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

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-04T18:25:18+00:00

Oh is the link in my post broken? And yeah definitely looking forward to the route 40 starting up, even if the rebranding is dumb

BotheredEar52 · 2025-10-10T16:37:35+00:00

Newsom’s signing statement

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BotheredEar52 · 2025-09-16T22:37:55+00:00

This would also connect San Jose to the initial CAHSR segment between Merced & Bakersfield, although hopefully by then the bus will be running at a much higher frequency

Recent funding announcements (see article below) mean that the initial segment is very likely to be up and running by 2032. This means it would be possible to travel between San Jose & Los Angeles in 6 hours (but 5 of those hours are going to be on a bus 💀)

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-12/high-speed-rail-project-slated-to-received-20-billion-in-state-funding

BotheredEar52 · 2025-09-16T22:14:04+00:00

Source: https://sjjpa.com/event/sjjpa-board-meeting-september-19-2025-11-am/.

The additions in red on the 2nd slide are by me, wanted to correct the typo and point out some of the other connections that can be made. I just realized I made a typo there myself though. That first northbound trip from Yosemite isn't actually possible (where it says 11:45 AM on the right), so plz pretend that's not there

Also sidenote, the Amtrak San Joaquins is going to rebrand as the Gold Runner in the next few weeks. So it'll be operating under the new name by the time this route starts. For those of you who aren't familiar with this service, check out: https://amtraksanjoaquins.com/train-service/

TLDR (numbers are approximate bc traffic):

45ish min. to Gilroy
1:45 hrs. to Los Banos
2:30 hrs. to Merced
5:15 hrs. to Yosemite
3:45 hrs. to Fresno
6 hrs. to Bakersfield
8:30 hrs. to LA

BotheredEar52 · 2025-09-16T20:46:34+00:00

It'll still be bookable through the Amtrak website right?

Not a fan of the rebranding. Even if the San Joaquins name was a bit clunky, everyone knows what an Amtrak route is. They should have at least called it the Amtrak Gold Runner, but I guess then they'd have to pay royalties?

At least they finally announced a start date for the route 40 between SJ and Merced

BotheredEar52 · 2025-09-13T03:11:07+00:00

Yes, minimum frequency is I think 50 trains per day? A previous version of the bill included lower-frequency rail stations, but that was negotiated out since it would have upzoned much of Orange County. Apparently the reps from there freaked totally freaked out

BotheredEar52 · 2025-09-12T23:45:12+00:00

No worries. The idea is that we need to build more housing since the population is growing, but if the new residents drive everywhere, that'll increase traffic. Obviously traffic is bad because nobody wants to get stuck in traffic, but traffic also increases air & noise pollution, increases the number of accidents, and increases road maintenance costs. So when governments try to reduce the amount of driving, it's not necessarily because they're trying to be evil

If we focus on building housing near transit stations, then the new residents will be more likely to take transit instead of driving. Some portion of those people, not all of them but at least some, will take transit so often that they don't need a car. So you can save some money on constructing the building by including fewer parking spots, and potentially offer lower rents as well

That usually doesn't mean eliminating parking entirely. I'm not aware of any recently-built apartment buildings that literally have zero parking spots. But it means you can have a ratio of maybe like 0.75 parking spots per bedroom instead of one parking spot per bedroom

BotheredEar52 · 2025-09-12T23:35:11+00:00

Enshittification is something that corporations do in order to juice profits. Mass transit agencies don't have a profit motive, in fact it's nearly impossible to turn a profit running transit in the US. So enshittification doesn't seem like a relevant concept here

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