Sunday, April 25, 2010

Amtrak

This is a somewhat weird article from the Post, talking about Amtrak and delay problems, and feeding the whole thing through the lens of whether train travel is romantic.

It leads with a Northeast corridor delay which caused by someone committing suicide by train. That's not exactly a structural problem with Amtrak's infrastructure, just... sometimes unforseeable things happen. Elsewhere they do get to the real problem which is the fact that in other parts of the country the problem is that the they share track with freight companies.

Also, this is misleading:

She has never considered taking the Acela. "It's so expensive," she says of the speedier train with WiFi and electrical outlets. "I don't need a plug. All I have is a cellphone. And when it rings, it takes me so long to pick it up because I have to figure it out."


The non-Acela trains in the NE corridor (don't know about elsewhere) also have electrical outlets. That and wireless broaband mean that sometimes I travel and you, dear readers, don't even know I'm gone.