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A comment on Amtrak Goes Electric, Drops $466 Million on Siemens Electric Locomotives. Parent comment

Re:Amtrak Goes Electric, Drops $466 Million on Siemens Elect... by bck on Sunday October 31, 2010 @01:40AM (#1852564)
Actually, many people do daily or semi-daily commutes already. I commute and sometimes it's hard to find seats when taking the Acela Express between New York and Boston.

At this point I think the problem is price. You only see white collar workers on the express because a round trip is $200+. If any of these people (myself included) had to foot the bill for the train tickets I doubt the trains would be nearly as full as they are.

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Re:Amtrak Goes Electric, Drops $466 Million on Siemens Elect... by high5ths on Sunday October 31, 2010 @02:23AM (#1852632)
The ridiculous thing about the Acela is that it's significantly more expensive than the "normal" train, but only cuts about 40 minutes from the trip. (Checking Amtrak.com showed me ~4:15 for the normal train, 3:36 for the Acela.) When I was commuting twice a week NYC-BOS, I couldn't possibly justify the price difference, especially if you compare it to the $20 Bolt Bus or Greyhound tickets.

Point being: the Acela (IMHO) doesn't qualify as a high-speed train if only because it doesn't "feel" high-speed compared to the other options. Commuting in 3.5 or 4 hours is emotionally irrelevant. Commuting in 1.5 hours would feel remarkably different.

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Re:Amtrak Goes Electric, Drops $466 Million on Siemens Elect... by fragmede on Sunday October 31, 2010 @11:25AM (#1853407)
Actually, the ridiculous thing about the Acela, is that in some cases, it's both cheaper and faster to take a plane. Faster, sure; but cheaper? If I've justified the price of the Acela, why wouldn't I want to take a plane, especially if it's faster.
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Re:Amtrak Goes Electric, Drops $466 Million on Siemens Elect... by jnw2 on Sunday October 31, 2010 @01:56AM (#1852589)
Congress has

1) Only chosen to buy 20 Acela trainsets, with one first class, one cafe, and four business class cars each, and I believe four of those are always scheduled to be undergoing maintenance at any given time.

2) Told Amtrak to try to make a profit

Given the constrains of needing to somehow decide which people get to use the inadequate number of seats, and trying to make money, how do you kill two birds with one stone?

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