I have friends that take the long haul Amtrak route. One does it for environmental reasons. He also eats discarded food so as not to waste. Great guy. Just a bit of a nut.
Another travels by train with his wife because they are retired and both have knee problems that make sitting in a plane untenable.
But yeah, traveling by train in the US outside the Northeast corridor doesn't make except for unusual circumstances.
I just took the Amtrak from Southern California to Seattle.
Pros:
- space! wide seats and leg room are awesome (I'm 6'5" so this is everything)
- Freedom to move around and explore. Lounge car, dining car, snack bar
- Spectacular views
- Train stations are much more pleasant than airports
- Opportunity to meet people from all over the place. On a plane everyone is going from A->B, people on the train could be starting/ending anywhere along the route, including small towns you've never heard of.
Cons:
- 32 hours of travel
- Pay an extra ~$500 to get a bed, or sleep in your seat
Overall I have no regrets but I'll probably not do this again until I'm retired or extremely bored.
I’ve traveled in the Coast Starlight I think maybe five times. It was enjoyable.
Some more pros:
- The food served in the dining car is far better than airplane food. If you get a bed, the food is included. Even if you get a seat, you have the option of paying for good food.
- You can bring a bicycle along for the ride. You do not need to disassemble it or put it in a box. Just walk the bike to the luggage car and someone will take it; when you get off the train walk to the luggage car and someone will hand it to you.
I assume they have eliminated the "smoking" car by now? Last time I took Amtrak long distance, walking through the smoking car to get to the dining car basically ruined the experience. Literally blue haze air and you smelled the smoke in your clothes for several hours afterwards. This was the early 1990s.
For long distance trains, sure. But there’s plenty of shorter Amtrak routes outside of the NE Corridor where it could make as much or more sense than flying, to be fair
Los Angeles - San Diego: 2.5hrs downtown to downtown (less if you’re going to one of the many suburbs or beach towns in between), which is on par with driving and sometimes even faster than traffic. Also, a ticket is only $30-50, so about a tank of gas. This is likely why it’s Amtrak’s busiest and most profitable route outside the NEC. If the second phase of the California High Speed Rail ever gets built (lol), this trip is to take somewhere between 30-45 minutes.
I did NY to Miami in 2024, I was working in NY one week and Miami the next, made sense to me to have Sat morning down town in New York, then sit in a private hotel room with great food for 24 hours before arriving in New York Sunday evening in time for work the following day.
Could have flown Saturday evening and had an extra day in a hotel room in Miami instead, but I spend enough time in chain hotels
I see a lot of mentions of great food. On the train from DC to NYC, the dining car is like a little league concession stand. Is it better on longer routes?
Eh, the Portland - Seattle - Vancouver BC Amtrak sector is also pretty usable. In practice I've found it's not substantially faster or slower than driving - at least not enough to make a big difference for me.
On a train I can read a book, eat some food, drink, stare at the scenery, check my phone, no problem because I'm not driving. On most trains a professional is driving, on a few a machine is driving, but either way it's not my problem.
Pretty, yes, but geopolitical issues slow the service. We were at least two hours late thanks to various issues with crossing the border and fitting in with the cargo trains.
Another travels by train with his wife because they are retired and both have knee problems that make sitting in a plane untenable.
But yeah, traveling by train in the US outside the Northeast corridor doesn't make except for unusual circumstances.