Amtrak can be OK as an occasional experience when you don't really care how long it takes to get somewhere. I did it once, and that was enough. For anyone needing to be somewhere on a schedule it is a disaster.
I live in NYC and have family in Boston, so Amtrack has been my main mode of transportation. I purposely take the slow train (not the Accela), as it is both cheaper, and easier to work while traveling (restaurant cars).
For people that live in the midwest, I can see how Amtrack is this old rag-tag thing, that serves no purpose, but for the North Eastern Corridor, Amtrack is a life saver.
I wish this country could invest more into rail routes, and make them faster, instead of spending trillion of dollars in sensless wars.
With half of that 2 trillion dollars that we spent on Afghanistan, (and whatever we did in Iraq), we could have had high speed rail in most of the larger cities, at least 10 major routes, making it almost a national high speed rail system.
Right now we have 0.
The US has no intercity trains? Is there a reason? I've always seen the NYC subway in movies and just recklessly assumed all major US cities are connected by rail...which is silly of me in hindsight.
* For most of the country, cities are really far apart.
* The US has excellent freight rail network. They lease their lines to Amtrak, but they only have secondary priority. Passenger trains often have to wait behind slow freight, or even allow freight trains to pass them.
* After WW2, the US aggressively built the interstate highway system, which simultaneously caused suburbanization and killed intercity passenger rail.
Like the other commenter says, the Northeast Corridor between DC and Boston is an exception, as the cities are closer, and there isn't as much freight traffic, and the highways have a lot of car and truck traffic.
This is only partially true, as I understand it. Amtrak has highest priority, as long as it stays within its schedule windows. When two trains pass as scheduled, Amtrak always gets the main line, and the freight has to wait in a siding. However, if Amtrak is delayed, and misses its window, then it has to wait, as freight does not have to give up its spot and be delayed to let amtrak make up time.
As for speed: they don’t call it “Acela” for nothing: it can cruise at a blistering 80 MPH!! For up to 15 minutes! Actually in all my trips only once did it go that fast. And on that trip any gains were nullified by an unexplained 40 minute pause in the middle of nowhere (not near any station).
When I compare it to the experience of Thalys, TGV, ICE, Shinkansen (all of which at various times I have used for regular work trips) et al: what a joke. The US does as well at building infrastructure as it does at winning wars.
Additionally wifi and beer means I can do a variety of other things I can’t while driving.