Recent content by puck71

I think this is a good point. I'm nowhere near an expert on anything train related, but it seems like common sense to have signals at the end of each station, not hundreds/thousands of feet down the track. Then trains would wait at the station until that signal was clear - that would just be how...

Maybe they shouldn't be included in the price of the room. It's always seemed kind of odd to me that all meals and desserts are included in a sleeper car rate. What does one have to do with the other? I'd rather they lower the sleeper car rates and make meals a la carte for everyone. Are they...

I second this. I think it's a glaring hole (admittedly among many glaring holes on the Amtrak route map) not having a North-South route through the middle of the country (Dallas-KC-Minneapolis would be the biggest stops). Supposedly some of this is underway, but connecting all the way to MSP...

They have a light rail going from the Mall of America <-> Airport <-> Downtown Minneapolis (Metrodome, Target Center). Other than that it's just buses, but they have a lot of bus routes and pretty good coverage, at least in the "inner metro." Website for all is metrotransit.org - site is pretty...

That's good, because it couldn't get much worse (other than costing more for the same exact thing!) Hopefully they will make it so it can be used for any fare, not just low bucket.

Sorry to jump in, but I think one of the issues here is that "good service" is subjective. It's entirely possible for a person to be providing service that they think is good, while the customer thinks it's bad (or vice versa I guess). Personally, I except "good service" but to me that just...

I signed up in June and haven't received a card either, but have got two newsletters! I don't even have my member number, the website accepts a bunch of 1's for the number. There's no Quiktrak here so I picked up my tickets at the window. He did ask for my card but I showed him my Paypal receipt...

I just rode the EB both ways a week or so ago and got the bad luck of not having outlets at my coach seat either direction. My mom rode it a few months ago and said she did, so it really is just luck of the draw. Oh well, I found enough to do!

Back to this topic, I'd say that unfortunately, like always, you can't please everyone. If they kept spare equipment/sleepers for circumstances like this, it would please the people who got delayed and need space on the next day's train, but it wouldn't please the people who were trying to book...

If it's one of the routes that was affected by the flooding, I'd call shenanigans on that "statistic" - if a third of the trains (or whatever it was) didn't even run for the month, counting that as a decline in ridership would be pretty ridiculous! Sure I guess the route technically ran using...

No it shouldn't ever take more than 30 minutes but it's often pretty close to 30. I think the big potential for bleeding time is getting from the hotel to the station, and back. If you stay right next to the station then that's not a concern and you basically just have a half hour each way to...

If you can reliably get to Newark Penn in 5 minutes (with no waiting for the shuttle), then I think you'll be fine. The Newark hotel we were at had a shuttle too and it only took a few minutes once we got moving, but it was horribly unreliable. Supposedly they were short a driver or something...

I know this doesn't have to do with Amtrak, but I'd seriously consider staying "in the city" (Manhattan). Yes it's more expensive, but staying in Newark you have to burn a couple hours every day just getting back and forth to Newark. It seems really close, but that PATH train from Newark to WTC...

ND Senator Byron Dorgan, one of the most senior Senators in the country, had a quote about Amtrak and the restoring of their funding despite Bush's budget in a separate article (http://www.westfargopioneer.com/articles/index.cfm?id=13334&section=News). You may need to register for it, but here's...

As far as I've been able to tell it counts toward low bucket railfare, which is sufficient if you book far enough in advance.