Weekday Travel

[da40flyer]

Sorry for the dumb question but..... generally is travelling on a Thursday-Friday on a long distance train not quite as full than say a Friday-Saturday trip?

 

[Green Maned Lion]

I don't think that can be generalized. The Capitol Limited, for example, due to its schedule, seems to be mildly popular with business travelers. Trains that leave early in the morning, less so, I'd think.

 

[meatpuff]

If you want to find out, just enter pretend bookings on the route for a few weeks or months out on Amtrak's website. Of course, with the bucket system (outside of CA state-supported routes and Hiawatha that are fixed price) the price will be higher on days with heavier bookings, and you may very well see patterns based on what day of the week it is.

GML is right, it is difficult to generalize. But what you said is so on specific long-distance routes for various reasons. On the City, the CDL-CHI portion has heavier traffic on the weekends (especially Fri and Sun) because it serves three major state universities on that segment and many students use it to travel back to the state's population center in Chicago. If I were to try to generalize, I bet you would find higher traffic on most LD routes on the weekends near the endpoints or other big cities on the route (daytrippers and weekend travelers), but not a whole lot of difference in the middle of the route where it's somewhere in the boonies.

 

[da40flyer]

If you want to find out, just enter pretend bookings on the route for a few weeks or months out on Amtrak's website. Of course, with the bucket system (outside of CA state-supported routes and Hiawatha that are fixed price) the price will be higher on days with heavier bookings, and you may very well see patterns based on what day of the week it is.
GML is right, it is difficult to generalize. But what you said is so on specific long-distance routes for various reasons. On the City, the CDL-CHI portion has heavier traffic on the weekends (especially Fri and Sun) because it serves three major state universities on that segment and many students use it to travel back to the state's population center in Chicago. If I were to try to generalize, I bet you would find higher traffic on most LD routes on the weekends near the endpoints or other big cities on the route (daytrippers and weekend travelers), but not a whole lot of difference in the middle of the route where it's somewhere in the boonies.

The reason I ask is we are on the CS leaving on a thursday morning from LAX to Portland. Coming back we leave on Sunday and get into LA on Monday.

 

[Everydaymatters]

I had often thought about the same question, so I did my own unscientific research.

A couple of years ago I was regularly traveling between Chicago and DC. Most of the time I would leave Chicago on Saturday and make the return trip from DC leaving on Wednesday. The Wednesday train from DC wasn't as crowded as the Saturday train from Chicago.

A Thursday train to Kingman, AZ (Las Vegas) from Chicago was more crowded than the return trip on Tuesday.

I believe being on a train between Thursday evening and Monday brings the most crowds with people doing 4-day weekends, or starting their vacation early.

BTW, that wasn't a dumb question.

Betty