Amtrak’s Bad Week

Photo of Amtrak locomotives near Union Station. This hasn’t been a good week for Amtrak along the East Coast. First you have the guy hit on the tracks near Philly, then the train fire near BWI, then yesterday’s rail power outage, on the same day that the House voted on a one-third budget cut for the government subsidized rail service.

This is all very encouraging to me as I prepare to hop an an Amtrak Regional at the peak travel hour of the pre-Memorial Day weekend rush to go visit Amy. I’m reminded of my trip up to NJ on the 4th of July, 2003, when even the aisles of the train were so crowded with standees that I had to spend the entire trip in the vestibule. Really looking forward to that.

Comments

  1. I dropped my mom off at the train station yesterday morning about 8 o’clock. She made it back to my house about 1. I dropped her off again this morning, and assume this time she’s well on her way back to New Hampshire.

    It’ll be interesting to see what happens to rates and routes with the budget cuts. Since I don’t think the government ought to be subsidising such things to begin with, I’m not going to complain about it, but it may well mean that my mom won’t be able to visit as often.