[jamesbressi]

I wish we could get this on the East Coast. D.C. -> Philadelphia -> NYC -> Boston

I would easily pay $1000 to $1500 a month.

It would as affordable as an Amtrak pass and just as convenient.

The possibilities for those who don't want to move to another city for work but want to broaden their options (or course if your salary range allows--but if you are making 100k or more it is brilliant).

[melling]

D.C. to Philly is 140 miles. Philly to NYC is 90 miles. NYC to Boston is 220 miles. Is it really necessary to spend $1000-$1500 a month to go that short of a distance? There's 50 year old technology that went into commercial use before man stepped foot on the moon. This is insane.

At some point America is going to realize that it needs a 21st century infrastructure. It's going to cost a lot more in 20-30 years, of course.

[equark]

Amtrak Acela, Boston - NYC is $173 one-way and takes 3 hours and 30 minutes. That quickly adds up.

[Retric]

For some reason Amtrak is by far the least subsidized form of transport in the US. If cars had so little subsidy gas tax would be 3 dollars a gallon to cover road construction, maintenance, and parking lots etc. Airplanes are less subsidized, but you would still see an extra 20-40% added to the ticket price.

It might not be rational, but we pay a lot more in taxes to make it seem like traveling is far less expensive than it actually is.

[twoodfin]

You're completely wrong about Federal highway spending: 90+% is funded by gas taxes and other user fee-like sources. In contrast, Amtrak is hugely subsidized on a passenger-miles basis.

[Retric]

I suggest you rethink the numbers.

Several states impose a fuel tax that's below their sales tax limit. They still need to pay for road maintenance.

"U.S. annual gasoline consumption is 140 billion gallons and growing." The federal tax is 18.4 cents per gallon that's 25.76 billion a year but you need to subtract out the oil company subsidy's, NHTSA's billion a year for safety, federal reconstruction aid after a disaster etc, and not just the new federal construction costs.

While 'free parking' is available in large sections of the country it still takes land and someone needs to maintain it. However, it's vary unusual for federal, state, or local governments to pay for such parking as part of a gas tax, it's generally taken from the budget of the agency providing that parking space.

[patrickgzill]

You are very, very wrong, because not only are you not accounting for state fuel taxes, but toll roads, AND, the extra fees paid by truckers and other commercial vehicles. However I am not goint to write a dissertation for your sole benefit - suffice it to say, that each 18 wheeler you see, is a source of over $25K per year in taxes. Yes, over $2000 per month.

[a3camero]

That's almost exactly the distance between Shinjuku (Tokyo) and Sendai, Japan. $40 cheaper + an hour faster by train. I think that's the alternative. High speed rail.

If you happen to live by Omiya's station (about 30mi closer to Sendai), you'd be there in under 2 hours.

[excuse-me]

London Paris is 60mi further but under 3hours - and there is a sea in the way,

If even the English can do public projects better than you, you have a problem!

[DougWebb]

There aren't tens of millions of people living in the Channel blocking the path the train needs to take; digging the Channel tunnel was simple compared to putting straight rail lines between Boston, NYC, Philly, and DC.

[justincormack]

Dig a tunnel under the people if you think it is easier then.

[vidarh]

The fun part is that it's now finally this fast after a lot of hurt British pride when the trains used to have to break when reaching the British side, because the tracks were of too poor quality compared to on the French side. It's taken years for them to upgrade the British side (and moving the terminal to another station where the trains could make am ore direct approach instead of going in a large semi-circle on crappy, congested suburban lines) to let the trains run at full speed.

[melling]

That's right the average speed between NYC and Boston is around 60 mph. It's not high-speed rail, which is 150mph+.

Beijing to Shanghai, for example, is currently averaging 186mph, and if they get back to initial goals, they'll average over 200mph.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing%E2%80%93Shanghai_High-S...

In short, NYC to Boston should be 90 minutes by train.

[martingordon]

You can get a monthly pass from NYP to BOS for $1700 or a ten-ride pass for $780. See here: http://tickets.amtrak.com/itd/amtrak/multiride

Taking into account travel time to and from the airports, plus time spent in security, you might be looking at longer than 3.5 hours.

Still, travel along the Northeast corridor would be a lot cheaper if those fares didn't have to subside ridiculous cross-country routes. A one-way ticket from New York to Los Angeles (changing trains in Chicago) costs $266 and takes 62 hours, not including the 5 hour layover. Why are these trains still running?

[blahedo]

There are relatively few people that take the cross-country trains end-to-end, and a lot of people that get on or off at some little town along the way. For many of the more rural parts of the country, this is their primary access to long-distance travel. (This is especially true since the various phases of airline deregulation have increasingly caused smaller airports to close.)

There are also strong network effects in play. NYP to BOS is great if you're just going from NYP to BOS. But if you're going from NYP up to Portland, or BOS to Trenton or Pittsburgh or something, the cheap NYP-BOS connection is useless to you unless there are also not-extremely-expensive links from NYP or BOS to your actual endpoints. Part of what makes NYP-BOS so cost-effective as a route is that it's also fed by other lines that A) exist and B) aren't prohibitively expensive.

[_delirium]

> Why are these trains still running?

A political reason is that the keep-Amtrak-alive coalition is basically a mixture of urban transit advocates and representatives from rural areas who want to keep their town's train stop. A system that only served the major cities wouldn't have broad enough support, especially if it were only the major coastal cities (e.g. if you cut the Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, etc. services).

[jimmybot]

How overbooked does Amtrak get? Maybe Amtrak should be selling subscriptions. Or bulk discounts, but the passes are per person and expire end of the month.

[martingordon]

Amtrak does sell monthly passes. See my post above: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3813734

[dwynings]

They actually had planned to launch on the East Coast, but changed their minds because of the train services there.

More info: http://pandodaily.com/2012/04/05/silicon-valley-gets-its-own...

[melling]

"So, will this model work? That’s a big question. They had originally planned to launch it on the East Coast but quickly realized, with the train service there, it wasn’t a great market."

Kind of funny. We don't even have high-speed rail in this country yet. The distance between LA and San Francisco is less than 400 miles. Someday it'll be a 2 hour train trip, but it's looking like it'll be another 100 years at this point.

[bookshlf]

I'm in favor of better quality rail service in this country but for various reasons it's not simple.

Acquiring land already developed on to get lines in and out of larger cities isn't simple, and building underground routes like the "Chunnel" to get out of city centers isn't cheap.

And, I agree, there is a cultural perspective of rail travel that changed dramatically once it became affordable for so many to own a car.