I do hope that at the time of booking they make it clear which Acela it is. Airlines do this: they usually mention the type of plane while booking. I might just do a trip on the new Acela to experience the train.
Everyone's using ChatGPT these days.
I live in Switzerland where people are so comfortable taking the train they treat it like an extension of their living room.
Only in rare cases do I even book tickets in advance, like when going to Milano… otherwise I just use the Fairtiq app, which is a nation wide system for paying for tickets, including busses and trams…
You swipe right before you step on, swipe left when you step off and the system automatically calculates the best ticket for you.
There isn’t a “fully booked”.
Based on my understanding, travel times in the northeast are limited not by the top speed of the trains, but by the tracks, and the fact that freight is prioritized.
For as much as Biden purported to be a pro-passenger train President, you'd think he would have done something about that.
Unfortunately Siemens has become something of a monopoly outside of Asia and France for passenger trains and they've apparently decided that train travel should be uncomfortable, with bad seats and harsh lighting.
The upside to these new Acela trains is that they were built by the French railcar maker Alstrom, not by Siemens like the rest of the new Amtrak carriages.
* DC to NYC: 80 minutes.
* NYC to Boston: 80 minutes.
* NYC to Toronto: 2 hours and 45 minutes.
* NYC to Chicago: 4 hours and 35 minutes.
It'd be nice to see the distribution to know if there are some other efficiencies with relation to total length (shorter power cars) or internally (better seat distribution, maybe less first class...). Haven't looked much around, so maybe it's easy to get that info.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avelia_Liberty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acela_Express_(trainset)Acela Express has 8 cars, while the new Avelia Liberty is 9.
> Amtrak's expects a roughly 30 minute reduction in travel time between both DC and NYC and NYC and Boston once all NEC upgrades are completed.
DC --> NYC right now is about 3 hours, so I guess it'll be near 2:30 if those upgrades are completed?
(My understanding is that the speed limits is more to do with the railways than the actual trainsets, but maybe that's wrong. Apparently they go 160mph at max vs 150 on the old ones, but I don't know if that speed can be sustained between DC and NYC)
In the USA the Union might be the only reason a certain profession has a healthcare plan at all. The relationship is so combative, unions basically have to adopt a "fuck you I'll get mine" attitude or they're passing things over the bargaining table for nothing in return.
Americans got the labor market they deserve: a transactional one.
And unions make you vote a lot. Once every year for my representative, plus almost every time a sympathy strike can be organised.
Edit: To extend a little bit, just saying that unions aren't the main problem with not having better public infrastructures in the US. Also, unions models are different outside of the US. I don't have a lot of information about US unions, but I've felt like the model is a lot more individualistic and closed to the sector they're working for, and in Europe go hand in hand with global workers unions.