No Acela Value Fares after 10/15?

[Guest]

Net- it will be interesting to see if Amtrak hold the line or changes the fare back to 115

 

[cpotisch]

But this is not peak vs off peak...this is just one train on one day

Yeah, one train on one day. It's supply and demand. If people are willing to pay higher prices on that train, why offer the lower ones? The MTA is different since it has one fare for all trains and they don't have to cover their costs.

 

[the_traveler]

Its the only early morning train that gets you to nyc by 9. NEC is more a utility than anything else- you dont see the nyc MTA charging $5 because people depend on them

Actually you could leave the night before at 9:30 pm and get to NYP at 2 am. That gets you there before 9 am, so you do have a choice to get there before 9 am.

Thus you have a choice for a lower fare. If you do not want to chose it, there is your supply and demand.

It would be more inclined to so called price gouging if it were not offered on Wednesday or Friday trains, but it is. So I see it as supply and demand.

 

[jebr]

1. I'd certainly love to live on a route that has so much selection that even if my preferred train run spikes in price, I could choose one that arrives only an hour later.

2. Every stop from New London, CT south to New York City has commuter rail (or commuter bus to commuter rail, due to track work) that will get them into NYC (Grand Central Terminal) by 9 AM. It may be a bit longer, but that's a choice someone has to make. If someone's commuting on a regular basis from Rhode Island or Massachusetts to New York City, and has that hard/early of a deadline to meet, and is having to pay for it out of their own pocket (versus having the company expense it,) perhaps it's necessary to consider an alternate commute if the higher fare makes the commute non-worthwhile. There's also a Megabus and Greyhound schedule that, while leaves earlier from Boston, does arrive by 9 AM into New York.

If Amtrak doesn't get the ticket sales it expects at the higher price, they'll likely lower the price to attract riders back on board. However, I'm struggling to see the vitality of this specific schedule to the traditional sense of someone commuting to work.

 

[Guest]

Cpotisch- amtrack doesnt over its cost either- gets over 1 bill in fed funding

Jebr- there are lots of flolks on the routes that spend 2-4 nights per week in nyc...which lends credence to the demand of that one am train

 

[Guest]

Udpate- Amtrak retuned the Monday 2125 fare back to the normal $115...guess it wasn't a fruitful experiment and killed demand