Rail travel is booming in America
79 comments
·September 21, 2025jackcosgrove
I have investigated taking Amtrak for a family trip to do something different. "The journey is the destination" or something like that. I was branding it "slow travel" to the family so we could use it as a sort of modern life/digital detox. I also looked into a trans-Atlantic passage on the QM2.
I'm sad to report that renting a family bedroom or two joined bedrooms on Amtrak to take a journey on say the California Zephyr didn't pencil out. It is costlier than flying (about $2000 vs $1600 at the low end for both options, resp.) Even if you account for the cost of staying two extra nights at the destination it about breaks even.
With children I don't want to risk the days of travel becoming an ordeal as opposed to hours of flight time. The "digital detox" might quickly go sideways and require hours of screentime pacifiers. Maybe when they are older.
Happily the QM2 actually made financial sense and there would be more room to move about and explore the ship.
I think rail travel makes the most sense in the Acela context the article opened with - routes between cities that take less than a day. For cross-continent travel the time savings of air travel make rail travel a harder case to argue.
manquer
[delayed]
bluGill
Depends on where you are going - for my family vacation a sleeper for 4 is cheaper than flying by a lot (i live in a high priced air travel city, I would money driving to chicago despite the higher parking costs). However I have 5 people going and so it does't work out. (It doesn't help that amtrak dosen't suggest options like 2 rooms)
We went coach amtrak which was cheaper and more comfortable than flying. I'd do that again.
martinpw
Took Amtrak from LA to San Jose last week, which was a good experience. The train runs along the coast for a good stretch, from Ventura through Vandenberg and then through the hills. It's certainly not the fastest way to go (~10 hours) but you can leave in the morning, have a couple of sit down meals on the way, watch the world go by, work if necessary, and be in San Jose in the evening. Probably not something to do regularly, but a great occasional change from flying.
Since Amtrak is often delayed due to freight having priority, traveling the other way is more risky from a scheduling point of view, since the train starts in Seattle and could already be heavily delayed by the time it gets to San Jose.
https://www.amtrakvacations.com/travel-styles/famous-routes/...
pkulak
> due to freight having priority
Fun fact: by law, Amtrak has priority. Not that it matters much, even back when laws themselves mattered.
andrewguenther
It's not an enforcement issue so much as it is a heavily exploited loophole. Part of the reason freight trains are so long is so that they can't fit in passing sidings. Since Amtrak does fit, they end up having to yield because the freight trains simply cannot.
Could this be fixed by legislation on max train length to ensure all trains fit in sidings? Yes. Will that legislation get passed? No.
An interesting video on the subject: https://youtu.be/qQTjLWIHN74?si=t3u3iyZj1kRQQUCe
bluGill
Amtrak says this but the freight disagree. At this point I assume both sides are lieing.
oofbey
Classic America. Laws favor industry and commerce over individuals. Because lower prices benefits everybody. Uh huh.
bombcar
Amtrak trains have priority until they fall out of their slot.
returningfory2
To the downvoters: this comment is correct. E.g. [1] for an example of this being enforced.
Apparently the problem is the law is not enforced that much? And that there are loopholes around it.
[1] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/norfolk-southern-agrees-give-...
mschuster91
The problem is, overtaking is one thing when you got two parallel rails and ample point switches.
But when you don't have them or only every 100km or whatnot, or any of the potential places (such as in a train station) just isn't long enough to accept and buffer a 3 miles long train... then good luck, there just is no physical opportunity for the faster passenger train to speed ahead, not to mention the absurd amount of energy wasted in braking and then re-accelerating that 3 mile freight monster.
Fixing this would be possible - either by limiting the maximum length of a train or by forcing the extension of parallel rail segments. The former makes logistics significantly more challenging plus it requires more staff (which is the real problem, long haul isn't wanted much these days, neither rail nor road), the latter is darn expensive and someone has to foot the bill - Congress certainly won't.
JadeNB
> Fun fact: by law, Amtrak has priority. Not that it matters much, even back when laws themselves mattered.
Are you sure about that? I've never looked up the law, but my understanding is that, for most (all?) of its routes, Amtrak is running on privately owned track, and, on such track, freight has priority.
(I'm surprised at the number of downvotes. The replies indicated that I'm wrong, which is awesome in the sense that I like riding Amtrak and want it to have priority, and so I understand the frustration; but I think that I cannot be the only one who has heard from every Amtrak rider they've talked to that freight has priority, and surely it's a good thing to seek an authoritative answer? Maybe it looked like I was rhetorically saying that someone was wrong rather than honestly seeking clarification.)
MBCook
Yep. Federal law requires passenger trains to get priority.
But for some reason the government basically stopped enforcing it like 40 years ago.
So in practice it tends to work the other way.
crockeo
My understanding is that as part of the Amtrak Improvement Act[1] Amtrak is given preference over freight rail, even on private track. However only the Department of Justice may enforce this, which it has done only once.
Fair warning I haven't read the text of the law in full, only heard this second hand.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/15427
blendergeek
Due to the history of Amtrak this is actually true. The railroads in America (while privately owned and operated) were built with much government subsidy. The railroad companies originally provided passenger service. Eventually, to ensure this service continued a law was passed that prohibited railroads from dropping passe nger service. After the rise of personal cars coinciding with the massive federal investment in car infrastructure in the 1950s with the interstate hughway system, passenger rail travel was in free fall in the late 60s and the railroad companies begged to be allowed to end passenger service. Congress stepped in and nationalized the passenger service exempting the railroad companies from their mandate to provide passenger service while requiring them to give passenger trains priority in scheduling. So, TL;DR passenger trains have legally mandated priority over the freight trains of the host railroad.
jeltz
Working on trains is also often nice so you do not really lose much time. You can just do a normal workday at the train including lunch and then quit working for the day when you arrive.
catlover76
[dead]
tonetegeatinst
I used to have to take the train to college and back home on breaks and it was nice trip.
You can't bring a whole dorm and your closet, but a backpack and a bag for clothes are manageable. I always brought some bags of beef jerky and would watch the scenic view or listen to an audiobook. Just sitting on the train, enjoying my snack and watching nature was a nice way to pass time time.
techblueberry
If I never had to fly domestically again it would be too soon, high speed rail ftw!
mothballed
Don't worry, if high-speed rail displaces flight they'll have the federal gropers jobs program for that too. Soon enough it will suck just as much as flying "for your security."
oblio
I recently saw that Canadian passenger railways have security checks and bag check-in just like airlines :-))
They're like aliens seeing humans preparing food but not understanding what taste is.
JadeNB
> I recently saw that Canadian passenger railways have security checks and bag check-in just like airlines :-))
It's probably harder to drive a train into something than it is to fly a plane into something, but a bomb on a train could do a lot of damage even if it wasn't as cinematic as a bomb on a plane. And, having traveled on Amtrak and seen what people try to cram in to the limited space available, it's not clear to me that some sort of baggage control is automatically a bad thing.
(Don't get me wrong, I like not having to go through those airport-style controls, but it's a tragedy of the commons sort of thing, where abuse of it by a few renders it unpleasant for everyone.)
raybb
I heard that Caltrain toyed with the idea of partnering with waymo to get people to and from train stations more affordably but dang wouldn't it be nice if one of the ride hailing companies started offering shuttle type services to get you to the train station but while sharing with other people.
Better bus coverage and reliability would be ideal but perhaps this could be used to help make the case in the mean time.
Vinnl
The Dutch railways have offered ridiculously cheap bicycle rentals by almost every station for years now, and it's so helpful. No need to plan travel times, just tap your card and go.
Of course this also requires proper bicycle infrastructure to be available, but it shows how well this could work.
gausswho
I rented one of those in Amsterdam then rode the beautiful tree-lined path along canals to Utrecht one day. I then rode back with the bike to Amsterdam. When I arrived, I was told this was not allowed, but it wasn't clear why. Maybe the municipal bikes need to stay in city limits? This was about a decade ago. Maybe you can enlighten me?
MassPikeMike
Bikes can work great for travelers aged from, say, 13 to 70 without much luggage. Not so great for travelers outside that age range, with more luggage, or with physical disabilities. I wonder what fraction of travelers falls into the latter category.
ch33zer
I agree standard bikes are a poor fit for luggage. There are cargo (e)bikes that can comfortably hold large bags (e.g. https://larryvsharry.com/products/ebullitt). They may make sense at major rail stations, but the logistics of keeping them in stock at the station would be hard, and of course this doesn't solve the infrastructure or physical disabilities/age problem.
newyankee
It requires dense cities too unless most of the population is fit enough to cycle
Seattle3503
Ive wondered if more people would use trains if you bring your car with you. You skip the traffic, but you have your car at the destination.
bombcar
https://www.amtrak.com/auto-train
Consistently one of the most sold-out and profitable routes.
JumpCrisscross
> Better bus coverage and reliability would be ideal
Busses seem suboptimal if you don’t need a driver. They’re too big.
Peoples’ travel plans in space and time are naturally heterogenous; the less we force passengers to travel to and from stops or change their plans to match a schedule, the more people will ride.
cogman10
Not when you are operating around scheduled transport like trains and planes. Buses are optimal in that case.
If you've ever taken a cruise you've seen this work beautifully. Even with multiple excursions, busses are optimal for getting people around because the 100s of people on the ship are ultimately going to the same places.
JumpCrisscross
> Even with multiple excursions, busses are optimal for getting people around because the 100s of people on the ship are ultimately going to the same places
Cruises are one of the rare cases where our buses are correctly sized and competitive against rail, in large part because you’l continuing the social experience of being on a cruise ship.
When you consider what makes a bus-sized bus perfect for tour groups and the like, it quickly becomes apparent why they’re not optimally sized for transit outside the constraints imposed by driver economics.
jeltz
Why? During rush hour buses transport like 100 people each. That is a lot of cars that would congest the roads.
JadeNB
Why would this be an issue with the driver? I don't mean that combatively; I really don't see it. It seems to me that any form of transit, autonomous or not, either runs on some sort of centrally controlled schedule subject to optimization, or can be summoned on demand, in which case it only works as long as not too many people use it (usually because of cost), or else it will lead to traffic congestion and worsen rather than improve traffic.
JumpCrisscross
> Why would this be an issue with the driver?
Drivers are the dominant operating cost of a bus system, and they’re typically paid regardless of ridership. That means you have a minimum ridership per driver required to offset their cost.
Bus systems thus size the bus and route to ensure that minimum ridership. That, in turn, requires aggregating demand, i.e. forcing people to change the places and times of their transit to line up with the bus’s. Analogous to lift and drag, the more you force people to change their schedules, the more you lose potential demand to alternatives.
If you don’t have a driver, you can make your transports as big or small as you’d like. In rare cases, they’ll be bus sized. But most busses either aren’t consistently full or lose a lot of potential riders because their schedules and stops are inconvenient. A fleet of smaller vehicles sops up that demand without hauling around a bunch of dead mass off rush hour.
cjensen
ACE Rail (from Stockton to San Jose) has an absolutely wonderful network of eight shuttle buses that meet the train when it arrives at the Great America station[1]. They fan out across most of the Silicon Valley so that there's no need to wait for a bus or make connections between buses.
Every commuter rail line really should do this. Obviously Caltrain could not do this for every train, but how about some trains?
[1] https://cdn.acerail.com/wp-content/uploads/ACE-Shuttle-Map-S...
jolux
The Avelias are nice but the problem with the Acela hasn't been the rolling stock in a long time, it's that it can only reach top speed (~150mph) on a tiny portion of the track, mostly between Boston and Providence and some more in New Jersey. The rest of it, we're running proper high-speed trains at like 70mph, unfortunately. Fixing the alignment and upgrading the track is a kind of political nightmare that upgrading the trains just isn't.
pkulak
The problem with every train is that it doesn't go faster. But Acela is already faster than driving, which is a benchmark no other train can match in North America. Probably faster, door-to-door, than flying, unless you ride its entire length.
inferiorhuman
Yep. What Metro North is doing is a travesty.
AaronAPU
I really wish there was an auto train connecting the west and east sides of the country.
varenc
Took the California Zephyr from Emeryville to Chicago and loved it! but 5x more expensive than flying for a private room...but an absolutely beautiful journey.
heelix
So funny enough, I'm sitting on a plane right now because the amtrak train was late, then announced a different trip number then what was on the ticket. No information on what was coming or leaving. It was a small city depot, but it was nothing like I've come to expect in Europe. The Chicago/Minneapolis ticket was cheap. Seats on the way up were comparable to first class. Wifi did not work on the way up. Did turn a couple hour journey into an all day affair. My kingdom for a bullet train like others have.
pkulak
Whenever I go to the East coast, I make a point of finding some reason to ride Amtrak, preferably Acela. There's just something magical about staying anywhere between Boston and DC, and yet only being one relaxing, couple-hour trip away from central Manhattan, downtown Philly, etc.
I wish the West Coast also had frequent service between Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, SF, LA, and points between. Driving and flying stresses me out and is generally an awful experience. When I arrive by train, I'm more relaxed than when I started.
myvoiceismypass
It always floored me when I moved to the Bay Area that Caltrain from SJ to SF took about as long as Amtrak from Philly to NYC (twice the distance). I know they are different systems and electric Caltrain is faster, but still, it felt like a step back rail wise. Also, Amtrak out here stops running so ridiculously early, which is very frustrating.
jwagenet
Caltrain is a commuter rail and Amtrak is regional. Caltrain makes 15-20 stops between SF and San Jose. They aren’t the same sort of system at all. It’s like comparing Amtrak to Metro North.
decafninja
I needed to travel from NYC to Washington DC, specifically without driving. Sounded like a perfect case for Amtrak.
Turns out flying was both cheaper and faster.
amelius
You have to add comfort to the equation.
And don't forget about TSA checks which can be stressful.
Notable is the recent introduction of Mardi Gras Service, a route from New Orleans from Mobile that hasn't been used for passenger trains since Hurricane Katrina. The maximum one-way fare is $15, and its already popular enough that they added 60 more seats. I'm looking forward to riding it and thumbing my nose in the direction of I-10.