this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2024
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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.
More money is spent each month on maintaining the roads in the United States than has ever been spent on passenger rail. If tax funding were reallocated away from roads towards trains the costs would reverse.
Man, I'm not arguing for cars, I want trains to be a viable option! They just aren't for a lot of people right now.
How is that possible? Trains are extremely cheap to run.
I would guess because Amtrak isn't being subsidized enough. A lot of government money is spent on building and maintaining roads. If the consumer had to pay for that directly in the form of toll roads instead of through taxes then Amtrak would be much more competitive.
I believe part of it too is that much of the rail infrastructure is owned by companies, and so Amtrak is getting permission from them to use their tracks. Freight trains get priority over Amtrak trains, for example, and I assume Amtrak has to pay for permission to use those rails.
You also have to take into account that they are buying tickets for 2 people whereas they only need to get gas for one car. If I do end up using AmTrak, I'm just one person so the gas price to ticket price ratio is one to one
capitalism
Amtrak is government owned
But indeed it is a special corporation that is not quite private, yet seeks profit. Subsidized by the government, it wouldn't be the first capitalist enterprise to rely heavily on government funding.
The question is how you define capitalist then.
I'd consider it state capitalism. A private for-profit company owns the means of production/capital but that company is government owned.
That being said though, I don't think its fair to blame Amtrak being a private company as the reason Amtrak has high prices. Amtrak is at the mercy of freight rail as Amtrak only owns 3% of the rails they operate on. They pretty much have to pay whatever the freight companies say and freight is given preference over passenger trains. Amtrak has never made a profit since its creation.
State capitalism is an oxymoron. Socialism(not Marxism which is more specific) is the collective control of the means of production, collective control includes state control, I(and I think most people) consider capitalism and socialism to be antonyms, so I don't think you can really say state control of something is anywhere near capitalism.
That is true, but I don't think anything stopped them from building their own track like Brightline is doing.
Correct me if I am wrong but isn't like 100% of US rails owned by freight companies? And Amtrak must negotiate it's prices for using them with each company whose track they want to use. This drives prices hella high.
Not 100%. Amtrak's FY2022 fact sheet says that 72.6% of miles driven was on tracks owned by other railroads. That doesn't tell us how much rail they own, but they do own some of their own rail.
Not only does it mean higher prices, but worse service because they have to rely on freight companies to maintain their rails properly and preference is given to freight leading to passenger delays.
Edit: Found a better source.
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
You're not expected to solve systemic issues on an individual level.
Please do make sure to vote for someone to build trains, of course.
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.
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.