My Railroad Rant

Tomorrow morning I leave for New York. Thursday I will be attending a conference and Friday I will be traveling to Boston. I hoped to make the four hour trip from NY to Boston by train in an attempt to be a bit greener and as homage to my grandfather who sold trains for GE during his life. I visited Amtrak's webpage to purchase tickets for a morning train into Boston a week and a half ago. Short timing I realize but the decision to go was very last minute. No seats were available. The site was easy enough to use, it wasn't user error but nothing was offered.

There was no disclaimer for why the, seemingly popular, route was inaccessible. After two days of four different people searching for three seats I gave in, I called to speak to an Amtrak representative. The call was answered expediently by a friendly, helpful woman. She explained the predicament; a bridge is out and the construction is scheduled during my trip. Instead of the normal ten trains running from 3 a.m. to 5 p.m. there will be three trains running. Typically the trip is little more than four hours; on the 27th it will take nearly double that.

Had the trains been running according to schedule I would have much preferred traveling by train, but in order to save $65 each and 3 hours we are opting to ride the bus. The Fung Wah bus leaves hourly, for $15 a head with service from China Town to China Town. There will be less movement and comfort but the buses webpage was running flawlessly. I am sure Amtrak won't go under because of the $250 they lost by my friends and me taking the bus. I doubt the inconvenience was even big enough to turn any of us off to using Amtrak in the future, but it was really annoying.

I checked today and now there is an explanation as to why there are only tickets for three trains for the next three days. I realize that it was an out of the ordinary event that caused the problem with the site, but because they acted so slowly on updating the site they lost our business and the business of how many others? I called to ask about seats again, just for kicks, and the representative said that the trains were all very open nearly empty. Typically ten trains run that route a day, for the next three days only three trains will run it nearly empty.Maybe Amtrak will feel the hit after all.