We love Amtrak

damn it, I hate it when I get entertained while being advertised at.

I love it, trains are sexy.
- Choos suggestively
To be clear, this tumblr account is in no way associated with the actual Amtrak company
- Sure but advertising is advertising no matter who it comes from.
  And whoever wrote that "ad" up there is kinda clever & a marketing genius.

Amtrak is pretty pricy though. I'd love nothing more than to pop on a train for a leisurely trip, but it was astonishingly expensive to cover the same distance as a four-hour drive.

I've been looking at it for a roughly 5 hour trip and it comes out to basically the same price as gas most days of the week. The annoying part is that the departure is 2:00 AM and returning trip gets in at 5:30 AM. Assuming no freight train shenanigans
- Nice! I just checked Amtrak prices and it would be $180 for my wife and I to make a trip for probably $50-60 in gas.
It shouldn't be, but they've been handicapped on purpose so it costs more than it should, takes longer than it should, and goes fewer places than it should. It's not that it's rail that it has these problems, rather because the car and petroleum industries rule the US.
However, you do need to consider that taking a train prevents adding wear to your vehicle. You're not only paying for gas when driving. You're paying for gas, wear on your car, wear on tires, and also wear on the road, but that last one gets partially socialized across all people regardless of if they drive for some reason (some is covered by gas taxes).
We were shocked at the price of airline tickets recently, so we wondered if taking the train would be more affordable. It was actually MORE expensive. WTF?
I'm guessing this is comparing train ticket price fuel cost of driving?
Under ideal circumstances, trains can take you to enough places you need to go as to not need the car at all, at which the comparison actually works out to what it should be: TCO of a car vs total cost of taking trains everywhere.
The TCO of cars is astonishingly high, fwiw. Much higher than people often realise.
- That's the dream, but Amtrak makes that 4 hour drive into a 9 hour ride. It's through the mountains and supposedly a gorgeous experience, but it is impractical if you need to semi-regularly make the drive.
- I needed to go to LA last year from Sacramento
  I could take:
  Amtrak: 8/9 hours for $150 per person, uncomfortable and a slave to the freight network (I've ridden Amtrak many times in my life)
  Drive a rental: 120 for the rental for the day + gas, but a 6 hour drive
  Drive my EV: Just the 20 or so bucks for fast charging a few times, maybe an 8 hour total trip
  Fly: 80 bucks per person round trip, sub 2 hours flight, 30 minutes pre flight, Uber to where I'm going for 10 bucks cuz its not far from LAX
  I REALLY wanted to take the train but my god
- In the Northeast, it's often cheaper, and pretty much always faster, to fly than to take Amtrak, unfortunately. My family tried to get me on a last minute family gathering over the holidays, for example, and Amtrak was going to be over $400 round trip, and a round trip flight was less than $200, and about 2h30 quicker each way. If I look up the same trip saying I want to go from NYC to Boston today and return Tuesday, taking Amtrak at crazy early or late hours would let me have an 8+ hour round-trip come out to $285. Round trip flights would run $427 pretty much any time of day and take 3 hours in total. For me, as a younger guy often travelling solo, it might make sense to just wake up stupid late and be on a 2am Amtrak train to save some money. For people with kids, elderly folks, or anyone who has time commitments that mean they can't do that, the $427 flight at 10am sounds a lot more appealing.
  It only gets worse as the distance goes up. NYC to Montreal is only a $153 round trip on Amtrak if you book in advance to snag one of the cheap seats, but it takes 11h41m each way. Round trip flights going direct run $242, but going and coming take only a quarter of the time for going one-way on Amtrak.
  Oddly enough, going south, Amtrak actually makes sense. Booked far enough in advance, I can go from NYC to Philadelphia, Baltimore, or Washington, DC. for between $30-$50ish, last time I looked. Flights are more expensive and only save me about 90 minutes on the longer legs. I have heard that outside of the NE Corridor, Amtrak is much more affordable, but I don't know how true that is.
- While that is ideal, that's not the reality in the USA. There are only like 3 parts of the US where that's true. Everywhere else requires a car to have reasonable mobility.

I thought Amtrak was known for maintaining passenger rail with extreme reluctance?

Nah Amtrak is awesome. They are just hamstrung by govt
- Privatisation isn't the answer.
- More like deliberately crippled by the private freight railroads that own the tracks. Ones that the government bailed out multiple times mind you, yet they're shamelessly resisting the government's attempts to provide a public service.

Sad that we have the most wealth in the world but lost it all to corruption in politicians and company lobbying.

"we"
"We" didn't lose it. We never had it. Boomers gave away our futures for us.

Rooting for Amtrak is rooting for an underdog. Ride the train, Murica. It's cool AF.

I'm sure someone has some articles of why Amtrak is cancelled or corrupt or something. Spare me, please.

We'd love it better if it didn't have to give rail priority to freight trains.

And I'd personally like to be able to put our (modified for wheelchair) car on it so we'd have it when we get as far as the train can take us.

For the first part, I'm 90% sure that's already the case when possible, but the freight companies just make their trains too long for the sidings so Amtrak has to sidetrack instead of them.
For the second part, that is sometimes an option, but it isn't cheap. I know there's an Amtrak train that runs on the east coast that does that. It's from DC to Orlando, FL. I don't know if there are any other routes for this yet though.
- Yeah that's the only one, and I'm on the Left Coast. Looked into it when our kid was graduating in Minnesota and it was impossible. I wound up driving the whole way and back.

Gimme that NARN

I actually have it on good authority that what women want is pockets.

I wish I didn't have to drive two hours just to pick someone up from a train station lol. I'd love to have a serious passenger rail here in the states. It would mean I might could travel a little here and there, but mostly because of the benefits across the board for everyone.

I doubt our trains are half as fast, reliable, nor frequent as Japan or China

Well, sure, because we're not trying. Can you imagine what it would be like if we gave half as much of a shit about it as the interstate system? Or just full on fucking wasted half as much cash on it as we spend bailing out the airlines every other year?
Hot take! An afterthought of our transportation system sucks? WHAT?!
- Something we spend basically no money on is worse when compared to a country that actively invests in it? What a bizarre coincidence.