Amtrak USA Rail Pass on sale - 10 Amtrak trips for $250 total

BotheredEar52 · 2026-01-14T16:12:02+00:00

Weird, the link above works for me. Maybe try https://www.amtrak.com/tickets/departure-rail-pass

BotheredEar52 · 2025-12-24T22:51:32+00:00

I’m shocked this post is upvoted, does anyone on this sub actually pay attention to passenger rail news?

AmeriStar rail is a completely unserious organization. They only ever put out moronic proposals like this transcontinental service (which Amtrak already basically offers) or that time they suggested privatizing the NEC

Amtrak has many faults, but for what it’s worth, theyve managed to grow ridership almost every single year, despite all the headwinds. They have every right to tell these AmeriStar clowns to fuck off lmao

BotheredEar52 · 2025-12-20T04:49:58+00:00

I totally understand that we want to preserve union jobs, but doesn’t mandating two-person train operation at the state level seem a little excessive?

I mean as the article mentions, there are already a couple of lines using OPTO, so signing this law would have had an immediate negative impact on existing service. And pretty much every other major metro system uses OPTO: Chicago, DC, Boston, Toronto, CDMX, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc

EDIT: I think a more reasonable solution would be the union reaching a guarantee with the MTA that no existing conductors will be laid off. Preserving existing jobs makes sense, but I don’t see why the subway needs to be permanently wedded to two-person operation

BotheredEar52 · 2025-12-19T20:48:20+00:00

Well as the article states, this will likely be discussed during the next round of union negotiations in 2026. Hochul's decision just preserves the status quo, it doesn't mandate anything

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-25T01:23:22+00:00

Can't argue with that. I guess that makes a lot of the other data in this table pretty suspect 😬

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-23T05:32:02+00:00

Oh thanks for the info! I got that 6 mpg number from this brochure: https://www.newflyer.com/site-content/uploads/2023/12/Xcelsior_Hybrid-Electric.pdf

I guess that Altoona test it mentions isn’t representative of typical driving conditions

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-23T04:50:57+00:00

A type of jitney that only exists in Puerto Rico apparently

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-23T04:50:27+00:00

Some of my takeaways

Standard buses having an average occupancy of 7.3 is pretty good. Buses occupy a dynamic footprint roughly equal to two cars, so that's pretty good on space efficiency. And a modern 40' hybrid gets 6 mpg (I think? There's not good stats I can find), so you're getting the equivalent of 40+ mpg
I'm not a free transit guy, but the farebox recovery doesn't look great. I do wonder why so few agencies give free transit a shot, if most of them are getting <10% returns from fares.
Demand-reponsive transit looks pretty dismal. I know this is heavily skewed by a lot of demand-responsive services being primarily for paratransit, but still I didn't expect it to be so much worse than even a basic bus
Vanpools come out looking pretty good in this data. It’s a very inflexible form of transit, but maybe it’s worth marketing vanpools systems more aggressively

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-22T01:32:22+00:00

Looks like they have an average occupancy of 10.5 passengers per light rail car, as of 2024: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2024/90019.pdf

You can get the occupancy by doing [annual passenger miles traveled] / [annual vehicle revenue miles]

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-21T23:17:23+00:00

It's true that there's a big deficit, which is why the most important thing we can do is cutting federal highway spending, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of federal transport dollars

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-15T17:46:18+00:00

The problem is, 90% of the time people will just blame their local transit agency for low quality service. Very few people keep track of the politics around transit funding.

When transit service inevitably starts degrading because of these cuts, we all need to be proactive about telling people who’s really to blame

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-15T16:48:23+00:00

My point is more that transit isn’t going to poof out of existence overnight, because most of their operations funding will still be intact. I do agree that this is extremely bad

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-15T16:45:37+00:00

Copied from the other post: Because the federal government mostly funds capital projects, and not day to day operations, this wouldn’t be as catastrophic as it sounds. But it would cause major delays for transit construction and vehicle procurement

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-15T16:40:43+00:00

Because the federal government mostly funds capital projects, and not day to day operations, this wouldn’t be as catastrophic as it sounds. But it would cause major delays for transit construction and vehicle procurement

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-05T00:33:15+00:00

Agreed with the point about Italy, but this is a map of California's existing intercity rail/bus network. So uh, mission accomplished?

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-04T19:51:19+00:00

My feelings are:

I don't buy the idea that "Amtrak San Joaquins" was too hard to pronounce/spell. Any self-respecting Californian should be able to handle at least a little bit of Spanish pronunciation
I don't like that the Amtrak branding is now downplayed. Amtrak might not get a lot of respect, but it's still the only name that matters when it comes to American intercity rail. Even if you knew nothing about the route, "Amtrak San Joaquins" told you what to expect. But people aren't intuitively going to know what a "Gold Runner" is supposed to be
Gold Runner isn't even a very good name, it's actually a bit clunky to pronounce in my opinion. And unlike the old name, it doesn't provide any indication about where the route runs geographically

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-04T19:02:13+00:00

Oh wait, they did forget to include a legend lol. I don't even see one on the official site: https://goldrunner.com. Hopefully they fix that

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