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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

Yeah I ride Amtrak, a fellow passenger told me they lost a lot of funding though, so now they share the tracks with another company. Not sure of the details entirely though. At least down in Florida anyway.

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That's somewhat accurate, but not really anything recent. Amtrak only owns the track in some parts of the Northeast Corridor between DC and Boston. In the rest of the country, they are using track owned by freight companies, and the passenger trains often get prioritized below the freight trains. Especially when freight traffic increases.

And that is why Amtrak is the most unreliable form of passenger transportation in the US, west of the Appalachians. I was once delayed 24 hours from Denver to Chicago. That wasn't even waiting in a station for the train to arrive. It was twenty-four hours, stuck on a siding in the middle of nowhere, staring at the agriculture, as train after train of freight passed us by.

Never again. If you travel on land, and can't drive yourself, take a bus. If you want luxury accommodations, buy two seats.

In some cases, Amtrak (along with the states) runs their own passenger trains, like Amtrak California. The Capitol Corridor in California, and the Cascades in the Northwest are decent, if agonizingly slow. Though you'd literally have to pay me (a railfan) money to take the longer, overnight trains like the Coast Starlight (like the cost of a private room and bath).

I hope you at least had air conditioning.

I took Amtrak once and every time we stopped in the middle of nowhere, the AC stopped as well. I've never used Amtrak since.

Interesting, because the law demands that Amtrak get priority, to the extent that the railroads have sued Amtrak trying to reduce the strictness of the law, as they've been abusing it.

http://www.railwayage.com/index.php/blogs/frank-n-wilner/amt...

Hah. So, the thing is, Amtrak gets priority over freight trains so long as it is running according to schedule. Amtrak essentially never runs according to schedule -- many of its trains have 0% on-time performance -- so the freight trains end up getting priority, making Amtrak even later, and so on ad nauseam. Positive feedback loop.

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