This also includes some images that aren't part of the netscape.com version... which is probably part of the point of it: "A view of America from the tracks" has some pictures of Amtrak stations and Virginia countryside.
Delta has round trip flights from ATL->WAS for ~$800
TFA train round trip shows $306 without a private cabin.
TFA already mentioned the time differences.
The googs says it's 638miles doable in 9.5hours. Say an average of 20mpg at $4/gal (I have no idea what current rates are in that part of the country) needs 32gals for $128 one way or $256 to come back. Of course someone needs to drive it.
The train definitely looks like a decent deal for this route. I've priced train rides from my town, and prices look like plane routes but in days instead of hours. The train doesn't make sense all of the time, but I'm holding out hope I'll find a trip where it will make sense.
hdgvhicv•Mar 29, 2026
Based on the last long trip I did in the U.K. where I averaged 43 miles per US gallon (52mpg) I’m shocked how terrible efficiency is in the US. That’s real world highway driving in a 4 year old petrol
car.
dylan604•Mar 29, 2026
I deliberately chose a low mpg value. Most people are driving SUVs what I assumed 20mpg would be safe. My car averages about 26mpg. I have no insight into how many kilometers per liter UK cars get, but the translated £/litre to $/gallon has always shocked me at the price paid on that side of the pond. If Americans had to to pay the same rate, we'd have better mpg ratings as well.
hdgvhicv•Mar 29, 2026
I paid £1.45 a litre on Friday my average, which I tend to treat as about 14p a mile or 18c a mile.
I’m not sure why I’d deliberately burn more fuel regardless of the price. Literally setting fire to cash for nothing.
That would be $120 for your trip to Georgia, about the same price as in the US despite fuel being $7.30 a gallon equivalent in the uk.
dylan604•Mar 29, 2026
I don't know where you're coming with deliberately here as if that's something I chose. I'm not familiar with cars getting 43mpg in the US. Maybe some hybrid, but that's definitely not the norm on this side of the pond. Even when I had a Corolla, which was the highest rated car I've ever driven, did not get 43mpg.
Your "deliberate" sounds a lot like victim blaming here.
tzs•Mar 29, 2026
That's way too pessimistic.
Among SUV drivers in the US the biggest segment is compact SUVs (think Toyota RAV4 or Honda CR-V). Then midsize (like Toyota Highlander or Hyundai Palisade), subcompact (Mazda CX-30, Hyundai Kona), then full sized (Chevy Tahoe, Ford Expedition).
RAV4 non-hybrid is around 35 mpg highway. CR-V 34 mpg highway.
In midsize, Highlander is 29 mpg highway, and Palisade is 25 mpg highway.
In subcompact CX-30 is 30-33 mpg highway depending on options. Kona is 29-34 mpg highway depending on options.
The full size category, which does get down to around 20 mpg, is only around 3-4% of SUVs in the US. Tahoe is 20 mpg highway. Expedition gets 23 mpg highway.
dylan604•Mar 29, 2026
Great, but it's still 9.5 hours of time on the wheel. Train/plane eliminates that. So even if it is 1/3 cheaper in fuel, it's something that needs to be considered.
gruez•Mar 29, 2026
>So even if it is 1/3 cheaper in fuel, it's something that needs to be considered.
Not to mention wear on the car.
Arainach•Mar 29, 2026
> RAV4 non-hybrid is around 35 mpg highway. CR-V 34 mpg highway.
....35mpg at 60mph and little traffic, maybe. I can't speak for that specific model, but most vehicles I've driven do significantly worse than advertised.
My Subaru Legacy advertised 27 City, 35 Highway, 30 Combined. In practice I average 25-26 while commuting and on extended highways drives more like 29, still on stock tires.
uyzstvqs•Mar 29, 2026
What? I can book ATL <-> WAS round trip for $74 with Frontier, $184 with Delta. With a checked bag $168-254.
dylan604•Mar 29, 2026
<shrug> it's what my look up specifically for this comment gave me using Delta's website. I tried booking for 3/30 - 4/02 roundtrip. I went with Delta as that was specifically called out in TFA. Deliberately limiting the variables. Besides, I'd be in a really desperate situation to choose Frontier.
Helithumper•Mar 29, 2026
Like other commenters I was also confused at the "~$800" comment.
I tried this myself, picking a time a few weeks in the future (round trip April 15th to 22nd). Round trip as I'm assuming you'll want to go there and come home.
All of the following info is for ATL to Washington-Area airports (BWI, DCA, IAD). Amtrak is for Atlanta to Washington Union Station
Delta (20+ nonstop a day every 30min or so, ~2hrs flight time):
- ~$244->$304 Main
- ~$444->$504 Comfort+
- ~$769-$974 First
Amtrak (11:29PM->1:47PM, 14h18m):
- $356 Coach
- $1107 Private Room (Roomette)
I'm sure that a more accurate analysis would include a spread of days.
In general, this means that with the train you'd increase your travel time by ~26 hours round trip (over a whole day) while also paying ~$112 more.
(Note that the Amtrak website prices each leg independently while Delta prices round trip, I made sure to go all the way to the cart to gather the end pricing)
I was curious so I also did a trip much sooner (March 30th to April 6th):
Delta:
- $616-$665 Main
- $785-$800 Comfort Plus
- $1065 First (they were all priced the same)
Amtrak:
- $517 Main
- $1369 Private Room (Roomette)
So for a much sooner trip you do save ~$100 for the tradeoff of ~26 hours more time spent.
It's also worth noting that this route's travel occurs primarily at night, in the dark. This means both trying to sleep on a train as well as not being able to see much outside as it'll be dark most of the ride.
superultra•Mar 29, 2026
I’ve taken this line - as many have and do all the time. Ride it once and you’ll realize why it’s the better way to travel in every way but cost and time - and both of those are a result of the United State unwillingness to fully fund something like Amtrak.
As the author states traveling by train just a more pleasant experience.
I should note that even though there is technically wifi on every Amtrak train, it’s cellular based. You’ll find that at least from atlanta to NY, the train somehow threads the needle between cellular ranges. Both your phone and of course the train will often be either out of range of fast cellular service or out of range altogether. Supposedly Amtrak is getting starlink but we’ll see. So, don’t expect to be getting on any video calls.
standardUser•Mar 29, 2026
Years ago I tried to book a train from San Francisco to Chicago as part of a trip I had planned but found it to be more expensive and, more significantly, a multi-day journey instead of a few hours. If you happen to be an American living near one of the useful passenger rail lines, and desire to go to one of the few destinations it can take you to quickly and affordably, more power to you. But most Americans live nowhere near a useful rail system.
JKCalhoun•Mar 29, 2026
Taking days to get to Chicago from Emeryville is all part of the fun of it. Enjoy the journey…
standardUser•Mar 29, 2026
Spoken like one of the small percentage of Americans who can afford to tag on extra days to their PTO to enjoy a nice view.
JKCalhoun•Mar 29, 2026
I guess so. We took the girls when they were young to Omaha a few times from the Bay Area. I wasn't even sure passenger trains would be around when they were adults so wanted to give them that experience. I took a train between Kansas City and Chicago as a kid and found it magical.
So, yeah, the train ride was actually a significant part of the experience for those particular vacations.
aziaziazi•Mar 29, 2026
I’m curious if a classic starlings antenna works at 100-300 km/h with occasional rotation, or will it need to be mounted on a targeting motor on top of the train?
hdgvhicv•Mar 29, 2026
Works on planes at 1000km/h so should be fine on trains in the open countryside (not in tunnels of course)
wolvoleo•Mar 29, 2026
Yes and the sats go a lot faster than 1000km/h anyway
goalieca•Mar 29, 2026
> and both of those are a result of the United State unwillingness to fully fund something like Amtrak.
What kind of funding are we looking at? Is the issue that this is cost-prohibitive for reasons of scale that make this non-competitive for businesses themselves to fund as compared to elsewhere?
supertrope•Mar 29, 2026
Amtrak was created to preserve the last vestiges of passenger rail when private businesses pulled out. It has conflicting missions so it's never going to be competitive in service.
Amtrak does not own its own rail network. It has priority over cargo trains de jure but in practice cargo takes priority. Many areas only have one set of tracks and trains can only pull over onto sidings when they exist. Class 1 railroads are capital intensive so to be more profitable they don't spend any money they don't have to. Such as more sidings, more train yards, not maximizing the length of trains so they fit onto those sidings, or more than one operator per train. Class 1 railroads are focused on cargo and making money, not helping Amtrak trains go first. The government doesn't care to enforce the law either. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/tracking-productivity...
Amtrak operates routes that suffer from low demand instead of focusing on the New York Washington DC route. It's about counting US Senate votes as much as customer satisfaction or breaking even.
The Federal government heavily subsidized cars starting in the 1950s through the Interstate Highway System. Cars and airliners are considered critical passenger transportation infrastructure, trains are not.
chiph•Mar 30, 2026
The S-Line project is underway in NC and VA. It will rehabilitate an abandoned line (the former Seaboard Coast Line) to allow faster travel between Raleigh and Richmond. It won't be electrified but will allow trains to run at up to 110 mph/177 kph which is a big improvement over the current 60-70 mph (when the passenger train isn't being delayed by a freight train).
They are currently doing a couple of grade-separation bridge projects in north Raleigh and some minor curve straightening. Since the S-Line is not currently being used they can straighten many of the curves since there won't be any impact to existing operations.
The S-Line right of way is owned by CSX and they will be running freight on it. The budget wasn't there to acquire all of it by NCDOT and VA and dedicate it to passenger service.
> The train is still longer, and time is money, we are taught. But certainty has value, too, even if it means at 11:29 p.m. departure.
Unfortunately this is misleading. Outside of the Northeast Acela corridor, there is no certainty in train travel in the U.S..
Although legally passenger trains are now supposed to have right of way over freight trains, in practice that’s just not the case. So a 14.5 hr train journey can easily be delayed by several hours.
GenerWork•Mar 29, 2026
I believe Brightline in Florida has ownership of its tracks from Cocoa to Orlando.
bryananderson•Mar 29, 2026
It does not, but it has a sane scheduling agreement with the railroad which the railroad actually respects.
This is a common misconception because Brightline’s parent company Florida East Coast Industries shares heritage with Florida East Coast Railway, but the companies were split in 2007.
xvedejas•Mar 29, 2026
A couple of the lines I ride in California have decent on-time rates (mostly I ride the line formerly known as the San Joaquins)
jeffbee•Mar 29, 2026
Haha hours. There is no upper bound. The average Amtrak delay on Norfolk Southern is 19 minutes per 100 miles. And the worst cases are all horror stories. A freight operator sidetracks Amtrak while a miles-long coal train rolls through at a jogging pace. The coal train breaks down. The Amtrak crew can't legally operate any more because of federal time limits. You are 1000 miles from a city in the middle of nowhere and by the time they dispatch another crew to your train you've been surviving on Fritos for days.
Loughla•Mar 29, 2026
So I took a consulting job in a small town in Illinois called Quincy. I couldn't fly there without connecting in St. Louis, but I could take the train from Chicago. It was billed at 6 hours.
It absolutely left on time but had to wait for three freight trains on the way. 9 hours later we got to the "station". One of the other passengers said that their previous trip was cancelled and Amtrak bought everyone bus tickets.
In the Midwest, there are no guarantees with trains other than you'll get there. Eventually.
stockresearcher•Mar 30, 2026
Quincy IL, the capital of Forgottonia. Used to be a bigger city, was destroyed by politics.
From talking to people there, it seems like Quincy itself was less destroyed by politics and more just sort of left to rot by families with "important names" in the area who are resistant to change.
No idea which is accurate, that's just a consistent theme from almost every conversation when I was consulting there.
SoftTalker•Mar 30, 2026
Common pattern in small-ish towns, where there is a core of older wealthy people who are stereotypical NIMBYs running everything, and who want to keep their quaint little town as it is. Problem is that forces all the young people to move away to find opportunity, and then 50 years later the town is dying.
linsomniac•Mar 30, 2026
>So I took a consulting job in a small town in Illinois called Quincy.
Adams Internet/Telco/Fiber? Same. It always impressed me how early they were to fiber to the home down there in southwestern IL. ~15 years ago I made that same trip: Chicago down to Quincy then over to Steeleville and then to St Louis to drop off the rental car and fly back home. They really make the Coop system work out there.
Melatonic•Mar 30, 2026
Freight is all you have in some places in the midwest. Ohio, for example, used to have some very cool passenger railway stations. Unfortunately now there is basically zero passenger rail in the entire state.
vl•Mar 29, 2026
Delays? What if you can’t buy tickets at all.
I was looking at Tucson to Seattle trip on a relatively short notice - all sleeping tickets were sold out multiple weeks in advance. And due to the length of the trip it’s not practical with non-sleeping seat.
rootusrootus•Mar 30, 2026
For fun, I just got prices for taking my family to Tucson from Portland, a trip we took last week by airplane. It was relatively expensive from what I'm used to for a trip between two cities on the same end of the country, about $2500 total. Nonstop, just under 3 hours flight time. Amtrak would be about half that for a coach ticket. But as you point out, a coach ticket for a 40-45 hour trip is impractical. So I picked a family room (when possible, which was not on every segment). $7000. HAHAHAHAHAHA. I could waste money on first class plane tickets and still pay less than half that.
greenavocado•Mar 30, 2026
My fever dream for the past two decades has been an interstate "road train" roll-on/roll-offstation network where cars are towed at moderate speed on extremely long flat bed trailers between cities so people don't have to pay attention to the road between cities and can sleep or relax.
b40d-48b2-979e•Mar 30, 2026
due to the length of the trip it’s not practical with non-sleeping seat
I don't know what this anti-train propaganda is going on in this post, but this is laughable. All of the seats are sleepers on Amtrak at least. I went from Cincinnati to San Diego without a sleeper.
SoftTalker•Mar 29, 2026
> a 14.5 hr train journey can easily be delayed by several hours
It can easily be delayed a lot longer than that. The last time I took Amtrak I was delayed over 24 hours.
pstuart•Mar 30, 2026
We should nationalize the rail lines, ensure Positive Train Control is mandatory, invest in the rails and sidetracks to allow for faster trains and less traffic jams.
It could be structured so the current owners don't lose money on the deal but America gets a faster, better utilized train system. So much winning!
bluGill•Mar 30, 2026
America has the best fright system in the world. The other countries you are looking at have a great humans on train system, but freight is much worse because of it. Humans and freight generally want very difference things from transportation and so they should not be mixed at all.
bpodgursky•Mar 30, 2026
> Although legally passenger trains are now supposed to have right of way over freight trains, in practice that’s just not the case
Amtrak has right-of-way over freight trains if they are claiming their pre-allocated rail time slot. If a freight train is already on the track at its own scheduled time, it's going to take it, regardless of scheduling priority.
Unfortunately, Amtrak is independently dysfunctional (I'm sorry, it's true, it's led by people who don't know anything about trains) and is rarely on time even independent of rail congestion, so they show up at times they weren't scheduled, and the lateness compounds as they get further delayed by congestion.
Story discovered via usability of that site. Will use it more.
ChrisArchitect•Mar 30, 2026
c00l. Stick to sources over syndication for submissions tho, as others noted, source has more photos etc.
walterbell•Mar 30, 2026
Thanks to ever helpful commmenters!
axpy906•Mar 29, 2026
“ That is what drew Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman for one of the Civil War’s seminal campaigns that helped defeat the Confederacy.”
To be clear Sherman burned it to the ground which is why it got renamed Atlanta.
Reason077•Mar 29, 2026
> ”… booked the train overnight and into game day across a 650-mile route … A 14½-hour weekend train ride”
Just by way of comparison, in China the 819-mile train route between Beijing and Shanghai takes 4.5 hours.
satvikpendem•Mar 30, 2026
Imagine if we had passenger rail like Asia does, it would be amazing. But sadly it's all a matter of political will, the US simply does not want to create such a rail system where we can take bullet trains from NYC to LA.
There is no world where bullet trains between NYC and LA would make any financial sense at all. The trains can't possibly go fast enough for passengers to be satisfied with the speed (even maglev isn't fast enough), and the cost of track construction and maintenance would never be paid for by ridership.
I live in Japan; bullet trains are great here, but the distances they cover are quite short by American standards. Extremely high ridership, with trains covering relatively short distances between extremely populated population centers (the Tokyo metro area has 38 million people for reference) means the trains operate at a profit. That could be done in America, maybe, but only between select cities that aren't too far apart, such as DC and NYC and Boston. Even here in Japan, no one is taking the shinkansen between far-apart cities in the north and south; they use inexpensive and faster domestic flights instead.
satvikpendem•Mar 30, 2026
In China it's a matter of politics rather than financial sense, of unifying the country hence why they have them in ethnic minority areas too. The trains would be like roads, sure, most people wouldn't take them from one end to the other, A to Z, but there are enough people to take them from A to D, J to N, Q to T, so to speak. If one could commute in one hour from Boston to DC for example each way, daily without flying, it opens up more economic opportunities in total. But like PG said, the competition to an airline isn't a car or a plane, it's Zoom.
shiroiuma•Mar 30, 2026
Yes, I can see how some people might think the same system would work in the US too, with a HSR network going from Boston to LA, with stops along the way in NYC, Chicago, Louisville, St. Louis, Denver, and maybe some smaller cities too.
But China has a much larger population than the US, by far, and an authoritarian government that has no problem using the "build it and they will come" business model for large infrastructure projects that may or may not work out as planned and no worry about opposition from local politicians, NIMBYs, etc. Don't forget, most of their population is concentrated on the east coast; the inland areas are relatively unpopulated. And they don't have a population that's been conditioned from birth, ever since the 1940s, to think that automobiles are the mode of transit that society should be based around.
So even if they did build an HSR network across the US, I don't think it would work out. How much travel is there between Denver and St Louis, really? A lot of the intra-US travel is really between places on opposite coasts, or on the same coast, because that's where the population is.
bluGill•Mar 30, 2026
Denver is too far away from any other large city to make HSR work. At the distances involved everyone will fly. Maybe you can make it work within Denver, but not to get to any other state as there is no city of any size anywhere close.
ghaff•Mar 30, 2026
Zoom isn’t a replacement for in-person meetings all of the time but it’s pretty good for a lot of purposes. I’m on a non-profit board and we do have a couple meetings a year when we ask people to try to make it in person but the rest is planned to be virtual.
rbanffy•Mar 30, 2026
Remote work is a good replacement for commuting.
ghaff•Mar 30, 2026
It’s a workable replacement for commuting a lot of the time. Some face to face is useful even if it’s only quarterly team meetings.
iso1631•Mar 30, 2026
Absolutely, and I'd far rather take a 6 hour train ride once a quarter than a 30 minute commute every day
rbanffy•Mar 30, 2026
> it's Zoom
I heard something like that about the Concorde at the Air and Space Museum. What killed it was not fuel costs, but cheaper long-distance phone calls and fax machines.
But if a country takes the Chinese approach and pushed inexpensive rail as a way to open new economic opportunities, the idea of flying as your daily commute moves from ridiculous to feasible (if you replace the airplane with a train).
b40d-48b2-979e•Mar 30, 2026
What killed it was not fuel costs
No, it was definitely the cost to operate it and the sonic boom associated with flying at that speed. The company operating the Concorde never made a profit.
Ichthypresbyter•Mar 30, 2026
British Airways certainly made a profit from Concorde, which was operated by a separate division of the company.
I don't know if (then state-owned) Air France did.
mememememememo•Mar 30, 2026
What amazes me is frequency of shinkansen for Tokyo-Osaka. Like more frequent than some metros! Just rock up Must change how people think.
iso1631•Mar 30, 2026
> the distances they cover are quite short by American standards
Typical distances are about the same as SanFrancisco-LA, LA-Phoenix, Phoenix-LasVegas, Dallas-Houston, Houston-New Orleans, Portland-Vancouver. The longest service is 650 miles -- around the Atlanta to New York, Chicago to Washington DC, San Francisco to Portland, Austin to Kansas City
mememememememo•Mar 30, 2026
Asia, including India soon!
plagiarist•Mar 29, 2026
I wish we had high speed rail. Rail travel is actually pleasant. Air travel is a godawful nightmare that is somehow worse every single year.
ghaff•Mar 29, 2026
I’m hoping it won’t be necessary but, if TSA is fundamentally broken with an international transfer through Dulles I will seriously consider taking the train from a union Station to Boston.
Honestly surprised how many TSA people are still working without pay. I wouldn’t in their shoes. Maybe if TSA just basically shutdown commercial aviation in the US it would lead to some progress.
int0x29•Mar 29, 2026
Historically they've gotten backpay. Also they are trying to keep their jobs.
ghaff•Mar 30, 2026
I’m not sure historical precedent tells us a whole lot and Congress has now skipped Washington. It’s hard to say when this will be resolved. It could be a month or more.
ritcgab•Mar 29, 2026
Interestingly mixed usage of en dash and em dash across the article.
mememememememo•Mar 30, 2026
Mixed usage—of em-dash and en-dash—is suspiciously human–like.
etmargallo•Mar 29, 2026
Wow, netscape is still around
arkensaw•Mar 29, 2026
came here to post this!
stego-tech•Mar 29, 2026
I've taken multiple Amtrak routes, all out of the Northeast Corridor but eventually crossing the country West or South.
You don't take Amtrak because you want to get there fast, and you don't really take it because it's cheaper than flying. You take it because you can, and because it's more important to you to be (comparatively) comfortable instead of rushing from A to B. You take it because of the sights, the people, the chance encounters, the proximity to city centers that airplanes can never hope to match. It's an experience in and of itself that's distinctly foreign to many Americans, and one I wholeheartedly recommend.
Sitting in a roomette, crossing from Boston to LA over a long weekend, sharing delicious meals with total strangers as the countryside whizzed by (or we sat on a siding waiting on a freight train).
Just not comparable.
doomspork•Mar 30, 2026
Couldn't have said it any better. The experience and the people I've met make it worth it. It's a great little adventure.
satvikpendem•Mar 30, 2026
This is not really true, at least for the northeast corridor. Amtrak is the fastest way to get from DC to NYC for example due to traffic in the city if driving or taking the bus, and the distance from the airport (LGA or JFK) to the final destination in the city if you're flying. I take Amtrak somewhat begrudgingly because it often can be way more expensive than flights which are subsidized generally speaking over passenger rail these days, because it's simply faster.
And I honestly don't know what adventures people are talking about, most people keep to themselves. I've had more stranger experiences on flights than I have on Amtrak but maybe it's different in the West Coast.
pfg_•Mar 30, 2026
This only applies to sleeper car routes. You're on the traib for 2-3 days, mostly with no cell service. If you eat in the restaurant car, they will seat you with strangers. If you sit in the observation car, there's a bunch of other people sitting there too.
rvba•Mar 30, 2026
Do you fly in your own private plane, or commercial where you need to sit next to other peasants?
iso1631•Mar 30, 2026
I did NY to Miami 18 months ago having spent a week in Washington/NY and was due for 3 days in Miami before flying home.
Saturday morning in NY looking at a few sights I hadn't seen (Trinity Church), then a relaxing train down to Miami. Beat flying and spending Sunday in a hotel room.
I didn't sit with anyone else in the restaurant car, but that does sound an interesting way to meet people from a whole different world. The Friday night in NY though I did sit at a bar next to other people, so I guess that was horrifying?
Had i been that against it though there was an option to eat in my room.
SoftTalker•Mar 30, 2026
And creeping along for hours at 25mph because you're following a freight train is frustrating in its own way, even if you have a comfortable seat and food and drink.
sarchertech•Mar 30, 2026
I spent the entire trip on the Acela Express first class (work was paying) from NYC to Boston talking to an absolutely fascinating man headed to his 60th MIT reunion.
I spent the entire trip (including a 4 hour delay where we didn’t move) in the cheap seats from Atlanta to New Orleans smelling the farts of someone with serious GI issues while a college kid walked up and down the aisle spraying axe body spray to drown out the smell.
CalRobert•Mar 30, 2026
Many many years ago I took the train from San Luis Obispo to Sacramento and enjoyed a meal in the dining car, with set times and seating assignments. It was a really interesting conversation with my randomly chosen tablemates. Sadly I don't think they do that anymore.
ghaff•Mar 30, 2026
I usually take the Regional on my own dime though last trip I got a deal on the return leg on Acela. The downside of Amtrak for me is that the Boston south suburban station is an hour drive in basically the wrong direction. But I hate hate driving into Manhattan.
khuey•Mar 30, 2026
Do you ever consider driving to New Haven and taking Metro North the rest of the way? IIRC it's as fast as Amtrak if you're on the Super Express train.
ghaff•Mar 30, 2026
I have considered it. I’ve never done it. Parking used to be an issue for some of the commuter rail stations but I understand it isn’t in New Haven at this point. Also about twice as long a drive but likely more efficient overall.
trgn•Mar 30, 2026
it's very expensive though. i used to live in philly close to 30th and had a reason to go up to nyc regularly close to penn, essentially perfect for taking amtrak, but ended up taking boltbus just because the price difference was very significant and time wise it was only like 30-45min slower.
adi_kurian•Mar 30, 2026
Pro tip for those who like risk and are traveling regularly for non timely purposes they have dynamic pricing that rewards literal last 5m. I do Amtrak for like $15-40 NYC-PHL. You have to be signed in to the app otherwise they won't give you the sweetheart deal. Refresh reguarly the price changes constantly in the last 3-4h though I'll typically rock up to Penn and buy one 10m before.
ryoshu•Mar 30, 2026
Sat across from Dr. Ruth on the Acela going from NYC to DC for business. She was lovely and sharp as ever.
hatmanstack•Mar 30, 2026
I take the train to meet Neil Cassidy, still waiting, still trying.
999900000999•Mar 30, 2026
You take it for a variety of reasons.
The only profitable routes are Boston to Washington DC.
Outside of that it's both better and worse. Sometimes you meet friendly people, sometimes your stuck next to folks with hygiene issues.
I've had way more chance encounters flying, went out with a girl once.
It's cool, but so underfunded that I don't think it'll ever catch up to say Japan. An 18 hour highspeed NYC to LA train would be amazing.
I think I did Chicago to NYC once. Afterwards my thought was , cool I did it, I don't need to experience that again.
CalRobert•Mar 30, 2026
In fairness, we don't have many profitable freeways either.
b40d-48b2-979e•Mar 30, 2026
In fairness, we don't have ~~many~~ ANY profitable freeways either.
SoftTalker•Mar 30, 2026
Toll roads are profitable. They are basically money-printers in fact. More/all of our expressways should be toll roads IMO. Then the people who use them will pay for them, and there will be money to keep them in good repair without needing appropriations from the general fund.
skywal_l•Mar 30, 2026
> An 18 hour highspeed NYC to LA train would be amazing.
Often I think of the cut intro scene for "Escape From New York" where Snake robs some sort of bank and then escape in the inter state subway[0]. That future is grim but at least they got high speed long distance underground subways.
High speed around the world rarely gets people taking more than about a 5 hour trip. I'm sure a few would take such a train, but not near enough to make it worth the cost of building an maintaining it. In the mean time everyone talking about that distracts from building transportation that people would use.
If you want trains in the US then you need to focus on the DC-NYC-Boston route - this should be an obvious route with affordable high speed trains every 10 minutes all day. You also need to get local trains to stop bloating the costs such that nothing but the most dense areas can afford to build them. Solve those and then start focusing on areas where trains are harder.
ksymph•Mar 30, 2026
Well, you can take it because it's cheaper than flying. Prices are comparable to the dirtiest, cheapiest dirt cheap flights with no checked baggage, carry-ons etc., but with more space, free wifi + (often) functional mobile data, better amenities, no TSA, and all the luggage you can carry. It's amazing being able to bring a whole guitar in a gig bag without having to worry about it at all.
The romance of it is wonderful too, but even from a purely practical standpoint the only real downsides are the slow speed and inconsistent arrival times.
ghaff•Mar 30, 2026
Except it’s not cheaper unless perhaps you’re willing to sit in a seat for two days.
bluGill•Mar 30, 2026
At $5000 vs $2000 to take my family someplace over Christmas break (when the kids are off school flight costs go up because everyone else is trying to take their kids on vacation at the same time) I'll pay the time. I seriously considered driving instead (which would have been cheaper, and perhaps faster).
kortilla•Mar 30, 2026
Agree except for the meals. They are just OK. The experience of talking to other people on the train can be nice but the food itself is not “delicious”.
If you really like to have good food when you travel, the dining car wears thin quite quickly. I lament the lack of options for better food (I would happily pay more).
iso1631•Mar 30, 2026
I was massively impressed by the food when I took it, certainly as good as any restaurant my expenses policy even attempts to allow me to eat in, and I'd say better than most first class on BA which I've flown a few times, other than the fixed meal times (in F on BA you can eat whenever you want)
CalRobert•Mar 30, 2026
For what it's worth, I love trains, and the romance of them, but I ALSO love taking it from Oakland or Richmond to Sacramento and sipping a beer while I look through the window at all the poor saps stuck on I-80. I've had that drive take 4+ hours before on a Friday, especially when people are headed to Tahoe.
II2II•Mar 30, 2026
The tone of the article, as well as some of the comments here, make me think of "City of New Orleans" (a song about the history and experience of American railways) instead of "Midnight Train to Georgia".
brianzelip•Mar 30, 2026
The song title is actually ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’.
yanhangyhy•Mar 30, 2026
I highly recommend everyone read “The Grass Frontier”. It provides a detailed account of the development of American suburbanization and its integration with the automobile industry. (and why cars > trains after that)
The United States is a very unique case—its capitalist development progressed faster than in other countries. Although many industries today are controlled by oligarchs and politicians and no longer serve the public interest, this history remains distinctive and worth remembering.
rballpug•Mar 30, 2026
I started to think, whether the UP-Norfolk Southern merger would bring major changes to the mid-line time-keeping measure in the CCG.
derelicta•Mar 30, 2026
I rode the amtrak from NYC, to DC then finally to Atlanta. Beautiful all the way, but incredibly slow, and the train "station" at Atlanta is left to be desired to say the last.
saagarjha•Mar 30, 2026
A lot of people here talking about the northeastern routes, but there's another good one that is kinda worth it: San Jose to Santa Barbara on the Coast Starlight, on account of SBA being very expensive to fly through. It's about 8 hours (driving is 5-6) and comparable in price to a bus (and it is probably beating gas right now, to be honest). And the tracks go by some of the prettiest coastline in the United States, usually around sunset too.
ghaff•Mar 30, 2026
There are probably a few other city pairs like Seattle to Portland’s and Raleigh to Charlotte that are reasonable.
Halian•Mar 30, 2026
I took the Floridian and Silver Meteor last April in coach round-trip to DC. 19 hours getting bounced around so badly I couldn't sleep. :(
davidfekke•Mar 30, 2026
Ah, Choo Choo trains
rsynnott•Mar 30, 2026
650 miles in 14 hours. Wow. That's actually slower than Irish intercity trains.
jeingham•Mar 30, 2026
I am very much enjoying my weekly train rides to care for my grandson. I'd much rather do that than drive the 90 mi or so back and forth. I set up my laptop and hotspot and go. Or I just sit and watch the scenery. Or just watch the people. Sometimes the bathrooms are a little stinky and sometimes people are a little loud and sometimes the train is crowded. But that's all much better than the intensity of driving on the freeway for me at least. So much more relaxing.
gaoshan•Mar 30, 2026
Having ridden the trains of China fairly extensively and over a long period of time I am essentially ruined for what we have in the US. The older style Chinese trains were fine and I always enjoyed the journey (and remember excitedly riding the maglev when it first opened in Shanghai) but the newer generation of high speed trains is what pushed me from "It would be so pleasant to have this system in the US" to "We are losing out and falling behind the modern world".
Trips that take me 3 hours in normal traffic here would take less than 45 minutes in China... possibly as little as 30 minutes. Trains would be leaving for the main destinations in 15 minute intervals, travel times cut by an order of magnitude, arrivals would be in stations that connect to clean, modern, efficient, inexpensive and safe subway systems.
A typical journey. Hangzhou to Shanghai used to be a 3 hour bus ride for me. On top of that it was 45 minutes from home to the bus station. Now I can walk a few hundred meters to a gleaming, state of the art metro station (seriously, you've never experienced anything like this if you've never left the US), arrive in the ground floor of the train station, catch a glass smooth, spacious high speed train to Shanghai that leaves every 15 minutes and takes only 45 minutes and go downstairs to the subway to travel wherever I need to go in the city (usually within a couple of blocks of whatever destination I have).
We are so far away from this that I find it a bit distressing. We cannot afford it, we cannot overcome the legal and political hurdles to make it happen... we are just going to fall further and further behind.
nasaeclipse•Mar 30, 2026
Same. I lived in Japan, Taiwan, and mainland China for about 10 years, and I only came back with my wife because we want to buy a house here in the States. After that, we're going back to Japan and China.
The US is so far behind in public infrastructure (trains, pedestrian, cycling, etc) that I can't see the States being a good place NOW, much less the next fifty years.
HWR_14•Mar 30, 2026
Why do you want to buy a house in the United States that you never plan to live in?
SoftTalker•Mar 30, 2026
China can do it because they have a command economy and the government can just take property to do what it wants.
To do this in the USA you'd have a thousand different emminent domain claims to get through, at least some of which will be contested, you'll need to pay the property owners fair market prices for the land you are taking, there will need to be environmental impact studies, planning commission approvals, fights with every interested locality over station locations and ammenities and how many trees will be cut down. China doesn't have to worry about any of that they just do it.
phil21•Mar 30, 2026
The US built stuff though. Not even that long ago.
Subway systems don’t take all that much land from private parties and are effectively too expensive to build here. Not to mention how long they take.
It’s because we decided it must be this way. If we decided (as a society) building stuff was important we could do so. It will take an existential crises for this attitude to shift though.
When you propose building quite literally anything here you will have people saying “no” crawling out of the woodwork. We decided to empower such people both legally and socially.
Melatonic•Mar 30, 2026
Los Angeles is building a ton of new subway systems ( I think maybe more than anywhere else in the US ) where it is far from easy. If LA Metro can pull it off then so can elsewhere!
SoftTalker•Mar 30, 2026
Long-distance passenger rail isn't something we (as a society) want. So it doesn't get built. We still build highways for cars. We still build commuter rail, where population density supports it.
johnpdoe1234•Mar 30, 2026
While I don't disagree with you as you described the US situation, many places out there have societies and government regulations closer to the US than China and they have built successful railway networks, including high speed ones. Many countries in Europe, for example.
It might be useful to compare the US with those countries instead, and find out what differs in the US so it's holding it back.
24 Comments
more info here: https://hackaday.com/2026/01/27/zombie-netscape-wont-die/
I miss when the web looked like this, and pages were documents instead of applications.
We built the wrong web, we needed two, one for documents, and one for applications, but we built this rube goldberg contraption instead.
This also includes some images that aren't part of the netscape.com version... which is probably part of the point of it: "A view of America from the tracks" has some pictures of Amtrak stations and Virginia countryside.
(and for some nostalgia- City of New Orleans by Steve Goodman https://youtu.be/fhHxNMyw0dI )
TFA train round trip shows $306 without a private cabin.
TFA already mentioned the time differences.
The googs says it's 638miles doable in 9.5hours. Say an average of 20mpg at $4/gal (I have no idea what current rates are in that part of the country) needs 32gals for $128 one way or $256 to come back. Of course someone needs to drive it.
The train definitely looks like a decent deal for this route. I've priced train rides from my town, and prices look like plane routes but in days instead of hours. The train doesn't make sense all of the time, but I'm holding out hope I'll find a trip where it will make sense.
I’m not sure why I’d deliberately burn more fuel regardless of the price. Literally setting fire to cash for nothing.
That would be $120 for your trip to Georgia, about the same price as in the US despite fuel being $7.30 a gallon equivalent in the uk.
Your "deliberate" sounds a lot like victim blaming here.
Among SUV drivers in the US the biggest segment is compact SUVs (think Toyota RAV4 or Honda CR-V). Then midsize (like Toyota Highlander or Hyundai Palisade), subcompact (Mazda CX-30, Hyundai Kona), then full sized (Chevy Tahoe, Ford Expedition).
RAV4 non-hybrid is around 35 mpg highway. CR-V 34 mpg highway.
In midsize, Highlander is 29 mpg highway, and Palisade is 25 mpg highway.
In subcompact CX-30 is 30-33 mpg highway depending on options. Kona is 29-34 mpg highway depending on options.
The full size category, which does get down to around 20 mpg, is only around 3-4% of SUVs in the US. Tahoe is 20 mpg highway. Expedition gets 23 mpg highway.
Not to mention wear on the car.
....35mpg at 60mph and little traffic, maybe. I can't speak for that specific model, but most vehicles I've driven do significantly worse than advertised.
My Subaru Legacy advertised 27 City, 35 Highway, 30 Combined. In practice I average 25-26 while commuting and on extended highways drives more like 29, still on stock tires.
I tried this myself, picking a time a few weeks in the future (round trip April 15th to 22nd). Round trip as I'm assuming you'll want to go there and come home.
All of the following info is for ATL to Washington-Area airports (BWI, DCA, IAD). Amtrak is for Atlanta to Washington Union Station
Delta (20+ nonstop a day every 30min or so, ~2hrs flight time):
- ~$244->$304 Main
- ~$444->$504 Comfort+
- ~$769-$974 First
Amtrak (11:29PM->1:47PM, 14h18m):
- $356 Coach
- $1107 Private Room (Roomette)
I'm sure that a more accurate analysis would include a spread of days.
In general, this means that with the train you'd increase your travel time by ~26 hours round trip (over a whole day) while also paying ~$112 more.
(Note that the Amtrak website prices each leg independently while Delta prices round trip, I made sure to go all the way to the cart to gather the end pricing)
I was curious so I also did a trip much sooner (March 30th to April 6th):
Delta:
- $616-$665 Main
- $785-$800 Comfort Plus
- $1065 First (they were all priced the same)
Amtrak:
- $517 Main
- $1369 Private Room (Roomette)
So for a much sooner trip you do save ~$100 for the tradeoff of ~26 hours more time spent.
It's also worth noting that this route's travel occurs primarily at night, in the dark. This means both trying to sleep on a train as well as not being able to see much outside as it'll be dark most of the ride.
As the author states traveling by train just a more pleasant experience.
I should note that even though there is technically wifi on every Amtrak train, it’s cellular based. You’ll find that at least from atlanta to NY, the train somehow threads the needle between cellular ranges. Both your phone and of course the train will often be either out of range of fast cellular service or out of range altogether. Supposedly Amtrak is getting starlink but we’ll see. So, don’t expect to be getting on any video calls.
So, yeah, the train ride was actually a significant part of the experience for those particular vacations.
What kind of funding are we looking at? Is the issue that this is cost-prohibitive for reasons of scale that make this non-competitive for businesses themselves to fund as compared to elsewhere?
Amtrak does not own its own rail network. It has priority over cargo trains de jure but in practice cargo takes priority. Many areas only have one set of tracks and trains can only pull over onto sidings when they exist. Class 1 railroads are capital intensive so to be more profitable they don't spend any money they don't have to. Such as more sidings, more train yards, not maximizing the length of trains so they fit onto those sidings, or more than one operator per train. Class 1 railroads are focused on cargo and making money, not helping Amtrak trains go first. The government doesn't care to enforce the law either. https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-13/tracking-productivity...
Amtrak operates routes that suffer from low demand instead of focusing on the New York Washington DC route. It's about counting US Senate votes as much as customer satisfaction or breaking even.
The Federal government heavily subsidized cars starting in the 1950s through the Interstate Highway System. Cars and airliners are considered critical passenger transportation infrastructure, trains are not.
They are currently doing a couple of grade-separation bridge projects in north Raleigh and some minor curve straightening. Since the S-Line is not currently being used they can straighten many of the curves since there won't be any impact to existing operations.
The S-Line right of way is owned by CSX and they will be running freight on it. The budget wasn't there to acquire all of it by NCDOT and VA and dedicate it to passenger service.
https://www.ncdot.gov/divisions/rail/s-line-projects/raleigh...
https://vapassengerrailauthority.org/projects/richmond2ralei...
Unfortunately this is misleading. Outside of the Northeast Acela corridor, there is no certainty in train travel in the U.S..
Although legally passenger trains are now supposed to have right of way over freight trains, in practice that’s just not the case. So a 14.5 hr train journey can easily be delayed by several hours.
This is a common misconception because Brightline’s parent company Florida East Coast Industries shares heritage with Florida East Coast Railway, but the companies were split in 2007.
It absolutely left on time but had to wait for three freight trains on the way. 9 hours later we got to the "station". One of the other passengers said that their previous trip was cancelled and Amtrak bought everyone bus tickets.
In the Midwest, there are no guarantees with trains other than you'll get there. Eventually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forgottonia
No idea which is accurate, that's just a consistent theme from almost every conversation when I was consulting there.
Adams Internet/Telco/Fiber? Same. It always impressed me how early they were to fiber to the home down there in southwestern IL. ~15 years ago I made that same trip: Chicago down to Quincy then over to Steeleville and then to St Louis to drop off the rental car and fly back home. They really make the Coop system work out there.
I was looking at Tucson to Seattle trip on a relatively short notice - all sleeping tickets were sold out multiple weeks in advance. And due to the length of the trip it’s not practical with non-sleeping seat.
It can easily be delayed a lot longer than that. The last time I took Amtrak I was delayed over 24 hours.
It could be structured so the current owners don't lose money on the deal but America gets a faster, better utilized train system. So much winning!
Amtrak has right-of-way over freight trains if they are claiming their pre-allocated rail time slot. If a freight train is already on the track at its own scheduled time, it's going to take it, regardless of scheduling priority.
Unfortunately, Amtrak is independently dysfunctional (I'm sorry, it's true, it's led by people who don't know anything about trains) and is rarely on time even independent of rail congestion, so they show up at times they weren't scheduled, and the lateness compounds as they get further delayed by congestion.
To be clear Sherman burned it to the ground which is why it got renamed Atlanta.
Just by way of comparison, in China the 819-mile train route between Beijing and Shanghai takes 4.5 hours.
I live in Japan; bullet trains are great here, but the distances they cover are quite short by American standards. Extremely high ridership, with trains covering relatively short distances between extremely populated population centers (the Tokyo metro area has 38 million people for reference) means the trains operate at a profit. That could be done in America, maybe, but only between select cities that aren't too far apart, such as DC and NYC and Boston. Even here in Japan, no one is taking the shinkansen between far-apart cities in the north and south; they use inexpensive and faster domestic flights instead.
But China has a much larger population than the US, by far, and an authoritarian government that has no problem using the "build it and they will come" business model for large infrastructure projects that may or may not work out as planned and no worry about opposition from local politicians, NIMBYs, etc. Don't forget, most of their population is concentrated on the east coast; the inland areas are relatively unpopulated. And they don't have a population that's been conditioned from birth, ever since the 1940s, to think that automobiles are the mode of transit that society should be based around.
So even if they did build an HSR network across the US, I don't think it would work out. How much travel is there between Denver and St Louis, really? A lot of the intra-US travel is really between places on opposite coasts, or on the same coast, because that's where the population is.
I heard something like that about the Concorde at the Air and Space Museum. What killed it was not fuel costs, but cheaper long-distance phone calls and fax machines.
But if a country takes the Chinese approach and pushed inexpensive rail as a way to open new economic opportunities, the idea of flying as your daily commute moves from ridiculous to feasible (if you replace the airplane with a train).
I don't know if (then state-owned) Air France did.
Typical distances are about the same as SanFrancisco-LA, LA-Phoenix, Phoenix-LasVegas, Dallas-Houston, Houston-New Orleans, Portland-Vancouver. The longest service is 650 miles -- around the Atlanta to New York, Chicago to Washington DC, San Francisco to Portland, Austin to Kansas City
Honestly surprised how many TSA people are still working without pay. I wouldn’t in their shoes. Maybe if TSA just basically shutdown commercial aviation in the US it would lead to some progress.
You don't take Amtrak because you want to get there fast, and you don't really take it because it's cheaper than flying. You take it because you can, and because it's more important to you to be (comparatively) comfortable instead of rushing from A to B. You take it because of the sights, the people, the chance encounters, the proximity to city centers that airplanes can never hope to match. It's an experience in and of itself that's distinctly foreign to many Americans, and one I wholeheartedly recommend.
Sitting in a roomette, crossing from Boston to LA over a long weekend, sharing delicious meals with total strangers as the countryside whizzed by (or we sat on a siding waiting on a freight train).
Just not comparable.
And I honestly don't know what adventures people are talking about, most people keep to themselves. I've had more stranger experiences on flights than I have on Amtrak but maybe it's different in the West Coast.
Saturday morning in NY looking at a few sights I hadn't seen (Trinity Church), then a relaxing train down to Miami. Beat flying and spending Sunday in a hotel room.
I didn't sit with anyone else in the restaurant car, but that does sound an interesting way to meet people from a whole different world. The Friday night in NY though I did sit at a bar next to other people, so I guess that was horrifying?
Had i been that against it though there was an option to eat in my room.
I spent the entire trip (including a 4 hour delay where we didn’t move) in the cheap seats from Atlanta to New Orleans smelling the farts of someone with serious GI issues while a college kid walked up and down the aisle spraying axe body spray to drown out the smell.
The only profitable routes are Boston to Washington DC.
Outside of that it's both better and worse. Sometimes you meet friendly people, sometimes your stuck next to folks with hygiene issues.
I've had way more chance encounters flying, went out with a girl once.
It's cool, but so underfunded that I don't think it'll ever catch up to say Japan. An 18 hour highspeed NYC to LA train would be amazing.
I think I did Chicago to NYC once. Afterwards my thought was , cool I did it, I don't need to experience that again.
Often I think of the cut intro scene for "Escape From New York" where Snake robs some sort of bank and then escape in the inter state subway[0]. That future is grim but at least they got high speed long distance underground subways.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsLT-zRWWdQ
If you want trains in the US then you need to focus on the DC-NYC-Boston route - this should be an obvious route with affordable high speed trains every 10 minutes all day. You also need to get local trains to stop bloating the costs such that nothing but the most dense areas can afford to build them. Solve those and then start focusing on areas where trains are harder.
The romance of it is wonderful too, but even from a purely practical standpoint the only real downsides are the slow speed and inconsistent arrival times.
If you really like to have good food when you travel, the dining car wears thin quite quickly. I lament the lack of options for better food (I would happily pay more).
The United States is a very unique case—its capitalist development progressed faster than in other countries. Although many industries today are controlled by oligarchs and politicians and no longer serve the public interest, this history remains distinctive and worth remembering.
Trips that take me 3 hours in normal traffic here would take less than 45 minutes in China... possibly as little as 30 minutes. Trains would be leaving for the main destinations in 15 minute intervals, travel times cut by an order of magnitude, arrivals would be in stations that connect to clean, modern, efficient, inexpensive and safe subway systems.
A typical journey. Hangzhou to Shanghai used to be a 3 hour bus ride for me. On top of that it was 45 minutes from home to the bus station. Now I can walk a few hundred meters to a gleaming, state of the art metro station (seriously, you've never experienced anything like this if you've never left the US), arrive in the ground floor of the train station, catch a glass smooth, spacious high speed train to Shanghai that leaves every 15 minutes and takes only 45 minutes and go downstairs to the subway to travel wherever I need to go in the city (usually within a couple of blocks of whatever destination I have).
We are so far away from this that I find it a bit distressing. We cannot afford it, we cannot overcome the legal and political hurdles to make it happen... we are just going to fall further and further behind.
The US is so far behind in public infrastructure (trains, pedestrian, cycling, etc) that I can't see the States being a good place NOW, much less the next fifty years.
To do this in the USA you'd have a thousand different emminent domain claims to get through, at least some of which will be contested, you'll need to pay the property owners fair market prices for the land you are taking, there will need to be environmental impact studies, planning commission approvals, fights with every interested locality over station locations and ammenities and how many trees will be cut down. China doesn't have to worry about any of that they just do it.
Subway systems don’t take all that much land from private parties and are effectively too expensive to build here. Not to mention how long they take.
It’s because we decided it must be this way. If we decided (as a society) building stuff was important we could do so. It will take an existential crises for this attitude to shift though.
When you propose building quite literally anything here you will have people saying “no” crawling out of the woodwork. We decided to empower such people both legally and socially.
It might be useful to compare the US with those countries instead, and find out what differs in the US so it's holding it back.