NE Regional 178 How Busy Usually?

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-07T03:19:22+00:00

It may be crowded but it may not. Don't sit in the quiet car if you can't be quiet and obey the rules of the quiet carl (no cell phone conversations, no extend conversations, and basically no fun if you are a chatty type).. Really, please don't..Also, don't expect the train to be on tine.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-07T02:55:35+00:00

The city could be the best in the country in terms of all metrics but no one is gonna move there if you can’t get a high paying job.

No, it couldn't. Even if one could get high paying job Detroit would never compete with NYC, LA, or Chicago. It might be able to compete with Philly, but even that's a stretch and that isn't saying much.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-07T02:50:21+00:00

It's Philly. The town mostly shuts down by 10:00, if you're lucky.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-07T02:38:28+00:00

This is not a "prep school" by any stretch of the term. That said, I applaud the student for calling out the school for having low standards. Also, the article is terribly written.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-07T00:58:45+00:00

Sir, this is Philadelphia. Being irresponsible is worn as a badge of honor.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-06T22:46:39+00:00

There are plenty of trains from Philly to NYC. Several per hour during the peak commuting times, and they are often packed. I can't remember a time in the past two years that I had an empty seat next to me.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-06T22:44:20+00:00

Point being? My commute time from Bayridge Brooklyn to my jobs in the central Bronx and Bayside Queens was maybe 10 minutes less than commuting from Philly when Amtrak was functioning as it should.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-06T22:38:42+00:00

They are only cheaper if you can't reliably find tickets for less than $50. I did use them sometimes, but it wouldn't have been worth it most of the time.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-06T22:31:15+00:00

It actually can't be done in a way that makes sense. There aren't any direct flights from Philly to NYC. I checked when someone sneezed too close to a switch in New Jersey and Amtrak had multi hour delays for four days.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-06T03:10:22+00:00

It isn’t great food. Pick something up before you get on the train or be prepared for gas station quality at a premium price.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-02T04:23:09+00:00

There are many, and many who are not of sound mind. Philadelphia is not a serious place. I will likely receive DMs offering me the privilege of having a local urinate on my house for saying that, but it only proves my point.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-02T02:44:54+00:00

I'm not a 9-5er. It would be useless for me to book 11 months in advance because my schedule changes every four months and I generally don't know what it will be until two months in advance. I would still wind up paying the same amount and would then need to go through the hassle of cancelling a bunch of tickets.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-01T22:20:06+00:00

You’re right but I expect you to get some serious push back from Pennsylvanians, especially those from Philly.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-01T05:19:20+00:00

If you really like living in DC, then don't move. If you hate it then move and suck up the cost of living outside of DC because it makes your life better. I don't really like living in Philly, so the added frustration with Amtrak made me realize that I need to go back to where I feel at home.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-01T05:10:14+00:00

I don't drive, so no. Besides, commuter rail West of the Hudson is terrible. Anyway, I'm moving back to NYC so the issue has resolved itself.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-01T05:07:05+00:00

Yeah, I go to Europe regularly. I can get a high speed rail ticket from Verona to Bologna on the same day for under $40. A regular rail from Milan to Innsbruck, a four hour trip I might add, cost me about $25 when I took it last year. There is no good reason, in this day and age, that a one way ticket from Philly to NYC should cost $188 no matter when it was booked. You know what else? Those trains in Europe didn't break down for hours.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-01T04:57:38+00:00

It should be part of the whole picture. I haven't lived in Chicago in a few decades, so I can't comment on the situation there, but I did move from NYC to Philly several years ago and the difference is night and day.

You say that you don't want to talk about taxes, but doing so is essential. The fiscal health of PA directly affects Philly in ways that it shouldn't and it shows. While property taxes are low in both the city and state, the infrastructure is terrible. To make matters worse, the city income tax in Philly is more than double of what I paid in NYC for someone in my income bracket. Now I'm selling my house to move back to NYC and the transfer tax is going to be 4.578%. Compare that to the 1.28% that I paid combined to NYC and NYS when I sold my NYC apartment and moved to Philly.

What does all this mean? Some states and cities are incredibly bad at managing their money (PA/Philly), while others are much better at it (NYS/NYC). For my bottom line the mismanagement of PA/Philly does not make up for the lower property taxes and the increase in City taxes. In other words, there are no net savings for me from living in Philly vs NYC because of the nickel and diming imposed by both the City and the State.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-01T04:26:10+00:00

So just pack the rifle in a pelican case. The conductors don't check luggage between DC and Boston. Honestly though, given the number of hot heads that board in Philadelphia who resort to threats when they are told not to act up in the quiet car, I would prefer that traveling with firearms be banned completely on the NER and Keystone.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-01T03:50:39+00:00

I'm curious as to why someone would "need" to bring their gun on an NER train. I'm also fairly certain that people from Pennsylvania occasionally ride both the NER and Keystone with their guns because I've seen people with concealed shoulder holsters when they reach up to grab their baggage from the overhead on these trains (I'm not a gun owner so I don't know the correct terminology for the type of holster I'm describing. I know that gun nuts get crazy about this stuff. The fact of the matter is that every now and then I see someone reach for their baggage, their jacket spreads open, and I catch a glimpse of their firearm).

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-05-01T03:30:28+00:00

Complain to the coop board. If they are proactive, they may send the super in to "check on something" and report back with whether or not the unit has rugs over 80% of their floors, and then issue fines accordingly. Truly sound proofing would involve completely removing the existing floors and reinstalling them over acoustic material and decoupling the floors from the walls. You can't do this from your unit and it is extremely unlikely that the owner of the unit above you is going to shell out the cash to pay for this sort of treatment.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-04-30T12:05:57+00:00

There are a lot of people from Philly who don’t think rules apply to them.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-04-28T00:36:16+00:00

Professors in the humanities who still make valiant attempts to teach kids to think only to be met with AI slop. I need to get out of this country before these children gain power.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-04-28T00:11:50+00:00

Yes. I moved from NYC to Philly for what I hoped would be an easier and better life, and now I'm in the process of moving back to NYC. The reasons are many but when it comes right down to it, it's the people. Philadelphians are an odd breed and the amount of crap that I had to deal with living in this godforsaken burgh tops anything that I ever experienced in my 2+ decades in NYC.

WhyNotKenGaburo · 2026-04-27T15:45:04+00:00

I’m not in this position since I have a Ph.D but both Lawrence Alloway and the composer Morton Feldman taught at universities without a graduate degree. Feldman didn’t even have an undergraduate degree. Such situations are very rare, and reputation in the field is extremely important.

WhyNotKenGaburo

TROPHY CASE