Acela & Amtrak NEC (HSR BOS-NYP-WAS and branches only)

How about New York-Atlanta? Depart Penn Station at 6pm, arrive refreshed following morning at seven after a great dinner and breakfast?
Or Boston-Charlotte?
Or how 'bout Washington-Orlando?
San Francisco-Seattle?
Los Angeles-Las Vegas?
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What kind of price tag are we looking at for these trips with these accommodations?
Obviously people will be willing to pay extra for the 'getting-there-is-half-the-fun' experience but can it be done cheaply enough to be affordable to people other than the well-heeled?
 
These trains are common in Europe. They're called hotel trains, and they're used by businessmen in preference to flying. You leave at, say, 6pm and arrive nonstop, well-rested, well-fed, relaxed and promptly at 7am --comfortably in time for a 9am meeting. Sure beats flying.

Better than the Amtrak model is to not include meals in the ticket price. That way, you can get the charge for room and ticket down to about $350 --about the same as you'd pay for a hotel room and a plane ticket.

All tickets on hotel trains include a sleeping compartment. Though there's a club car, no one rides in standard coach accommodations.
 
^^Sounds fair.

Be nice if we could match that here in the US. Of course, we would need the Gov't to build out the necessary infrastructure. Let's hold our breath (and see who passes out first.)
 
Infratructure' already there. A nonstop thirteen hour trip at a relatively leisurely 70 mph average gives you a range of about 900 miles. The train doesn't have to be high speed.
 
From CNN:

The president joked that he was jealous of not only Europe's high-speed rail but also the fact that campaigns there only last a few months.
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What a beautiful sentence to read!
 
Nicolai Ourossoff said:
At the same time, Europe and Asia began to supplant America as places where visions of the future were being built. The European Union spent decades building one of the most efficient networks of high-speed trains in the world, a railway that has unified the continent while leading to the cultural revival of cities?
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.
 
ablarc said:
These trains are common in Europe. They're called hotel trains, and they're used by businessmen in preference to flying. You leave at, say, 6pm and arrive nonstop, well-rested, well-fed, relaxed and promptly at 7am --comfortably in time for a 9am meeting. Sure beats flying.

Better than the Amtrak model is to not include meals in the ticket price. That way, you can get the charge for room and ticket down to about $350 --about the same as you'd pay for a hotel room and a plane ticket.

All tickets on hotel trains include a sleeping compartment. Though there's a club car, no one rides in standard coach accommodations.
Click to expand...

I rode one of the overnight trains (Munich -> Amsterdam) when I was traveling around Europe this summer. It was much cheaper than a hotel room and the whole trip happened while I was asleep. The accommodations weren't nearly as lavish as in the photos posted in this thread though -- it was more like the kind where there are six bunks to a compartment and most of them are filled by Dutch college students. I'd definitely do it again though.
 
Um, I've taken some pretty shitty train rides in Europe. Lisbon-Madrid overnight? No bunks on that one, and the seats were little better than Acela's. Going from Berlin to anywhere else in eastern Germany? You're likely taking a Soviet-era through train to Budapest or Moscow. The sleeper trains in Poland are notorious for theft. Even the high-speed ICE, flagship train of Germany, is filled with annoyances like broken toilets.

So this "oh wow, the EU has built the rail system of the future" meme strikes me as a little overblown. Trains in Europe are better than Amtrak, but not always by much. There are a few spectacular rides (the TGV, the Thayls, the EuroStar Chunnel trains), but most feel like a ride on one of the better commuter rail systems in the US (like the LIRR, for example).
 
czsz said:
Um, I've taken some pretty shitty train rides in Europe. Lisbon-Madrid overnight? No bunks on that one, and the seats were little better than Acela's. Going from Berlin to anywhere else in eastern Germany? You're likely taking a Soviet-era through train to Budapest or Moscow. The sleeper trains in Poland are notorious for theft. Even the high-speed ICE, flagship train of Germany, is filled with annoyances like broken toilets.

So this "oh wow, the EU has built the rail system of the future" meme strikes me as a little overblown. Trains in Europe are better than Amtrak, but not always by much. There are a few spectacular rides (the TGV, the Thayls, the EuroStar Chunnel trains), but most feel like a ride on one of the better commuter rail systems in the US (like the LIRR, for example).
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Agreed. If you want a really good ride, try Japan.
 
^ No doubt! Kyoto to Tokyo in under three hours. Astonishing. I wish the video I shot came out better...
 
Amtrak's $117 Billion Plan For High Speed Travel

Boston to New York in 1:20 Hours!

What can you buy for $117 billion? According to Amtrak, you can cut travel times between major East Coast cities in half. You can operate trains at up to 220 miles per hour, and you can start doing it all in just five years.
Amtrak announced a concept plan today for what would be the United States? first high-speed rail service, connecting Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston. The proposed rail line would be completed by 2040, with a launch for some sections as early as 2015. Funding has yet to be finalized, but Amtrak has already requested $2.5 billion from Congress for 2011, and earlier this year Obama earmarked $8 billion of the 2009 stimulus package for high-speed rail service. The rest would come from private investment, according to CEO Joseph Boardman.
With the Next-Generation High-Speed Rail a trip between New York City and Boston would take only 84 minutes, a trek that currently takes over 2.5 hours by Amtrak?s Acela train, or four hours by bus.
Aside from the conveniences this will bring to travelers and daily commuters, the new rail would attract riders away from highway and air travel, detracting from the need for foreign oil and the carbon emissions, and making the Next-Gen the most environmentally sustainable travel option.
Still, Next-Gen pales in comparison to its more institutionalized counterparts in Europe and Asia. Its implementation is scheduled for 51 years after Japan first introduced its Shinkansen high-speed rail. France?s TGV train takes only three hours to cover the 490 miles between Paris to Marseille, whereas Next-Gen would take nearly three-and-a-half hours to travel the 426 miles between Washington, D.C. and Boston.
As uncompetitive as it is, Amtrak?s plan is the first of several investments needed to create a viable modern transit network in the Northeast, cut pollution, and bridge the infrastructure gap.

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/1691854/amtrak-high-speed-east-coast-rail

Report found on Amtrak's website and here:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way...040-washington-to-new-york-city-in-96-minutes
 
Amtrak%20High%20Speed%20Trains_604x341.JPG


Sorry the repeat, but I liked this version better... Granted it's just a preliminary feasibility study, but at least they can begin to think about funding/financing.

Amtrak Envisions High-Speed Rail for East Coast
Published September 28, 2010 | FoxNews.com


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Washington to Boston in 3 hours? Amtrak wants to make it happen.

On Tuesday, Amtrak unveiled a $117 billion, 30-year vision for a high-speed rail line on the East Coast that would drastically reduce travel times along the congested corridor using trains traveling up to 220 miles (354 kilometers) per hour.

?Amtrak is putting forward a bold vision of a realistic and attainable future that can revolutionize transportation, travel patterns and economic development in the Northeast for generations,? said Amtrak President Joseph Boardman during a news conference at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.

The proposal, which would require building a new set of tracks from Boston to Washington, D.C., is at the concept stage and there's no funding plan in place, Boardman said.

The project would likely use some combination of public and private investment and hopefully be phased in starting in 2015, he said.

The Next-Gen High Speed Rail line would have hubs in Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington and would cut travel times in half or better. It would reduce the travel time between Washington and New York from 162 minutes to 96 minutes, according to Amtrak. The travel time between New York and Boston would go from 215 minutes to 84 minutes.

About 12 million riders a year use Amtrak along the northeast corridor.

Under the high-speed system envisioned, the trains would be able to accommodate about 33.7 million passengers by 2040. Amtrak officials estimated the high-speed system would generate an $900 million more a year with the added ridership.

High-speed rail would not only help reduce congestion on the rails, but also in the skies, since it would be more enticing to passengers making shorter trips, according to Amtrak officials and others.

"No one should take a plane for a trip shorter than 500 miles (800 kilometers),"said Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, noting that the system would be comparable to service now linking European countries.

The Democratic governor added that political leaders must generate the will to get the project done before current system is overwhelmed.

"It isn't a dream, it isn't a fantasy, it isn't an illusion," Rendell said. "Can we afford it? ... We can't afford not to do it."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
 
Only 51 years after the Shinkansen was introduced? In 1964, the entire 500km route from Tokyo to Osaka made its debut. Will the implementation of the first "phase" of Next-Gen in 2015 be of comparable significance? (i.e., Boston to New York in 84 minutes). LOL.
 
It's a shame that this will take 25 years AND probably never happen. I applaud Amtrak for thinking big for once. What is interesting is that a very similar line was actually proposed back in 1888 which was designed to cut diagonally through CT to speed times from NY to Boston. Some rail still exists out there but it bypasses so much that it doesn't really make financial sense.

I wish we had the political leadership to pull this off. The only way I see this happening is if the governors from all these states come together and somehow convince Washington that this is worth financing.
 
Agreed. Governor Rendell was present at the press release and showed some serious support. There is also a Northeast Coalition of DOT Directors that support such advancements.
 
This is Amtrak's Mars exploration plan. Will be killed as soon as a Republican tea party president topples Obama in 2012.
 
Yea according to infrastructurist.com most republicans are against HSR (along w/ stem cell research, abortion, culture, acknowledging global warming etc...). But have no fear they are all about creating jobs, somehow...?? oh yes by making sure billionaires don't pay a slight increase in taxes. Trickle down effect is a CROCK of SHIT. Hopefully the tea partiers (aka clueless closet-racist retards) will ruin the modern republican party and they(smart repubs) reform as the respectable party they used to be. Having a great job-creating investment like this would be a good start.
 
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