https://amtraknewera.com/gateway/
Based on my understanding, travel times in the northeast are limited not by the top speed of the trains, but by the tracks, and the fact that freight is prioritized.
For as much as Biden purported to be a pro-passenger train President, you'd think he would have done something about that.
Unfortunately Siemens has become something of a monopoly outside of Asia and France for passenger trains and they've apparently decided that train travel should be uncomfortable, with bad seats and harsh lighting.
The upside to these new Acela trains is that they were built by the French railcar maker Alstrom, not by Siemens like the rest of the new Amtrak carriages.